by DC Alexander
I searched the room for clothes. I found a pair of socks and the hamper of soiled scrubs. The idea of wearing them wasn’t pleasant, but I had to get out of here. I didn’t know what had happened to Carl, Mag, Dirt, the guy who cast the ball, or the area by the creek with all the fire. I’d been wondering why nobody came to see me, I was sad, insulted, worried, and sad by turns. My hair was gone, I was skin and bone, I looked like a zombie. Maybe they didn’t care. Whatever, I wanted to go home. I put on the scrubs, tied the little hat over my skull, and left casting invisible as hard as I could and hoping it worked.
I left the hospital walking. It was fairly early, traffic was light, and in the cool of the morning it was only 99 degrees or so, not hot at all.
I got a ride out of the parking lot from somebody, we turned out of the parking lot and he actually saw me. He went for the door handle to get out and leave me in the car I guess. I reached over and caught him by the balls; I said “I can tear them off. See?” I pulled a little and he moved to keep up with me, swerving onto the shoulder of the road. “You behave and I give you a nice present; I let you keep your danglies. How’s that sound with you?”
“That’s fine, here, I’ll let you out.” He pulled on off the road.
“No, I don’t think you understand. That aint the way it works. You gone take me home, then I let you go if you good.” I twisted a little “Let’s go, I aint got all day.”
He dropped me near the house. I didn’t want him able to identify which house it was, I got out on the corner and told him “Look, you come back in a few days and I’ll feed you, pay you, whatever. I aint a bad person but I’m having trouble and I aint got time to play. You have a good day, now.”
I had never been so glad to be home. I hurried around to the back. I needed to get out of sight. The back door was locked but I had a key in the dirt. I reached down and my fingers sank in, I grabbed the key and let myself in the house. I got a big glass of water, started coffee making, and went down to the basement.
I stepped out of the tattered paper shoes from the hospital and stepped on my cleared circle of dirt, I quested for Dirt and it answered.
I can’t express how much better that made me feel. I sank into the dirt, the energy coursed up my buried arm to the rest of my body, and I restored the lost tissue. I ran out of materials immediately, I was starved and weak, but I had energy to spare. Dirt wasn’t curious about what had happened; the magician had been eliminated, I had survived, this was another day. No big catching up party or anything. It was like a dam had held water back; when the dam was broken, the water ran free again, but it wasn’t upset it had been dammed up.
I spent the next few days eating, drinking and healing. I checked me in the mirror every day, and every day became less a skeleton and more my old self. My eyes worked fine, they looked fine; I could change my eye color after I thought about it a while.
The day came when I couldn’t put it off any longer. I went over to Wanda’s house and knocked on the door.
She opened the door and looked at me like she had seen a ghost. “Rose, is that you?”
“Yes, how are you doin? Is Carl home?” I wanted to find out why he hadn’t even called me. If he was alive; I’d went over that day so many times it hurt, best I remembered he should have been out of range of most of the blast that hit me. He had to be alive. I held myself poised between fury if he was alive and didn’t call me; terrible grief if he was dead or unable.
“Carl aint here; I ought to bust yo ass, girl. Where you been? You need to tell me a reason I don’t call the law right now and report you, that stuff yall got into done got Carl in some bad trouble, you tell me the reason I don’t put you down NOW if you got one.” She was truly fired up and on a rampage, and I didn’t have a clue.
“Wanda, I just escaped from the hospital, I burned my eyeballs out and had to grow them back. They wouldn’t let me go. I’ve been over at the house the last few days trying to get healed up so I could get around without scaring people, and wondering why nobody ever checked on me at the hospital.”
She looked at me a minute, considering, then she pulled me inside and hugged me “They aint nobody ever made up a lie like that, it’s got to be the truth. Get in here where nobody will see you and let me tell you what I know.”
She filled me in. I disappeared after the explosion. There was a large fire when the weeds burned; the fire department had been called. When they got there they found Carl burned, feeling through the weeds and claiming I had vanished but I was there somewhere injured and needing help. He said the dog was his, they took Mag to Wanda, they took Carl to the psych ward, and there he was, under watch for violent tendencies. He kept trying to escape. They had him in a jacket.
The police suspected him of foul play because I was missing, last seen in his company. We later found out that I was fished out of the bay, the explosion must have thrown me into three mile creek and I drifted down and out to sea. I have no idea why I didn’t drown. I was naked when found and looked like a very young, small, torture victim. The write up in the paper was small. It was an ongoing investigation into a juvenile case and details weren’t given out.
I went down to the hospital with Wanda and my purse. Good thing she could drive, I had to get Carl out or I’d be unable to go anywhere. I’d left the purse at home when we confronted the magician, my papers were safe. Nobody had found my pistol to Wanda’s knowledge and I guessed my sword had blown up when I hit the magician’s ball of magic with it. It had certainly blown me up, and that was the last I’d known for a while.
I told them I was the missing person Carl had been looking for, I had left before the fire started, and hadn’t known he had been detained. He certainly wasn’t any danger to me, he was worried about me. I had hidden in the grass, and then I’d left him to worry to get even with him for something he’d done. Yes, he was silly, but I didn’t want him detained and I was good at hiding. They had some problems with that but they let us go with some stern talk. They had no reason to hold Carl after I showed.
Mag was at my house. She’d gone back to dog form and didn’t seem to want to come out. It had probably saved her life. I hoped she didn’t have brain damage; she had taken a terrible lick.
Carl was affectionate. He was angry under it, but he stifled it, I knew there would be an accounting at some point. I begged off doing any more with the too tired excuse, he walked me into the house and left.
I sat down in the kitchen, I was tired. Mag wanted out, I figured she could take care of herself by now so I opened the door and let her go. The day had gone by fast. I hit the bed with a sigh of satisfaction, everything was fixed. I could finally relax.
The beating on the door was almost expected. Of course something else would come up. I pointed the shotgun at the door, released the deadbolt and pulled it open.
Andy, with his new little skullcap of black, black hair, said “Thank god! Rosalee, we got trouble!”
Author Notes and Appreciation:
Please post a review on this book. A good review encourages me to write more. A review that points out problems with the book will help to make it better because if there are enough I will rewrite it again. All are welcome and appreciated. Thanks for reading these notes!
The next book in this series, Earthly Powers – Fire! is written and will be released summer 2019 or earlier.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DC Alexander currently lives in a swamp in Alabama. Loves to read and enjoys writing. Has kids, neighbor dogs who have adopted him. Writes in the third person a lot it seems.
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