Grimoire

Grimoire

Grimoire. A book of power; a battery if you will. Locked within its bindings breathes magic and with it the possibility to alter reality to your will. Some may call it a myth, others a fantasy but they truly don’t understand that all reality is malleable. It can be changed in an instant and none would notice. That is the power of magic.

Take for instance this rundown café I find myself sitting in. Overly lit with cheap lights and almost empty. My warm coffee cooling before my eyes – undrinkable – but welcoming to the weary and desperate. I am the former. I don’t even like coffee but once I was offered it, I couldn’t refuse. My eyes lock on the swirling vapours bleeding from the inky-brown liquid lurking in my use-stained cup. The cup like this building still clung to former glories, grasping at its wilting laurels, as decay continued to take hold. Looking up I could see the walls resembled the cup, stains ran down the once white walls. Hell, even the furniture was a shade of brown, forgotten of a colour once popular a long time ago now thankfully forgotten.

But in this place there is magic. You can sense it or at least I can. Past the smell of burnt coffee, distant grease fires and disappointing food you can sense it just on the tips of your senses. Between the buzz of so many signals before and since its inception, there it sits. Like someone is watching you, that prickly feeling on the back of your neck but not uncomfortable. The texture of Petrichor at the end of a long, hot, summer’s week. You cannot trust your eyes to find it however they lie. Vision is the realm of false magic and anxiety. Full of bunnies pulled out of hats and ladies sawed in two. Real magic exists behind your eyes. Where night takes shape and my monster lives. It gives form to the form less and marks ink upon paper. Definable limits. A box-able quantity. And right now it exists, here, in this moment.

A waitress brushes past my shoulder, her faint pink checker polyester blend uniform crinkles slightly against my heavy grey coat and I am jolted out of the space I was in. Coffee laps against the rim of my cup as the impact travels along my arm and just like that the magic is gone. The darkness spills out from its borrowed form, ebbing against the whole container. Crashing against its walls as it spills deeper into its container. Briefly I glance down at my watch. ‘What watch?’ I catch myself thinking my hand now reaching out for my phone dragging it along the table towards me. ‘Haven’t had a watch in years. How is that still a habit?’ I look down at the dully lit clock sprawled across the cracked screen. ‘Huh, twenty to seven, suppose I better get moving’. With a sigh I haul myself to standing an outside observer to my own actions. After fumbling in my pocket I locate a handful of coins and place the appropriate change underneath my cup and start for the door.

Halfway to the exit I hear a voice, behind me calling, which snaps me back in to the driving seat. Forced back behind my own eyes it takes a few seconds for the bewilderment to retreat and my senses to lock onto the words.

“Sir, sir you forgot this.”

I freeze, heat welling up from the nape of my neck as my chest restricts ever so slightly. ‘Yep there is no getting the magic back in this place. Now how am I to do this? One step at a time… that’s it. Breathe… now first I should…’

I turn to see the waitress holding my small black notebook. A form of blurred colours framed by the constricted walls of my vision. Gingerly, I close the distance my hand rising. Everything is heightened, the clap of my shoe heel on the floor, the scratching of my fingernails against the fabric of my coat. She snaps in to focus, hyper-detailed and yet faceless. Reaching my goal I take my book from her – heartbeat pulsing in my ears. My fingers grasp the worn black faux leather of its cover as I mutter a barely discernible thank you.

‘That’s it just like that. Have to keep up with the niceties… Breathe… Nothing else needed. Book retrieved… She’s not going to? Is she?’

I can feel my body bracing despite myself. Anticipating the inevitable questions they always ask of: ‘What are you working on?’ or ‘That looks interesting, what is it?’ but they still just hovered there as unrealised realities. Frozen, slowed I don’t know how long had passed; just the heat. My heartbeat my only indicator of time passing as it repetitively struck against the walls of my chest. And there it is once more. Magic – the fleeting before the tragic. The calm before a collision. The marble of darkness contracted waiting its release.

‘Here it comes…’

Tentatively I raise my head, as my fingers finalise retrieving my book, stowing it clumsily in my pocket. My eyes meet her gaze. The marble bursts and once again the magic is gone. Replaced with the icy guilt-flush of my anxieties… my monster. All I could do was look.

‘Not too long… she is pretty… not too long otherwise she’ll attack. Control your eye contact… limit it. Now look away slightly a-and now back again.’

She really was pretty. Her auburn hair flowed down past her shoulder brushing the top of her collar bone and continued further down her back. With each scan of her blue eyes the detail of her iris deepened, each fleck more prominent, the slight fleck of gold in her left eye, all of it. Our eye met for the briefest of moments before my gaze instinctively darted back to its default location - low and unassuming. My eyes pan downward diagonally across her pear white neck before I settled on the safe location of her faded name tag.

“Y-you didn’t look in it?” pour from my mouth and spill out into the air before me.

“No. Should have I?” she smiled.

“No, no. It’s not important. P-please forget I asked. Bye.”

I sharply turn on my heel and hastened towards the exit. Not a run, not an amble but something in between in time with my every second beat of my racing heartbeat. The vice was closing and I have to get out. With as much control as I could muster I open the door and plunge myself into the cold dark velveteen night, letting it swallow me.

The rash-like heat of my face was stripped almost instantly from my face blown away by the biting cold of the evening breeze. Without even looking around I continued along the pavement my feet on autopilot, an observer once more, and set for home.

‘But first one stop.’

The vice releases as I give into the outside. With every step I take my ears begin to tune out everything; everything except the constant call and repeat of the rubber-dampened thump of my heel and the slapping response of the toe of my boots on the sleet slicked pavement. The splashing sounds of stray passing cars interrupted this little duet but only sporadically. After all the world was winding down for the weeknight and I was very much alone. The night wrapped in around me and despite my best efforts a faint smile begins to percolate across my face. Once again I can feel it, magic. I let it take me. Thumbing the spine of my black not book I give myself to the moment. The bliss of solitude as my monster recalls inward, retracting the tendrils which had gripped my body.

‘Peace. Although that was progress. I actually spoke to her, probably never again but… I… spoke. This is a start. A necessary one if others are to know of magic. If others are to share in my magic. I need more than myself for company. This cannot continue, the walls of my mind are crushing inward and I will not allow it…’

It is dangerous to get lost in thought. Lost inward. Everything becomes automatic, self-regulated and ultimately, eventual without self. The numbing encroaches bit by bit until nothing but a stump can be felt. I couldn’t tell you how it happened to me either. It just sorted of did bit by bit. The cold shoulder here – I retreat a bit. Deliberately broken plans – inward further. They’re looks seem colder – further inward still. Before I knew it I was almost completely entrenched behind the walls of my own mind surrounded by the cacophony of the negativity of the world – more accurately the negativity of its people toward me. After a while I became attuned to it until my routine changed. I don’t know why. What made me do it, I just did it. After all I am all automated, focusing only on those minor moments of magic when I can break from my shell and once more drive. Until then they were fleeting. Until then. Now I can fell magic more and more. My eyes are opened and my little black note book holds the key.

Without noticing I had arrived at the spot.

‘This is it… this is where I change reality, even if it is ultimately just my little corner of it’.

I looked upward reaching into my coat pocket once again withdraw my small black notebook. My grimoire. I can feel my hands open the cover. My heart palpitates once more as I once again return behind my eyes. I gaze softly at the small piece of card tucked between the first and second pages. A faint smile gently fills my face, impeded briefly as my ulcer rakes along my teeth. I couldn’t help myself but stare, drinking in the evidence of my good fortune; a winning scratch card for twenty thousand dollars.

You can’t buy magic, those small moments of perfect beauty, of fleeting tranquillity or outright comfort of self but this piece of paper most certainly grants the freedom. Even if a little fear still trickles in now and then. Someone stepped out of the shop and just as quickly as I had spotted them I retreated once again back into myself. Smile gone, internalised, hidden to the world.

‘Well, at least without some fears…’

Working up the courage I pressed forward with my purpose and took the next step.