“Can I get a gym membership”

“Finally you've started taking your health seriously”

“Mom.”

“All I'm saying is that it's been long enough. You remember…” Iona stared at her mother.

“Ok never mind, it's fine. Don't pay attention to your little old mother. Which gym I can sign you up for a membership at mine”

“If you'd let me.” Iona’s mother reached across the car to touch Iona’s face.

“You could be so beautiful dear.” Her mother looked to the left as she turned the car.

“That's so disparaging.”

“Well women like us have to be beautiful. At least you are, my tall beautiful woman. They say less beautiful women actually have an easier time achieving Mastery. Have you been working on that dear?” Her mom smiled.

“Yes.” Her mom stopped the car.

“Do you want to get donut holes before school? My treat I'm sorry dear.” Iona nodded. Her mom looked sweet sometimes. Iona knew she loved her but in all the wrong ways.

Iona and her mom ate donuts in the car. Her mom laughed and giggled with her. Mom asked her about the boys she was interested in, Iona didn't say anything. Only shifted her stump hand in her pockets. She couldn’t let her mom see. Definitely not now. She’d worry or worse ask her how it happened. A stump arm was the opposite of beauty.

-

That day at school she’d kept her stump in her pocket but not as if anyone would notice. For all they knew she’d always been like that. “Most likely none of you will achieve Mastery. I've just achieved it at the age of 48. But young Masters like me are never hireable. Wasted my life.” Gribowski said. Iona looked out the window. Someone coughed.

“I know some of you care about stuff like that but the only surefire way to become a Master is to be creative. Creative in how you live, in how you do what you do. Creative in everything. Enjoy your free period the rest of you” And the class broke into a crowd. Nobody treated Mastery class seriously.

“What are you going to do Sunday.”

“Do you wanna get tacos after school.”

“She's so fine.” Her classmates talked and chattered in big waves, Iona didn’t say a word. She only looked out the window and doodled in her notebook. “Mrs. Ionesco you wanted to talk to me.” Mr. Gribowski loomed over her seat. He was a tall heavyset broad-shouldered man. He dressed informally and wore a singular cheap skull ring.

“About what I asked you before….” Iona said.

“Of course, you can use the school gym. The fighting team uses it after school most days but those guys will not care about you coming in.” He said looking down at her. His eyes glossed over, he didn't even see her.

“And the Mastery book section of the library can be unlocked?”

“You have to go at the set times for that most of the books are quite expensive. I want to help you but the librarian would never forgive me.” She nodded and he went back to his book. He thought this was free time too.

The bar went up and it went down and she thought she might kill herself. Nobody else was in the gym, maybe she should take it easy. She moved from exercise to exercise checking her phone to ensure she did them right. Some of the exercises she couldn’t do with her stump hand. She’d need to find some sort of prosthetic maybe a golden hand but she didn’t fuck her siblings. Worst of all, it hurt. So much pain for no reason.

She heard a door open and a group of boys came in. She stuffed her hand in her sweatshirt pocket when they entered. Trent Wilson, AJ Geller and Tony. Well just Tony. Everyone knew Tony. The other guys she didn’t care about. But Tony was different. They were fighting boys, the wrestlers. They would all become Physicals or at best Masters. Nobody liked the fighting kids but nobody messed with them. Don’t mess with Physicals. Their skin shone and even underneath it she could see their Physical fuckery at work. AJ Geller’s biceps kept moving on their own. Shifting along his skin.

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Tony stood tall even though he wasn't. His shoulders were broad and his hair lay in heaps. But his face looked clad in metal. Everything was sharp and angles, even his eyebrows. He smiled with all his teeth and looked a bit worse when he did. They were laughing when they came in. But saw her and went quiet.

She just pushed the bar overhead. Maybe the bar would be lighter with their eyes lifting it up. Her shoulders cracked as she worked out.

They all started to do various workouts from their phones. Iona tried not to look but their bodies, their bodies seemed to shine. Every part of them glowed with muscle. Pecs and biceps, shoulders and abs. They were all jacked. Her muscles ached so bad. But worse, she could sense them looking. Why did they have to stare? Sweat glistened off their shoulders, off their biceps, in their armpits. They probably stunk of musk.

“Uhm miss do you mind if we spar.” Trent Wilson. Iona turned her face to him. She couldn't look at his eyes. She really just couldn't. “Yeah. Umm please.” He must've been staring, was her fat showing, was her face all wrong? Did he scrunch up in disgust?

“Ok?” He said with a question at the end of it. She shouldn't have said ‘please’. His voice sounded so good. Like crystals falling on ice. The sounds of beating flesh filled the gym. Thump, bang, bump. One of the other ones, she couldn't tell his face, punched Tony's chest. The knuckle resounded against flesh. She couldn't stop looking.

They fought taking turns. One after another. Whoever lost (to which criteria she couldn't tell) would just get up and shake hands. They didn't even say a word. Just fight and punch and grapple. Like a dance of violence and flesh.

She didn't even notice. She pretended to do exercises but these guys were the real deal. Fighting and jabbing and muscling. They were everything.

“Hey see you later.” They said as they left. To her, to her. Tony paused as he stood in the exit door.

“Are you alright to get out on your own? Like it's pretty dark out. You need someone to walk you out? I'm just gonna be with them. No pressure, not trying to be weird.” He didn't look at her but at the floor underneath her. His eyes lasered on the ground.

“No, I’m fine. It’s all good.” She nodded and waved at him. He paused for a second in the doorway.

“Just be safe.” He said and left. She looked around at the gym. Nobody was here? She didn’t have any training equipment at home. And well, maybe Tony and the guys could use some of the stuff here. She took out her deck of cards, she’d put it in a old card box her mom bought her. Green felt covered the box, she’d lost the poker set the cards came with but the box remained. She looked around. Nobody, not even a camera, and took out the box. She rifled through it. A new card appeared in the box, a 2 of Training. The image for the suit had been replaced with little dumbbells.

She picked a bench press and jammed the card into it. At once the bar wiggle and morph, again a thick smell of sulfur filled the air. The bar morphed and thickened and darkened. Small etchings appeared on it’s edges. Besides the visual changes she didn’t notice any difference. She tried doing a squat with it and felt nothing odd. It didn’t make her stronger. Who knew what it would do?

She got home after dark. There was a note on the counter near the entrance. “Will be back late. Make dinner for yourself.” Iona’s mom worked as an executive of a runic goods corporation. They made extra efficient lawnmowers. She worked late and came back early. Her hands always stunk of magic, the lilac-infused scent of light runic work not the thick sulfuric scent of higher magics.

Iona didn’t ever want to work in runes. It just didn’t interest her. The world had so much to offer and so many people just sat at desk job writing runes. They could do mystical things, mysterious things, awe-inspiring things. But she hated the smell of lilacs. All runic workers had it, it clung to them day and night. Apparently some men even bottled the specific scent and sold it as cologne, other people adored it, but she couldn’t stand it. Simple runes could make things work better, make something sharper, make a self-repairing blade. But they were boring. And the work was boring. Dreadfully boring. Nothing close to the high magic she had at her finger-tips. She was good at them though.

Dinner was going to be sparse. Her body hurt to even move. She got some pickled onions and leftover sausages from her mom’s lunch. Easiest dinner in the world. If you like pickled onions and sausages that is. Rice was done a second later and she sat and ate.

The house stunk with silence. Iona looked at the paintings covering the walls. Her grandfather on her father’s side made them. Splotches of color in all manner of shapes. They were the only other people in the house besides her.

It was at that moment that the loneliness steeped into her. There was just nobody. Having just that taste of human interaction kept the flavor in her mouth but like an addict reaching for another potato chip, she needed more. But how does someone make friends?

Everyone else had friends. They talked to people in class, they made jokes with each other. How did they do it? How did anyone do it? She should join something, anything. But she didn’t know what to join. There should be a guide on life. A great big book where they outlined the path happiness? Why couldn’t there just be concrete steps toward everything?

The food was gone. She’d finished it deep in thought. She cleaned the bowl and went to her room. She’d destroyed the book and tools that she’d used to get to this position. They were supposed to change everything. But what did she want to be changed?

She looked at herself in the large mirror in the middle of her room. She held her stump out. The skin folded on itself, as if it hadn’t been covered in blood a day prior. Over the years she’d seen her face so many times she wanted to tear it out. Do ugly people know they’re ugly? Yes. The answer was simple and it was her face.

Could she use the cards and become an expert in plastic surgery? She couldn’t operate on herself. She could get incredibly good at make-up but that wouldn’t fix the body. She could make herself muscular. That would make her body attractive. Her face though. The chin was all wrong. All of it was all wrong.

She buried her face in her pillows. It would be so easy to rip it off. To bury it in the trash. But that wouldn’t even fix it all. It felt like a thousand fiery bugs lay underneath her skin and they wanted to be released onto the world. Men had it easy. They weren’t solely judged by their looks. But ugly women? If you’re ugly you deserve death. She’d seen it in the eyes of her classmates. They didn’t pity her, they hated her. She’d heard them talk about her.

She could apply cards to her body. That was the only way to fix it. She’d need to find the right cards and apply them correctly. She’d also need to get a lot of cards quickly. Then she would be beautiful. Then her face would shine. Then they’d all stare, but stare as they should stare. Then all of the men, all of the women, every single person, would love her.

She knew that the voice gave her the tools to change her life, but what were the cards that led to beauty. She took out the blank deck and pulled out the card that looked like herself. She could only stare at the ugly face in the card. But another shred of color appeared in the deck. She took out the new card, it’s suit was a pair of eyes, a 2 of Desire.