Page 4 of Roses Are Dead
I always had problems with that part. My spirit was too wild and volatile to reach calm. I was at my most focused listening to the heaviest metal music complete with throaty screams and wild drum beats, not some tranquil chiming of bells or worse… silence.
Silence was deadly, like a church.
Thankfully, the wind and the water were loud. I merged with the violence easily as I prepped the spell.
I stood on the non-broken spur of the pier. There, I balanced between the land, air, water, construction, destruction, cultivated landscape, and untamed wilderness. The skies obliged sending not one, but two fast concussive bolts of searing white light from one end of the horizon to the other.
This is powerful, my soul cried.
The wind picked up, casting sticks and debris into the maelstrom.
My hair whipped around, blinding me, and binding around me. The egg in my hand had Carl’s name scribed seven times across the surface. The words inked in a mixture of wax from a black candle and the ashes of intent written in my blood.
Being a good little witch was beyond my patience. This magic suited me much better. The strength of it coursed through me as easily as breathing. My will focused on one thing, getting rid of that man’s influence on my life. A single word encompassed my entire future; I was working a spell toward freedom.
I whispered the word to the egg, conveying the desired outcome of the binding into the spell. There was no vision of how this change would unfold, only the sensation of finally owning my destiny and experiencing joy. Maybe holding my best friend’s youngest in my lap? Or better yet, watching that child graduate from high school and cheering almost as loud as Beth as we celebrated June’s passage into adulthood. Yes, that would be the reality I sought.
Another sheet of lightning sizzled above me. My hair lifted into the wind as if two unseen hands held it aloft. I felt the magic in my bones. My heart called to it in the short span of time and space we lingered together. It simmered in that moment of held breath, will, desire, and natural energy. I cocked my arm back and screamed a curse into the void. Then threw the fragile carrier of all my hopes and desires into the rushing river.
The last of the light faded as the churning water ate the splash.
The wind blew straight, wet, and cold, chilling me so quickly it sapped my energy with each sideways, stinging raindrop.
I slipped in the mud as I climbed back onto the bank, still naked, and drenched from the water pouring from the sky. My clothes were wet and muddy. I put them on anyway. Luckily, I’d planned for this possibility and slid onto the tarp-covered seat. At most there’d be a little mud on the floorboards, nothing for Carl to yell about. Barely a sign that I’d defied him once again.
Right before I drove away, I swore I saw a wild animal in the bushes. I blinked and it was gone. Strange. And fortunate. Sneaking out of the house and using Carl’s car was dangerous enough, but having to fend off an animal crazy enough to not get out of the rain was not on my agenda today.
Hexing my ex-boyfriend and tormentor? Absolutely.
2
Bear
There were exactly two hours before a rare mid-week “prayer” meeting at the club. Enough time to slip in a run. I scanned the clouds. The day started ominously and marched vindictively toward the promise of a late season downpour spurred on by moisture coming up from the south and a hard-edged cold front creeping down from the north. This far west in Pennsylvania the remnants of most fall hurricanes were gentler than if I lived on the gulf or the coast east of here, but lately it seemed as if the planet wanted humanity washed off its surface. Or blown off. I could appreciate the sentiment, as long as it wasn’t aimed at me.
The wind picked up.
I tied my running shoes and prayed no one saw me. At six-five and pushing two hundred and eighty pounds, it was hard not to see me, but what I really wanted was for no one to take one look at my tattoos, my mohawk, my bulk, and then see the bright as fuck neon pink running shoes and laugh their asses off at me.
Slow. I didn’t mind being called fat because I could have another eighty pounds of beer gut and still kick the speaker’s ass. But slow? That was a death sentence. And I loved living too much to be a corpse any time soon.
So, I’d started… slow. Fuck, I hated that word. That meant a treadmill tucked inside the safe room in my basement. When that got boring, I toyed with the idea of jogging the multi-purpose trail behind my house. And with that fool notion, I’d let some idiot salesman talk me into bright pink running shoes. They were an embarrassment of epic proportions. One that kept me from starting any public workout until it was almost too late in the season to make a habit of it.
With two hours to kill and a storm keeping everyone inside, I slipped onto the bike path behind my house and ran away from the city. The first leg was easy. Then the asphalt ended, and gravel took its place. Whatever. I’d keep going for twenty minutes, path or not. Then come back, take a quick shower and haul my ass to the impromptu Wednesday night meeting at the Destroyers’ club house tucked into a junkyard across the river about two miles north.
What? You thought I meant a Christian prayer meeting in a church? Hell, I’d be struck dead walking into one of those. I was a proud pagan follower of Odin and Thor. I wore a heavy silver hammer pendant around my neck like those folks wore crosses. And despite my wild black hair that I kept braided in a stripe from forehead to neck, I was biologically, and more importantly, animalistically, Norse. I was born an ancient soul in the modern world. That’s why I’d found a home with the Destroyers MC. They were the right kind of drunken, pillaging idiots I enjoyed.
But if they saw me in pink shoes, damn. My reputation would go right into the shitter. I pounded out those thoughts as the gravel crunched under my feet. The path took a turn toward the river, avoiding the industrial park where the club owned four warehouse buildings that brought in over ten grand in lease income each month.
That was another thing that had changed in the last few years. It used to be that the Skilletsville Destroyers barely had any legal cashflow outside of dues, the junkyard, and accompanying automotive or motorcycle repair shops. But then the dumbest idiot of the bunch slept with his half-sister… not biologically his half-sister, mind you… but damn that whole concept was kind of ball-shriveling for some of us, and then, fool that Sprout was, he married her. At least there was a perk besides sex. She inherited almost nine-hundred-million dollars and didn’t mind sharing it with her husband or his club.
I know what you’re thinking, no fucking way. And yes, way.
Now we were not only rolling in dough, but appointed as the people responsible for building this town beyond its little steel industry roots and straight into gentrification. I hated it. One day, this running path would be finished, and all the wildness would be gone. That hurt.
But the money was great, so I shut the fuck up and did my part. And just to make sure no one invited me to any groundbreakings or soirees, I added more tattoos to my skin, piercings to anything that could get pierced, and gave up wearing anything normal.
Fuck normal.
