It took Jason a good bit to get used to the vibe of this party. He knew his girlfriend claimed to practice witchcraft as a hobby, but most of the details went over his head. He just knew that today was the Leap Day, an important day for Clarice's specific practices, and apparently one hell of a party for which she was the guest of honor this year. It didn't initially appeal to him, but then promise of a good time and a good high was enough for Jason to accept her invitation to join them.
So far it was definitely poppin', if not in the way he was used to. Retro-as-hell folk music, herb-infused wines to curl the stomach as much as the tongue, and strains of mushrooms that he didn't recognize but was willing to give a try anyway. After the initial nausea passed, he began to feel both the booze and shrooms take effect, and it was proving to be a nice mixture to pry away his grip on reality. In the full swing of the substances, the music sounded far more interesting and the chanting had a rhythm that he hadn't noticed before.
He wobbled his way over to the main crowd where Clarice was, then clumsily planted a kiss on her cheek before whispering in her ear. "I now understand why you throw this kind of party. It's just a shame it's once every four years." She responded by smiling and leaning against him affectionately, apparently also in the thrall of the drink and drugs, though Jason thought maybe not quite as strongly as he was.
"If it was simply about this part of the gathering, I'm sure we'd be doing it every weekend possible." She whispered back. "But there's a purpose to this whole thing. The ritual is coming up soon. You can watch, but you'd have to be a full member to receive an explanation of what we're doing and why we're doing it. Important secrets that we have to protect." Pushing through his muddled thoughts, Jason nodded and simply basked in the music with her, sipping wine and nibbling mushrooms as needed to maintain the smooth high.
Then it was almost midnight, time for the ritual. One of the other witches changed their phone to a different Spotify playlist, this one more ominous but still feeling appropriately folk for the situation. Clarice moved Jason's head off her shoulder and moved towards the center of the room where some kind of occult sign just about finished being drawn. Clarice stopped a few feet before the sigil, then stripped to her underwear and allowed the other women to paint unfamiliar symbols onto her skin. When that was finished, they began clothing her in some kind of ritual garb, black cloths with similar symbols stitched into them. Jason had a delayed double take when a witch brought out an M16 with full military attachments and adorned with charms. As Clarice began examining the gun and the clips, which seemed to be stuffed to the gills with herbs around the bullets, Jason could see trepidation on her face.
She's nervous, this means a lot to her and she doesn't want to mess it up. Jason thought through the impairing mental haze. Am I being a good enough boyfriend by simply attending the event with her? I should be next to her during this preparation, to show her that I don't need to understand what's happening to know that she's doing it well and that I'm proud of her.
Taking a moment to build resolve, he staggered forward to stand supportively at Clarice's shoulder. It only occurred to him at the last steps that the wine was much stronger than he initially thought. As he made the final step to stand next to her, he tripped over another witch's feet and pitched forward towards the sigil on the floor. Through the rush of peril seeming to slow down time, Jason could see the looks of panic form on everyone. Clarice most of all seemed terrified and tried to reach out and catch him, but wasn't fast enough to stop him from slamming his head into the floor.
Then, in the black silence, the sound of his own heartbeat was all he could feel.
It took a few moments for Jason to get over the stun from hitting his head, then he tried to take stock. He only saw blackness and couldn't hear the expected shouts of surprise from Clarice and the other witches. Did people go blind and deaf when concussed? He couldn't remember. Then he began to make out some muttering.
"-damn Stolas. Amazing he managed to predict that humans would make repository devices." The voice stopped, and a sharp sniffing noise could be heard. "Strange though, electricity and electromagnetic wavelength transmission. Not even the slightest bit of corvid bone in its construction. I'll need to rub it in his face that he doesn't actually know everything."
Jason could begin to make out the faint glow of a smartphone screen, his smartphone, a few feet away in the gloom. It did a poor job of illuminating the face of the . . . person? It met the basic criteria for a human face, but in the bad lighting he was certain something was wrong, out of place. The figure took notice that Jason was awake, slipping the phone into a pocket of the billowing . . . cloak? Maybe it was black wings? The impenetrable gloom of this place made it impossible to tell.
"No protective measures, no weapons, no training. And that look of confusion on your face. It seems like today is the day it all begins." The creature examined Jason and considered. "There is still some waiting to do, so I'm willing to indulge some questions. The past four hundred years have not allowed me talkative visitors." Something in the tone of its voice was scratching at some primal fear in Jason, but it hadn't quite found its grip yet.
"Who . . . who are you? Where are we?" Jason tried his best to sound resolute as he lay on the ground, too scared to move lest he provoke this being that seemed more unnatural the more he looked at it.
"I am an exile, someone considered a rebel and traitor by many. As for this place? It's a 'when', not a 'where'. Currently we occupy the calendar space of February 30th. Quite an unfair temporal liminal space. February 29th works similar when it isn't a leap year, a time and place that shouldn't be yet must be crossed over in order to reach March. The Vatican bastards were clever enough to create their special calendar just to trap me, not sacrificing any existing days but scrounging together spare seconds to create a temporary day with a new border. Normally with how these sort of spaces work, waiting twenty four hours would safely deposit you in the next day, but this one is too disconnected normally."
The distant horizon began to dimly glow with faint sepia tones, and the creature smiled. If a children's joyous smile could be described as a beautiful sunrise, then this being's expression was a solar eclipse. "Because I'm disconnected from time and classical mortality, my presence isn't enough to make time move forward here. And the visitors sent to beat me down every four years were able to train themselves to abandon their sense of time while they were here. But you . . ." The smile deepened, as an impossibly expanding moon might cover even the solar corona. "Your unexpected, and assuredly unplanned, arrival has been enough to dislodge the seconds and send them forward. Congratulations! It is all because of you that the first February 30th will complete and I can step out into March 1st!"
The injury and drugs were still slowing Jason's mind, but he began to grasp at pieces. The witches' Leap Day ritual, the strange decoration on Clarice. The adorned gun. The best plan he could come up with was to negotiate, to buy time for himself in hopes he could get a chance to warn Clarice. "But won't you need a guide? You've been here for so long, if you gave me my phone back I could help you learn what's new."
The creature changed posture, cocked its head curiously. "I was wondering how long it would take for you to realize the true gravity of the situation you're in. Unfortunately, your service won't be of use to me." It reached back into its cloak and produced something metallic and somehow gleaming in the gloom. The object looked like a scalpel, until it started writhing like an agitated centipede. "But your component parts will serve me very well."
No comments:
Post a Comment