The idea first occurred to me shortly after the second semester of school started. I had already been working at the archives for a while, having started before transferring to this university, and had gained an increasing familiarity with the works stored in those dusty, dimly lit shelves. The dimly lit part is rather unusual in itself. Usually, the government absolutely loves to use glaring fluorescent lighting, the kind that constantly grates on your nerves and makes the obnoxious beige that permeates their architecture even more unbearable. It’s as important to the experience of being a government employee as PowerPoint and outdated operating systems.
But the weird energies put off by some of the documents doesn’t play nice with florescent lighting. It’s not like fluorescents would immediately fail right away, but they’d flicker strangely and in some cases would even change colors. When they had these lights examined it was found that the gas inside the tubes had changed to neon, argon, or another of the noble gases. So as a result the main section of the archives was lit with old-fashioned incandescent bulbs. Maybe the documents just wanted a more atmospheric setting? It’s weird, but at least these bulbs work, since gas lighting or candles would be an absolute bitch to deal with, and a major fire hazard.
I honestly have no idea why this clique of girls decided I would be a good target to make fun of. Sure, I’m not the most social person, but there are plenty of people just as introverted. Many of the classes have flashy, stereotypical fine-arts type along with the more subdued art history majors, and you’d think one of those eccentrics would be a perfect target for being picked on. My clothes are all plain, being close to an outright gray-man look. The kind where if you saw me walking down the street in them you wouldn’t think twice. I prefer to avoid attention in my daily life, and I do my utmost best to try and achieve that.
This was near the start of the semester, with my Renaissance art history class just starting. I have to say, I really admire this professor’s approach to it. He started the first couple weeks of the class setting the stage, to be sure that we had at least an inkling of and understanding of the context of the times and the views of the average person in Renaissance Europe.
He started, of course, discussing the theology of the time. Starting near the beginning of the Renaissance, there was no Protestant Reformation yet. The Church, with a capital C, was the authority on morality and the afterlife. Kings and Queens bowed to the power of the Pope, Christ’s vicar on Earth. To the average person what the church said was absolute fact. The people on this plane of existence were the church militant, fighting and working towards the salvation they’d achieve in Heaven after, of course, a stay in Purgatory to make up for the sins they committed in life. A life completely free of sin was impossible even for a saint, as there was always the Original sin that every man and woman was born with.
Their view of this world, before and mostly during the Renaissance, was that it was merely a test before death, and joining the ranks of the church triumphant. There was no need to focus on the pleasures of this life, when they would get their great reward in the afterlife. And this was not mere theology to them. This was hard, cold fact. Also as fact, was the idea that there were dark forces that would try to cause them to stray from this path. Evil and temptation were real to them, and were to be shunned.
There was a natural, rigid order to this world. Just as in heaven above, with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit at the top of the hierarchy, there was a hierarchy on earth. The pope leads all the Christians on earth as part of a line of leaders going back to Saint Peter, to whom Christ handed the keys to Heaven. Underneath him, the Kings rule their countries through Divine Right, their authority coming from the position that God has placed to them. And underneath them the lords rule, in an orderly hierarchy all down to the common person.
Even the heavens ascribe to this rigid order. The Earth is at the center, as the people God created are the center of the universe. The celestial bodies orbit around this earth, the Sun, the Moon, and the planets. And above this all the stars have been planted in the firmament. This is absolute fact, to the people of the time, and strongly shapes the view of the people at the time the artwork was created, even going into the Renaissance and the rebirth of humanism. There is even the belief that you can chart the course your life may take, based on the position of the stars and planets at the time of your birth. This world God has created is a world of divine order, and His pattern can be seen in everything.
“What a bunch of superstitious retards.” I hear the girl behind me say. “No one could possibly believe in all that magical crap.”
This girl was one of the first to start spreading rumors about me. It wasn’t as bad as some of the more salacious rumors people had been saying, but it still irked me. The claims were that I was wearing baggy clothing to hide having a flabby stomach. It was a downright childish claim. While it’s true that I can be a bit self-conscious about my figure, my bigger concern is the muscle I built up at my previous job. There’s nothing wrong with athletic girls, but I really don’t want people to start thinking I’m some sort of rough tomboy. And I guess the clothing also helps hide the fact that I’m carrying a handgun. A nice skirt can hide that far better than the yoga pants or the literal pajamas some of these students wear to class.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
She had started her own diet recently too, despite maintaining her addiction to lattés and frappés from a certain overpriced coffee chain. Maybe she’s just projecting her insecurities onto me? Whatever it is, it doesn’t excuse slandering me like this. I’ve done perfectly fine not putting on any weight since starting school. Primarily by staying busy at my job, but I really can’t be faulted for having a work ethic, regardless of the less than voluntary nature of my employment. Having the nerve to call me fat. Proving her wrong directly would be rather awkward, however. Well, very awkward. And possibly illegal in a way that would cause a massive scene and get campus police called. I really don’t want a reputation for being the weird girl who starts stripping when being called fat. But thinking of work, I suppose there is another way to get back at her.
After the lecture is over, I dally in my seat for a bit, waiting for most of the room to clear out. I act like I’m transferring some notes over in a book, though honestly I never take notes. It’s a bad habit, but one I picked up working in a field where anything you write down can be a massive pain to handle due to the nature of the information. It’s much better to keep things in your head. My GPA might be suffering a bit from that habit, but oh well.
After the girl leaves, I attempt to inconspicuously examine the seat she was sitting. It’d be kind of weird if someone noticed me doing this, so all I can do is pray no one picks up on this. Furtively glancing around to make sure no one is looking at me, I duck down to take a closer look at the seat back. I’m in luck. A hair is stuck to the back, the same blonde shade of the chairs previous occupant, I grab it, fold it in a scrap of paper, and leave for work.
While at work, I am fortunate enough not to have too many tasks for the day. There have been a few outside agencies who’ve made requests for archive materials, but nothing that extreme. The most notable is the Department of Energy requesting an Islamic text on Jinn, and a consultant with the Forestry service who managed to get permission to look over a report on incidents involving Native American sorcery. Nothing too extreme. I wouldn’t worry about it.
With these documents gathered, summarized and redacted to remove the spicier bits, I had a bit of free time on my hands. I made my way through the archive, to the section where we kept documents and books pertaining to magic. The use of magic is technically not illegal, per say, but at the same time the government can’t go around encouraging it. Or for that matter, even acknowledging it exists. Most people don’t have the aptitude for it anyways, even if they are sensitive to the supernatural, but at the same time the government openly admitting such a thing exists would overturn the common sense of our modern times.
Really, though, this is more of a whim than anything. It probably wont work. The most this will likely do is fizzle out, from what I’ve heard about other people attempting magic. At least it should be cathartic, though. Like writing an angry letter but not mailing it, I should be able to let off some steam. While I know all the grimoires in our archive should have some level of validity to the spells written in them, they aren’t in this archive for nothing, doing some weird ritual doesn’t seem like it’d actually work. But on the off chance it does, that asshole won’t possibly think it has anything to do with me. It’s all just superstition, right?
Finding the grimoire I remembered glancing over previously, I skimmed through it until I found the spell I needed. I can’t take notes of course, but this one was in somewhat modern English, and the actual instructions were simple. The roots of the spell were actually linked in a tradition of beseeching fae, so I don’t even have to worry about the sketchiness of imploring demons to do my bidding that so many of these other texts seem to enjoy.
My work finished for the day and my extracurricular reading accomplished, I stopped at a store on the way home to pick up the “sacrifice” required by the spell. Leaving the shop, I looked up at the sky to see a full moon on a cloudless night.
“I love it when a plan comes together.” I said to myself, although I lack the gray hair, cigar, and mini-14 I would need to really pull off the reference. Not that it matters, since no one’s here to comment on it anyway. Now that I have the sacrifice, I had to head home quickly.
In my back yard, I was quick to start small blaze in my fire pit. I may have cheated a bit by using lighter fluid, but that’s just a minor detail. Although it may seem a bit corny, I even thought to grab a hat I had as part of one of my hobbies. A witch hat just seems appropriate given what I’m going to try to do next. All the pieces in place, I combined the hair I had gathered in class with the sacrifice. Muttering the short spell, more of a request to the fae, I dumped the sacrificial frappé onto the fire. The book said the sacrifice had to be related to the target, and everyone knows that the fae like dairy products.
Rather than causing the fire to sputter a bit like I expected, something strange happened. I mean, stranger than a woman in her mid-twenties in a witch hat and hoodie dumping St*rbucks on a campfire. A warm sensation, originating around my gut, seemed to flow up, through my arm, and into the sacrifice. As this occurred, the fire flared up, then when out.
I stood there a moment, in silence. Then I quietly dumped a bucket of water on the fire to make sure the embers were out, went inside, and hit the rack.
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During the weekend I mainly focused on chores around the house, trying not to think too hard about the events of that Thursday night. I tried to pushed it from my mind, and soon enough I was back in class that next Tuesday. Reassuringly, I wasn’t the only one to have had a weird experience.
“I swear to God, the baristas at the one on campus have it out for me! Everything I’ve ordered, every single fucking latté I’ve ordered, has tasted disgusting.” She cried to her friends.
“It can’t be that bad.”
“They’re lying to my face! They say their milk isn’t sour, but all I can taste is sour milk. Even the ones off campus are doing the same thing! I tried buying the pre-made ones from a convenience store, and even those had gone off.”
“Aren’t you on a diet anyways?”
“Shut the fuck up!”
I allowed myself a small smile. Maybe I do have a talent for magic.