Witching - Moved to Main Profile

Chapter One

He mumbled unintelligibly in reply, no clue as to what he even wanted to say.

She patted his cheek. "I'd love to be able to tell you that you were wonderful tonight, but honestly, it was embarrassing when you got spooked, fell on your ass, and let my catch crawl out of the tub. Plus, you fainted, leaving me with the mess. But don't worry, you won't remember a thing tomorrow."

She waved her hand in front of his face and a silvery-black smoke created a strange symbol that hovered in the air for a heartbeat before it vanished.

The woman was gone, too.

"Hey," he yelled, twisting around, searching for her. "Did you want to get together again? Text me!" But the place was deserted.

Groaning, he fished his keys from his pocket, wrenched open the car door and collapsed on the front seat. Then, he frantically scrolled his phone's history for a trace of her.

Nothing. With a sigh, he tossed the phone on the passenger seat. And noticed his shirt and shorts weren't just wet. They were sticky.

Blood?

Blood!

His or someone else's?

A strangled gurgle escaped his throat. By his car's interior light, he checked his face in the rear-view mirror.

A strange, pock-marked, heavily-jowled man stared back at him. He screamed, hands flying up.

He looked again. His own, normal face was in the small mirror. Or, normal except for the rust colored smears decorating his cheeks.

***

Corman's scream woke him and he fell, flailing, out of bed and onto the floor. He moaned. His ass hurt. Really hurt.

Wait. He'd had a nightmare. A blood and sweat smeared man had lunged out of a bathtub for Corman, knocking him on his butt. There was also a woman, a black-haired stunner shrink-wrapped in leather, who was not amused. She was holding a bucket of red paint. Next thing in his dream, they were jogging through a golf course on an emergency painting mission.

Maybe that's why his muscles were sore. He'd been sleep exercising all night.

"Stupid dream," he mumbled. Bleary-eyed, he checked his phone, and would have fallen again, except he was already on the floor. "Four pm? I missed work. I missed everything. Shit. Forty-two messages and three calls? Hell, did the Russians break through our firewall?"

He stumbled to his feet, swaying. And glanced down at himself.

"Fuck!" He jumped backwards, waving his hands, as if he could escape his blood-coated shirt and cargo-shorts. His Star Wars sheets were covered in dried blood, bits of grass, and mud from his dirty socks and sandals he hadn't taken off.

The dream. The nightmare. No.

"It didn't happen. I didn't do it. I need a drink. And a shower. Nothing happened last night."

Thirty minutes later, he ducked through the front door of his favorite haunt, a neighborhood bar called Bottled Arcade. He was clean. Everything was normal. His life was fine.

The bar was a comforting mash-up of eighties nostalgia, restored arcade games, imported brews, RPG flyers, and nerds. Inside, the usual day-crowd of four men—semi-permanent features of the bar's landscape—hunched over their screens, half-forgotten drinks at their elbows. They glanced up and gave him a nod of greetings, fellow geek.

He fell onto his stool at the end of the counter, the musty smell of stale beer a balm to his nerves, but before he could order a foaming beer was set in front of him. It was uncanny how the ex-cop bartender always knew what Corman wanted before he did. With a grunt, the man returned to wiping down glasses. Corman gazed a moment at his beer before lifting it.