The Curseworks—a sanctuary from madness; a sanctuary from time; a sanctuary for Trey to collect his prayers and wits and, with luck, his breath. He thanked God for feet that touched the ground: no plunging, no perilous diving, no cold-as-curses wind cutting his face with its unsparing frost. Trey’s finger rubbed Swishy’s palm, and the scarecrow made eye contact. Blue bubbly hearts rose from that precious gourd.
He gazed back to the un-dark parts of the city and eyeballed the clock tower: 11:59 pm.
Close, close, close. They’d almost missed Ruby’s deadline. But once they’d crossed into the designated threshold, the clock tower’s gears instantly halted. Time stopped, simple as that. Their footsteps into the plaza served as a pause button for the show called Life. The world had taken mercy upon them, pausing in sound and movement and breath of life.
Had time really stopped? Nuh-uh, not a chance in Ruby’s hell.
Trey couldn’t afford to invest in fickle, hopeful trickery. He experienced every step as a foolhardy parade across Ruby’s palm. Second by second, he expected the witch’s callused fingers to close over his life. He saw himself as a too-handsome, too devastatingly fashionable corpse—and Swishy as a boy of ash, burnt through and blown into nothingness. The GAME OVER scenario was a lot more vivid for him than in the Altruistic Altar sessions he’d fed Swishy.
MIDNIGHT was paused—for now. But when dealing with Cearth and curses and Ruby, for now was always the applicable caveat. Trey tapped into his spell of SOUL and locked onto the curses outside. The spell had not been released, but its collected entities occupied the shadows of the city. Whether the spell was unleashed or not, Straw City had acquired an innovative darkness. Humongous, unpredictable shadows at that. An unknown power swallowed the settlement, wholly, completely, a force that was Ruby’s to command.
Not to mention Trey and Swishy’s obvious problem: the sheer destruction they’d inflicted upon Straw City. The unplanned tree sprouting, the crashed zeppelin, the explosions and sudden forest fires in the middle of a metropolis—there was so much damage for Trey to tally in his head. But as he ran the distracting labor costs and time investments and necessary repair materials in his head, he couldn’t run from the fact that the city was destroyed—but Ruby wasn’t. He daydreamed the children’s book version of how he’d like the future to go: a heartless witch is wronged, foregoes revenge, and grows a heart instead. Her cauldron of boiling doom broth would become an alphabet suit, its only letters L-O-V-E. No potions, no curses, no spite, no vengeance. Ruby, the smiley picture book version of her, would acquire forgiveness and light.
The end. Cupcake and confetti for all!
Amid those hopeful delusions, Trey’s mouth went agape as a spectral shroud blanketed the damaged city from which they came. The buildings and shops and streetlights and gold-straw lanterns were snuffed out by shadows. The distant silhouettes of evacuating stragglers and shadowclaws were erased. The moon was eclipsed. Even the Swishy’s zeppelin-stopping woods, its black and golden flames, had vanished beneath a curtain of darkness.
The shadows closed like a zipper, and even though legitimate destruction was a mere twenty meters away—flames everywhere, zeppelin fuel combusting, tree bark snapping from their forced transition into ash—the sights and sounds and heat were squelched. Beyond the dark portal of The Curseworks sign, the fog had stolen all access to the outside.
Trey and Swishy and Myst were sealed within the new territory. There was no going back now. Only forward—toward Ruby.
Hopefully the forgiveness and light are somewhere in here…
“You ready, Swish?”
“No, we’re gonna die.” One side of Swishy’s mouth split upwards into a jerky little smirk.
“Sure, Swishy, sure, we’re as good as dead.”
“I’ve been dead inside. I can’t wait to die for real.” Swishy released his hand from Trey’s and switched to a two-handed grip over his rake.
The boys stepped into the dark, ready to meet the curses in their own home. Myst, herself, was home, having seamlessly melded into the air.
Everything came in shades of black. The sky, the air, and the gaps between objects were all obsidian. Objects themselves—trees and cobblestones and flowers—were tinged with matte crescents of blue. Even the breeze curled through the dark in cerulean swirls.
Trey strained his eyes and Swishy, ever the attentive friend, summoned more gold-straw at the end of his rake and lit the way. Trey gave him an approving nod as the scarecrow smugly smiled.
The Clayborne turned his attention to Myst. She floated high and drifted low, glad to have returned to stable darkness. The Curseworks was as close to a real altar as she could currently get. Myst was silently content, her lips glued into a slight smile. Trey, strangely, felt happy for her trifling ass.
The Curseworks enveloped the trio in a homey aura. Trey liked the cozy feeling but hated that such warm tidings came from this darkness, Ruby’s darkness. He scanned the surroundings and found huge alterations to the familiar layout. The plaza was restricted and redone. THE ANCIENT ART OF STRAW was not in its original location. OATS OF NIGHT AND DARKNESS was gone as well. DARK STRAW POTIONS had also been whisked away. The stores were replaced by batches of trees, rows upon rows of haunted willows which were tall and weighed down by heavy crowns of foliage.
“Dang…” Swishy said. “Even the BANEBREAD BAKERY is gone. They hate us, Trey.”
“Yup, the bread folks ditched us. True oppression.”
“Straw chew?” Swishy held the light-bright rake to his mouth.
Trey plucked a single strand and held it between his lips. “Thanks.”
All evidence of a standing city had vanished, and raw nature was erected in its place. The Clayborne felt the dull beat of throbbing roots beneath his feet, the planted Swish-heart pumping nutrients and arcane energy through the area. The heart of straw now enforced a reversion from civilization, just like when Earth had transitioned to Cearth. Trey remembered his studies of The Curse then, the Earth transitioning to Cearth, the century-old rewind which now had stricken the present-day plaza.
The trees bent down upon them like attentive, smiling daddies, their protrusive roots fissuring through the cobblestone. The creepy willows seemingly praised Trey for his deduction, radiating a teacher’s you’ve-earned-a-gold-star energy. The Curseworks affirmed Trey’s dark understanding that The Curse, indeed, recurred locally. Trey, friend of darkness, wished he was wrong.
“Having fun in purgatory?” Myst finally deigned to speak.
Trey’s jaw dropped to hell. “I’m too cross-loving for the purgatory jokes. You know purgatory ain’t for me!”
Myst laughed and laughed. “Fine, fine. This is just a liminal zone. A precursor to The Curseworks you once knew. You’ve traveled to other darknesses. You’ll make it through here just as well.”
“Cool, that’s more like it. Purgatory is a hell nah. But liminal zone? I can live with that.” Trey’s chattering teeth had just about finished the straw-chew. He extracted another strand from Swishy’s rake.
“Ha! Your worries are so human, I love this so much.”
“I’m glad you’re having a great time.”
“Always, my friend. Your panic keeps me grounded.”
His phone lit with a text, the buzzing blaring far too loudly in their silent realm. Ruby’s name flashed across the screen with her accompaniment of emojis attached to her contact name: a broom, a vial, a crow.
Trey tossed the phone over his shoulder. He wasn’t going to deal with that now—or ever. He made the mental health decision to leave the phone behind. Swishy turned to retrieve it but Trey grabbed him by the shoulder. “No Swishy, let’s just leave it. We don’t want those messages. Eyes forward, feet forward, souls forward.”
But the edges of Trey’s periphery were pulled toward the phone. His vision trembled as dark smoke rose from the ground and absorbed the device.
“What the heck?” The boys simultaneously said—Trey with his mouth, and Swishy with his swishes.
Myst giggled over his shoulder and produced Trey’s phone. He wanted to ask how but he knew the answer: the darkness was Myst and Myst was the darkness.
“What the hell are you doing?” Trey snapped.
“Being in your business, obviously. Wow, Trey, these texts are wild.”
“Texts?”
“Indeed. Your employer is writing a whole book. The next great novel.”
“Spare me the spoilers.”
“But the spoilers are the good part.” Myst floated up against his head, her plumped shadow lips ghosting the edges of his ear. “She’s going to catch you.”
“Okay, expected—”
“You die and are revived in every chapter.”
“Ugh.” Trey snatched the phone and pocketed it.
“So mean,” Myst said.
“Yeah, and?”
Swishy initiated their progress this time, gawking in amazement at the gigantic presence of The Curseworks. Trey couldn’t blame him—because in such a short time the plaza truly did become incredible. Scary, sure, but no less incredible.
All paths led toward the sky-piercing elevation that Swishy’s heart had propelled The Curseworks’ ascension. A blue sheen cut across the roots which bulged out of the ground, breaking the cobblestone. They proceeded carefully through the uneven terrain, journeying toward the clouds. Ruby’s Mount Olympus fantasies were on full display as, even from the start of the climb, Trey could see window lights of The Last Straw glowing atop the area’s peak.
Within some of those windows, bird shapes appeared, obviously snitchtalons. Even from afar, he could tell that they were piloted by sugar-wraith souls—the top hat silhouettes were unmistakable. The angles of their heads, too, that upturned contempt for the plebeian Trey.
Winged roaches, that’s what they are! He briefly used SOUL to astral project and flip them off, hoping they’d feel it, before retracting his blue self into his physical body.
A sharp caw echoed through these strange, mid-metropolis woods. Trey smirked.
“That’s not nice,” Swishy scolded.
“It’s just a finger, Swishy. I flip the bird—and you eat them. How many have you eaten, tell me?”
“Oh…I don’t actually know.”
“See? I’m not even shaming or shading you. So let me have this.”
Trey saluted the birds again—with both hands. Then he grabbed his nuts, shook them, and made a tossing gesture toward the window-hugging snitches.
Swishy’s wing flapped uncontrollably. The scarecrow reached for it and held it firmly. The wing bucked for a few seconds, spasming in mad dog fashion before quieting again. Trey concentrated on his SOUL magic and watched the dark plumage crawl along the wing edges. The clamorous curses were trapped in the feathers, screaming at Swishy. The scarecrow caught Trey’s gaze and preempted his concerns.
“Don’t worry,” Swishy said. “They’re talking back to you, too. They always talk…” Swishy’s eyes lowered and seethed.
As they traveled onwards, Trey studied the wing—wary of its remnant souls. Even after a thorough defeat, the snitchtalons were determined to have their say. Trey hated the birds; he blamed every snitch; he wished them ill—and he fancied them upon his dinner plate. The snitchtalons had scuffed his simple plan: start a cult, outnumber Ruby, and protect Swishy through numbers. But he’d underestimated everyone in the city—the violent devotion of the city’s humans, and the raw vitriol and jealousy of the snitchtalons. He felt stupid for getting drawn into an all-out plumage war. He was a smart boy with a bird-brained idea, one that’d torched Ruby’s city and brought MIDNIGHT curses over the length of their lives.
Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. Trey greatly regretted offending her. His mind drifted to those texts he was ignoring. He almost wanted to ask Myst for his phone back but knew he’d back out if he read the threats. Still, he was curious—curious and scared. Ruby was life; Ruby was law. She’d tamed hurricanes. She’d put food in mouths, and blood flow back into withering, atrophied hearts. She’d secured a following, a township who’d jump off of cliffs for her. The devotees applauded as Ruby traded Bibles into the altar and participated in uncouth soul exchanges. As long as Ruby provided, nobody cared how she did it. And Swishy was the latest act of providing in a decades-long spree of unscrupulous witchery.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Her followers had one immutable condition: Everybody eats. The citizenry lived and died by this, especially now that the city possessed a Swishy. They, like the whole of human history that’d come before them, like any banal opportunist who happened upon a magic non-human—emphasis on non-human, not human, never in your wildest dreams a human—entertained the notion of a straw-bound slave.
Slaving Swishy’s straw was the city’s real aspiration, the winning ticket that gleamed in all its history and darkness. Cearth was full of curses—but this one came straight from Earth. Trey knew this well—the annals of Clayhearth history could’ve told him that one. Goosebumps raised upon his black skin, itching with traumatic ancestry.
Swishy was a bird—and a person. A scarecrow—and a person. A straw savior—and still a person. Trey couldn’t ride for Ruby so long as the spirit of slavery flowed through the city. Once Trey had seen it, he couldn’t unsee it. And there came a time when every young child—scarecrows, too—aged into the unfair truths of the world.
“Sit down, Swishy.” Trey slumped down against a tree and busted out a straw-chew.
Swishy nestled against the tree as well—because he was obedient, and because, for some odd reason, the ambient darkness had a calming effect on him. The realization bothered Trey because he needed Swishy to take this more seriously. Fine. Trey would let the boy rest. But not without putting him on game. If he was old enough to eat birds, he was old enough to know the stakes.
He didn’t have Ruby’s convenient, biblical flashcards, the ways of the world made somewhat easy. Trey had options: a heart book that he’d sacrificed but not studied, some SOUL tricks, and the Z expressions.
His intuition led him to the Z. He focused hard on the Z, twisting and turning it, divining a lesson for the boy. Z formed in the air, gold glitter shimmering, and from the end of that Z, a connection was being made. The gold extended outwards, forming a line, a swirl, a connection to the next letter. Swishy followed its progress from left to right, reading properly, reading an unfamiliar word. The Z and its conjured intent had fully formed. Trey smiled and presented the word to Swishy, an ugly word, but successful magic.
“Are you ready for a hard lesson?”
“All the lessons lately have been hard.”
“Okay. I’m sorry, Swish.”
“I don’t know why you’re apologizing.”
“You’ll see,” Myst said with annoying smugness.
Ignoring the slight, Trey released the intent. The individual letters floated toward Swishy’s face, first the Z and L, the A, the V, and finally the E. “This represents what Ruby and her followers want to do to you. This is what they want you to become. It’ll feel harsh. But it’s the truth. The truth hurts. And sometimes, the truth takes everything that you are.”
”Everything?” Swishy swished it so innocently that Trey almost cried.
“Everything. Now brace yourself. Be brave.”
With each letter Swishy absorbed, his facial expression proportionately soured. The ghostly blues of his gourd forgot its rhythmic swimming and adopted a series of jerky pivots, a jagged trail filling his head.
“Swish-bro, I need you to talk. Are you with us? I don’t know what you’re seeing. And I don’t know what you’re feeling. But please feel it and make it through. This is just what you’re fighting against. This isn’t what you are.”
ZLAVE intent slipped between Swishy slits of straw. The word's dark history and feeling contaminated his spirit.
Trey had astral projected, sensing his simple lesson had gone awry. "Swishy! Speak to me! Are you okay?"
Trey's blue self emerged from his now-sleeping body, carefully studying the effects on Swishy. He didn't mean to hurt him but the word did exactly that, fraying his soul with horrific knowledge. He’d introduced Swishy to ZLAVE and the straw boy had gone rigid, each weave of straw tight, immovable. Swishy’s soul had learned the meaning of chains. He'd learned to fear all binding, all attempts at using him. His strength of heart flaked away in thousands of dried shards.
He floated toward Swishy, hugging him, stroking his gourd. He wished there was a better way to teach him what he needed to know. He didn’t want to kill the playfulness in him. But there was no play in The Curseworks to be had. Ruby was after them. That was the reality. And she didn’t strike Trey as the killing type. The lady had finesse. She had startlingly persuasive ways—straight-up coercion when it came down to it. He knew that both he and Swishy were prime talents, candidates for Ruby to farm.
Suddenly, an interruption. Sprouts of darkness shot from the ground, a series of vaporous curses that released a litany of evil, high-pitched laughs. Trey tried to swat the curses away but they expertly dodged, twisting around his body, taunting him, leering at him. They paused before his face. Fool, they collectively said. And then the shadows entered Swishy. Black veins appeared upon the Swishy’s surface, undulating from his face and arms and neck toward his chest. Shadows pierced through his heart, an immaterial flow that caused obvious damage.
The boy seized up, stiffening in posture, his heart squeezed by chains of darkness. The scarecrow’s gourd blues shrank, then extinguished. The curses made a whole host of snide, horrific remarks. That was their spell, their words of power, their favorite alchemic poison for a young, impressionable bird.
This is your destiny. Don’t you feel it? That you don’t belong to yourself. That without us to serve, you’re nothing. Sink into the servitude. Find your worth in us!
Trey panicked and lost control of the spell. Those carefully piloted letters had dug deeply into their unfortunate target. Swishy, that organically fertile boy, produced more unplanned words of power. Once the particles of his divination had destabilized, the curses wormed their way into its construction. As the ZLAVE intent exploded into golden flakes, the cursed bodies collected the shrapnel and fashioned mini Z’s of their own. ZIN, ZUFFERING, ZTARVATION, ZOLD.
“Hey, you bastards, go away!”
We wouldn’t dream of letting a chance like this go. We were feathered and free and fancy. Until the scarecrow took us out. We’re only paying back a portion of what he did to us.
“When you die once, you’re supposed to stay dead.”
When you fall from the sky, you should’ve landed on your neck. But alas, here we are—you living to flip us off another day. We all don’t get what we want. Tough news all around, wouldn’t you say?
Trey scrambled for options. The magic was inside him, gifts of the illustrious Myst. He couldn’t fail here—not for Swishy, and not for his embarrassment either. He sensed Myst a few meters away, musing about his endearing weakness as a human man. I can’t go out like that, hell no.
He indulged in a moment of pause, a moment of soul-searching for a proper entry within the frayed cardiothoracic glossary Swishy fought all night for him to have.
Heart, heart, what do I know about these hearts?
He whispered the word as a totem, heart, while constructing the applicable technique as an action guide. He drew the spell from himself and compelled Swishy’s heart to fight back.
S-T-R-I-N-G-S. Heartstrings, I like it... The spell flowed into the scarecrow as Trey awaited a favorable outcome.
A first thread of straw rose from Swishy’s chest, one which Trey was surprised to have phantom control over. Then he rose several more, flexing his fingers like a marionette master. Upon command of his magic digits, he deployed the rye strings toward the snitchtalon souls. In an impromptu act of surgery, he lassoed the words with thin strips of gold twine. One by one, he bound the microbial versions of Z harms. A panic swept through Trey but he kept himself calm, though that placidity then brought forth shame. How could I be so stupid, so reckless? A hard lesson was the intention, but a historical trauma was the result.
The boy woke up, small blue orbs flaring within his optic carvings, a candlelight of awareness that relieved Trey. At that point, the Clayborne’s soul merged back into his body, ending the astral projection. He awakened and reached out to hug Swishy, an embrace that the scarecrow reluctantly accepted.
Swishy had returned—thank goodness—but he wasn’t completely himself anymore.
“That’s horrible…” Swishy finally said.
“It is, I’m sorry.”
“Why would you do that to me?”
“It was an accident, I tried to show—”
Swishy recoiled. “I need a second…”
“We don’t have seconds. Look we have to g—”
“Please, Trey. Seconds are not long...”
And the boy ran off.
ZIP—Trey wasted no time heading after him. But Swishy was fast as hell, light on his feet, light as straw you could reasonably expect straw to be. Trey kept pace, dashing after the glowing rake tip. The boy beacon immersed himself into a thicket of trees, taking random turns, challenging Trey’s agility.
“Aye boy, get back here!”
“No, not yet!”
Swishy’s panicked gestures concerned Trey. Errant straw bits were sent everywhere. From all directions, thick globules of floating shadows hovered after him. The nodes of cursed consciousness were swift and unrelenting.
The scarecrow had another pursuer as well: the Z toxins that Trey’s heartstrings had painstakingly released from the wheat crevices. Those same linguistic evils joined the snitchtalon souls, chasing Swishy and his glowing rake with ZADNESS, ZORROW, and ZUFFERING, among others.
Trey picked up the pace, shifting gears toward the level 2 ZOOM, adopting his sideways skateboard posture as he glided around the trees and branches and curses. The murky souls had turned their attention to Trey as well. Orb after orb of dark souls aimed toward Trey’s face, attempting to blind him, but his dodging neck adopted an agility he’d never before known. He avoided headshot after headshot, keeping focused on the rake's light.
And then an opportunity arose: the trees thinned out into a long stretch of wheat-filled plains, yet another environment of shadows and blue light. The scarecrow ran across the field, batting the curses away, swishing out his rejections. He even pumped further gold-straw through his rake, diminishing the shadowy Z spells with pure light. But the spells reintegrated and dodged behind the trees, flying in the dark, hiding, stalking, waiting for the moment to claim the terrified boy.
Trey sped his ZOOM toward Swishy, holding his arms out to the side. “Here I am,” he declared, “The scarecrow of Clayhearth is here to save the day!”
Swishy didn’t respond. His eyes were narrowed into thin blue lines. He was charging up a spell. He placed both hands upon the ground and the surrounding wheat sprouts were drawn upwards, lengthened, then flown straight into his body.
The wheat piled onto the scarecrow’s body, double, tripling, quadrupling his size. And the boy became larger still, a humongous round form, which proved to be an effective shield.
Boy balloon…what a move.
The Z intents clashed against the straw, bouncing off in a way, before gathering themselves and attempting ingress into other parts of Swishy’s body. But the straw was firm, divinely closed to all curses.
Trey ZOOM’d closer, knowing that he’d likely hurt himself by crashing into Swishy. He was almost there, knowing he’d have to bail out of that hug. He had too little arm for that husky amount of boy. Yet he pressed forwards, confident his friend was there inside.
He closed his eyes, envisioning the comforting nest Swishy crafted for himself, and aimed his intent there. A gear shift, ascending to level 3: ZLIDE.
An inkblot of darkness appeared within his vision, gradually spreading outwards until it consumed his entire sight. He was in another realm, a teleportation through the Cearthen shadows until resurfacing in a cozy bunker of luminous gold-straw. Beyond this single layer of gold, Trey sensed an entire boy balloon of blackwheat. But the cursed straw and its burden of gloom were warded off by Swishy’s luminous walls, thin but strong.
Trey was proud, relieved, and generally happy that Swishy was capable of such self-defense. He turned in the closet-sized room, his shoulders brushing the gold walls.
“Dammit. Swishy where did you go!”
Another ZLIDE—and Trey was outside of the boy balloon. He found a boy-sized gap in the back of the round form, a gingerbread cookie-shaped door, comically thrown open. Trey was again equal parts annoyed and pleased with the scarecrow’s progression. But that made him harder to wrangle, especially now, when the world was most dangerous. The Z words continuously kept bounding against the balloon decoy, losing steam, losing thickness and letters and energy. Within the next moment, the spells died.
Good job, Swish. But ugh, calm down and talk!
Trey caught a glimpse of the boy’s path, panicked blackwheat sheddings mixed in with the meager remains of gold-straw. Swishy had entered the thicket once more, having run off to who knows where. Heart—the young man’s mind immediately thought of the cardiothoracic guide. He wracked his brain for the version of himself that Swishy now needed. The heart surgeon? The friend of darkness? The babysitter? The brother? Trey sighed at the number of hats the magic scarecrow required him to wear.
He prepared to downshift from ZOOM to ZIP, content to hastily power walk as he calmly scanned the dark for Swishy’s spirit. With patience and soul, he’d discover the way. But as he set off, Myst conjured upon his shoulder. She held his buzzing phone, mirthfully pointing at the LED glow of bad, bad news. He could dismiss it no longer.
He accepted the phone from Myst, his so-called friend.
Ruby had left him paragraphs, naturally, all time-stamped to 11:59. As he read them, he noticed one thing—Myst was lying about the aggressive nature of the texts. Ruby was being Ruby, a cheery and generally lovely person—while Myst was being a mischievous shadow entity. Trey glared at her and she concealed her laughs with her long, slender fingers.
Hello Trey!
Please come by. I just finished cooking, cleaning, sweeping. I even retouched my dye!
There’s also food! I made all of Swishy’s favorites. And yours too! I even have pork belly rice—only the best for a dutiful and dedicated young man such as yourself. You’re the best assistant a witchy wonder girl can ever ask for! So please, come eat and be merry!
Trey, are you reading my texts? Please answer. I can see you traveling along. I know you’re having difficulties but you can still look at your phone sometimes.
It’s only a text. Only a hello. H, E, L, L, O. See? It’s easy.
Trey? Trey? Are you there?
A silly question—I know you’re at The Curseworks. That’s what we agreed upon, right?
And it took you a lot to make it here. More trouble than it should’ve been…all you had to do was walk…
Nobody told you to do a street performance, fights the birds, or gather followers. I don’t understand why you turned one simple instruction—come to my house where there’s food and warmth and the best host ever—into starting a…coo? Oh no, that’s a pigeon noise—I hate pigeons. Coup is the word, I think—what a stupid word for a stupid thing.
Whatever.
But what’s done is done. I’m glad to know that you’ve begun to use magic. That you’re open to the darkness. I’ve waited to have an assistant who was both willing and talented. You see, keeping the magic controlled is a hard thing. You’ve learned that, I know. It’s especially hard when you’re stressed. And even harder when you’ve been CROSSED. Sometimes you want to UNLEASH it. You want to EXPLODE! But you can’t. When life happens Trey, you have to stay calm. Whether The Stormcellar bruises your bananas and ruins your crops—or your apprentices crash your blimp and set a big-big fire, you’ve got to keep a cool head and properly dyed roots.
There’s darkness everywhere. Shadows that require their costs. But the darkness is as old as time. It transcends time—time is stopped, 11:59, but the darkness is here, there, everywhere! Isn’t it amazing? How patient the darkness is? Once you make it through, trust that the darkness will be here to provide. The dark grants powers, it grants healing. And sometimes it’s even waiting for a warm meal. So that’s how I want myself to be: infinite patience and open arms. When you boys arrive, I’m ready to hear what you have to say. I will open my ears, my home, my heart. And perhaps even my teachings—because I am a kind lady.
My outfit will also be nice—because I am a fashionista, too!
PS: Zip, zoom, zlide are pretty neat tricks. I’m so proud of you! Maybe I should try those out myself…ZLIDE—and haha, I’m right behind you!
Ghost emoji, devil emoji, knife emoji.
Trey swiveled behind him—no Ruby. He turned and turned a couple more times to be sure. The woman had him shaken. And he wondered once again: exactly how powerful is she? And, naturally, how much trouble was he and Swishy really in? He dropped the phone, his hand trembling—though as the phone touched the darkness, it immediately teleported into Myst’s hand.
Myst’s eyes went big. Her smirk was wide and vicious. “Are you taking me on a dinner date? You really shouldn’t have.”
“I thought we were just friends.”
“Oh, so now you admit that. You’re a horrible boy. I hope Ruby kills you.”
“I am a human—HUMAN. A child of GOD.”
“Children of God die every day.” There it was again, that smug grin.
“Can’t argue with that.” Trey activated SOUL, abandoning his body, his blue soul floating alongside Myst. “Now let’s find, Swish.”
Myst stared at Trey’s vacated body. “See? See? You’re halfway dead already!”
And then they were off.