Page 47 of Sigils & Spells

I slipped into my bathroom and undressed. Not expecting to have company, I wasn’t wearing the nicest of my undies. Nothing matched, that wasn’t the worry. The concern was in the holes and stains, and general rattiness of my under things. I didn’t need him, or anyone, seeing the state of my clothes. Clothes off, robe on, I made my way back into the bedroom.

Darren had undressed too. Only he didn’t bother to cover up. He lounged in his naked glory across my bed. I stopped to take in the sight before me. Ripped abs, long legs. His hair was down, and fell over his shoulders like a blanket. And that part that all the women wanted a piece of, well, his sex was as spectacular as the rest of him. He shaved, or waxed, and his overall presentation made me think of a porn star. Hell, maybe he was. I didn’t know what he did for a living.

For the longest time, I had assumed he was with the fire department. They seemed to have an abundance of hot guys. Then I figured he was another one of the local farm boys. He probably had acreage, chickens, and maybe even some tobacco growing out in the hills. But he never had mud on him, and he lacked that earthy scent that most farmers had lingering around them.

As far as I could tell, he wasn’t associated with the college, or even college-adjacent. He was a local, but he hung out with Merle. And as far as I knew, Merle wasn’t local. I gave my head a quick shake, banishing Merle from my thoughts.

I slid onto the bed next to Darren.

He rolled into me, and his hand undid the tie at my waist. His skin felt soft and smooth and he was so warm. That night I earned exactly why he had the reputation he did. It was well deserved. I didn’t have to think, I only had to feel. And he felt amazing. He made me feel amazing.

I was boneless and half asleep when he kissed me on the forehead and left my bed.

I woke up the next morning and felt even worse than I had before. My body felt relaxed, but sleeping with Darren hadn’t changed anything. It had been nothing more than a means to prove me wrong. Darren would and did indiscriminately sleep with big girls. He had slept with me.

Point. Set. Match.

I still woke up alone, and I needed to go to work.

Breakfast, shower, clothes. My hair was damp when I left my little apartment, and the chill of late winter -early spring clung to me for hours, even after it fully dried.

At work I sorted documents, re-shelved periodicals, and pulled and processed journals to be shipped out to other archives and directly to patrons. Another one of those weird not-quite locals, I didn’t work at Duchamp College. I worked for the W. Duchamp Archives, tucked in next to the Weiss Library at the school. Technically across the street and not on campus. I had moved here to work at the archive.

Duchamp was a postage stamp sized town tucked into the Appalachian foothills with deep Kentucky roots. It was the county seat, hell, it was the only actual town in all of Belvoir County. All the other names on the map were glorified crossroads with a post office.

Like the rest of the county, people here were obsessed with chickens. The proverbial chip on the collective shoulder of the women of Belvoir County over fried chicken recipes would have been the stuff of mighty epics, if it wasn’t so ridiculous.

Since I tried not to eat anything fried, let alone chicken, I didn’t get the fuss. And not being a local, as I was told repeatedly, I just would never understand. I did understand that chickens were the foundation of the robber baron fortune that founded the town, the school, the archives, the whole damned county.

I kept hoping I would catch a glimpse of Merle coming in to research more ancient esoterica, items of interest to only a few select individuals. But each time it was a shadow, or someone who looked nothing like the tall man I so desperately wanted to see. And at least once every other hour, my body would shiver with the memory of Darren’s masterful touch. Hormones and nerve endings were obnoxious things. I could see how easy it would be for someone to confuse those feelings for love. I was safe from falling in love with Darren, I was already in love with Merle. Only he didn’t know it.

“Dubbya Duchamp Archives, how may I help ya?” Claudette, the Archive’s receptionist, answered the phone. She pronounced Duchamp as Dushawn swallowing the second half of the u-n sound up into her nasal passages in a nod to the old French pronunciation. Anyone who pronounced the town as Dew-champs gave themselves away as not being from these parts.

I said Dewchamps once. Claudette has never let me forget it.

“Pan, can you do a pickup?” she asked.

I stared at her until she gave me more information. I learned not to answer her until she provided all the information. Claudette was queen of incomplete requests, and then adding in unnecessary tasks. If I said yes to a pickup, it could be anything from retrieving documents from our clients, to making a Taco Bell run.

“Oh, right. Chris at the Weiss Library said he’s got some material for Dr. Armitage, and he wanted to know if we could piggyback it with our delivery.”

“Pandora!” our boss, Dr. Simon Bronson, Ph.D., bellowed.

I scooted behind the counter that separated the bulk of our collection from the general public and stood at the open door to the only office we had. He sat behind a big desk, and looked puzzled at his computer screen.

“Yes, Dr. Bronson?”

“Oh good. I have a delivery request.” He handed over a print out of the requested document. “You might have to check with the folks across the street at Weiss on some of these.”

I scanned over the list. Atlantis. Mesopotamia. “Dr. Armitage?” I asked, recognizing a few of the items. I tried not to smile.

“How did you know?”

“Chris already called over to see if we could pick up Dr. Armitage’s order from him.”

I confirmed that I could not only handle pulling the requested materials, but that I could run to campus and pick up the materials from Weiss Library.

The Archives weren’t officially part of the college, even though it was the same money, and the same family. Our collection wasn’t exactly based in science, or math, or documented history. It was a bit more eclectic than that. If eclectic was the right term? Dr. Bronson liked to say esoteric. Claudette just called it weird and creepy shit. But she always, always followed that with, “I like that weird stuff.”

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