Aries: Swinging into Spring

by Sèphera Girón

“No,” Maggie said. “I can’t say that I blame you.”

  Maggie pulled a cloth-wrapped item from her purse and set it on the coffee table. “This thing is nearly as disgusting.”“

  “I know. I’ve seen it many times,” Toni said.

  “I don’t even want to unwrap it. I hate that thing,” Maggie said.

  “I know. We all hate it, yet I guess we were all right to consider that it must have some sort of magical powers.”

  “It does have magical powers,” Weldon said. “How could something so ugly not?”

  They waited in silence, staring at the cooler with trepidation, then at each other, as if each were waiting for the other to open it.

  At last, they heard steps on the porch. The door opened and shut and Sid entered the room. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Am I too late?” he asked.

  “No, we’re waiting for you,” Toni said. “Once we start, we can’t stop, so we’re putting it off as long as we can.”

  “We should get a move on with this, then. There’s a storm coming. A big one.”

  “Oh good,” Maggie said. “The Prometheus will need fire. It’s all going to work out.”

  “Especially with all the fire signs in the room,” Toni laughed.

  “All two of us,” Maggie said.

  “We have almost all the elements except water.”

  “Maybe those two have water somewhere in their charts,” Maggie said. “I haven’t seen either of their charts.”

  “Could be they both are tidal waves,” Toni said. “But enough stalling. Let’s do this.”

  Toni gritted her teeth as she pulled the lid from the cooler. A coppery smell mixed with dry ice and other hospital smells wafted out, and her’ stomach churned.

  Inside were baggies of pieces of skin and a few assorted fingers. Toni shuddered. Maggie put her hand to her mouth. Sid glared.

  “What the fuck?” he asked.

  “Never mind,” Toni said. “We all knew what this would involve, so let’s just get our shit together and deal with it.”

  Maggie was pale as she stared at Toni, but not as pale as Sid.

  “Let’s get to work,” Toni said, growing businesslike.

  The foursome worked quickly, patching pieces of flesh to the bodies with needle and thread. Weldon sewed on the missing fingers, and Maggie stuffed a few holes with chunks of flesh. Toni swallowed back nausea every time her needle pierced Violet’s skin, but as she saw the results of her handiwork, she grew a little bit happier. She very carefully patched up Violet’s hand and turned it over to look at her palm. Violet’s heart and lifelines were badly corrupted, and Toni spent extra time sewing in tiny bits of flesh and smoothing out lines. She extended the lifelines on Violet’s hands and raised her mounds of sexuality higher than they had been in life.

  Once Toni had repaired Violet’s palms, she did the same for Norm. She didn’t question whether she was “cheating” by giving them long lifelines and romantic love toward each other. She even made certain their fortune lines were intact. Though they’d likely never be stinking rich, they’d never want for money again either.

  With four of them working steadily and silently, the patching was completed rather quickly.

  By the time they were done, Violet and Norm looked like homemade rag dolls. But at least they weren’t full of gaping holes and their faces weren’t torn.

  Maggie unwrapped the thing on the table. It was a dried-out claw with ugly, long talons. She held it out to the circle of friends. Each person said a small blessing on it, shuddering as they pressed their lips to it in prayer.

  After each person blessed the claw, she lightly passed it over the bodies, being careful to bless the parts where the skin grafts were adhered the most. Maggie stroked the bodies lightly with the claw, gently dragging the talons over every inch from toe to head. Toni lit more incense and added more black candles. Weldon unwound the coat hangers and balanced them in the bodies’ armpits, crotches and around their ankles.

  Toni put a fresh piece of charcoal in a bowl and it sparked to life, flames sizzling high. Sid looked over, fear in his eyes. Black smoke curled up from the blazing charcoal, and Toni lightly sprinkled pinches of herbs Maggie had prepared earlier into the flame. The herbs popped and sparked, dancing from the bowl and into the air. Sid grabbed a glass of water, ready to douse any stray sparks.

  The candles flickered ominously. Maggie looked at a piece of paper on which Lucy had written special words. She tried to say them, but the paper was shaking in her fingers so hard, she could barely read.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Maggie said. “I should be able to do this.”

  “It’s hard for all of us,” Toni said. “Right, Sid?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s good that we’re all here,” Toni said. “I’ll read the rest.”

  Toni took the paper from Maggie and read the rest of the spell. She passed the claw over the bodies one more time for good measure, then held the paper the spell was written on in a candle flame until it caught on fire. The paper smoked and the flame blossomed with hungry licks. At last, she dropped it into a small bowl of sand.

  “Now we wait,” Toni said. “Maybe a storm will come.”

  The foursome sat staring at the bodies for a long time. The candles flickered, the incense burned and the witches sat agitated and curious about what could happen next.

  A few drops of rain danced staccato on the roof. Toni looked up expectantly.

  At long last, a streak of lightning flashed outside. The sight of it startled the group. The wished-for thunderclaps rumbled.

  “Stand back,” Weldon warned as more lightning snapped outside the window.

  “It’s going to happen as Lucy said.” Toni grinned.

  “Thank God,” Maggie said.

  The storm took hold outside the house. Rain poured down in heavy bullets. Thunder roared and bellowed, shaking the room. Flashes of lightning cut the sky with blinding streaks. With every new burst of light, Toni nervously glanced at the bodies.

  It would be soon. It had to be soon.

  The storm grew in intensity, and just when Toni thought the house would rip apart, the thunder began to roll away. There was one last flash, so blindingly sudden that Sid screamed.

  A bolt of lightning tore through the window and glommed on to the coat hangers. Toni ran as far back as she could, unable to take her eyes off the electric blue-and-yellow, sizzling sparks that danced along and through the coat hangers. The bodies shook and trembled as the hangers glowed and then were still as the hangers cooled.

  Maggie stared at Toni, and together they looked at the bodies. The candles flickered, and the friends were afraid to say a word.

  Violet was the first one to gasp. She coughed and wheezed and clawed at the floor until she was able to turn herself over. She tried to sit up, her legs flailing as she grabbed on to a chair. The friends stared in disbelief, uncertain how to help her. Violet moaned, holding her head. She looked down at herself and stared in disbelief at her scarred arms. She picked at the threads holding the new flesh to her old flesh, but her new fingers were useless.

  Violet looked over at Toni questioningly, her wide, violet eyes blinking as she tried to comprehend the situation.

  Toni looked at the others and took a deep breath. “You died and we had to fix you. Those demons you conjured. Not so good,” she quipped.

  Violet nodded that she understood, a moan escaping from her lips as her fingers stroked the stitches on her arms.

  Maggie stepped over to her. “We had to sew new skin on you where you were ripped apart. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Violet shook her head, looking down at herself, at her sewn-on breasts and lopsided nipples.

  Norm groaned and gasped and sputtered until he clawed himself to sitting up. Hangers clattered to the floor. He held his hands up and rolled his head. He stared at his palms, the needle-and-thread zigzags that held him together. Toni looked over at him.

 
“Oh, God,” Norm cried out painfully. “What the fuck?”

  Weldon and Sid sat beside him. They helped steady him so he was sitting up against the couch.

  “God damn, I feel like a truck ran over me. What the hell happened?” he asked.

  “You were ripped apart by the sex demons at the orgy. But you’re okay now,” Sid said. “Well, sort of.”

  “Am I dead?” Violet asked.

  “Not anymore,” Toni said. “We brought you back. But we had to give you all that skin and stuff first. Kind of gross.”

  Violet looked down at herself. “It’s appreciated,” she said. “Don’t think it’s not. But fuck, this hurts.”

  “Hopefully it will grow into your own skin just like real skin grafts,” Maggie said. “We’re not the best sewers in the world.”

  Violet held up her arm and stared at it. She squinted and blinked as she examined her wounds.

  “I think this is healing faster than any old skin graft. Check it out.” Violet held out her arm, and Toni gasped as she saw the threaded patches of skin she had sewn on mere minutes earlier were now faded as if 20 years had passed.

  “I guess the spell works in many ways,” Toni said. “I never get the hang of stuff in this town.”

  “Not to worry. I’m sure there aren’t a lot of people coming back from the dead either,” Violet said.

  “You have that right,” Norm said. “My fingers are working as if they are my own. They hurt like hell when I woke up. I could feel every stitch on them. But now, it’s like they’ve always been there.”

  “Let’s make a circle,” Maggie said. “We have to finish this off.”

  Everyone sat on the floor in a circle and held hands. Sid shivered.

  “I’m not so sure I want to hold hands with you all. Last time we did this, all hell broke loose. In more ways than one.”

  “We’re giving thanks is all,” Toni explained. “Nothing happens except that we’re thankful for being back with our friends.

  “I’m totally grateful, aren’t I, Norm?” Violet asked.

  “If you’re feeling like me, I don’t know how I can ever thank you guys.”

  “You don’t have to. Just stay away from those spells. You just never know what’s going to happen.”

  “That was something else. I guess we should leave the spells to the real witches,” Norm said.

  “Do you remember what happened?” Sid asked.

  “Just a bit. I remember having some of the best sex in my life. Followed by some of the shittiest pain I’ve ever experienced.”

  “I know. I felt it too,” Violet said as she hugged Maggie. “Thank you all so much.”

  “Be well,” Maggie said. She closed her eyes and began the thank-you prayer.

  * * *

  Toni and Sid walked along the damp boardwalk in silence except for the pounding waves. The tiny sliver of the new moon glowed in the black sky. There were flashes of lightning in the distance and thunder rumbling away. They hadn’t said a word to each other since they’d left Violet and Norm’s home.

  “Well, that’s another adventure solved,” Toni said brightly.

  Sid turned to look at her. “Pardon me?” he asked incredulously.

  “I said, ‘That’s another adventure solved.’”

  “And what’s that’s supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know. All’s well that ends well?”

  “Does it? Is it? Are we meant to be screwing around with forces like that? Did we have a right to make those people live and then die and then live?”

  “We didn’t make those people do anything. We just happened to be there,” Toni said.

  “No, we were all at fault or guilty or whatever term you want to use. We were all there. We all called the demons. We were just lucky it wasn’t us that were torn apart.”

  “Maybe they came for Maggie,” Toni said. “Maybe Ben did want revenge on Weldon somehow.”

  “You don’t understand what I’m saying. If we had never screwed around with other forces and beings, this would never have happened. Violet and Norm would have never died, and therefore we would never have had to bring them back to life.”

  “As disgusting as that was,” Toni said, retching. She spit on the ground, bile surging up from her stomach as she remembered the coppery stink of sewing harvested flesh to dead, frozen flesh.

  “I can’t believe you. You act as if you were the one that died. And you weren’t. You were lucky,” Sid said.

  “I wasn’t lucky. I was out of the line of fire for some reason. As were you. There’s a difference.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  Toni put her hand on Sid’s chest. “Must we fight, out here on the beach in the new moon? Can’t we be romantic?”

  “Romantic? How can we be romantic at a time like this? We just touched dead bodies. We just brought the dead to life, like we’re Frankensteins or God. We have no right to manipulate life like that.”

  “If we weren’t meant to manipulate life, we never would have learned the powers of how to do it,” Toni said.

  “No, it’s wrong.”

  “Is casting a love or sex spell wrong?” Toni asked.

  “If it means things have to die, hell yeah. What does one person need so badly that someone has to die for it?”

  “People have died for love for centuries,” Toni said.

  “This wasn’t about love, or even obsession. This was about getting fucked. They wanted to get fucked and it went wrong.”

  “We wanted to get fucked and it went wrong,” Toni said, trying to take his hand. “So what? Get over it. We fixed it. It wasn’t even our mistake.”

  Sid shook her hand from his.

  “Shouldn’t we have left them alone? What if now we’ve created some kind of ripple?”

  “Please, Sid.” Toni stared at him. “What ripple? Witches cast spells all the time. Non-witches cast spells all the time.

  “‘I don’t know. I don’t really like your attitude,” Sid said.

  “I don’t have an attitude. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about how you talk to me like... like I’m insignificant or a nobody. We’re not in the bedroom now.”‘

  “No, we’re not. So why can’t we be romantic?” Toni said again.

  “No, I’m not in the mood now,” Sid said as he turned away from her. “In fact, I may never be in the mood for you again.”

  He stomped off down the boardwalk. Toni watched him go, sadness in her eyes.

  He was a strange man, that Sid, she thought. Yet there was something about him that she quite liked.

  Chapter Eleven

  Introspection can provide answers.

  Toni checked her email that night. There was nothing from Sid. She checked her email the next morning, and there was still nothing. As the day wore on, she found herself almost compulsive in her checking of emails and text messages. But Sid remained silent.

  She had work that night and lost herself in the bustle of Hermana coming back to life after a long, harsh winter.

  By the time she got home, she was so exhausted that she fell into bed.

  The next morning, she was up, checking her emails yet again.

  Not a word. Not a text message. Not an email from Sid.

  She didn’t know why she cared. He was far too moody for her.

  She clicked off the computer and focused on getting ready for work. She couldn’t believe it was Sunday yet again.

  Where did the time go? she wondered. Where had her special birthday month gone? And when was she going to fall in love?

  What about Sid? another voice in her head said.

  Forget Sid, she thought. He was just a pain in the ass. His behavior had nothing to do with her. She couldn’t do more than she already had. Thinking about him was more than he deserved.

  Toni went into her bathroom and stared at the sink. She tried to remember back to what Ellie had told her about love and activating vibrations. She hadn’t really followe
d it in her time that she was supposed to practicing all that stuff.

  She remembered vaguely something about the color pink and keeping items in pairs and having no plants and no TVs or other reflective items in the bedroom either. Well, she’d always had a TV in her room. She didn’t think a modern-day person could bear to be without a TV in his or her bedroom.

  Throughout the day, her thoughts kept straying back to Sid. Why did he have to be so difficult? Maybe she should just call him.

  She didn’t want to call him. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  By the time Toni got off work, she was fit to be tied. Sid hadn’t even stopped by the bar. Of course, there was the chance that he had to work as well, but she refused to see the common sense of that possibility.

  When she got home, she hurried over to her computer to check her email in case her phone had frozen or glitched out. There was nothing from Sid.

  She sighed and wondered if she’d ever see him again.

  It was time to take some action.

  Toni checked her love corners and realized her clutter mountains had slowly been building up again. There was a doozy of a laundry pile in her bedroom right smack dab in that love corner. That wouldn’t do. Ellie would freak out if she saw it.

  Old habits are so hard to break, Toni thought.

  She double-checked her bedroom for bad-love-vibe things. Beside the laundry, she didn’t notice anything new or pressing.

  She decided to take two candles out of the living room and put them on a small table in her love corner. She dragged her vanity over there too just to see if he would call.

  I’m pathetic, she thought. How did a woman get to this point, pining over a man she barely knew?

  She realized that what she missed was his energy, his demeanor. Whether he was happy or nervous, he was always moving and she always felt connected to him.

  Or at least she had. She wondered if he felt the loss of their connection as well.

  * * *

  With her bedroom rearranged, Toni wandered into her living room and flopped onto the couch in a funk. Why wouldn’t he call her? She’d feng-shuied. She’d rearranged. She was paying attention to details.