The Shine

Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary

With a cool $1000 in my pocket and 1000 less brain cells in my head I had two agenda items. Get in touch with Bloody Mary and get Eterno.

I forked out another $50 on a room at the Guest Host Motel. Am I a guest or the host? Make up your mind motel. It's the kind of place that has a big ladder leaning up to the roof but you never seen anyone doing any roof work. It's not a bad motel, I think it has only 1.9 stars because of people worried about getting murdered. Babies.

I dragged Royale's trunk out of the car into the room with me for research. There's so much blood on the front seat it looks like someone butchered a hog in there. I wonder how much new upholstery would cost. More than the car.

I am 90% convinced that the contents of the trunk change every time I look through them. In those stupid pirate movies the vampire guy has a compass that points to whatever he wants. It would be nice if the trunk changed contents shifted to whatever I was looking for. I don't think it does, as far as I can tell it's random.

I was looking for a curse I could put on Eterno or a spell I could use to hurt at a distance. In my three-week tutelage with Obaluaiye, he said that you never use magic to hurt anyone. Ever. Not ever. Royale said something like that but he was less adamant about it in terms of defending yourself. After all the first time I saw him he was using magic to knock an aggressively violent dudebro on his ass.

Royale and Obaluaiye both said that a spell that hurts or kills someone is black magic and you don't do it lightly. You don't do it ever. Buuuuuuut maybe you could do it maybe if you have a really really really good reason. But don't.

I didn't find any kind of attack or curse spells in Royale's trunk. Maybe because the trunk was showing me what I needed. Oooh, deep. There's probably nothing like that in there. If Fantastique knew any spells that were dangerous I doubt he wrote them down. A person might know how to do bad shit but they don't usually pass that knowledge down to the next generation.

Since that didn't pan out I turned to item 2. Mary still wasn't responding to calls or texts. Online I saw that she was booked to work for The Beast pro wrestling in Keokuk. According to social media chatter she did show up at the venue, then refused to come out for her match. General opinion is she flaked either because she was high off her ass or due to "feminine troubles".

A quick three-hour drive later and I was in "The Racing Capital of the World". I used my finding spell to track her to the Budget Inn. Tracking is a classy term for stalking. I'm proud of myself for finding her like that. I'm getting good with that finding spell.

She wouldn't come to the door at first but I stood out there for saying that I wanted to discuss what happened for a long time and eventually she let me in. She was in a sports bra and sweat pants. Given the serious situation I was inappropriately jealous of her back and shoulders. She looks like she could squat a Honda Fit.

Once she let me in we stood there awkwardly for a moment before I stammered that I thought there was something "off" with her during our match. She laughed in that not-laughing way and said "you think?"

I had gone there planning on telling her about Eterno. About magic. About the whole thing. Once we started talking and I saw how shaken up she was about what had happened I wasn't sure what to do anymore. I was taken aback at seeing someone so physically imposing as her all but trembling with fear in front of me. I know it's wrong but I can't help but think of people like her as never being scared.

We're all scared. It's the human condition.

She described what happened that night as starting with a feeling like her stomach had something alive in it, like she had swallowed an animal and it was struggling to get out. She mentioned the movie Alien but I've never seen it. For a second she thought she was just sick with a stomach bug but she quickly realized that something was really wrong.

Next her skin started to tingle like she was being pricked with pins all over her body. She said that she felt like cold water was being injected into her arms and legs with a syringe, running along the backs of her muscles and making them twist. She said the pain worse than she'd ever felt.

She showed me her wrists, they were so bruised and swollen they looked like softballs painted black. In that moment she said she couldn't control her body, she described it like sleep paralysis only she couldn't stop herself from moving rather than the other way round.

While she was telling me all this I kept going back and forth in my mind. Telling her seemed cruel, there was nothing she could do about so why clue her into this horrible thing that exists? But lying never seems right to me either. Who was I to decide for her if she could handle the truth?

I made up a story about seeing a guy messing with her water bottle backstage. I told her that based on what she told me and what I saw that night it was probably psilocybin. I said it like I know shit about psilocybin.

I don't think she honestly believed me but I think she did decide to believe me. She seemed to feel a little better after I lied to her. She told me that her boyfriend had been freaking out because she couldn't talk to him or text him back. She didn't know what to say. She almost started crying then but she didn't.

I asked her if she wanted me to call her boyfriend for her. I didn't want to but that's what they would do on Law & Order.   

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