Short Story - Hex (5/9)

Title: Hex

Genre: Paranormal

Rating: PG-13 (for language)

Story Type: Short story
Warnings: mild violence

Word count: (total) 18,373 - (chapter) 2,481

Summary: Nora used her powers for revenge, and even though it was just a little revenge, she's still in trouble with The Powers That Be.  To atone, she helps as many people as she can.  Now, she's helping Tyler, and his problem is just so big that it might be the one that gets her out of the doghouse for good.

 

   
Well, that hurt.  Like, seriously hurt.  Nana always said I had a hard head, but it obviously wasn’t hard enough to be the immovable object that met the unstoppable force.  I had to check the back of my head with the tips of my fingers just to be sure that there wasn’t a dent in the back of my skull.  Luckily, there wasn’t.
   
I may have had a steel spine when it came to standing up for myself, but my back was most definitely not made out of the same metal.  The muscles tightened as I tried to get up from the floor and, for a second, I had to stop.  It was either stop moving and let everything go back to where it should have been, or cry like a little baby.  If I were with people who could actually hold me, I’d go with cry.  As I was with a ghost and a stranger, crying was out.
   
The last ache to make itself known was the throbbing in my hand.  Amazing how you can get hurt all at once and, instead of it all just becoming one big hurt, they all had to show themselves one at a time.  Pain in an ass, it was.
   
Right now, though, it was the pain in my hand that bothered me.  The main reason it hadn’t hit me first was because my hand was numb.  With the numbness gone, though, I was more than well aware of the fact that my hand was fucking killing me.  Nothing was broken, thank Them, but I could actually see my palm pulsing around the crystal.
   
I’d never felt anything like that before.  Sure, I’d seen the spells that caused this kind of thing, but I’d never had to touch any of them.  The few that I had seen, the true soul devouring spells, were all on Nana or Momma’s watch.  I was just tagging along, learning the ropes.  And I’d never seen either of them get tossed across the room.  What’s up with that?
   
“Nana?”  I gulped, then jumped when I realized just how close she was standing to me.  If I took one step to the left, I’d have been inside of her, and let me tell you, that was freaky enough that I’d never do it again.  “Nana, what happened?”
   
“Are you alright?”  She reached out towards me, but stopped before actually touching me.  “You feel broken.”
   
“I am not broken.  I’m kinda pissed, though.  I mean, I’m supposed to be the most powerful, right?  Then why’d it do that?  Nothing like that ever happened to you.”
   
“I never had someone else’s hex try to attack me, either.”  If ghosts could sigh, Nana would have.  As it were, her form shifted enough that I thought maybe ghosts had something other than lungs to provide them with a  sigh’s comfort.  I’d have to do more research.
   
“What do you mean it tried to attack me?  Isn’t this supposed to be a good guy spell?  I’m in so much hot water, Nana, I don’t think I count.”
   
“Oh, you count, luv.  You count and it wanted you.  The second the crystal touched Tyler’s forehead, I felt it lash out.  Two for the price of one, and you would have been an extra special prize.”
   
I was kind of curious about that extra special prize bit, but the second she said Tyler’s name, I remembered that he wasn’t exactly in peak physical condition, either.  I remembered the scream he let out just before I went flying, and that brought all of my attention to him.
   
Tyler’s long, slender body was folded over itself.  His hands were to his face, more accurately, his point of entry, i.e. that widow’s peak of doom that sat in the middle of his forehead.  He rocked slightly back and forth, and he whimpered.
   
Now, there are very few things that’ll turn me into a quivering, simpering ball of mush.  Being shut up in a dark room.  A room full of spiders.  Nana on a tirade of disapproval.  And the only two that didn’t directly involve me… hurt children and crying men.  Guess which one applied here.
   
I knelt down beside Tyler and lightly touched his shoulder.  He jerked away from me and scrambled across the floor.  His head turned up to me and I could see the tears of agonizing pain on his cheeks.  Oh, hell.  He was one step away from Ben Affleck.  You know, he cries and that makes me cry?  I was damn close to crying for him, but I didn’t.  Wow, I’m strong, aren’t I?
   
“Tyler, I’m sorry.”  He should have cherished that.  I didn’t apologize often, and the last two times that I can remember were forced apologies from Nana.  The actual last one was apologizing for the herpes thing, and I only half meant that one.  Hm, maybe that’s why I’m in this mess, now.
   
Tyler didn’t seem to appreciate it, though.  Maybe he needed to hear the story of how few times I’d actually apologized.  Then, maybe he would have accepted it like he should have instead of narrowing his eyes at me.
   
“What did you do to me!”  He put his left hand to his head.  “What the hell did you do to me!”
   
“Hey, now, you’re not the only one that got hurt in all of this, ya know.”  My back was still aching.  It was going to take something stronger than Excedrin Migraine to fix my head.  And my hand felt like I’d just slammed it into a brick wall.  “In case you forgot, I got thrown across the room.”
   
“You knew that was going to happen!”
   
“The hell I did!”  I sighed and shook my head.  Getting into an argument with him over what I did and did not know would be pointless, and more than a little contradictory.  I knew that something could have happened, and I figured if something were to happen, it would just happen to me.  I’d never seen a spell extraction actually hurt the person who’d been hexed.
   
I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.  “Look, Tyler, I apologized, which is rare for me, by the way, because I honestly didn’t know that you’d get hurt.”
   
I moved towards him and he said, “Don’t touch me.”  Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet.  Tyler ran his hands down his face, then let his arms drop languidly at his sides.  “You tell me what just happened.”
   
I rolled my eyes.  “Were you not just listening when Nana explained it to me?”
   
His eyes narrowed.  “I was kind of busy trying to pull what felt like an invisible hot poker out of my forehead.”
   
“You don’t have to be so rude about it.”  Again, I rolled my eyes, and this time, I wished I hadn’t.  Headaches and eye-rolling didn’t go together very well. 

When the world stopped spinning, the flashing lights stopped popping, and I was pretty sure my head wasn’t going to explode, I said, “The spell on you tried to attack me.  Why it did that to you, though…”

I looked to Nana for help, and she was all too eager to give it.  While Nana took pride in the things I could do on my own, the proof that I’d actually paid attention to my studies, she just couldn’t resist the opportunity to remind me that I didn’t know everything.  She said I needed it at my age, because I thought I knew everything.  No, I didn’t.  I just thought I knew almost everything.

“It means that the spell has eaten its way into you.  It has become a part of you.  So, just as it would hurt were Nora to cut off a piece of your skin or the tip of your nose, there was pain in extracting a piece of the spell.”

“There’s a whole lot you two want me to believe,” he muttered, shaking his head. “And if I didn’t feel like she just tried to kill me, I’d probably call you both crazy and put a restraining order out on you.”

“Ah, but you do feel like I just tried to kill you, so we’re not crazy!”  Yeah, well, I get a little excited when I’m proven right.  I told him I was telling the truth.  “Besides, you couldn’t put a restraining order on Nana, anyway.  She’s already dead.  They’d look at you like you were crazy.”

“Oh… shut up!”  Tyler shook his head and turned away from me before he could see the dual middle fingers that were up in his direction.  Nana hit me in the back of the head.  I was so tired of her doing that.  But, at least it didn’t hurt.  Maybe metaphysical slaps didn’t actually do the same damage as a real, physical slap.

“Look, Tyler, there’s a bright side to this whole thing.  A hell of a lot of bright sides, as a matter of fact.”

“Name one.”

“Besides the fact that I did actually get a little piece of the bugger off before it backhanded me?”
I smirked and held up the crystal.  The red eye in the center was bigger, now, and it twisted itself into long, agonizing twirls and curls.  Bits of the spell lashed out on the sides, rocking the crystal as it tried to find a way out, but that wasn’t happening.  Gotcha, bitch!

Tyler turned back towards me, then started moving.  His eyes were on the crystal, but at least he was coming closer.  I couldn’t do this whole thing with him trying to be as far away as possible.  Besides the fact that it would be a pain in the ass to talk to him, I couldn’t possibly flirt if he weren’t standing close enough to get the full brunt of it. 

He reached out towards the crystal and it trembled at the end of its chain.  I pulled it back and, if a spell could be angry, this one was pissed off at me so bad it wanted to kill.  Though, maybe it did.  Nobody had actually gone that far into the personification properties of spells.  We were all more worried about how they actually worked and what they did. 
Again, maybe I needed to do more research.

“Why’d it move like that?” Tyler asked.

“Because it wants back in, right, Nana?”  She nodded and smiled with satisfaction.  “Oh, don’t get to used to this asking for help thing.  I won’t do it that often.”

Nana grinned.  “Why do you think I’m enjoying it so much, now?”

I really wished I could roll my eyes without my head splitting.  I had to settle for a sigh before turning my eyes back on Tyler.  “With this, I can trace it back to the original source.”

“And then?”

“Then, I hope that I’m strong enough to make whoever put it on you take it back.  Or—“ I looked to Nana and she wasn’t smiling anymore.  It wasn’t something either of us talked about because we didn’t like the idea of it.  That was too Daredevil, and I was more Batman.

“Or what?” Tyler asked.

I sighed.  “Or I kill the person who  put it on you.  I don’t like saying it, because, besides the fact that it’s a felony, it’s just not something I ever want to do.”

“I can imagine.  Killing… not exactly on my number one list of things to do in a pinch.”  He shrugged.  “So, what happens if this person takes it off?  What’s to stop them from putting it back on when you’re gone?”

“Exactly.”

“Excuse me?”

“Them.  They.  You know, the Pubahs I told you about before.  I find it.  I get it removed.  Then they strip the powers.  I find the person who put this spell on you and get it taken off, then you’re safe.  And that leads me to the other bright side.”

“And that would be?”

“You have to know this person, Tyler.  Whoever did this to you had to spend a prolonged time touching you to get something so deeply embedded.  And that brings me back to the ex-girlfriend.  I really hate ex-girlfriends.  They’re always a pain in the ass to deal with.”

But luckily, I’d yet to meet one prettier than me.  Yeah, I’m vain and shallow, but so are most guys.  Most would rather flirt with me than sleep with their not-as-attractive ex-girlfriends.  The exes rarely got the guy back, even if I didn’t really want him in the first place.  Of course, I could have just being egotistical.  I can’t really say that most guys would want to take back a girl that had hexed them.

“I told you, Diane couldn’t have done this.  She’s not a witch.  She told me everything, and she would have told me that.”

“Tells you everything, huh?”

“She told me that she slept with my best friend.”

I grunted.  “Guess she does tell you everything.”  I shrugged.  “Is that why you broke up?”

“No, we broke up because we weren’t compatible.  The best friend thing was over a year ago.”

“And, probably the reason you became incompatible.  It just took you a year to figure it out.”  I shook my head.  “It’s gotta be somebody close to you, though.  Close enough to do this without you knowing, and I’m gonna find out who it was.”

“How?”

“God, you ask a lot of questions.”  I did roll my eyes that time, but while it hurt, it wasn’t as bad as before.  My head was harder than I thought.  No concussion. 

“Yeah, I do, when my life is on the line.”  Tyler looked around the room and stopped on my mirror for a second.  Twice, since coming to my place, he’d asked me to show him how the mirror worked.  I told him that was second date material and me feeling up his aura didn’t count as the first date.

“So,” he said, “what’s next?”

“Next, I sit down over a map and find a location.   Pin down a spot.”

“Then?”

“Then, we go to Walmart because I’ve got to get some aspirin, and I need to reinforce the holes in the back.  I told you, Hell comes through Walmart easier than it comes through Starbucks.”

“More people to get at once, yeah, I remember.”

“Exactly.  So, you sit tight and play with the mirror.  See how many different rhymes you can come up with that makes Nana groan.”

He rose a quizzical eyebrow at me and asked, “Why?  What good would that do?”

“For you?  Nothing, at all. . But, just because you can’t make them work doesn’t mean that they won’t work for me. 

And believe me, with as many times as she hits me in the back of the head, I’m always on the lookout for something to make her mad.”