Love and Magick, A Short Story Double Feature (3 page)

She would not wake, of this I was certain
and I had tried. I did not know how to switch bodies and this too I
had tried.

Was I to bring her to the Great Arcadian? I
didn't think so. The spell should not need another spell to make it
work. That was understood at the outset, it was one straight go
once the thing took off. Well, it had taken off.

It was on the eve of the sixth day when I
dragged her naked body into the bathroom. I laid her out in the tub
and felt sick. I taped off the windows with newspaper and sat on
the toilet, thinking.

Then, at last, I rose to the task.

She was beautiful and as I stood over her, I
saw that her body, to me, was perfect. She was as whole as a new
born.

“Jesus,” I whispered, gripping the jig
saw.

A single woman living alone does not have
certain tools that would have sped up this process. A rusty and
battered old jig saw from the barn out back was the only semblance
of a surgeon’s bone saw I could find.

I placed the cold metal blade against her
right thigh. “Oh fuck.” I burst into tears and stood back, my hand
covering my mouth. I dropped the saw, leaned over the toilet and
vomited. I was a mess. I bawled for an hour, sitting sloppily on
the floor with my doppelganger draped inside the tub, sleeping.

“I can’t do this!” I sobbed. “Please, please
don’t make me do this!” But I knew as sure as fire burns that I
would. Was I to be the one to mar her beauty? Me? Oh, what cruelty.
I heard again Arcadian's words, his admonitions. He had been right,
so damn right. I'd had no idea what price I would pay.

At last I kissed her forehead and with tears
sliding down my cheeks, whispered, “I love you.” Then, with gritty
and unthinking resolve, placed that horrific blade against her
tender thigh and gave it a wretched shove.

Her naked skin split open like a cotton
sheet and blood spurted and ran in rivulets into the white,
porcelain tub. The room spun. My vision swam, black spots blipping
in and out of sight.

“No,” I breathed. “Not now!”

I was going into shock, passing out and if I
did she would wake.

“Oh God, no—stay awake! Damn it, stay
awake!” I went to the sink and splashed cold water onto my face. I
wiped with a towel and saw in the mirror that bloody thing.

I had to finish it. Now. I couldn't bear
this any longer. I had to end it no matter the consequences. I had
to.

I hacked. Again and again I hacked. I sawed
and hewed away at that precious leg as one saws a Christmas tree to
make it level for the stand. The limb slipped from beneath my
greasy fingers and I grabbed it like a hunk of beef, steadied that
saw, and slashed the rusty teeth anew.

I vomited three times more before the end,
and would have again, but there was nothing left. And before the
morning sun lit the sky I removed the mangled, bloody limb from her
broken body and held it up as a madwoman might an abortion.

My heart jack hammered. I was covered in
gore to my elbows, my chest and hair. The bathroom was a
slaughterhouse. But my doppelganger slept still! Silent and
peaceful in a pool of her own blood. Oh, so much blood!

I thanked all the powers of nature that she
did not wake, for it would have crushed me.

There was only one last thing to do. I
unhitched my prosthesis and held the severed limb to the wrinkled
stump that had once been my leg.

“Come on, do it,” I urged. Time slipped by.
Minutes, and then longer.

“Noooo!" I screamed, frenzied. "How could
you? How fucking could you?"

The leg dropped to the floor with a hollow
splat. I fell with it, slipping in greasy pools of blood and
vomit.

“Do it!” I bawled to the leg, to my helpless
stump. "Do it! Do it.” I wept and pled again to the massacred
sleeper in the tub.

That’s when I noticed her chest no longer
moving.

The sleeper was dead.

“Oh God, oh God!” I fumbled to regain the
leg, sliding in the blood, grappling for its slick surface as it
slipped from my fingers like a greased ball. I grabbed it and
yanked it toward me.

The skin of my stump split open with an
audible tear, like jeans splitting their seam. I screamed and
watched my own blood pour out in jerky squirts, coating the
hacked-apart limb.

“Help me!”

Then the magick came. My stump sucked the
limb to it with a sickening slurp. Muscle, nerve and bone knitted
together as if by a multithread sewing machine. Tactile feeling
shot down into the limb. It kicked and I gasped. Down into the toes
and back up again, a surcharge of energy ran riot through my whole
body, made me cry out, delivering the kind of healing pain that
comes with killing a disease.

***

I love her.

I wish I could have told her who I am—what
makes
me who I am—what drives me, my defeats, my victories,
my dreams.

I wish I could have spent just one day
speaking with her, telling her everything I know about life and the
world and what to watch out for and who not to trust and, more
important, who you should. I wish I could have told her everything
I've learned and figured out in twenty-nine years of living.

Given the chance, I would try to give her
some small piece of wisdom that she could take and use to succeed.
And I would be sure to tell her too, that you must never stop
learning no matter how smart or wise you get. Or think you are.

And I wish, just for one hour, that she
could cry on
my
shoulder in hopes that I might take away
some tiny bit of the pain that I gave to her.

Because the burden she now has to bear, is
the hardest price for me to pay.

***

I lay sprawled on the bathroom floor,
staring at the ceiling. How long I lay there was impossible to say.
My mind—my spirit—had been drifting. Meadows, open sky, sunlight,
so many beautiful things.

My throat clicked in ragged, dry hitches and
when I finally sat up the stink of drying blood forced a gag.

But the pain was gone. And when I looked
down at my blood stained skin, at my naked body, I saw not one, but
two whole legs.

I was overwhelmed. Tears sprung unbidden. I
could do nothing but stare and weep.

“Oh…I see.”

When I stood I did so on one leg and then
laughed, pushing away more tears, as I let my weight settle on both
of
my
feet.

"A miracle," I whispered. I pulled the foot
of my new leg up toward my chest and set it back down again. I did
this over and over in total wonderment, watching each inch of
movement with complete fascination. And then I took my first
step.

There was something else I had to know. I
wetted the hem of a towel and sponged it where the flesh had fused.
"Praises be." There was no mark there. No scar, no single line of
incision. I pressed a thumb into the skin and watched it bounce
back whole.

And then I remembered and looked to the
blood-smattered tub, to the evidence of slaughter all around me. I
swallowed, astonished, for I was naked and she was gone and my
prosthetic limb gone with her.

Blue Moon Monday

That night when I reached into the box, I
had no idea what I would find. I had just come home from a very
long day, a very long week at the firm and simply was not
interested.

A wooden crate had been delivered to my
doorstep, stamped colorfully with various shipping and postal
notices. I sighed. From my beloved sister, I knew.

She lived in China and sent me…
things
every so often. You could say her heart was in the right place. But
to me, these things, these trinkets were useless junk.

This was just her style, too. The mysterious
box on the door-step, the prophetic letter of my future woe or
bliss, the blatant pleading to reevaluate my priorities. All under
the guise of saving my soul.

I brought it inside, set it on the table,
and stared at it.

After a carton of take-out and half a bottle
of wine, I decided I could do this. I lifted the top off, reached
in and pulled out a letter.

"Because I care about you.

"Love, Lisa."

That, and the stink of formaldehyde, was all
I got. I sneered. What else? I reached inside again and this time
pulled out a white, silk sheet. It was soft and supple and slipped
through my fingertips. I spread it out over the table and stood
back. Embroidered in the middle was the face of a blue Chinese
dragon.

“Hmm. That it?”

There was one last item in that crate.
Wedged in between slats of wood. Another card, this one not from
Lisa, but written out in a big, machine-style calligraphy.

Once in a Blue Moon Monday

When you wish nothing more to do

Touch the silken dragon

And say a prayer for you:

Wish on Sunday, that you on Monday

Will have no more work ensue

And as clearly as is written here

It shall come boldly true!

"Ahhh! Garbage! Crap!" I tossed it down.
“Lisa…damn it!”

But I didn't throw it away. Or burn it. Not
that night. I just left it sitting there folded up on the dining
room table.

And then I forgot about it.

I returned to my corporate kingdom again for
several weeks. The silken dragon and its crate went into storage in
some nook and I lost myself in the hubbub of deals and bottom
lines.

***

When it happened I never saw it coming. They
say the thing that gets you is the disaster you never even thought
of.

It had been a deal gone wrong, really wrong
and I was the fall guy. Oh, I could keep a job. A job, but position
and prestige were no longer a part of it. The high-roller life
became a distant dream again.

“You can kiss partner goodbye, I can tell
you that.” But that was just the tip of the ice berg because when
the axe finally fell it hit harder than I would have thought.
Jennifer left me too and that crushed me. Seven years and then,
sayonara with not so much as a post card.

Suddenly, I’d become just like everybody
else.

It was on a Friday afternoon some months
later that I went home early and looked in the mirror. Really
looked, you know. The kind of looking that makes you see past the
physical façade into your soul. The kind of look my sister would
approve of.

I looked bad. Haggard and aged too soon. I
just wasn’t the same and for all I tried, I could not get back on
top. I needed something, but didn’t know what.

I fell into a deep depression and stayed
there all weekend. I drank some, but more I just lay there,
thinking. I thought about my whole life and how my failures had led
me to this moment.

I stayed like that all weekend long. Until
Sunday night at eleven p.m.

“Where is that thing?”

Without really admitting to myself what I
was doing, I milled through the various closets and cabinets,
overturning boxes and upsetting shelves until I found it. I pulled
it from its container and swept up the card that had dropped to the
floor. "Once in a Blue Moon Monday," I read out loud, "when you
wish for nothing more to do, touch the silken dragon and say a
prayer for...yeah, yeah. This is stupid."

And then I did it. I wished for it. I wished
for the Blue Moon Monday until the picture of myself doing it
struck me and I felt like a dupe. I flung it away and watched as
the silk fluttered to the floor.

The next morning I awoke and didn't notice
the silken dragon face when I stepped over it on my way to the
shower. I tightened my tie and pulled on my suite. My car purred
when I turned the key and I arrived at the office.

No one there, as usual. I was always the
first to arrive. I used to pride myself on it. Now I despised
myself for it.

I began to work.

Two hours passed when I realized, at ten to
nine, that I was still the only one there. I emerged from my
cubicle to find other empty cubicles. I visited the lunchroom to
find empty coffee pots. I peered into every corporate nook. Nobody
there. And just as I was about to pick up the phone and call my
supervisor, I noticed an emailed memorandum from Friday. It had
been sent to everyone.

We will be closed this coming Monday in
observance of Memorial Day.

Somehow I had totally missed this. I went
back to my seat and stared at the powder blue partition.

Did the Blue Moon Monday just work? Then I
laughed ridicule at myself.
Did the Blue Moon Monday work? No,
you idiot. It's a holiday!

I left the office.

The sun had not yet come through the clouds
and it was doubtful if it would. I decided I would go to the beach
and take a walk.

Crashing waves and cold sand.

I left the beach and began walking through
town. There were plenty of crowds despite the weather. I wandered
about aimlessly, pointlessly. I sat for a while and remembered my
distress. I began to feel sorry for myself when I heard a
voice.

”Excuse me, do you know which one goes to
Heisler Park?" It was a woman, probably in her late twenties.

"Ah, yes, I do," I said. She was pretty, but
there was something odd. "You just go down the Pacific Coast
Highway to Myrtle and--" She just stared at me. "You want
directions, right?"

"I was hoping you would know which bus
line." She nodded to the bus stop sign next to me. "I thought it
was the Eighty-Nine, but now I'm not sure."

"Oh." I hadn't realized I was sitting so
near a stop. "I don't know about that." I felt awkward but wanted
to help her. Her eyes were wonderfully green and her skin a pretty,
pale white. But she seemed frail and weak, contrasted by her eyes
and the bright, floral wrap around her head. "I don't take the
bus."

She nodded and fidgeted with her bus pass.
"I'm sorry to bother you."