Page 104 of Girls Night
Electra
Three months have passed, and still Electra cannot help her stomach twisting in excitement when the door to the Three Blind Mice opens, only to be drowned in disappointment when Delphi doesn’t appear. She’s being a child, she knows it. Olectra has told her several times, mercilessly, in fact. Alectra only chuckles whenever Delphi is brought up. It’s both immature and delusional to hope for someone to rock up unannounced – out of the blue or thin air – when that someone is dead.
Her world crumbled that night at the bus shelter on the outskirts of Cotton Rock. Just when everything seemed like all would turn out for the best, Delphi sank to the street and went limp.
By the time Electra was able to find help, it was far from too late. The doctors had told her Delphi had suffered an aneurysm the size of a grape. They said her death was instant, and pain-free.
But she knows better than that.
Delphi had looked terrified moments before she’d died. She had seen something, Electra knows it. Whatever Delphi witnessed, it obliterated her entirely.
Even now, sitting behind the counter at the Three Blind Mice, greeting the random customer as he peruses the amulets and tarot cards, Electra feels nothing but despair and resentment.
Something took Delphi from her. Something ripped her from Electra’s arms, and, in doing so, destroyed any happy future she may have had.
Every day she stews. Every day she bites down on the burgeoning fury. Every day she plots devious things she’ll do to that specific ‘something’ when she eventually hunts it down and makes it pay for takingherDelphi away.
Her Delphi. Forever and always.
Electra closes the Three Blind Mice after the customer leaves with his purchases, nothing more than a few black candles and a pack of beginner’s tarot cards. Pathetic. She locks the door and inhales deeply through her nose, holds the incensed air of the store in her lungs and exhales. Her vision goes fish bowl blurry but she won’t cry again. She refuses.
Instead, she drops the key to the store on the counter and heads into the back room. Pushing the velvet curtain aside, she allows the darkness to blanket her. Enjoys it. Then, she lights the candles around the bust of Hecate and removes the ancient grimoire she and her sisters keep in the safe just behind it.
The book is hundreds of years old, passed down from generation to generation in her family line. It’s pages whisper archaic secrets. Its scuffed leather binding protects arcane power.
She puts the grimoire on the table, then places Delphi’s plastic cereal box spoon next to it. She has kept it in her pocket since the day she returned from Cotton Rock. Olectra claims it’s unhealthy to do such things. Olectra is wrong.
Sitting down in front of the grimoire and spoon, she forces her heartbeat to slow. She needs to remain calm. She takes another deep breath, and relaxes.
Electra isn’t stupid enough to believe that magic can bring back the dead. That much she knows.
However, as she blows the dust off the old grimoire and unties its binds, she knows it would be even more stupid not to try.
THE END
