by K. C. Hughes
Rick, students at ASU gathered earlier today for a rally. And like you mentioned they are upset about the high gas prices. Who wouldn’t be? What’s interesting about this rally from what we learned is that it was organized today. Campus police were not prepared for the large crowds and thankfully no one was hurt.
We’ve learned that a Deakon Metcalf was the organizer. Here’s some footage.
Deakon heard the spatula hit the floor. She gawked at her son on TV as he stood on a podium rallying the students. When the camera panned to the massive crowd, Deakon dropped his sandwich in the sink, unable to eat. He hadn’t been able to see the entire crowd during the rally but never in his life imagined controlling that many people.
His mom slowly turned to him in shock. “Young man”, she said. “I’m proud of you.” And she picked up the spatula, rinsed it off, and resumed preparing the sure-to-be-awful dinner. It was like nothing out of the ordinary occurred. That was just like his ditzy mom, one molecule away from being a mannequin.
You gotta’ love her, though.
After he cleaned up the ruined sandwich from the sink, Deakon was antsy. He needed to move. He needed to stir something up, to feel that rush again. He wanted to do something. But what could he do? He went to his room to check Facebook. When he saw that he had over fourteen hundred friend requests, he was giddy with excitement. He was no longer the friendless nerd that he had been all his life. He was somebody now. He was a warlock.
As Deakon accepted all his friend requests he heard the neighbor’s dog barking. He tried to ignore the nonstop noise but it kept echoing in his head. Quickly, he jumped from his seat, raised the window and yelled at the dog. When that didn’t stop the barking, he climbed out and, instead of using the patio chair for leverage to get over the blocked fence, he used his powers and flew into his neighbor’s dark backyard.
Deakon glided above the dog and landed beside it. A vision of Spanks clamped in the dog’s mouth flashed through his mind. He wanted to torture the mutt. When the dog began barking again, he grabbed his throat and squeezed it. He kept applying pressure and felt the life force leave the animal. He tried to stop but couldn’t. The turmoil in his mind turned to panic because he could not release his grip. He didn’t want to cause harm to any creature. Tears welled up in his eyes as the dog’s own eyes began rolling in the back of its head. Finally he was able to remove his hand from the dog’s throat. Once free, the dog lost his balance and fell to the ground with a soft whimper. “I’m so sorry,” Deakon said, patting him gently. Guilt jabbed at him and he didn’t want to leave the dog alone in the dark backyard.
He grabbed it in his arms, feeling its weak body and ascended home. He gently put the dog through his window and laid him on his bed. Deakon darted to the kitchen and grabbed handfuls of deli meat. He returned to his room and hand fed the dog while rubbing the back of his ears like he’d done with Spanks. After the dog fell asleep in Deakon’s bed, he knelt to pray. He didn’t know who he prayed to or how to pray, but he asked Someone to help him get rid of the evil that overcame him.
***
A few days had passed since the incident and the dog healed with no signs of trauma. Deakon was scared at what he was turning into. He constantly fantasized about hurting all the bullies who beat, embarrassed and teased him. He came up with a scenario for each bully. For instance, the kid Randall and his buddies who’d cemented him at Addeson Prep were his first victims. Randall had been considered a ‘pretty boy’ who dated the hottest girls. Deakon could easily Photoshop a picture of him kissing another guy and then post it online. He had the skills to do it. But that would be too easy. He wanted to physically hurt him. He could mangle his face with his new strength.
Then he thought about giving Randall a taste of his own medicine by cementing him to a subway rail and letting the train run him over. Splat! But that would be too quick. He wanted a slow and painful revenge. His favorite fantasy with Randall involved rats. He would gather rats and starve them for a few days. Then he’d immobilize Randall in an empty room and let the hungry rats munch on him for dinner. Some nights he lay in bed harboring bad thoughts about hurting Matt. He wanted to crush every bone in his body, one by one. He wanted to kill everyone in Matt’s family. The more he tried to stop thinking of the gory thoughts, the more he wanted to do them. It was like dieting, when you are not allowed to eat carbs, for example, you craved them more.
He couldn’t talk to his parents about it. How would he tell his mom that he’d been transformed into a modern day warlock? He wanted to discuss his scrambled thoughts with Karri, but feared she’d dump their friendship for evolving into a warlock-gone-wild. And he didn’t want to ruin what they had, even though he’d wished it was more.
He gazed at her sitting on his bed playing WoW. It reminded him of the time they spent in Passau. The good part. He made up excuses to see her everyday and she didn’t mind. They bowled, shot pool, and went to parties. In fact, his dance moves were getting down-right smooth. He didn’t mind when she danced with other guys. Well, he did but didn’t tell her. As soon as he slid on the bed to join her in a game, his phone rang. At nearly the same time he heard the doorbell ring, which rarely chimed. He answered the phone.
“Deakon Metcalf?” He heard a woman’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Yes, whose this?”
“This is Fox10 news.”
Deakon removed the phone from his ear and looked at it.
“Yea?”
“We’re calling to ask how you single-handedly caused oil prices to drop,” the news reporter said.
“Huh?”
“Haven’t you been watching the news or reading the papers? The oil companies have slashed the cost of oil worldwide because of you.”
“Oh?” Deakon replied. He hadn’t been watching the news or reading newspapers. He had other things on his mind. Like being with Karri. And being a warlock. As he waited for her to say something else, his mother barged in his room.
“Honey, I think you’d better come to the front door,” she said, panting like she’d ran a mini marathon.
He carried the phone with him. When he opened the front door, he was assailed by dozens of news reporters. Instantly, lights blared and reporters shoved microphones in his face. Cameramen camped on their walkway and the front lawn. There were at least four news trucks with the satellite uplink towers craned to their maximum heights.
“Um, let me call you back,” Deakon said to the news reporter still on hold. His eyes bulged at the circus in their front yard. He was too stunned to speak. How had they found out where he lived?
There was, however, one person on the front lawn that wasn’t a news reporter.
CHAPTER 22
Warlock or not, Deakon wasn’t about to become a national spokesperson fighting greedy oil companies. The rally had been a test and not a platform to get attention. The reporters were like a pack of wild animals surrounding their prey. And the lights. There were so many cameras with high wattage lights that he had to raise his hand to shield his eyes. When he didn’t answer the reporter’s questions, they moved in closer for the kill.
He backed up and shut the door behind him. But it didn’t fully close. He looked down and saw a man’s sneaker wedged between the door. Deakon wanted to whisper a spell to make the whole lot of them disappear, like he’d done to Karri. But he shook his head and chucked the thought. He wasn’t a bad warlock. So instead, he used his strength to forcibly kick the man’s foot from the door. He turned around with so much force that he bumped into his mother who’d been standing behind him. The reaction of the rock-hard impact sent her sailing across the room. If he hadn’t used his power of flight to catch her fall, she would’ve died from a massive head injury.
Wanda looked at her son with pure fright. “What the-,”
Deakon covered her mouth with his hand. “Shhh, everything’s gonna be alright.” He lifted her body, carried her to the master bedroom, and gently placed her on the bed. He covered her eyes with his
hand and whispered in her ear, “You will sleep and when you wake, you won’t remember what happened.” When he removed his hand she was asleep. He quietly tiptoed through the house to his room, moving like a thief in the night.
Why am I sneaking around my own house? I’m a warlock, bitch.
He changed his stance and walked with the confidence of an African lion. He entered his room and saw Karri still playing World of Warcraft. Her dilated eyes focused on the monitor.
“We need to go,” Deakon said.
“One sec, I just need a couple hundred XPs to level up.”
They didn’t have time to wait. Who knew how long it would take her to get that many points? There was a horde of news reporters camped out in their front yard. He couldn’t afford to have video clips of him splashed across the TV for God and the world to see. He feared that he might unknowingly cast a spell on someone. But he also knew Karri’s dilemma. Leveling up in WoW for normal people had to be hard. He grabbed the wireless keyboard from her, queued up the dungeon, and hit F8 to run the gamer app he wrote. Since it took too long to wait for other online players to enter the dungeon, he developed the app that grabbed ghost IP addresses and put them in the dungeon as dummy players. Without anyone attacking, Karri’s avatar had free will to kill the minions that protected the boss. Once he obliterated them and killed the boss, he gained a lot of points for her.
“There you go, level 35,” Deakon said and placed the keyboard on the bed.
She looked at him in astonishment. “How the hell did you do that so fast?”
“We need to go, now!” he exclaimed.
Karri knew something was going on and with Deakon, it could be as simple as lying to his mother or as complicated as scaling the Sears Tower.
“What’s up?” she asked.
He told her about the reporters outside asking about the rally. She’d seen for herself what he did. The crowd was humongous and terrifying at the same time. At one point during the rally, she thought she was going to be trampled to death. When Deakon told the crowd to remain calm, the mood went from frightful to peaceful. It had been amazing to watch him.
They grabbed a few things and made their way to the bedroom window. They moved fast because he didn’t want his mom waking up and catching them sneaking out. In a quick motion, he raised the window and gently shoved Karri through it. He immediately followed suit.
Unfortunately, someone was on the other side of the window.
Panic overcame Deakon as soon as his foot hit the ground. Someone covered his head with a thick, dark cloth and swooped him up. It happened so fast that he fought hard to find his bearing. Someone carried him off and all he thought of was Karri.
“Karri, where are you?” he yelled.
“Deakon, help me!”
He let out a sigh of relief that she was okay. But he had to focus. He was a warlock and had major powers. He calmed his breathing by inhaling gulps of air. He visualized levitating himself to put distance between him and whoever it was that captured him. But as soon as he was ready to whisper the spell, his body suddenly began rising. It wasn’t by his powers, though. Someone lifted him. Then he felt himself being lowered and grabbed by another set of hands, bigger hands. And then fast movement.
He worried about Karri, but when he heard her muffled screams he knew she was alright, for now. He had to save them from whoever had them. He found it hard to focus. Instead, he kept wondering who captured them. Surely it couldn’t have been a reporter. But he needed to concentrate on their escape.
Deakon refused to stand still and allow people to hurt him like they had all his life. He intended to use the entirety of his powers to save them and to teach them a lesson. He couldn’t use the powers because his body shifted in abnormal positions. He needed to focus but too many things ran through his mind.
He felt his body land on something cold and hard and heard a door slam. He felt Karri wriggling next to him. “Stay calm, I’ll get us out of this mess,” he whispered to her.
While covered, he felt someone tie his hands behind his back and another person tie his feet together. Then he heard a motor roar to life. That’s five people he counted. He pushed the panic and fear that threatened to weaken him aside, so he’d have a clear mind to focus on their escape.
Someone snatched the cover off his face and jammed something soft and cottony in his mouth. He was unable to talk and it was hard for him to breath. He saw that they did the same to Karri. The look of fear in her eyes strengthened his resolve to get them out of there.
Since his couldn’t talk, he tried to telepathically tell the man to untie him. He gazed into his face and mentally recited ‘untie me’ in his mind. He did this for what seemed like forever and nothing happen. Had his powers left him? Then he wiggled his bound wrist and didn’t feel the bracelet. His eyes bulged in panic when he discovered he was powerless without the bracelet. Karri saw the fear in his eyes and tears built up in hers and flowed down her beautifully rounded cheeks.
Deakon’s mind told him to give up like he’d done all his life. What could he do anyway without the bracelet? He immediately stopped the pity-party. There had to be a way to escape and he was determined to find it. He would never bow down to bullies again, whether they were kids or grown men.
No mercy!
He craned his neck to the right trying to find out where he was. It looked like one of those soccer-mom mini-vans with the seats removed. He counted eight windows including the windshield. He also counted five men. They looked serious and professional, like they’d done this before. But it definitely wasn’t a good sign that he saw their faces. The first man reminded Deakon of what he’d look like in ten years, if he lived that long. He had long dark hair that was slightly wavy. He couldn’t tell whether eyes were brown, blue or hazel because it was too dark in the-what.. STOP IT! He had to focused. Why was he thinking about his kidnapper’s dark and wavy hair?
Focus, Deak!
Regaining his inner strength, he vowed to find a way use his powers without the bracelet. He looked over at Karri and gave her a look that said everything was going to be alright. She blinked her eyes in the sweetest ‘you’re-my-hero’ look. Then, one of the men pulled out a syringe, extracted liquid from a small vial, and stuck it in his arm. When he felt his muscles go limp, he lost hope. Seconds before he blacked out, he thought he saw Loro.
CHAPTER 23
As Zelda prepared to tell Deakon about his heritage, she bounced off the walls from the nervousness. Should she simply walk next door and say, Hi, you’re a warlock and we need to talk. She needed the right words to say to him but they escaped her. She couldn't understand why she was so anxious about the talk because she'd prepared for this for the last sixteen years.
Zelda had heard stories since childhood that their Warlock Spire would come. The stories were as endearing as mortal's Santa Claus tales. The older she became, the less she believed he would come during her lifetime. But she still dreamt of the day when they would unite as a feared group instead a bunch of gypsy-like people who were mocked in movies and TV shows. They needed to bring the fear back and Zelda believed, wholeheartedly that the witches would regain their respect with the Spire. And the time was here.
She walked from room to room in her Phoenix home, talking to herself, trying to determine what say to him. After all the years being away from Passau guarding the Spire, the time had finally come to approach Deakon. She was excited and petrified at the same time. Would he accept his destiny and move to Passau with her? Or would he shun it? When she walked past the living room for the hundredth time, something caught her attention outside the window.
Zelda peeked out the window as she’d done many times, and saw reporters and cameramen gathered on the Metcalf’s property. She froze, wondering what had brought the media to their house. Had they found out about his powers and threatened to expose him? She dropped to her knees and pounded the floor with closed fists. “Damm, damn, damn!” Then she took a deep breath and gained control of herself. S
he intended to find out what they knew.
She rushed to her closet and changed into something presentable. Zelda ran out of the house, leaving the front door wide open. When she made it next door, she talked to the first reporter she saw.
“What’s happening?” Zelda asked, speaking slowly.
The reporter looked her up and down as if she was sizing her up for entry into a beauty contest. When the skinny bitch didn’t answer her question, Zelda thought to cast a spell and turn her into a mongrel. But she didn’t have time. Instead, she politely asked again.
“The kid who started the rally at ASU lives here,” the reporter said and turned away.
Zelda let out a sigh of relief. It was harmless. As she walked back home she thought she’d seen a familiar face in the crowd of reporters, cameramen and nosey neighbors, but ignored it. Her mind wandered back to the reporter. She had time to cast the spell on the woman. But, instead, she centered her thoughts on Deakon and the talk.
When she entered her house, something felt different. It was so noticeable that her nose twitched. She checked the house to see if anyone had entered when she went next door. She checked every room, in every closet, under the bed, and behind the shower curtains. No one was inside so she checked the back yard. It was quiet and overgrown with weeds, but no one was there. The only sound she heard was the nonstop barking of the dog that lived on the other side of Deakon.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. So Zelda retraced her steps and searched her house again, leaving all the lights on. When she was sure no one was in her house, she decided to approach Deakon to get it over with.
She grabbed her keys and left her house, making sure to lock the door. When she pushed through the crowd, and rang the Metcalf’s doorbell, she heard a few reporters let out a laugh. Moments later Deakon’s father opened the door. All of a sudden the reporters converged on him. Lights shown in his face and he was slammed with questions about Deakon.