Category: Fiction

She opened her handbag and tipped the contents onto the floor in a desperate attempt to find the key. She knew it was in there, there was no other option.

After searching for what felt like ages, she slumped down on the ground and cried. “How could I have been so stupid?” she berated herself. That key was her only link to discovering the truth behind her employer’s bizarre behavior.

He seemed perfectly normal and approachable some days, and then disheveled, surly, and downright curmudgeonly on others. It was more than that. It felt like he was two different people, a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde scenario. Wasn’t that based on legitimate bi-polar disorder, or schizophrenia? She was unsure, and maybe using the smuggled key could answer these questions. Maybe there were medication bottles in his private area that would explain so much.

She knew it was ridiculous to even care. It was just a job after all. Yes, it was a good job that she liked, but it’s not like she was a VP or anything, she was just an assistant. Well, as a good assistant, shouldn’t she be predicting her manager’s needs and whims? How could she do that if she was unaware of a malady that plagued him? Yes, she had settled that this logic was extremely sound.

It was all for naught, as she had lost the ruddy key. She sat there on the floor, distraught and worried that it would be discovered she stole the key and then lost it and would lose her job. Her heel moved and the sound of something solid and metal rang out. The key!

With satisfied jubilance she stood, threw all the contents back into her purse, slid the key into the lock, and turned. The quiet clicking of the lock felt louder than it should have been in the quiet warehouse space. She closed it firmly behind her. The room was dark, made even darker by dark carpets, and décor. She pulled the tiny flashlight on her keys to illuminate the space.

What she saw was a fantastical laboratory straight out of the 18^th century. Glass tubes and bottles connected by copper joints in an ornate maze with different colored liquids in them. The wall held a tall cabinet that stored dozens and dozens of jars with herbs, liquids, and even animal parts floating in liquid. What is this guy into? She thought nervously. Was he an actual mad scientist?

She heard the scrape of something outside the door so she turned off the flashlight and scurried under the table. Dim lights came up in the room and she could see it more clearly. It was straight out of Sherlock Holmes – a dark red Persian rug underneath her, thick dark wood table above with a long table cloth that provided some coverage for her. His black boots, that she now recognized looked like they were from another time approached the table and stood there. She could hear him clinking bottles around.

Her heart raced and she prayed silently that he would finish quickly and leave, or go to a place where she might be able to silently escape, but that’s the sort of thing for movies. So she froze there awaiting anything that might give her a glimmer of hope for how to leave and still have a job tomorrow.

She had done a poor job of hiding the damage, so naturally she kept futzing with it in a vain attempt to make the skin look normal again. Katrina exhaled, “Worst. Witch. Ever.”

Which isn’t technically accurate, as this was her first spell, and she had far more natural power than she knew. So much so, that a coven of witches, clear in another county, was knocked clear flat onto their backs by the shockwave of energy sent out by that one small spell.

Katrina pulled on her grandmother’s hand-knitted cardigan to cover up the mangled flesh on her upper arm. She gathered up the witch accoutrements that led to the disastrous spell and chucked it into a canvas bag with the shattered sense that she would never have the power her grandmother had.

Just prior, the coven of witches were standing up in the middle of farmer Gorgon’s sheep field. He always fancied Minerva and cleared his sheep away every month for their full moon ritual. He was bound by the coven to not peek at their rituals, which he supposed included naked lady orgies writhing in pleasure before a sacrificial altar. Such a man thing to imagine. Nakedness does not immediately mean sex, any proper witch will tell you that. It is, however, an excellent way to ensure you’re directly connected with the divine spirit and can channel the elements of Mother Nature more powerfully. So, yes, there was nakedness, but no, there were no orgies. And sacrifice is a harsh word. Is it sacrificing when you eat chicken nuggets? No, it’s eating, so leave the coven in peace when they bleed a chicken and turn it into soup later.

Minerva pushed herself up from her prostrate position on the soft grass. “What in the name of the Goddess was that?!” she yelled. “Juliette, were the runes properly placed?”

The young, naked brunette had fallen beside Minerva. She nodded.

“Then what could possibly have gone wrong?” Minerva was getting to her feet when she saw a glowing orb of light floating above their altar. She joined the other women who had seen it with gaping mouths.

Katrina wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep away this failure, but her body was restless and rejected that idea, so decided to go for a midnight stroll. It was a warm summer’s eve, the summer solstice in fact. The day her grandmother gave her specific instructions for what to do after her passing.

“I failed you, g-g.” she said to the bright moon above. Being outside under that moon was comforting. The full moon always reminded her of G-G. Even as a small child her grandmother would take her into the woods on the full moon to do magic. As a child it was so real, the possibilities of magic, but as she grew older she knew it was just an old hippie reliving some acid trip from her youth. That was the only logical explanation. And then G-G died, and left Katrina her grimoire and a cottage no one in the family knew about. Yes, laugh all you want, she had a witch’s cottage, and not in a highly desirable area, no, in fact, it was literally in the middle of nowhere in Wales of all places. WALES? Who but sheep want to be in Wales for goodness’ sake?? Though as she spent more time there trying to understand this witchy stuff, it was rather beautiful. The moonlit strolls in nature were oddly peaceful, and not creepy. Not once did she imagine Jason Vorhees or Cujo waiting behind a tree. That’s not strictly correct, she did imagine it more than once, but that was in the beginning.

The glowing orb began to move. The witches gasped collectively as it slowly floated away from the altar. Minerva grabbed the hands of nearby witches and they all started clasping hands together, encircling the floating and moving orb. “Grant, oh great Goddess, thy protection,” Minerva began and all the ladies joined in. The orb approached a witch with mocha colored skin. They spoke their prayer louder “And in protection, strength.” The orb nearly touched the witch, but rose higher above her head and out of the circle continuing on an unseen path. The witches abandoned their chanting prayer and scrambled to follow it.

Katrina came to the small creek not far from G-G’s magical house and crouched beside it to touch the cool clear water. It always felt like a restorative spring to Katrina and she quickly wondered if it had magical properties. She pulled her left arm from the cardigan, scooped up a handful of the creek water saying a healing prayer she found in the grimoire “Deep peace I breathe into you, O weariness, here:
O ache, here.” while slowly pouring the creek waters onto the distorted flesh. Katrina’s eyes widened as the flesh began to smooth with each droplet of water.

The orb passed over farmer Gorgon’s fence. The witches, still naked, looked at each other to see if they were going to pursue in their current undress.

“CLOAKS!” Minerva barked. “CECILY, THE VAN!” she shrieked.

The coven moved quickly, throwing cloaks over their naked forms, a large van raced towards the fence, stopped and the coven piled in, though not everyone had a seat.

“Follow that orb.” Minerva instructed. And the van broke through the fence and followed the orb crushing crops and grass on its impossibly slow journey.

“You will not move, you will not twitch a muscle. You are sentinels, and sentinels are living statues. You are no longer of this world, but above it. It bows to you.”

Under the ornate golden armor, emblazoned with a phoenix flowing like flaming liquid on his breastplate, beads of sweat pooled and dripped down his body. His still very living body. How was one to become a sentinel, above the world, to be that level of infamy? This was the first exercise designed to filter out strong from the weak. They were all worthy, they had all passed the trials, the tests of history, criminology, legend, and ethics, but being worthy alone did not make you fit to be a sentinel. A sentinel was better than everyone but the gods, and a sentinel, by their intelligence, worth, and strength were then chosen by the gods to protect the world they created.

The suns, both midday and early day glared down on the row of golden beacons, hundreds stretched across the crest of the fiercest desert, like jewels decorating a red coat of the gods. It seemed like hours had passed, the beads of sweat had turned into fountains. Jarnius could hear the clanking of others falling or fainting from the scorching heat. “Not me, not me, not me.” He thought to himself. “I am a sentinel, a master of will. I am chosen by the gods to protect and keep their world safe. The relic of arnuieta has had my name engraved on it since the dawn of time, for I am a sentinel.” He whispered the prayer over and over again. Never closing his eyes, always staying alert and observant of those around him.

The Captain walked in front of the cadet to his right, peered into the armor, pushed on their shoulder, whispered to his lieutenant and then approached Jarnius. Looking forward, refusing to blink, shrink, or crumble, Jarnius kept the prayer in his mind the relic of arnuieta has had my name engraved on it since the dawn of time. The captain pushed on his shoulder and he didn’t budge. He was a statue. He was above this world. He would not yield.

The captain spoke to the lieutenant, who wrote something down. Jarnius could see the word “arnuieta” and nearly cheered, but he knew they used every tool in their arsenal to unmake a sentinel, and vanity or pride were worthy tools. The prideful are never chosen, no. The prideful are sent to the games and made a spectacle. Jarnius would not fail like that. He had no pride to speak of, this was all he had and he could not fail.

The early sun had set, and the midday sun was low in the sky, allowing the first moon to peek over the farthest horizon. The gleaming row of golden dots was heavily broken, whittled down from hundreds to several dozen. Jarnius had not weakened, his arms had lost feeling hours before. Now was the wait for the frozen night when the midnight moon would rise. The golden armor was freeze resistant, but it would not stop flesh from freezing, or a weak person to freeze and lose consciousness. But Jarnius knew that once the second sun set, he was halfway through this fierce challenge – the easy half. For at night, not only must a sentinel tolerate the cold, but the ice wisps that came to torment them, to infiltrate their armor, even some could insert into one’s eye.

The stupid sensor went off again. It was always going off for no reason, which meant I had to go back into that horrible place and look around. Yes, that’s my job, but it doesn’t mean I want to do it. I have no problem looking into any other building on these grounds, but building 86 was creepy, it always had been. The old man who trained me told me crazy stories about that building. Said it was where they stored the organs from alien autopsies, real venom from a basilisk, and he even said they had a mummified faery and the body of a gnome in some liquid in a jar like a science experiment. It was a trip. Needless to say I have never seen any of these things, but I will say that building 86 was the loudest building and the sensors kept going off. I complain to maintenance about how the sensors aren’t working, and they check it out during the day shift and say it’s fine. But it’s not at night, I can tell you that. Something was setting them off in that stupid building, and nothing the old coot told me about could do it, because all of those things were dead. So unless the gnome broke out of the jar and is now a zombie gnome wandering the building, it was something else. In all likelihood it was a bird or a rat or maybe even a racoon that got in there and somehow knows where all the cameras are and can avoid them. Yes, it sounds crazy, but it’s a hell of a lot more sane sounding than a) a zombie gnome, b) a mummy faery come back to life without the help of Brenden Fraser, or c) an alien putting back in his harvested organs. When comparing a smart rodent to that, the smart rodent wins every day, because it’s the least goddamn crazy of the group.

*BAM* I heard while approaching the building, and it was not imagined. Something knocked or rammed into the door. All things a, b, and c were still bottom of the list of suspects. That may be a dumb bird thing, throwing themselves at the door to get free, so despite the weirdness of the building I opened the door, and what did I see? A dead bird who had bashed its head in flying into the door. Knew it. Wait, and then there was another, but a little further from the door, and then another further inside the building. What the fuck. How were birds hitting the door, or wall or whatever and falling to their deaths? There was nothing for them to hit in the middle of the road, after I had found four more birds.

The sunlight had all but disappeared, the birds should have been in their nests by now. Looking up, they circled above the troubling building.

“Told ya.” came the croak from the old coot Tom, startling me. Where had he come from? “Building 86 gets busy at night.”

“What the hell are’ya doing here, Tom? You should’ve clocked out hours ago.” I didn’t even bother looking at him, plus didn’t want to miss if any birds were going to fly into an invisible wall again. Tom just grunted. “Besides it’s barely night, and them birds should already be asleep.”

“‘Sept they ain’t.” Tom said staring up at the birds, a scene reminiscent of Hitchcock.

Without a sound, both me and Tom were being pushed away from the building by nothing. No wind, no force really, it felt like a wall was pushing us back slowly. I reached out and my hands pressed hard on something invisible, it had no heat or cold, it was flat and hard. I knocked on it, it made no sound. But sure as birds fly, we were being pushed back, closer to another building. It wasn’t fast, mind you, but it was relentless. Our backs were slowly approaching building 85, so me ‘n Tom headed to the space between 85 and 83. Surely whatever that was would stop at another building.

When it continued to expand into buildings 85 and 83, Tom and I ran towards the control booth. Not sure who or what to call, but we weren’t sure what was gonna happen next.