Bewitched, Bothered, Etc. Ch. 01

"Carl, I need to ask you a big, BIG favor!" Hayley said rather loudly as her eyes sank to the ground like a couple of ten pound weights had just been tied to them.

I waited for her next line but finally decided that she must have missed rehearsal. "I'm listening," I prompted. The noisy cars escaping the restaurant parking lot would have made it difficult enough to hear her even if she had said anything and yet I thought I heard her in my head even before she finally spoke.

"I've...had one hell of a week and I am absolutely stressed to the max. To the fucking MAX!" She was so nervous she was shaking. As she spoke, Hayley's arms flayed the air in the parking lot with trembling parries and thrusts but her eyes still studied her baby blue tennis shoes. Finally she looked up and it was like her eyes connected directly to my soul. Once again I saw the rainbow.

The rainbow always made me feel warm and special because apparently no one else in the whole wide world could see even a trace of it. It certainly didn't surprise me anymore. Almost from the beginning I had just come to expect it when our eyes met. Colors. Blue, violet, red, yellow... They streamed hypnotically out of her beautiful orbs in ever-widening circlets until her face seemed to just absolutely glow. Hayley had gone on and on about our soul-mate connection and I had obsessed on researching auras for awhile but this didn't really seem to match either of those things. Whatever it was, I knew that it was a sign of some kind of special connection between us.

"Talk to me. What do you need?"

"I want you to take some of my negative energy."

"Meaning?"

"I want to do a ritual and give you some of this negative energy I've been carrying around." Now that the cat was out of the bag, it was like a dam had broken and suddenly her sentences tumbled out and over each other. "It's been literally making me sick and nervous and tired all week long but if my idea works, you should be able to turn it into positive energy. After all, energy is just energy, right? It's only negative energy to me, get it? To you, it should be just like some big burst of metaphysical adrenaline, y'know?"

Did I mention that Hayley was a witch? A candle-burning, cat-loving, Goddess-worshipping real-life Sabrina? We had met three years earlier while both of us were shopping in the New Age section at the Mallbooks down in Rayford. I was just indulging my curiosity; she saw me looking at a book on witchcraft, took it right out of my hand and recommended what she said was a much better one. That's when I first looked her in the eye and saw the glow. I did what had to have been a classic double-take. I guess at first it just seemed like some kind of reflection in my glasses but even when I took them off and rubbed my eyes, it didn't go away. I didn't mention it to her at first but I know I kept staring. It was fascinating. SHE was fascinating. We ended up talking for hours that evening, sitting out in the mall well after the stores had closed. We started out discussing Paganism and witchcraft but before long had expanded the topics to include life and love and hopes and dreams and sex and songs and PUNKY BREWSTER. (Hey, what can I say? She loved that show.) After the mall security guard finally kicked us out, we stood outside in the windy parking lot just chatting for another half an hour. Since then, we've stood in lots of parking lots and talked until odd hours...which brings me back to the present.

"Okay, okay. You don't have to sell it so hard. I guess that makes sense. Energy is just energy. Yeah. Sure. I'll do it." Sometimes I honestly wasn't sure if I was humoring her or if I actually bought her whole line. One thing was certain; there was no denying that she really did seem to have some kind of mind-over-matter powers. She radiated a magnetic energy that pulled things to her as she needed them—people, jobs, ideas...She'd tell me she needed a new job and the next day the perfect job would fall right into her lap. She'd express an interest in seeing an old friend and he or she would turn up as if by accident a few days later walking through the mall. She had always said she felt as though she had pulled me to her at the bookstore that night, too. "What exactly do you need from me? I mean, how does this 'ritual' work?"

"Well, see, that's the thing..."

"You mean...?"

"No, I haven't done it before nor have I found anything about doing anything like this in any of my books," she said in a sing-song voice, anticipating my questions in that annoying, almost telepathic way she had.

"Okay, then, so you're making it up as you go along," I sighed a tad impatiently.

"Exactly!" she responded with an obvious sense of pride.

"That wasn't necessarily meant as a compliment."

"Well, why not? It should have been!" she said with an uneasy smile.

"Anywaaaaay..."

"Fine."

" My question is still: How the hell are you going to do this, ya little witch?"

"Hey!"

"What? Exactly what about that is incorrect? I said the "W" word, not the "B" word."

She grimaced and shook her hands aimlessly toward me. "Never mind. When the time comes, I'll know. Meet me at my apartment at six. I get off at 5 but you'll probably get there ahead of me if there's traffic. DO NOT LEAVE! Wait for me, okay?"

"Deal"

"Promise?"

"I promise! I'll wait for you if I get there first."

"Okay, then. I'll see you at six. I gotta get back. My lunch hour's already over. I'm late."

"Go! Go! See you at six." As I waved her off, she smiled, took a deep breath and ran to her car. Sometimes I wondered what she really thought of me. Other times, I figured if she really is reading my mind, she knows exactly how I think of her. I just wish she could find a way to put it into words that made it make sense to me.

I enjoyed being with Hayley but she frustrated me so much. Occasionally, I felt as if we were simply characters in a badly written play...or worse, a story song! We would talk endlessly, she would reach important decisions, then suddenly go into denial mode and I was expected, as her closest friend, never to remind her of her previous "deep and meaningful" conclusions. It drove me absolutely bugfuck crazy to be around her sometimes and yet I couldn't even imagine not being her friend. It felt like I had known her for my entire life.

In spite of the obvious connection, we never became lovers. It seemed early on that she was always involved with someone else and then, after awhile, we had settled comfortably into our roles as just friends. Sometimes I wished things had happened differently but Hayley always reminded me that, "Everything happens for a reason." Thus, for whatever reason, I found myself sitting in my car in her apartment complex parking lot listening to my MP3 player at nearly 7:15 when she finally came driving up and parked right next to me.

"Oh, you stayed! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she rattled off in relief.

"You always act so surprised. I said I'd wait, didn't I?"

"Yes, but a lot of people say things they don't mean you know? Thank you."

"You're welcome. Look, you've got me under your spell, okay? Pun intended."

"Now, Carl..."

"What!?"

"Ohhh...Never mind. Come on. Help me carry this stuff up to my apartment."

"Is this stuff for the ritual?" I asked as I grabbed a few bags out of her hatchback.

"Of course not. What are you thinking? These are groceries I just picked up."

"You stopped for groceries after telling me to wait...Aaaargh!!"

"Oh, hush. Come on. The ice cream'll melt."

"Yes, Mistress!"

"Stop that!"

Between the two of us, we carried about a dozen plastic bags of groceries down into her basement apartment. She told me to sit and relax while she put everything away so I plopped down on the big blue couch in the living room. Immediately, I was greeted by Stevie and Lindsey, Hayley's two dysfunctional acrobatic cats.

"Hi, guys," I whispered as I held out the back of my hand for each of them to sniff. "Does she drive you crazy, too?"

"I heard that!" came the unexpected response from the kitchen.

"Out loud or in your head?" I yelled back.

"Both, dumbass! Just sit there a minute and we can get started on this, okay?"

"I'm sitting already! Jeez!" Stevie rubbed up against my right arm while Lindsey made a sincere effort at climbing the other one. Luckily, he was already declawed when she adopted him.

"You want something to eat?"

"I thought you wanted to get this over with, get rid of all that negativity, remember?"

"I...I do but that doesn't mean we have to do it on an empty stomach. Even Samantha had dinner, you know."

"Samantha was a TV witch."

"I really loved that show!" she said as she slowly walked into the living room with two plates of sandwiches and two cups of tea precariously balanced on her left palm and forearm.

"You watch way too much TV," I said as I rose and lifted the plates down to the coffee table. I lifted the bread on my sandwich and found it to be thinly sliced roast beef with just a dab of mustard. "You know, this is just exactly the way I like it."

"Naturally," was her somewhat haughty response.

"You don't understand. In the entire time I've known you, we've never had roast beef sandwiches and I'm pretty sure the subject never came up in conversation."

"What's your damage?" she said indignantly as I took a bite.

"It's just that you couldn't possibly know exactly how I liked roast beef sandwiches."

"Oh," she whispered through a blush. "Sorry."

"Don't be. It's just the latest example of something we each know about the other that we shouldn't, couldn't know. A little weird but kinda neat, too."

"I know. I don't mean to be weird. It just all comes so naturally. Err...the knowing and stuff, not the weirdness."

"I figured."

"I feel like you know me better than anyone. That's why this idea should work. Hurry up and eat. I'm anxious to get started."

"Jeez! 'Relax,' she says, then 'Hurry up,' she says. I'm still chewing. Deal!" She laughed and sighed, a little bit of tension broken perhaps but the room itself felt a bit claustrophobic. Hayley wandered off and gathered some items. When I finished, I stood up.

"Ready?" she asked. "Good. Now come in here and sit down at the dining room table."

"You got it all worked out now?"

"Would you just hush about that! Just...Work with me here, all right? Sit!"

"Sit! Got it!"

"Come on, Carl," she whined. "If you're not gonna take this seriously, then..."

"Sorry! Sorry. Look, you know I trust you. You showed me that magic was more than just a card game. You showed me that you WERE magic or at least something very much like it. It's just that..."

"It's just that you don't want me messing with forces I don't fully understand. Trust me, honey, that thought has occurred to me, too!"

"Actually, no. I was gonna say that..."

Her arms started fanning the breeze again. "Will you just...Shhh! Here we go. Put your hands in front of you on the table." I did as instructed in all seriousness but then burst out with a laugh when Lindsey leapt up onto the table and began licking my hands. "Dammit! Get down you silly cat!" she corrected as she brushed him away. The white cat landed on his feet with a plop, meowed loudly once and then ran down the hall with a sudden burst of energy. Me, I might have interpreted that as some kind of a warning but my overstressed witch ignored the intrusion and lit the melted blue blob of a candle she had placed on the table.

"Any significance to the color of the candle?" I asked.

"Blue's my favorite color," she said. I laughed. "No, seriously, it should act as a positive energy conductor. Could you just...please..."

"I'm done," I said, making a show of twisting the key in the imaginary lock on my lips.

"Thank you," she said as she grabbed my arm and placed my hand back on the table. "Okay, now close your eyes and whatever happens, do not...DO NOT open them until I tell you. Do you trust me?" I nodded. "Good. Now, I am NOT going to touch you in any way but you MAY feel something." I chuckled aloud. "Dammit!!"

"Mmmm, mmmm!" I quickly apologized through the imaginary lock. Hayley sighed deeply and shook her head spastically.

"Now, close your eyes and keep your hands on the table." Suddenly music began playing in the background. I didn't recognize the song but it sounded appropriately like Stevie Nicks. I found myself wondering how Hayley could have started the CD way over in the living room.

"Listen to my voice," she began in a quiet drone that barely betrayed her Southern accent. "Listen. I want you to think about light. Envision a pinpoint of pure white light in the center of your mind. Concentrate on it and remember, don't move."

With my eyes closed, I had no clue what she was doing but I could tell she was moving from one side of me to the other by the sound of her voice. Suddenly the hair on both of my arms bristled as though something were lightly brushing past them. In my mind's eye, I could see the little circle of light but the tingling in my arms prevented me from concentrating on it. Even more distracting and disconcerting was the fact that something was noticeably moving in my underwear. Even though this attractive young woman was doing nothing to me physically or suggestively in any way, I was getting an erection!

Her voice seemed distant now, droning on hypnotically. "Take this energy from me willingly. Open your heart and your mind and your soul to me and accept what I offer. Visualize the light and let it come to you. Light overcomes the darkness. Let the light come to you."

I could not believe it! My now full erection was clearly seeping into my boxers! Before this knowledge even had a chance to have an impact on me, however, the small dot of light I'd been staring at behind my eyes began expanding rapidly. It seemed as though it was now racing toward me at ever-increasing speed. Stevie Nicks had been replaced with a distant roar like rushing water that grew louder...No! Closer! The light suddenly expanded to fill my entire consciousness like a rushing freight train, making me feel momentarily blinded even though I had my eyes closed!

I threw my hands up in front of me as if to protect myself from some invisible intruder and Hayley screamed, "CARL! Carl, are you all right? Say something!"

My eyes slowly fluttered open and I was quite frankly surprised to see that reality was still there. My hands were shaking and both sides of my nose were tingling. My lips had become dry and chapped. "What the fuck was that?!" I murmured.

A big smile lit up Hayley's face as the colors came swirling back at me. "Hah! A real spell from a real witch, honey! Don't move." She ran into her bedroom and returned with a small piece of polished black onyx. "Here. Take this and squeeze it in your hands until the shaking stops. How do you feel?"

"Owww! My head's pounding. Did you hypnotize me or something?"

"I guess. In a way. I didn't mean to but you had to be open to suggestion in order to accept the negative energy from me so I guess I did hypnotize you. You think it worked?"

"Do I think it...? Ho, ho, ho! Something sure did! That was just damn weird, y'know? Was it good for you, too?"

"Stop that!"

"No, seriously, do you feel like your energy levels are drained or whatever?"

"I...I can't tell yet. I didn't really feel anything...I don't think. What did it feel like to you? Describe the sensations." I told her about the tingling and the erection and even the seepage. "Oh, my!" was her reaction to that one.

I started to stand, still rolling the onyx back and forth in my hand. My legs were wobbly. They obviously weren't as wobbly as Hayley's, though, as she suddenly proceeded to faint dead away.

To Be Continued...