Oculus

by S. E. Akers

I purposely attempted to snuff out the glow I could feel haloing my baby-blues. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied, aiming for the straightest of faces, despite the fact I was trying to win a losing fight.

  “Umm, you’re practically fluorescent,” my bosom friend alleged and then pointed to her sunglasses. “And that’s with my shades on.”

  I clenched my teeth, feeling the creep of my grin. “Can’t I be in a good mood?” I submitted innocently.

  My bosom friend pushed back her sunglasses, anchoring them to her head. “I suppose,” she hummed, her tone turning more suspicious. “I guess I’m just surprised. I had to pretty much pry that frown off your face with a crowbar the last time you were here . . . And you sounded pretty ticked when you left that message the other morning.”

  My smile was now as feasibly containable as a raging five-alarm fire. “I was.”

  Katie eyelids shot open with one insightful blink and then her gasp rent the air like a set of screeching tires. “You KILLED HIM, didn’t you?”

  I lowered my gaze to the curb, amused by both Sherlock’s theory as well as the fact that my hands were admittedly a touch red with respect to having entertained that exact same fantasy.

  “Not quite,” I said with a coy, far-off stare.

  Like lighting a fuse, a thoughtful twinkle sparked in her eyes. “Wait — Did something happen?” Katie asked, her words practically tiptoeing a cautious path towards my ears.

  My only response was to bait her with a wily grin, keeping completely mum, which in turn just sent that magazine in her hand flying up like a cocked shotgun and her bottom lip gunning for the sidewalk.

  “Something DID HAPPEN!” she declared with a doubtless point.

  My brows rocked out a few guilty bounces as I slipped past her and then darted into the building.

  Katie came charging inside right behind me. “Nuh-uh! After the number of times I’ve lent you my bosom-friend ears since Mexico — Oh, I deserve the full scoop! Every. Freaking. Detail,” she demanded, swatting my rear after every word like she was pounding it into stone.

  Bursting at the seams to oblige my BFF, I accommodated her request with a detailed & dreamy account of the past few days as we slowly worked our way up the stairs. Between the airy rise of my twisting steps and knowing how giddy I felt, I was kind of surprised my rear wasn’t floating all the way up to her floor.

  Katie unlocked the door to her apartment and rolled her eyes up to ceiling, her heavy stare pausing at the tin ceiling tiles. “Where the hell is my Tanner Grey?” she sighed with a pucker.

  I winced a little when she turned to step inside. Crap… The only thing I hated more than reeling with guilt was trying to keep a secret, especially when it came to good news and doubly so when it involved someone close to me. Having just heard her cosmic plea coupled with seeing her new red hair color was making it even worse. I really wanted to tell her about Ty’s trip to the fortune teller, but a part me of felt like I might be meddling with destiny. Karma never took kindly to a helping hand, so why should I think that Fate would be any different by offering me any pats on the back? Considering my luck, that Cupid’s arrow I was so itching to shoot her way could very well end up backfiring with an unintended shot in either hers or Ty’s ass. And I had to face facts. In the aim department, I was no Katniss…so both of them might end up sporting fresh new holes.

  I took a confident stride across the threshold. “He’s out there,” I insisted, beaming an encouraging smile and deciding to leave it at that, at least until I’d battled out the pros and cons. But who knows? Maybe this would be one of those rare times the universe would send me a sign, one way or the other — sparkly golden rays, the hum of a commanding chorus, and all that clear-cut jazz. Crazier things have happened.

  The solitary sounds of my footsteps creaking along the hardwood planks called my last visit to mind, when a certain “guest” had me scrambling for a hasty getaway. With my ears on high-alert, I listened for the sounds of clicking paws and heavy pants charging for the door. Their absence had my senses scanning the apartment for fuzzy, furry brainwaves.

  I turned my attention back to Katie when I couldn’t locate the first one. “Where’s Tux?”

  Katie tossed me a curt, “Gone,” before making a hotfooted beeline for the futon.

  Color me more than curious, but I detected a hint of evasiveness fueling the sprawl of her gait. Plus, she hadn’t mentioned anything about finding his owner the countless times we’d spoken over the past month.

  “When?” I probed.

  Katie grabbed the remote and turned on the TV with a firm tap. “Umm . . . Not long after you left.”

  The hasty hum in her tone and the fact that her eyes remained awkwardly glued to the Shark Vacuum infomercial screamed “cagey” with the wail of a banshee.

  I strolled over to the TV and positioned myself in front of the screen. “Did y’all find his owner?”

  Katie barely lifted her gaze. “Nope.”

  The sight of my BFF’s teeth sinking into her bottom lip tossed my gut into a foul flip. “You didn’t drop him off at the pound, did you?” I stood there painfully mute, unable to stomach such a thought — Doggie Death Row, with the slim chance of getting paroled by some compassionate soul. And by HER of all people — the girl who was technically without a family and no real home to go to herself. Had she forgotten that?

  “NO!” Katie blared defensively. Just before too much relief could wash over me, she added, “But he did get dropped,” and then pointedly averted her stare.

  “Dropped where?” I asked, praying I would hear anything but “on the side of the road”.

  “ . . . Out the window,” she admitted sheepishly.

  “WHAT?” I shrieked.

  The cringe now seizing my BFF was all the ringing out my ears needed. “WHO?” I demanded, despite my initial assumption that the name “Donnie” was about to strike my eardrums. And you could bet your bottom dollar that the next punch headed his way would be a good five inches lower — BELIEVE ME. I only prayed my ornery-side didn’t get the better of me. I wasn’t sure what sort of karma-payback would be headed my way if I ended up robbing his precious apple bag of planting any of its sacred “seeds” down the road. But considering my present temperament, I was good with it. Surely there was a stone out there that could fix it if need be.

  “It was Killian,” Katie finally revealed.

  “Killian?” I parroted, now stuck in what felt like a black hole of bewilderment. “H—How?”

  “Tux charged into my bedroom, so I ran in after him before he found my slippers. Killian followed me and grabbed him first. Then he walked over to my open window with the little fur-ball in his arms and sat down on the sill. Killian was petting him when I went to throw my slippers inside the closet and then after I closed my door, he was standing there, dog-less, and staring down at the street.” Katie shrugged her shoulders. “Tux must have wiggled out of his hands like he did Fergus’ earlier.” Her expression shifted from solemn to uncomfortably suspicious. “Unless he dropped him on purpose.”

  Discovering that Tux had taken a five-floor free-fall was jarring enough, but hearing that addendum left my processers mind-boggling numb and my mouth slack-jawed. “W—Why would you even think something like that?” I asked. “I mean, Killian seemed so calm . . . And quiet . . . And NICE.”

  “To be honest, he really didn’t seem that shook up about it,” Katie insisted. “And he didn’t say anything after it happened, which I’ll admit isn’t unusual or him. But even Donnie acted more concerned. All Killian did was scratch out an ‘I’m sorry’ on his notepad — That was it.”

  Whether Killian’s non-verbal issues where rooted in shyness or social anxiety, surely he would have displayed a little more remorse with respect to an accident of that magnitude that involved an actual living being. He was supposed to be a Wiccan for Pete’s sake — a nature-loving, goodwill ambassador to the earth and all its creatures. Surely that included respect for the
domesticated four-legged ones, regardless of how many times they cocked their hind-legs at any trees.

  “And he acted kind of skittish around Tux,” Katie added. “Both Bethesda and Cassie kept trying to get Killian to pet him, but he shook his head every time . . . adamantly, too. At first, I thought he might be afraid of dogs, until he snatched him up in my room. It just seemed weird.”

  “Did you say anything to Bethesda?”

  “Are you CRAZY? Accuse one of her covenmembers of being a suspected attempted dog murderer without any solid proof?” Katie shook her head. “He could have whipped out his little pad and handed me an official ‘your number’s up’ — literally.”

  I postured my hands on my hips, struggling for some clarity after her “attempted” claim. “Well, how do y’all know Tux is okay?”

  “Because I rushed over to the window and saw the lucky little bastard bolting down the street without missing a beat,” she nodded. “Everyone ran into my room when they heard me scream. They all saw him round the corner at the end of the block. Hell, you’d have thought his freaking tail was on fire after seeing the line of smoke his black & white butt left behind.” A light laugh pushed past her lips. “It kind of reminded me of one of those old western movies . . . where the horse gallops off into the fading sunset with dust flying all around.”

  I stared at her flatly, unamused by her visual. That was one heck of a drop he survived, I marveled silently. And that was on top of accidently getting the shit kicked out of him the night before by yours truly. Maybe Boston Terriers had nine lives too?

  “Poor Tux . . . and Bethesda,” I muttered.

  “Poor me, too,” Katie pouted. “I wanted to keep him after all that.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I liked the idea of having a spunky little sidekick.” Katie leaned past me to align the remote with the TV sensor. “I could have called him Timex.” She grinned and started scrolling through the channels. “Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.”

  I snatched the remote out of her hand, admittedly well on the side of gruff. One, because I couldn’t find as much humor in her joke knowing that I would’ve liked to have seen him running off without any limping for my own peace of mind, and Two, because I still felt bad for driving him snout-first into the sheetrock. I tossed the remote onto the table. “You know we don’t have time for any movies.” My eyes commenced with a speedy scan of the loft. “So where’s all of your stuff? In your bedroom?” I asked as I turned to head that way.

  I hadn’t taken two full steps when Katie jumped up and blurted, “I haven’t packed.”

  I almost tripped over my own feet when the soles of my shoes came to their abrupt stop. “You’re kiddin’ me?” I questioned as I whirled around, only to have her quickly confirm it with a couple of guilty headshakes. With a weary sigh, I glanced at my watch and then started running figures in my head. She didn’t have that much to box up, and it shouldn’t take too long, not when one of the pairs of hands helping out was a supernatural speed-packer. “Well, come on. I’ll take the closet, and you can tackle the dresser drawers.”

  Katie postured her arm in the air with the staunchness of a crossing guard. “Wait!” Her halting gesture wasn’t as bothersome as seeing her hands locking together in a tense clasp not a second later. “Maybe you should sit down.”

  Shhhit… I couldn’t tell which I was starting to fear more after sensing the tenor of that request: a tidal wave that would swarm me with unbridled anger or one that would drown me in suffocating disappointment. That depended on just how bad her next words socked me in the gut…and how close I could feel myself slipping towards the edge of my fluffy white cloud.

  Preparing for the worst, I folded my arms at my chest and arched one of my brows high enough to deem it a crown. “Please tell me that your reason for wanting me to ‘sit down’ doesn’t have anything to do with you suddenly deciding not to go to MassArt?”

  Katie snatched a glossy yellow folder from off the coffee table and hoisted it in the air like she was holding a shiny gold trophy. “Of course, I’m going! My class schedule is right here.” Then she pulled out a mint-green sheet of paper. “See,” she said, waving it around. “I’m already registered and everything.”

  I remained exactly where I was, though the cross of my arms was now pressing against my chest like a safety harness while I awaited the sudden drop of a carnival ride. The heat fueling my gaze turned up automatically as I watched her arranging all of her crap back inside the folder so painstakingly, growing more and more irritated from her obvious stall.

  When she finally finished, Katie tossed the folder onto the table and breathed out a heavy sigh. “I didn’t pack because I’m going to commute.”

  My back fell into a slump that felt as dead as my stare. Then the next thing I knew, my mind was crying out what seemed like a never-ending stream of, “No! No! No! No! No!” The sink of my frame inevitably buckled my legs where I dropped butt-first onto one of the beanbags with a nauseating “plop”. Well, now it was official. I was A.O.C.—Ass Off Cloud—and then some. I couldn’t have cared less that one of the bag’s seams had busted open upon my landing, nor did I give the first flip about the damn snowstorm of static-charged styrofoam dots that were swirling around me, furthering my disgust. I’d been waiting on pins and needles for this day to come for over two months. Katie moving out of Bethesda’s was supposed to magically erase one of my lingering lies. Practicing witchcraft was her choice, and realistically, Tanner didn’t have a dog in that hunt. However, my boneheaded decision to temporarily house her in a coven from the get-go had been the catalyst in all of this. Covering up the stink of that was going to go over about as well as trying to mask a construction site port-a-potty with a spritz of cheap perfume.

  I let out a whipped sigh. There’s no way around it . . . Now I have to fess up to him.

  Katie dropped to her knees beside me. “Are you mad?”

  I raked up a fistful of the white, pea-sized foam beads and slung them at her straightaway. And dammit if more of them were clinging to me than had latched onto her. “Oh, what do you think?” I grumped.

  “Shi, I’m so sorry, but it’s way more practical,” she argued. “The rent is cheaper. I’m almost to the point of being able to tolerate this roommate. I don’t want to have to break in another one. And plus, I’ve got a car now — Thanks to you.”

  My eyes locked onto hers with a whip, burning white-hot with regret.

  Katie threw up her hands. “Sorry,” she winced.

  Feeling completely gutted, my stare crashed to the floor. Now here was a perfect case in point that proved “the road to hell” truly was paved with good intentions…at least it was on my side of the street.

  “You don’t have to tell Tanner a thing,” Katie insisted and consoled me with a firm squeeze. “He’ll never meet Bethesda anyway.”

  I belted out a terse laugh. “Silas knows Bethesda is a witch,” I countered, “and that you’re messing around with The Craft too. He’ll tell Tanner if he asks. He’ll have to.” My head rocked back and forth like it was wriggling on a chopping block. “I’m telling him this week . . . SOMETIME this week.” Now I really wished that I’d fessed up to Tanner when I was in search of something aggravating enough to drive some distance between us. But, oh no… His attitude towards my “recklessness” had swooped in and helped me achieve that without any riling confessions from me. Sitting here now and looking back at all of my screw-ups, throwing the witch-thing into the mix really wouldn’t have been that bad in the grand scheme of things. It wasn’t like I was mucking up a clean slate.

  I blew out a ruffled stream of air. Though now it sure feels like it…

  “How upset do you think he’ll really be?” Katie asked.

  My gaze shot to hers, my eyes pleading for mercy. “Upset enough that I’ll take you by a Ferrari dealership right now if you promise to move out,” I said, mentally throwing myself at her feet, kicking and screaming. And I wasn’t op
posed to dangling the possibility of loaning her Silas for an entire day. After all, Tanner’s orders were still in place, and this was something “Ms. Wallace desperately needed”. Of course, the thought of the house steward’s retaliation would prove just as dicey as karma’s (possibly worse). And I wasn’t an idiot. That Genie-bastard would swim through piranha-infested waters to squeal over me pimping him out, rest assured.

  Katie puckered her lips. “But I like it here.”

  “Because of the witchcraft,” I surmised, feeling the drain of my sinking spirits.

  My bosom friend nodded. “And because it’s the only thing that sort of feels like home to me.”

  Great… Throw in some guilt on top of everything. Truth be told, I’d been secretly praying for the past month that her fascination with The Craft would wane a little with each passing day. Then once her fashion design classes were in full swing, she would be so busy with her studies and a brand new social-life on campus that she’d be totally over the witch-fad completely. Though sadly, it seemed that all of my desperate pleas were for naught.

  “Okay,” I huffed, conceding defeat. After all, this was my deceptive-disaster-come-back-to-haunt, not hers. Though truthfully, Tanner’s forgiveness wasn’t my biggest concern. It was his hard stance on witches and what it could potentially mean for our lifelong bosom-friendship…as well as its effect on my new relationship with him.

  Katie nuzzled her head on my shoulder, aligning that sad cow-eyed stare she had spent years mastering with mine. Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a fly to land on her cheek, supplying me with the perfect cover story to go with the smack I was desperately holding back.

  “How can I make it up to you, Shi?” she begged as devout as a sinner sitting on the hot-side of a confessional.

  I gave her unsuspecting head a few gentle pats while my own began envisioning a shower of sparkly golden rays…the hum of that commanding chorus I was craving…right along with a padlock the size of my fist clamping my lips sealed for what right now I vowed would be a come hell or high water, secret-keeping eternity.