Day 260 - Spell Story

Spell Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

“Molly, Trent, Jermaine, Mike.” Derrick repeated the names twice and then he crumpled up the photograph and threw it in the fire. He watched their twisted and crumpled faces begin to melt as the flames caught hold.

He had said the words and cast the spell, for whatever good it would actually do. He assumed no one would hear them. He assumed no one was coming to save him. He had to assume the worst.

He would soon be dead. The people in the photo would be as well. For all he knew, they might already be dead. If they were, then that really meant it was all over for him. They were his only cavalry, his plan “B”. They were his first, last, and only hope.

“Molly, Trent, Jermaine, Mike.” The four best friends he ever had.

Derrick didn’t know where he was. It was some sort of limbo netherworld. He didn’t know how long he had been there. There was no passing time, no stars or sun or moon – no benchmarks or guides that he could track.

There was just endless, directionless, nothingness.

“Molly, Trent, Jermaine, Mike.” He repeated the names over and over. He hoped one of them was still listening.

One thing he had come to learn in his time here in limbo – never piss off the spell you conjured up. They could be resentful little pricks with no sense of loyalty. He had never had a spell go wrong before. He had never been defeated by a spell before.

Maybe he had come to learn two things – never piss off the spell, but also never use a part of yourself when making the spell. That was a mistake. That gave it life, gave it too much power.

It was part of the design. They had all agreed. They had all taken part. They had all given. They had made it real. What they hadn’t expected was that they were making it unstoppable.

It used that part of them to take control. It used that part of them to block them out. It was powerful. It was an angry out-of-control child. They just couldn’t stop it. It was a part of them.

Okay, so maybe he had learned three things – never piss it off, never put a piece of yourself inside it, and never ever make it so powerful that it can’t be stopped.

It had to be powerful to do what they wanted it to do. They wanted a better world so they needed something that could bend and nudge everything in the right direction.

They thought they could control it. They were wrong.

“Molly, Trent, Jermaine, Mike.”

“Molly, Trent, Jermaine, Mike.”

“Molly, Trent—“

Fire. There was a fire. Suddenly Derrick realized there was a fire. And a picture of them to put into the fire. What sort of limbo netherworld was this? Where did that fire come from and how did he have a picture with him? Why was the fire there? That was the pertinent question now.

Derrick wasn’t sure. He didn’t have the answer. But he could remember that there hadn’t always been a fire. Then he thought about needing to cast the spell and suddenly it was there, as if it had always been there.

What else could he do, he wondered? What else was happening out of the ordinary?

He hadn’t eaten or slept.

Was he dead? He was pretty sure he’d know if he were. He had a good sense about these things.

If he wasn’t dead, was he alive? What if all this was something else?

He slowly thought it through. This might not be limbo. This might be some other sort of reality.

The spell could nudge reality. That was what it did. That was its job. He hadn’t been able to destroy the spell because part of him was inside it. But maybe that meant the spell couldn’t destroy him back. He had to be alive for the spell to stay alive.

So maybe he was just trapped somewhere, in some reality that the spell concocted. Maybe here wasn’t here at all. He could be inside his spell and his body was just waiting for him where it had been when they had all gathered to create it.

Maybe his friends were still alive.

He liked that idea.

Maybe it was all just wishful thinking.

He tried not to dwell on that.

Derrick sat beside the fire to think. He always thought about S’mores when he was at a fire.

Suddenly he had a skewer and a marshmallow. Reality had been nudged in the right direction. Was he the spell? Was the spell in him? Did it matter? He had made a shift. He had learned a rule – that he could make something happen.

It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

Derrick stared into the fire and thought about all the things he was going to need to figure out in order to get out of there.