Dark Magic: Part 2

He looked at Jessie, and felt at ease. She was worried, though. What was she worried about? He looked down, and a broken glass lay sideways on the table; the remainder of its contents trickling their way down the table leg, and down his. It was cold. It was cold, but it was real, and somehow that reassured him. He wanted to grasp onto the table leg - it looked solid. Some instinct called him to be rooted to the ground, because for a fleeting moment he felt he might float away. But it passed, and then he felt something more startling. Her hand was gently grasping his wrist; the other on his shoulder. She was speaking to him, but though the words thundered in his ears, they could not compete with the decibel levels being emitted from nearby speakers. He glanced around at the other faces nearby, and all were looking at him, querulously. They were waiting for an explanation, but what was he to explain? What...Where...Questions flooded his brain, and only seemed to amplify the problem. He took a deep breath and sat down again, starting as he felt a sharp prick on his thigh. He brushed aside the offending piece of glass, and heard another voice in his ear; a male voice, again familiar, but somehow he was unable to place it.

"Are you alright? do you want to go outside?"

He looked at the speaker. He was...a friend. This, he could feel sure of. But whose friend? He looked towards the door, and his breathing quickened. An ephemeral feeling passed over him, and he recoiled from the somewhat distant doorway, unwilling to conceive of approaching it. But he did want to leave. This place was too constricted; the walls seemed to be closing in, threatening to suffocate him. He rose up, looking blankly at Jessie, wanting to convey something but unable to find the words. He stumbled past her, and feeling unsteady on his feet, ambled awkwardly towards a doorway marked 'exit'.

An indignant, irascible voice boomed behind him, as the doors burst open and plunged him into cool, night air. The voice was clearer now, behind him.

"Whaddaya think yer doin'?!"

He was in no doubt that this individual was demanding an explanation, also, but these were in short supply, and he didn't turn around. Instead, he remained, craning forwards and supporting himself by leaning his hands on his thighs. He was short of breath, and wasn't about to waste what little he had on this unidentified individual. The voice was addressing someone else, now.

"Is he with you?"
"Yeah, I don't think he's feeling well."
"Well, you go out an' yer not gettin' back in."

The doors shut loudly, and the music retreated to a muffled drone.

"What's wrong?"
Jessie. Her voice was clear, now, beyond the confines of the club.

He straightened up; his breathing steady now; his limbs following commands. Turning, he studied her closely, in the hopes it would provide some cue, some salient information to get his thoughts into some kind of order. She was wearing somewhat threadbare blue jeans and a close-fitting red top exposing her midriff, and emblazoned with the proud motto, "Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them", accompanied by a suitably illustrative stick-figure image. Her face reverberated in his mind, and every nuance of an expression seemed to trigger some key facet of his being, making him feel immediately at home, secure. He was glad she was here. Still, though, he struggled to come up with anything more meaningful. Her hair is a dusty blond; her skin white, and freckled in places, with a plumpness to the cheeks suggestive of youth, but a look in the eyes incongruent with such speculation. Her blue eyes were searching him, now, increasingly concerned, increasingly impatient.

"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG!?" She boomed, stamping her foot and throwing her hands towards him in exasperation.

Dark Magic: Part 1 of, I dunno, a few. maybe.

The babble of the crowd gradually faded into interminable distance, to be replaced by a low, mechanical humming. He felt dizzy and his thoughts became progressively more clouded, as the humming rose to a deafening roar. He glanced at the other faces around the table, but they were animated in conversation, and seemingly unaware of the sound. His chest felt tight, constricted, and a numbness overcame him so that he was unsure if he still drew breath. The sound seemed to emanate from all around, but some instinct told him that it had a source; something was approaching, and was all too near.

To his right, the entrance to the bar darkened. A shadow crossed the threshold, looming large over the crowd, which seemed to part unconsciously to admit it. There was substance to the shadow; a simulacrum of a person, but something about the proportions was wrong. The figure was moving slowly through the people, but time seemed to mould itself to its will. As it moved, it turned, so slowly, craning its cowled head to check the faces of each oblivious person it passed. It was searching for something; for someone. Fear gripped his heart. He glanced at the exit, but it was too far. A bead of sweat ran down his brow. There was no escape. The cowled figure turned, slowly, slowly. He had to hide! He had to...too late!

As it turned, its visage came into view, but it was nothing but a reflection, an illusion, a minatorial chasm, reflecting all the horrors of the world. A lachrymose, tear-drop-shaped countenance focussed on him; its vicious emptiness boring deep into his soul, exposing everything within. There was nowhere to hide, no way to escape the menacing glare. Time and causality evaporated; every vestige of hope fled, and the future stretched on as an indefinite present; a moment frozen in time and stretched on to an infinite, pernicious, unforgiving eternity.

Then there was nothing; nothing but a dull ache, where his heart had once been. But something spoke up in the void; some sensation, new and unfamiliar, calling from the corporeal world. He was aware of a cold dampness, creeping along his leg, and voices; alarmed, solicitous, but not threatening. Time returned. He registered motion, before any kind of visible world presented itself. He blinked, and there were people, again, moving, LAUGHING! The laughter awoke his senses, washing over his soul like the first monsoon rains, and spoke to him of promise, of life, and humanity. The voices in the immediate vicinity were louder now, and a face presented itself close to his - concerned, perplexed. It was a familiar face, but...he could not call to mind why, or how it was familiar. Then a fragment surfaced in his mind, a dim recollection of a bright, sunny day.

He had fallen. and she was there, concerned as now. She ran to help him. Jessie. This is Jessie.

Pretty-Picture Friday: Honorificabilitudinitatibus

Some people may not agree that this merits being posted under such a heading, but those individuals are philistines; charletans. Art is, by its nature, subjective, and this is, indeed, one of the most pulchritudinous sights that I have ever beheld. It signifies that I have been honourably discharged from the educational establishment where I have spent the last eon. The only caveat I allow to this encomium is that the figures in question, being as they are, so auspicious, should be rubric, rather than cerulean.

Fortune is ever shining on my door

Barely a week has passed since I won the lottery, but chance has bestowed upon me a second windfall. This time, stochasticity has brought me the promise of wealth seemingly through inheritance from a long-dead relative who, unnamed and unknown, left a sum of 15 million dollars, unclaimed, in a safety deposit box.

This putative sum has rested there since the inception of the second world war, and though the British Government has reportedly admitted that much documentation relating to such cases has been destroyed, it seems that one piece of information has survived intact, all these decades: my...email address. how fortunate.

So the purported solicitors who contacted me about this matters are offering their services in this regard - how selfless. I imagine all I need to do is pay a nominal fee, and the box in question will be magically opened, to reveal...a post-dated I.O.U.

(What did I do to merit my university email address being added to such a spamming list?)
[Answers on a postcard, to...]

Pretty-Picture Friday: County Down

Bittersweet Orchestral Rendition

(side-stepping copyright infringement laws and obviating a court-case from the erstwhile Verve's lawyers)
But I believe you get the idea - there is a certain ambivalence to my mood, since I have finished my final exams :D...but...what would otherwise be ecstatic joy is tempered somewhat by a certain empty, lacklustre feeling, stemming from the loss of that former impetus, for studious achievement. There is also a certain element of anxiety over the actual outcome. Nevertheless, I am free, and this is by any measure a joyous occasion, meretorious of champagne and wotnot.

On a less serious note, any delight I may feel at this is outshone by the literal disbelief at having won the lottery; one million euros, to be precise. I was informed of this while still in the middle of my exam preparations, and as you can imagine, I was rather pleased. As any optimistically- inclined fellow would do, I naturally accepted it with the utmost credulity - it's no stretch of the imagination to believe that I could win a competition that I never entered; people are so fortunate all the time, right?

And of course, it should come as no surprise that the lottery has branched out from the archaic method of charging people money for tickets, into the much more philanthropic and modern approach of randomly selecting winners from all the email addresses out there in internet-land. It seems a niche market that's been under-exploited of late, and one that I most heartily applaud them for embracing. A more sceptical individual may have questioned the fact that the email, informing me of my good fortune, originated from an AOL mailbox, and that the word Euromillions lacked certain vowels that are traditionally associated with its spelling. No doubt this is a carefully-chosen approach, designed to appeal to the 'YouTube' generation, for whom the English language is infinitely malleable. Sheer genius, on behalf of the Euromillions Marketing Department.

Unconscionable as it would be for me to question the authenticity of such serendipitous munifience, I still thought it prudent to approach this with caution, for two reasons:

Firstly, I was spending my days cloistered in the library, rapt in a delirium of academic fervor, and apprehensive of the coming exams. I could not, therefore, pick up the enormous cheque, myself (the transporting of which would no doubt require a forklift truck).

Secondly, lottery millionaires are often harassed by plaintive letters, remonstrating that the winner's fortune should be shared with those not so blessed, so as to ameloriorate their present financial predicament.

With these points foremost in my mind, I responded hastily to the epistle, but not without taking the prudent measure of utilising a pseudonym:



To:euromllns@aol.co.uk
RE: Official Notification: Your email address has won One Million Euros in the EuroMillions Lottery

oh, delightful! how serendipitous. unfortunately, i'm a little too busy at present to collect it. please deposit the winnings in 5-and 10-euro denominations, in a brown paper envelope, in your nearest rubbish receptacle, and my agents will be around shortly to collect them.
many thanks for your charitable and nonsensical generosity
yours,
-The Right Honorable Charles Montgomery (Esquire), Fourteenth Earl of Rockall

Pretty-Picture Friday: view from Pico, in the Azores

[Picture taken by the eminent Professor Paul Hart]