Not Anywhere

Do you remember that moment, as an adolescent, you have been found out. Yeah, no matter how hard you tried to hide it, through longer showers, umm, ‘reading’ in the middle of the day requiring three locks bolted on your bedroom door, waiting eagerly for the adults and siblings to leave the house and leave you alone, but suddenly they came back because of some stupid reason like, ‘oh, I forgot my sun glasses,’ and surprise, someone has caught you with your butt in the air humping the couch in the living room, because for whatever reason, the family couch was more erotic than your own bed.

Discovery of magic is a lot like that. We all do it. All the time, but we hide it because, well, quite frankly, we’ve become perversely attached to our war stories. War stories like: OMG, the foundation leak flooded the house, but the insurance had a secret clause that capped the foundation leak at 5k, simultaneously, the convertible cloth top is leaking, but only when it rains, the other car you loaned to a friend and they hydroplaned into a curve because they don’t have enough experience to let off the gas and now the tires on the left side of the vehicle that hit the curve look like a time machine DeLorean , only the truck still doesn’t fly due to the lack of a flux capacitor, and since both axels are broke, the repairs will cost more than the blue book value and so it’s almost better to buy a new vehicle, though it eats at you how a perfectly good truck, other than the broken wheels, is suddenly trash, and you heard through the grapevine your mother died, but you didn’t hear it from family but through a friend of friend of the family, which just irritates you more about your family, you dropped your phone and it broke, the power supply on your computer went out, and work has fired you, but you needed a medical procedure which now won’t happen in the absence of insurance, and you’re trying to find a friend who is sympathetic, but they start competing with you, “Oh, you think you have it bad,” and they give you their list of grievances, not so much to block you from soliciting their help, but because they genuinely don’t have the ability to attend to anything but themselves but they start their list with how Starbucks got their coffee wrong, and you’re like, what the fuck planet are you on?! That’s where I was. Only, I had no list of grievances. I was in Safe Haven, enjoying a pleasant morning Joe surrounded by people I genuinely love, and touching a certain dread the same way your tongue might probe the space where a tooth use to be.

Huey, my friend, the power of perspective has nothing on love.

“Jon?” I tuned back into my reality.

Loxy smiled at me. If there is such a thing as a soul mate, which I don’t believe in, Loxy Bliss would be the one. Still, I felt like a teenager who had used one too many socks to catch a load of sperm, and the ‘mom’ is wondering why I change socks so much and pushing for information, when she should have a fucking clue not to push, because she really doesn’t want to have that conversation any more than you do. Well, not my mom, but ‘mom/son’ discussions in general. My mom would be more likely to ask why I don’t bring a girl home and then when I do, she’d be going off on me for bringing home some ‘trailer trash’ neighbor girl, embarrassing me and the girl, which would only inflame my libido but ensure I don’t bring a girl home. The first time I had sex with a live girl was in a graveyard. It took some convincing to get her there, but once she discovered the joy of sex in a semi private public place, because who else goes to a graveyard after dark, I couldn’t keep her away from the place. Yeah, she became a freak who later on in life freaked out, started wearing Goth clothes, sleeping in a coffin, and became a world renown medium, with her own TV show, but is that really on me?

“Um,” Loxy mused. Her Egyptian hair cut went great with the Bohemian clothes, bare arms and bare legs. It had a summer dress feel and gold bands on her arms suggested hippies meet Isis. “Where’d you go?”

“Sorry,” I said, watching Lester take his seat. Sabra pushed her hand towards him across the table, fingernails at saucer level, and when her hand arrived in front of Lester, a saucer and a cup of coffee had ‘magically’ appeared, being pushed by the back of her fingernails. Knowing magic exists and seeing it in action just never gets old. She was dressed in her usual German barmaid outfit, with bosoms seemingly defying the tensile strength of the clothes they were trying to burst out of. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Speaking of that,” Lester said, which was surprising only in that he rarely made more than grunting sounds before completing one coffee. He hung his cane on the table. “The next time you fuck Fersia all night, take her damn bell collar off. I swear, there wasn’t a spot in the entire Hall that wasn’t reverberating with that damn tinkle. I almost thought we had been overrun by pixies. You are smart enough to not summon and fuck with Pixies, right? Worse than squirrels in the attic.”

I almost took a moment to consider Pixies and fucking with them, but got stuck on the accusation. “I didn’t fuck Fersia last night. I wasn’t even here last night.”

“Oh, well, where were you Mr. Tom cat?” Keera asked. She was wearing nursing scrubs, skirt option, and white hose.

“With the twins,” I said.

“So who was with…” Lester began.

“No, wait wait wait,” Keera said eagerly. “The Collin twins? Again?”

“Please,” Lester said. “Like they would want to spend the night with a freshman. So, Fersia, if it wasn’t Jon…”

“It was me,” Loxy said, trying to rush past this and back to me. “I’ll try to remember to muffle the bell next time. You were with the Collin twins again?”

“But I like it when you ring my bell,” Fersia said. She in body, skin tight, suit that resembled a cat, various shades of pastel furs.

I wanted to say something about Lester’s dismissal with me and the twins but found myself absent of words. Loxy noticed. I was staring at Fersia who was twirling the bell on her collar, smiling deviously at me.

“What’s wrong, Jon? Cat got your tongue?” Loxy asked.

“I,” began.

“Come home more often. You have an open invitation to play,” Fersia said.

“Speaking of play, who wants to try my new drink?” Sabra asked.

Loxy was the first to put her finger to her nose. It took me a moment to realize that I was the only one at the table not holding a finger to my nose. I frowned. “It’s a bit early to be drinking, isn’t it?” I asked. It was beautiful morning at Safe Haven, perched above the waters of Harister Hall.

“You lost, Sir,” Lester pointed out. “You’re too slow and your shirt’s on backwards.”

“How does a magician of your caliber get his shirt on backwards?” Esfir asked. She was our new resident, Russian descent, and casually dressed in Khaki shorts and a white blouse.

Embarrassed, I drew my arms in the shirt, reversed it, put my arms back through. Fersia laughed, making a comment about how I would be lost if Loxy didn’t dress me. I admit I have no fashion sense, but I can’t explain how I sometimes get my shirt on backwards. Sabra produced a glass and three, small bottle and as she poured the light blue liquid into the glass, the frosted symbol of our lightening patch fluoresced. The drink was layered, blue, indigo, then violet. The blue and the violet began to trade places.

“You’re not sampling your own magic, are you?” Alish asked, laughing at her own joke. She was a darker shade of green today, perhaps due to sun bathing. The dress that fell over her resembled an oversized guy’s t-shirt, only practically transparent. Her flowery nipples were actually flowers.

“Well, I have just the thing to draw you out of yourself,” Sabra said, pushing the new drink towards me. “It’s called the Freud Jung Bridge…”

“You mean the Rosenberg-Einstein Bridge?’ I clarified.

“Uh? Oh, no, I don’t want to teleport you away,” Sabra said. “You’re already not fully here. That could be disastrous.”

“Just drink it,” Lester said. “You don’t need to understand everything.”

“What is your urgency in this?” I asked him, finally annoyed enough with his presence that I felt perturbed. It wasn’t like he had done anything specifically wrong towards me, but he now held my attention.

“I’m finally not the guinea pig is my urgency,” Lester said.

“Hold on,” Loxy said. “You created a drink that can access the unconscious, the seat of the libido?”

“I see nothing bad happening with that,” Keera said, clearly sarcastic.

“How do I consume it?” I asked, practically.

“Really?” Lester demanded.

“It’s a fair question,” Sabra said. “Drink it fast, then chase it with this strawberry soda.” She pushed a pinkish, bubbling drink at me that might have been Big Red substitute like Fanta. Not that I would protest Fanta. Have you ever seen the Fanta commercials? Tell me again sex doesn’t sell.

“I’m not a fan of strawberry soda,” I said. I would take the strawberry Fanta girl, though. Actually, I would take the Rainbow of Fanta girls, who I am kidding.

“You’re running out of excuses, now drink your damn drink,” Lester said.

“I’m seriously perturbed by your insistence,” I told him.

“Oh, just drink it,” everyone said, with varying degrees of amusement.

I drank the drink in one motion, put the glass down hard, and paused as a grimace rolled across my face, only to discover I was an instant fan of strawberry soda. One glass wasn’t sufficient to get the taste of the poison out of my mouth.