by Kezzy Sparks
Does she often come here when she visits? How then has he never seen her before? Now he plans to take her home, and sure, they must go.
Outside he is in a whirlwind; the pavements swing up and down like a seesaw.
“Need a ride, need a ride?” A cabby badgers them.
Home isn’t far, but it’s all good, he won’t make this girl walk. Those little red pumps mustn’t kiss the pavement, but rather the cushy mats of a cab, or a limo even.
“Which way?” the cabby asks.
“My home.” Casey burps.
“Yeah, Dick.” Geena says to the cabby, and then turns to glare at Casey. “What a nice name for a road."
“You already know...Dick?” Casey gasps. “You seen me before?” His road has rather that comedic name. Jesus, how strange that Geena knows it. Am I too freakin’ drunk, or what is this cutie made of? She a psychic?
To be honest, he is long past the point of caring. It will only be for one night anyway. A fucking, drunken sexy night. And should things go wrong, Megan will understand. She is sweet and intelligent and will know.
Yet Geena here is just something else.
“You’re like a drug,” he says as he leans tighter on her.
“Truly, I’m cocaine.” She flashes him a smile.
He deeply desires her. She now looks more fabulous, the Prada-red outfit luscious on her, like it was all just lingerie. Only her hat looks a little funny, but the fabric is glittery in its blackness—like it could have come from Prada, too.
The devil wears Pra…someone once wrote, but he doesn’t see things that way. Geena is an angel. Who in this world can beat her, where looks are concerned anyway?
Four
Buffalo's soft and harsh lights shine into their beer-glazed eyes as the cabby resets his meter. Lots of cars are parked near the Crooked, and they slide back into the shimmering maelstrom as the taxi glides off. The Mage has long known of Casey’s address, which is how she came to tell it to the cabby. Five minutes, most likely. The driver presses on his accelerator.
Being Mage Extraordinaire comes with benefits. And curses. She sees things that many cannot. Two minutes in, the car stops at an intersection, and she glimpses two ghosts. The pair have emerged from the underworld only bones, with not an ounce of flesh. Just like they should be, The Mage knows all those things.
One is tall, the other short.
“Not tonight boys,” she whispers through the window. The driver notices her talk but can never see what’s on the other side because he isn’t endowed with a vision that can glimpse those apparitions. Same with Casey, who is dozing off.
“I’m busy,” she addresses the ghosts in a magic language called Quimglich. The driver hears, and must wonder how drunk she is to utter that kind of gibberish.
The phantoms grit their teeth in muted displeasure. They had expected more because The Mage is routinely given to feeding them. She does that by allowing them to draw saliva from her mouth, in an act others might call kissing, but then it isn't. Building good relations with creatures of the dark is the whole point of it. Because you never know when you might need their help.
The Mage is a top player in the underworld and knows it like her backyard. There are three kinds of undead. What people routinely call ghosts are this type she is gazing at—those that come back to the living in a shadowy skeletal form. With their horrible bones and black voids, they scare the uninitiated, but not her. She is fearless.
The second are the ones who come back to life in flesh form, popularly called zombies. These are the dead who have won the war to stop their corpses rotting away and so are able to rise in flesh. Zombies can surface from any kind of burial ground, but mostly they crawl out of mausoleums. They cause a lot of trouble in the underworld, but usually leave innocent mortals untouched.
The third are the smoking-lights. These are a kind comprising the dead whose bodies have been cremated or perished in fires, accidental or otherwise. With no substance to exist in, they come back to life in the form of flashing lights. They glow red, yellow, or orange but rarely ever pure white. Mostly these don’t bother anyone, but can be dangerous when enraged, for they can literally burn you.
All three largely remain invisible to regular people. It’s only when something special happens that an undead might show himself to mere mortals.
The two ghosts don’t give any trouble, and the taxi driver zips past the stop line. Had the two been particularly cranky, they would have prevented the car moving, and she would have to get out to placate them.
Casey is now fast asleep. The taxi turns at a couple more intersections. His small neighborhood consists of older detached housing units with large gardens.
“You have arrived at your destination,” the cab driver speaks like a GPS.
Yes, this is it; The Mage takes a deep breath. Only two last steps remain: the porch battle and then the actual genital lift.
As far as the porch war is concerned, she already sensed there would a big one because Casey is one of those very few remaining people with a guardian angel—and that cherub could be a big problem, if not a deadly one. Right now, the angel stands right by his door. He has brown wings and holds a bow and arrow. He smells of frankincense and myrrh.
The Mage deceived him previously with her spells when she lured Casey to the bar, but the coming fight isn’t going to be a dance.
“You are growing up slightly,” says Casey dully, woken up by the driver’s drawl. He has too much alcohol on his breath.
What he talks about is that The Mage’s disguise spell is waning in trickles. She had better finish the job before he is seeing more clearly.
As they get out the car, the guardian angel unleashes an arrow. It goes through Casey without hurting him, and he never sees it. The Mage ducks, but the arrow catches her on the shoulder. Luckily it doesn’t sink deep enough to stick hard, but the pain is searing. A smell rises from the hole that has been burnt in her clothes. Braving pain, she yanks the arrow out; it’s beginning to burn. She throws it away and then rushes ahead of Casey to catch the angel before he finds another. The angel lunges at her. She attempts to repel the force but reels. The angel sends a kick to the belly. It almost fells her, but The Mage finds her feet, dives aside, and then catches the cherub's ankle. She drags the leg and then throws the angel helpless to the ground. Finishing him off, she waves a stun wand, and he will remain pinned there for hours.
It has lasted maybe a little more than a minute, but to Casey, if he caught anything, it was like a blur.
“Open the door, honey.” She senses how close she is to finishing.
“You’re hyperventilating.” Casey chuckles.
“Wild night,” she says.
He unlocks.
Surprisingly from afar, another guardian angel is barreling up the road. Must be Megan’s. One guardian coming to assist another. This one is female, and those can be tricky. The angel has her bow and a quiver of arrows, the arrowheads glinting menacingly silver in the streetlights.
“I’ll remain to smoke for a bit, don't lock.” The Mage has to fight with this one, too—because simply disappearing into the house would be suicide. And she must act before the new guardian gets close and lets fly. Two arrows sinking into her could be totally disabling.
Before the second angel reaches the porch, The Mage strikes a match, and that magically renders her invisible for a bit. She rushes the coming angel and clutches the arrow. Not outdone, the guardian releases the trigger. The arrow flies but not at her. It strikes the door and explodes on the porch concrete. The angel seizes The Mage by the shoulders and presses hard. Things might get bad if she is felled while under this kind of grip. She tries to hold it, but the angel’s power is enormous. There is only one means of escape. If she could lower herself, touch the guardian’s knee, and then utter the incantation you aren’t in your territory, that would weaken the opponent.
The guardian switches grip, grabs her by the throat, and squeezes. The Mage chokes, all air passages almost
blocked. She gasps and then tries to fling herself down. The angel maintains its hold, still throttling her. Breathing now impossible, The Mage pretends to collapse and then barely manages to touch the guardian’s knee. She whimpers the incantation.
It works, however, and the angel’s hold weakens. She takes a gulp of air and hurls the angel away, who crushes into one heap with Casey's.
By the time she gets in, Casey has just finished peeing. The last time he did so with his own dick, if the final step goes well.
“Bedrooms are up,” he says.
They climb the staircase. In three minutes, she has put him to sleep. She stays with him for three more, praising her god, the Jove. Then she stands up to finish the task. Her bag is on a couch downstairs.
She comes down and starts by taking out the red catcher—an appropriately shaped metal case with a leather-lined interior that she intends to contain the loot. She positions the catcher on the couch, with the lid open, ready to be filled. With care, she brings out the goblet, undoes its thumb screw cap, and sets it on the coffee table while uttering chants.
Last is to fetch the magical fuse, a match-sized wand that she dips into the goblet. This is where she could burn herself if she makes a mistake—kaboom in her face and 911 would have to be called.
Instantly as the wand touches the water in the goblet, there is a flash and then some bubbling. A pulse of energy flies up the banister and then there is a plop. Some things heavy and pink fall into the catcher.
Dick, I got you where I want. The Mage closes the catcher, zips up her bag, heads for the door, and vanishes into the Buffalo night…
Part 2
Breaking…
One
I guide my ex-trooper Crown Victoria into its allotted space, then walk toward the office. There is something in the air today, and my right hand has been twitching ominously. To many, such twitches don’t signify anything—just a bunch of nerves fluttering, they say—but myself, I interpret it as a call to action. And usually I am right.
The door to my unit is made of a lower grade of maple, stained in amber and then varnished. Near the top is a sign with my name on it. MELANIE PERKISS, it reads in bold caps, then below that is an image of a claw hammer, with the words The Breaker scribbled beside.
It’s a cryptic enough thing, and many newly hired people working in this building often ask me what is it that I break, a word they utter while making quotation marks with their hands.
“Curses,” I reply, not shy to promote my type of business.
“That, really?” they further say, “is it a line of work?”
“Yes.” I often oblige them with a smile and then add, “I lift spells, too.”
That statement often elicits mystified grins, because to many, a spell and a curse are almost the same thing, but in my world they are different.
The conversation often doesn’t end there; it continues with them asking how it is that I know there is a curse here or a spell there to be dealt with. To which I reply by giving them the real jaw dropper: that I am a witch hunter—and that’s how I tell.
“For real, a witch hunter?” they exclaim, wiping the pavement dirt off their fallen jaws. “In this day and age?”
“Yeah,” I say, “right in this freakin’ new millennium.”
At this point you should see how they shake their heads and roll their eyes like they have seen some phantom from a bygone century. Yet I, Melanie Perkiss, know what my calling is, and I have an actual office to work in.
At the door, I produce a key. I could have used my magic door-opener that pretty much can unlock any door, but I prefer to save it. I always save it; that makes good sense.
My fingers twitch again as I go in. Even though today is a Tuesday, it’s the first day of my working week, so I wonder what’s calling me to arms so early on. Really, in our business, big things usually happen on Fridays or Saturdays but not so much on Sunday or Monday, so what then could have occurred, or is occurring? I must wait and see.
The office is quiet, except for the soft fall of feet in a corridor to the back. I work alone, with no boss or assistant, and there is no one to say good morning to, or ask how the weekend was. Witch hunting can be such a lonely job, but also a potentially rewarding one, I must add.
My eyes land on one of the most important fixtures in here: a fish tank on a stand to the north wall.
In there is Mr. Gillz, a companion fish of mine that I adore very much. His type is the flowerhorn cichlid, and that species can be colorful and attractive, but to me that is not the most important part. The real deal is that Mr Gillz here is magical and spiritual, just like all cichlids can be if handled the right way by the right hands. He warns me of impending supernatural disasters, and sometimes he hints at the potential outcome of a particular magic case I may be working on.
“Hi there,” I wave at him, gazing into his fluid chambers.
He slowly rises to the surface, brings his mouth out of the water, and blows a weak bubble, then sinks back in. Something isn’t right. His sluggishness points in a bad direction.
Even so, I raise my hand to blow a kiss back, but just at that moment, my desk phone rings. Immediately I abandon the fish. It’s my practice to answer every call that comes no matter what.
“Hello, Mel,” a strange male voice speaks. “I need your help. I can’t see my…um…things.”
“Things, what things?”
At first, I imagine someone has swiped the man’s wallet or IDs by means of magic, so he needs help finding them. Magic, of course, is the key word, because if it’s regular crime, I don’t deal with that. It's for the regular police.
“My…you know, downstairs,” the voice says mournfully.
I get a hint, and wonder then turns into shock. What other things can exist downstairs on a man, except—to put it in black and white—a dick and balls?
“You can’t see your…um.” I still find it hard to speak the exact words.
“Yes, my…dick and..,” he says.
“Nuts.” The word just escapes, and guilt bites into me.
He grunts. It’s true then.
Yikes, what could this thing be?
The easier thing to imagine is that someone has cast a spell on him that prevents him seeing that part of his anatomy. Some bad curses can be like that; you just fail to see certain things but it doesn’t mean they have been lost. If it’s like that then, we could work a fix.
“Something wrong with your eyes, buddy?” I ask with hope, even though I’m still afraid it could be worse.
“No, my eyes are perfect. My things just aren’t there.”
God, don’t tell me... “Hold on,” I say.
Panic grips me. His genitals could be gone, for sure. Jesus, what is Buffalo coming to? Honestly I have never dealt with anything like this. I have cracked many magic cases but not of vanished organs.
“What is your name, sir?” I ask.
“Casey,” he answers. “Casey McLong. Don’t call me sir.”
“Alright, can you come to my office?” I give him my address, as I am not officially on Google yet. I then hang up.
“Mr. Gillz, a crisis is coming our way,” I call out to the fish.
On hearing me, he slowly sails up and down. He can feel Casey coming. With the whole load of his problems.
Truly, I don’t know how we will solve this, so all I can do for now is wait. But while I do that, perhaps it’d be wise to start performing the other little things I do each time I come in after a weekend. Usually after checking on Mr. Gillz, next is to listen for any messages that came in while I wasn’t here. I will do that now.
One thing that amuses many who enter this office is how antique my desk phone is. It’s that old rotary-dial type—one that produces that classic monotone buzz often heard in bygone era movies. No other office I know of still has this type, and I had to go to great lengths to get a techie to wire in an adapting device so the vintage thing could work with modern networks. I snagged it at an antiques sale, and I
thought its age and red color made it the most suitable thing to have. Magic is as old as time itself, and I thought why not go ancient, too, with the tools I use.
I pick up the receiver, dial, and then listen. Surprisingly, today there isn’t even a single one. I wonder then what all that hand twitching was for. Was it all to do with the Casey incident? Perhaps so, and that means it must be big. I fear it could be too hard to handle.
Anyway bad things do happen, and I must record this case in my computer. It’s a thing I do pretty much with every reported occurrence. My desktop is a sleek little Dell.
“Time to do some work, buddy.” I nudge the Dell to life, then open a file and mark it Casey. Many wizards and wizardesses, including some witch hunters I know, attest that they can’t work with technologies, but I seem to be an exception in that aspect. I have this computer to prove that, and it won’t bother me in any way. I don’t experience any problems driving a car or operating a cellphone. There is a TV in this office, too, which I will be switching on soon and it’s not going to explode when I gaze at it, like some magicians claim happens when they do. It can be a crazy world working with magic, but I am saved some of the more troubling scourges.
Case of missing male sexual organs—so unusual, but to be investigated fully, is all I input for now. I will leave it hanging until I learn more.
Casey takes a long time, and there is a bit of a lull, so I manage to slot in quite a few extra bits, but inevitably the phone rings again.
“Where are you?” He is still mournful. “I just got off the bus.”
That catches me by surprise as I had assumed he would drive in. There is a bus stop, though, down the street, and I imagine that’s where he is.
“Your buildings aren’t well numbered,” he goes on. “Where is 349?”
Ah, the tragedy of not being too well-off. I could have rented in a more prominent building, with a courtyard of roses, and those fancy modern LED displays that announce whoever does what inside.