Djinn, Lose, or Draw

by Erick Buckley

  “Not your call. And do you think I could stand by and watch you kneel before either of those fuckwits?” chided Jazzlyn – which also hurt.

  Abbie was going to say something, to argue. But a small squeeze from her and he knew the discussion was over. He stood and removed her shoes from her feet. He gently pulled her socks off and then moved on to her belt.

  “Oh, Abbie. You look good enough to eat but I’m so sore, I couldn’t even raise a smile, much less anything else,” she groaned. He really did look delicious, and it was sending all the right morse code signals to juicy central.

  The djinn rolled his eyes and said, “First, shut up. Second, I am not allowed to use my powers to heal you. But I can make you feel better, so you can prepare for the next Trial.”

  “Can’t you just give me a teeny hint?” she chided.

  He answered by gently peeling her filthy pants and shirt. This was accompanied by many a groan from her and several hisses of empathy from the djinn. Once he had her completely nude, he stole one moment to just drink in the length of her. It brought the purest unadulterated smile to his lips she had seen since the Trial began. He removed his towel, which made her reciprocate the smile, pain be damned.

  He lifted her with exquisite care and carried her to the bath and lowered her into the blissfully hot water. She sighed in a tiny bit of relief. He took a silver bowl and poured the water over her head and hair. His hands found the knots in her neck and worked and kneaded it until it released. He moved to each shoulder, taking his time and working each individual muscle fiber until they gave up fighting and smoothed out. He kneaded her body on the knife’s edge between relieving her agony and not tickling her, which at that point may have done her in. But he managed to strike that balancing act. He eased the knots from her feet, then calves, and moved up to her thighs—the elicited moans ran the gamut from pain to pleasure.

  “If you work the areas slightly north as thoroughly as the rest of me, we’re going to get sticky and need another bath,” Jazzlyn said with a grin. She half-dreaded/half-wished for him to go for the gold.

  Instead, he lifted her with ease from the bath. She wrapped her arms around his neck. He carried her back to the bed and laid her on her belly. He dipped his hands into a silver bowl of oil and laid his hands on her low back. The strength of his hands opened the flat muscles enough that she thought she might walk again. He then mercilessly drove his thumbs into the muscles of her ass. This brought blood and sensation back to her lower body. And it also lit up her lady parts like a Christmas tree. She tried desperately not to encourage that second line of thought, but his fingers wandered further south and made that impossible.

  She wanted to roll over, to reciprocate, to express a few sexual ideas of her own, but he laid a hand on her and mumbled, “It’s time for my dessert. Rest.” And he took ALL the time to enjoy his meal. And even came back for seconds. She very vocally let the Goddess know she approved this message.

  Afterwards, he wrapped her like a burrito in the softest blankets ever made, kissed her with passion and gentleness, and murmured, “You are unstoppable.”

  And she drifted off.

  When she woke, he stood next to the bed, dressed, and had laid out a fresh change of clothes for her. He looked serious, kissed her cheek, and whispered, “It is time.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Abbie stood in the middle of the room next to a pedestal covered in fabric.

  The Bastard entered. He looked huge and rough around the edges. Otherwise, he looked like a mountain come to life—a confident mountain.

  Psycho entered. He looked tired and grey, as though he hadn’t slept one minute.

  Then Jazzlyn entered with Skye, looking more revived than both of them. The other two Aspirants went bananas.

  “What in the shittiest shit is this shit?” bellowed the WereElk as he crossed to the djinn.

  Psycho got in Abbie’s face and whined, “I was hurt, too. Where the Hell is my healing? You think you’re playing games with me?”

  Abbie gave them both a look of steel and said in a matter-of-fact tone, “I cast no spells. If I could, I would have cast a sleep spell on her, so she wouldn’t see the hideous remains of what I would have done to both of you.”

  Both men backed away reluctantly. Abbie strode to the table and he lifted the fabric. Underneath was a blue sphere about the size of a cantaloupe, floating about six inches above the table. “All three Aspirants have survived the Trial of Force. Now you will face the Trial of Mind,” he announced. The sphere became three identical spheres that drifted in front of each Aspirant.

  “What we s’posed to do with this? Eat it?” grunted the WereElk.

  “This is the Trial of the Mind, Dipshit. You are so doomed,” chortled Psycho. The Bastard glared at him, but some of his arrogance was worn away.

  “Grasp the sphere,” instructed Abbie.

  “And then?” Jazz asked in a tremulous voice. The brutality of the Trial of Force coming back in a rush.

  Abbie shook his head slowly in obvious fear for her.

  The three Aspirants took deep breaths, reached out, and grasped their spheres. Low hums emitted from the spheres, the Aspirants turned white, and their heads snapped up as one.

  Skye flapped to Abbie and hissed angrily, “How do I help her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Dammit Abbie, what is happening to her?” cursed the feathered familiar.

  Abbie shook his head helplessly. “I wish I knew.”

  Tran

  Psycho opened his eyes and was immediately disoriented. Everything was slightly off – the angles of sight, the levels of sound, and the relative size of the world around him. It all felt too large. He looked down at his feet and saw Keds. This was peculiar since he did not own Keds. No, that wasn’t true. He used to own Keds when he was about twelve. He then raised his hands and saw that they were hands he hadn’t owned since he was twelve.

  “Holy shit!” he cried in a voice that cracked appropriately for the preteen he was.

  “Language, Tran,” admonished a voice he had not heard in almost twenty years. He turned his head and found himself staring into the face of his halmeoni – his Korean grandma. His father’s mother. She stood the same height as his twelve-year-old self, but she emanated power in his life as though she was bigger than The Bastard. She was arranging flowers with no other motion to indicate she noticed his existence.

  “Forgiveness, halmeoni,” he bleated meekly. “I was surprised by…”

  This thought was interrupted by the all-too-familiar sensation of iron bands constricting him, barely allowing him to breathe. All of the old feelings of his childhood came flooding back—terror, rage, shame, indignation.

  The tiny woman gave off a sense of tightly wound steel. She looked Psycho in the eye without emotion. Her hand shot out and slapped him across the face, drawing blood.

  “We do not lose control, Tran. We are disciplined. That is your American coming through. You will not allow that again in my presence, yes?” she drawled dispassionately and returned to her flowers.

  He bowed his head and mumbled an indecipherable ascent. The pressure eased and he could breathe again. She had released and dismissed him without a word. As he turned to go, he realized what happened on this day and a smile played across his lips. And he floated through the rest of the day, collecting the various bits and powders and tinctures he would need.

  He brought his grandmother her evening tea, bowed, and backed out of her room. He retreated to his room at the end of the hallway, climbed into bed, and waited.

  He heard the remembered clatter of her teacup on the floor. The sound of her rasping breath. The unintelligible, choking gags, followed by the heavy thud of her body hitting the floor. Her death brought no feelings to him other than the sensation of finally owning his power. While he had taken out his previous vengeance against her on insects and animals, this was the first time he had killed a human and he found he had a taste for it. He closed his eyes e
xpecting to enjoy the sleep just as he had that night.

  But that wasn’t what happened.

  “Tran?” called a thick, gurgling voice.

  His eyes grew huge in fear. This was wrong. This was not what happened. This could not happen.

  “You are a disgrace, Tran,” choked the befouled voice of his halmeoni, who was dead.

  “No,” he whispered. “No.”

  He turned his head to the doorway as a hand with puckered, mottled flesh reach around the frame. The horror of her ravaged, lipless face appeared around the corner.

  Tran sat bolt upright in his bed. But it was not his childhood bed and not his pre-pubescent body. It was his grown self. In confusion, he forgot his immediate peril and stared at his long, lean frame. He opened his mouth in surprise, but no sound emerged.

  In fact, no air moved at all as he felt iron bands tighten around him again. But different. The bands were lined in spikes and he felt them invisibly drive into his flesh. The agony overwhelmed him. He was near insensate. His halmeoni slowly strode up to him until the ruin of her half-fleshed face was inches from his own.

  “You murdered me—your halmeoni. You have no honor. You are, and always will be, weak. You are doomed to suffer for eternity for this soulless crime,” croaked the merciless, damning voice.

  These words dragged him face-to-face with the enormity of what he’d done. What kind of monster kills as a child? He gave himself the name Psycho. Had he always truly been one? This was a singular moment where his mind would crack and break into a million pieces or he owns the monstrosity that he is.

  He turned to the horror of his grandmother, to face the horror of himself. He chose to own what he did and what he was, and always had been, unblinkingly with relish. He threw his arms wide, breaking the magical bonds that held him. He raised his own hands and his own magical bands wrapped around the tattered remains of his halmeoni.

  “I am not powerless. I destroyed you and I did so as a child. Imagine what I am capable of now,” he cried to the Universe. “You terrorized me because you could only terrorize a child. I terrorize everyone because I have that power. And as Master of the Lamp, I will wrap my world in bands tighter than these, and I will squeeze.”

  As he clenched his fist, crushing the horror that was his grandmother, she smiled with what could only be pride.

  And then he was back in the Lamp.

  * * *

  Jazzlyn

  A hazy sunshine dappled Jazz’s eyelids. The pleasant weight of a warm, male body spooned her from behind with a thickly, muscled arm wrapped around her naked midriff. She nuzzled backwards against his hairy chest. The word hairy set off alarms in her dopamine addled mind. She rolled over and was not looking into Abbie’s eyes.

  “Good morning, mush,” growled the deep bass voice of Karl Woodsman. The WereBear’s large, naked frame was giving off a sweet heat that made her thinking fuzzy. She propped herself up on one elbow and couldn’t make herself freak out. The feel of him was too familiar. She forced her emotions into gear.

  “What the fuck, Karl?” Jazz barked in forced outrage. She yanked the sheet around her own naked form and rolled out of the bed. “Where the Hell is Skye?”

  “Haven’t seen her this morning. She don’t like my place, you know that,” he said with a chuckle. He reached to the floor and pulled on the pair of shorts he always had laying there. He thundered past her taking a moment to squeeze her arm as he did.

  Skye not being here brought a moment back. A bad moment. One of the worst moments of her life. She ran to the closet and found her clothes. The same clothes. She knew because they had gotten torn that day. And that’s when she knew she was there. And she felt herself walking the same path she walked then. She held him in the same way, ate the same breakfast, and lazed on the couch with him.

  And then it happened. The sound of a door being ripped from its hinges. And there she was, Karl’s wife. The WereBear filled the doorway. But something was different. She was huge, unnaturally so. She not only filled the doorway. She had ripped part of the wall and her body was still scraping the edges.

  And she wasn’t just angry. Not just hurt and outraged. She was slavering. Utterly feral. She rushed in and with one swipe of her trunk-like arm, threw the couch across the room with her on it—which had never happened. The enraged female WereBear stood over her, larger than life and even more terrifying.

  “Whore! How dare you?” roared Karl’s wife. Foam flecked with blood erupted from her maw.

  “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I have no excuse. I don’t know why I couldn’t stop,” screamed Jazzlyn into the snapping jaws inches from her face.

  “Despoiler of my family. Look at what you have done to my home. My children. My life,” she growled deep in her throat in a terrifying threat. She moved aside her massive, shaggy bulk to reveal her cubs—her and Karl’s children. The smaller bears were emaciated. They looked cowed. They looked beaten, not physically but in their soul. The shame and loathing and fear rose in Jazzlyn’s throat as tears and snot streamed down the side of her face. She began gibbering nonsense as her mind and her sanity sought to flee her.

  “Answer for yourself. Answer me!” demanded the WereBear, heaving in great gulps of breath. “Answer me! Now!”

  The smell and heat were numbing and driving all sense from her. And then a small spark appeared in her mind. She grasped a hold of it.

  She simply said, “Chloe.”

  The WereBear pulled back an inch.

  “Your name was Chloe. Your cubs were Jimmy and Eli. They were seven and ten when this happened,” sobbed Jazzlyn.

  Chloe closed her mouth. The cubs ambled to their mother.

  “I was with Karl for six months. Towards the end, he made sketchy excuses about why he could only be with me on certain days. I didn’t ask simple questions that would have made it clear what he was doing,” she explained in an agonized tone as the family of bears looked at her unblinking. “That’s because deep down, I did not want to know. Because I knew. I already knew. I’m guilty of that. I will be sorry for that for the rest of my life.”

  Chloe and the cubs sat back on their haunches. Then Jazzlyn wiped her face clean.

  “I own my part, but I didn’t do this to your family. Karl did,” Jazzlyn accepted. “Karl knew exactly what he was doing and to whom. He knew he was hurting you, hurting your cubs, hurting me. He chose his own satisfaction over honesty. He chose his own satisfaction over your heart and my heart. He wanted what he wanted and fuck the consequences and fuck everyone else. And even after, he refused to let me go. To let you go. To let all of the people who he said he loved move on and heal. And I’ve been carrying that around my neck like it was mine to wear. And it’s not. I’m letting it go. Karl can have it. He earned it. I’m done.”

  And with that, Jazzlyn reached her hands out, took Chloe’s massive, shaggy head, and kissed her.

  And then she was back in the Lamp.

  The Bastard

  “Hugo!”

  The bellow snapped The Bastard out of whatever reverie had been in. He was in a clearing in the woods even though he didn’t remember coming outside. An axe was in his large, meaty hand with a pile of chopped wood spread out around him. To his left was a log cabin with a rutted dirt track leading down into the holler. He was home. But that wasn’t his truck. It looked like his dad’s old Ford, but that wasn’t possible. He’d junked that heap when his father…

  “Dammit! Hugo!” howled a low voice. His dad’s voice. His dead dad’s voice.

  That wasn’t possible, either. He trotted around the house, axe in hand, ready to deal with whoever was pulling this shit. As he turned the corner, he pulled up short and dropped his axe.

  There he was, big as life and almost as mean. Phillipé Bastien. A towering WereElk with every last inch of him covered with hair. He was scowling as another man was getting up off the ground with a bloodied lip, scrambling to return to a car parked in the dirt driveway. The man slammed the door, spun his wheels, and dr
ove off bouncing along the packed earth road.

  The Bastard blinked stupidly into the sun as it dawned on him what was happening. This was the day he took the crown from his old man. The day he set him down on his ass and the house became The Bastard’s with the old man merely getting to live in. This was going to be good.

  “That was the man from school. He said you ain’t there like you supposed to be. Said you got to show up. Then he went and called you dumb. Ain’t no one talking about you like that. But you gonna show up and you gonna finish and that’s all about that,” spat his dad.

  “Think so? I beg to differ,” chortled The Bastard as he tried to tighten his grip on the axe handle. That was how he did it—he beat the man with that axe handle and he was never the same again. But the axe wasn’t there. He looked around and saw his dad twirling the axe in his hand.

  “How the hell’d you…” started The Bastard and suddenly his father was too close to him, in his space. The Bastard raised his hand to ward off a blow.

  Instead, his dad reached out and cupped his face. “Why you want to fight everything, Hugo?” his dad asked with gentle concern. He then leaned his forehead against The Bastard’s. “You fight anything that loves you. You fought your friends just ‘cause you could. Fought your ma until it drove her away. Fought me ‘cause you can’t let no one love you. Being big don’t mean you can’t be the bigger man.”

  The Bastard tried to shake free. This wasn’t what happened. None of these words got said. “Shut up,” he screamed in confusion and tried to push his dad away. He was feeling bad. Bad for how hard he rode his friends—friends who didn’t talk to him anymore. Bad for how hard he screamed at his mom—his mom who left them when his dad wouldn’t send Hugo away even when he was getting so big and pushing her around. Bad about hurting his dad—his dad who would never recover from the beating he was about to get from his son.

  Instead, his father embraced him in a full hug. “You so angry. You don’t want no one to get close. Not in your heart. ‘Cause that’s the only part of you that’s soft and you so scared of getting hurt. But don’t you get that it’s the only way you can feel, son?”