Tag: fiction

It was late and Elia was alone. Alone in her room. Alone in her bed. Her ears heard only silence, and silence, and-

A door clicked shut in the room next to her. Her eyes shot open. That room had
always been empty. For as long as she had known. This was the first time she had heard a noise. Her senses pulsed with electric charge. She pricked up the ear that she placed against the cold cement wall, seeing everything through sound. The cement floor on the other side echoed with sonar footprints.

Elia’s mind formed around lanky legs and a skinny torso, and a bump in between that told her he was male. His head was 9 inches from the celling, reaching about 6’3.”

Tall, lanky, new. It was Lois, and he was back late, really late. The hands of her
bronze watch glowed 340 hours. Elia turned her attention away as he reached for his zipper.

Who just gets up at this time in the morning? Where could he have been? As Elia turned this over in her head, she came upon the only satisfactory answer.
Where she would least expect him to be.

The rebel leader wondered how many lies he could live at once. He was supposed to be sleeping in another room, another building, but he had business to attend to. He looked out at his handful of followers.

“It can’t be that hard to find Hades Poseidon. How do you hide the most important and powerful wizard since Phobos Dike? You don’t, that’s how. I’ve gotten a tip that he’s somewhere at the palace, but he could be anywhere. We need to find him and get him on our side. Get yourselves in the palace, gain their trust. Position yourself as maids, valets,
servants, whatever opening you can find.”

“Where will you be?” a rebel asked.

“Where you least expect me to be.”

Lies. Maritza formed the word with her lips. Lies. It was such an easy word to say, but it had the sharp edge of a disobedient sword. What did morals matter when the truth was buried in a vault of suggestions and assumptions? The past wasn’t real, just a story we told ourselves, over, and over, and over again.

Maritza never told lies, just stories. All day people came to her and she gave them the script written for a better day. And sometime the day would come and it would be real.

Some people thought she was lying, but they didn’t realize, self-fulfilling prophecies are prophecies all the same.

In the quiet days like this one Maritza played through her most interesting visits. All kinds of strange people came to see the Magi, some evil, some good, some curious, some just strange.

On this day she remembered one particular visit, one it would be hard to forget. A tall hooded figure had burst into her tent and spoke to her in a voice so raspy that it had to be fake.

“Why did you put a calendar on his back?” Maritza was taken aback. She had had no idea what the strange man was talking about. She had never put a calendar on anyone’s back.

“You count down his seconds and he doesn’t know the end.” Maritza had gasped.

“One of the chosen ones.” And the man had grabbed her by the collar.

“Don’t expect me to believe the lies you Magi cook up to sweeten up your curses.
There are no chosen ones. What is at the end?” Maritza had closed her eyes.

“And the two will live and breathe as one.” The man had shaken her and tightened his grip.

“I know the prophecies. I don’t need that crap from you. I need answers. Who is the other one? How will they become one? What does it mean?” Maritza had given him the typical magi answer.

“The prophecy will find its own end.”

That’s what needles felt like. They made him show them. They told him what needles felt like and they asked him again and again. What do needles feel like? That’s what needles feel like. He saw bad things, things that were red: needles. He learned what needles felt like, then he taught them and they screamed.

The man was dishonest. His black clothes hid himself. He was dishonest. Did he know what needles felt like? No. The dishonest man, angry, screamed anger, screamed black. The girl behind him was honest. Her eyes knew what needles felt like. The needles had pierced them wide, like they had pierced his shut. He didn’t hear the dishonest man, angry. He stopped
hearing because he only heard angry things, and those things were alone, dishonest.

He followed the dishonest man’s hands, angry. The girl with honest eyes looked at him.

“He couldn’t put the sky back together,” she whispered, and they left.

The sky broke open. Elia hadn’t asked it to. But it broke. She liked the rain. It smelled like good things, but then she stopped smelling because it smelt like bad things. They had done bad things. She knew they were bad things because they hurt. She learned what a scream sounded like, but she didn’t cry. The sky did that for her.

The man was wearing all black, but he didn’t have any eyes. He told her that he could fix things, make them right. She told him to put the sky back together. He told her he couldn’t do that. She turned away from the man who could not put the sky back together. He took her
anyway.

She hadn’t meant to hurt them, but the sky broke anyway.

And Lois was ready for it to be over. He was walking as quietly as he could back to the room and an extremely angry wizard stormed through him, not bothering to edge past Lois in the
narrow hallway. The doors nearest opened an inch and slammed shut in an instant. Gligor shook his head back at Lois.

“Typical. If wizards without sufficient control get upset, or feel any strong emotions, in fact, the world around them reacts to that emotion. Luckily Violeta isn’t that powerful or this building would have been leveled a long time ago.”

Lois stifled a yawn. He was exhausted already

Josép Aliénor threw down the ridiculously dense copy of The Comprehensive Guide to Magic
Spells. Lois was the one who read all this, but now that he had a job, Josép was left to research his own condition with nothing other than what Lois had told him and this insufferable excuse for a book. No, the book was fine. It would have been really helpful, actually, if Josép had any idea what he was looking for.

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t see the tattoo without a mirror, but he could feel it burning into his back, and he could hear its slow, constant ticking. Some nights it drove him crazy. It never stopped. It never quieted. He heard it sleeping and waking, night and day.
Some days he couldn’t stand it any more and slammed his fist into the wall.

Then his parents would come.

“What are you doing, Josép?”

“You need to stay calm. There’s no reason to get angry.” He kept his eyes down, but
he wanted to scream at them. You don’t understand. He wanted to tell them how it felt to have your seconds counted, not everyone’s seconds counted like a clock did, but just your seconds. They didn’t understand what it was like to have a time bomb on your back, a time bomb that could do anything when it went off. They didn’t know, and they couldn’t. The
truth would be even worse than years of oppressive lies.

Josép checked his watch to see if it was time for Lois to come home yet. Then he
remembered that his older brother wouldn’t be home until the weekend. He sighed. It was only Monday. This was going to be a long week.

Elia slid into an empty seat at the poker table; Rei was shuffling. No one was talking.

“Gligor’s got an apprentice.” Elia mentioned. Violeta scoffed.

“Probably some stuck up prick who wants control over the only people lower than he is.” Elia lowered her head and stole a glance at Violeta.

“He shook my hand.” Rei stopped shuffling

“He what?”

“Shook my hand. And he said it was a pleasure to meet me.” Violeta shook her head.

“He probably just wants to fuck you.”

Elia glared. Violeta flinched as tiny daggers prodded her face.

“He knew I was a wizard. And no human wants to fuck a wizard.”

“Yeah, lay off, Violeta,” Rei agreed. “Maybe you could even give the new guy a chance. For God’s sake, you never even gave Gligor a chance.” Violeta glared at Rei.

“I don’t need to give him a chance. He’s a human. Humans hate us, so I hate them.
End of story.” She slammed the table to push herself to her feet and out the door. Gerhardt shook his head and rolled his eyes. Rei and Elia made fleeting eye contact and looked down at their cards.

“I’ll raise,” Gerhardt started. Now Elia rolled her eyes.

Another bluff

Lois followed Gligor through the maze of passages that lead from the Wizard world to the human world. Lois would have opposed such language, but it was true.

“Now,” Gligor started, squeezing sideways through the dark musty halls, “in case you’re not familiar, this is where most Wizards live when they don’t have external jobs, but there are plenty of internal jobs to keep them busy. They buy their own food with their own
credits, but they live here.

“Some of the Low-Ranking Wizards like Violeta and Elia, 29’s and 30’s, stay here
most of the time, but pet Wizards like Gerhardt just come here to play poker.”

“Poker?” Lois asked.

“Yes, poker. Wizards take it pretty seriously, not sure why, but it’s a big deal.

Don’t interrupt a poker game unless you want your head fried. That’s tip number one. Rule number one is stay out of their business, but tip number two is to break that rule. You’ll get some overseers that don’t care about wizards; that’s a mistake. Get to know your Wizards
and they’ll be more willing to work with you.” They reached the reception area, the human world. “In fact, you will be living in wizard quarters. His key, Joe.

The receptionist, Joe, handed Lois a tarnished gold-colored key.

“218; Your bags are in your room,” Joe yawned and turned back to his computer. Gligor slapped Lois on the back. I’ll take you up there; I’m 220.

The two young wizards stared at each other, bags with their sparse belongings clutched to their chests. The younger wizard bit her lip, feeling like she should say something but too nervous to open her lips. The other wizard’s stony blue eyes didn’t move from her own. He was
trying to pin down what color they were. Every time he felt like he had decided, they shifted again. He gave up and stuck out his hand.

“Hovsep,” he greeted bluntly. She took his hand.

“Elia.” Their hands dropped to their sides, and, again, they stared.