Snippet - well... maybe not.

[joegoda]

Some days are like that...

I woke to the alarm buzzing like a maddened cicada and I swung my hand out, like I had done a thousand mornings before, to shut the damned thing off for another 9 minutes. And I missed.

I opened my right eye and felt the stab of the evil sun trying to fry what remained of my brain. The alarm kept whaaaing away, and I, through the incredible fuzziness of my near non-vision, could see the red numbers of the alarm clock glowing back at me, taunting me as if it was a demonic imp and demanding me to pay attention to it, dammit.

I don't know how I missed the snooze button. It was right there, where it had always been. Top left corner, two feet away from me. I stretched my hand out and tried again. The problem was that my hand wouldn't co-operate with me. My arm wouldn't either. I figured I had fallen asleep on it and out of retribution, it wasn't going to help me do anything, so I tried my other arm.

No good. It also ignored me. My first thought was that my body had gone into some sort of discussion while I was away and decided to go on strike. I hate that when it happens. It's as hard as the dickens to get it to come to an agreement once it does that.

I also hate it when I look down and see that the reason my arms aren't doing anything is because they're tied to my sides with what appears to be a thick bit of leather. Maybe a belt or a thong or something. That made me feel a bit better. At least my own body didn't betray me.

It's rather disconcerting to find that someone has bound me in my own bed. And I didn't even get a chance to vacuum. I couldn't feel them, either. My arms, I mean. It was as clean an amputation as you could want and still leave the limbs intact, because I could see them, laying at my sides, as useless as wings on a bus.

In fact, as I run through the list of things that just don't feel right, I can't feel my legs either. At this point, if I could have gotten my voice under some sort of control, I would have asked the room what the hell was going on, but that wasn't a choice for me either. I couldn't even go my normal early morning croaking. I had two things going for me. I could see, turn my head and I was breathing. That pretty much meant whoever did this to me was going to be in big trouble.

I let my near-sighted eyes scan the room, looking for some sort of shadow or figure that would tell me that I wasn't alone. Nothing I saw indicated I had company, except that the bedroom door was open and there was more light coming through it than the evil sun would explain. I focused my ears that direction, thinking that if someone was here, maybe they would be making some sort of sound. Maybe it was a maddened cleaning woman who had come in to reverse ransack my apartment and turn it into some sort of order. That would really tick me off. My apartment is in chaos for a reason.

Now, I realize that being bound and not being able to feel one's own extremities might cause most people to get all freaky, but then most people haven't lived a life quite like mine. It's a tale for another night and another pint, but I'll just say that stuff like this happens to me all the time.

Well, okay. Maybe not ALL the time. But enough odd things have happened to me that when something like this does happen, my brain just goes 'Huh', and I add it to the long list of things that make me go huh.

So I lay there, ears focused on hearing, eyes straining to focus. It wasn't the first time that I had wished I had taken Doc's recommendation and got the laser surgery. It probably wouldn't be the last. I don't know, though. If my eyes got better my hearing might get worse, and I have really, really good hearing.

Like the sounds I were hearing from outside the bedroom door. It wasn't much. Just a casual scruffing of carpet, a tiny whisper of pantlegs rubbing on each other. It was enough. I wasn't alone, and that meant that someone was here. Yeah, okay.. a duh thing, but an important duh thing. It was much better than not being alone and nobody was there. I've been in that situation too, and it was much more unpleasant. Ugly to the point of unmentionable. I will, but you got to get me really, really smashed.

A shadow eclipses my bedroom door, which is pretty much what I expected. It was pretty hard to determine the sex of the shadow, though. It would have been useful if I could have. Knowing male or female would have given me an advantage. It would have allowed me to connect with my Aspect, that pesky little demigod Pan.

Aspects are odd little bits of legend that have radiated throughout the Universe as beliefs and rituals, gaining a life of their own, and eventually bouncing back to the Earth, to find a host body that vibrates with the same biotic harmonics as they have. Yeah, it's a vibrational thing, like how the frequency of a sound can carry enough power to shatter glass. I won't bore you with the details.

There are as many Aspects on the Earth as there are beliefs that have lasted longer than a five minute kiss. I'm pretty sure there's an Aspect of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just haven't met its host yet.

Most Aspects are fairly harmless, existing in their hosts like a submerged personality until some radical event causes them to raise their hands and say, "Excuse me. I'm really here." When an Aspect does pop up, if the host isn't careful, the poor host could end up on the inside of a padded room, talking about the voices in their heads.

Mine popped up due to childhood abuse and emotional wreckage... but hey, that's my life. Nobody wants to hear my sad story. I'll just say it was traumatic enough to have bought me my own long sleeved jacket if anyone had caught on. Fortunately, I'm a very smart person, and kept my bit of insanity to myself.

Pan, my Aspect, is not a full blown demi-god. No Aspect is the God or Goddess or Dream that the legends indicate. Aspects are more like the essence of that legend. For instance, Pan can't do any magic tricks, or at least he says he can't. The one thing he does have is Charm, with a capital 'C', and that's the part I've used more than once to get me out of a jam.

So, if I had known what the sex was of the shadow standing in my bedroom doorway, I could have called up Pan and he could have turned on the old charmlight. Well... call up is a mis-statement. Wake up would have been more like it. Lazy bastard.

Instead, the shadow stayed right in the shadows of my hallway, outside the focal point of my unlasered eyes. And whatever or whoever it was just watched me. Pretty boring to just watch, I'm sure.

The shadow moved just a bit, tilted just a tad, and I heard some sort of electronic voice say "He's awake." They were using one of those voice boxes that change the frequency so you can't tell what the real voice sounds like. I remember the Darth Vader Vocoder. It was like that, but this one made the voice come out squeaky, like Minnie Mouse on helium.

So, whoever or whatever it was was not alone. That gave me one clue, and sometimes one clue is enough. Not in this case, though. I wanted to know what was going on.

I sniffed, a really big, really strong intake of air. The nose is a wonderful part of the body. It can detect millions and maybe billions of different odors, and that includes the ones that aren't really there. That's what I was looking for. An odor that might not have been there.

I smelled, faintly, faintly, the smell of hot wires, of ozone, of thunderclouds red hot and full of lightning. It's close to the smell of blood, but more raw, more primordial. Another clue.

Whoever this was, and it was a who, not a what, was a magic user. Probably pretty strong, too. They had probably entered through a gateway, which is what I was smelling. More than likely someone allied with an Elemental. And they brought their pet, to watch over me while they did whatever it was they were doing out in my living room. How nice. They could have simply phoned ahead and I would have made scones. Or something.

Since I could breath, I did. Three slow, calm breaths. Since I could close my eyes, I did that, too. And I started to build a little spell. It had to be tiny, because I had just woke up, my brain was still a bit buzzed from last night with my chums, and besides, I don't need big spells anymore. Takes too much time and too much energy.

Now, there was a time when I pretty much thought I was cursed with this magic stuff. I really didn't care much for it, hid it, and had nothing but contempt for folks that sat in their little parties, drew circles on the floor and pretended that they were priestesses and Goddesses and such.

That was before I found out anything about reality, before I realized I didn't know anything, and before the ghost of the past came to kick my incredibly ignorant butt. That was before Kansas, the Yellow Brick Road, and the choice to learn or die. I chose to learn. Funny thing about that. I was saved by one of those very same circle casters I used to make fun of.

So, I built this tiny little spell that started at my toes and slowly crawled up my body, like static electricity, but in very slow motion. If an infrared camera had been watching, they would have seen my body's temperature climb to about a hundred and ten as it pushed whatever it was that was keeping me paralyzed out of me and out into the air where I told it to wait for me. The spell had to move slow because I didn't want to alarm my guests. Alarmed people tend to be unpredictable. Harmful even.

Another thing about heat is that it does neat things to leather, specially when sweat is applied, and at a temperature of a hundred and ten, I sweat a lot. I think most folks would. I felt the leather bindings loosen just a bit and droop ever so, just enough to let me know. Course, it helped that I pushed just a bit that direction. Leather usually takes hours to soften. I figured I might not have hours. I might not even have minutes. Really, why take the chance?

As soon as I felt the spell reach my crown, I let it loose so that it could flow out the top of my head and fade away. I turned my eyes toward the shadow at my door, and they were still watching me. This pet was probably a low apprentice of some sort. Probably a nice enough person in the real world, but they had sort of lowered my opinion of them the moment they entered my apartment without permission. Binding me with a spell may have been beyond them, maybe not, but coming over without an invitation? Rudeness is a bit unforgivable in my book.

I quickly built another spell, a bit larger than the other. By a bit, I mean on a magnitude of about 10, though it's hard to tell with spells. After a while, one feels pretty much like another. The effects might vary quite a bit, though. And the amount of energy spent varies a lot. I was probably going to get really hungry here, pretty fast. This spell took the whatever it was that paralyzed me and allowed me to use it as I wished. And what I wished was to use it against my guard.

I spun the spell out towards the shadow, and the shadow didn't even notice when the spell unfolded around it, trapping the person where they stood and tying them to the door frame where they leaned.

I slipped quietly out of my bed, put on my glasses and took my time putting on my clothes. If you need to be quiet, it is very helpful to have your guard motionless and soundless, so they won't give out the alarm that you are now able to move around and seek retribution. It also allows a certain amount of casualness, so I had enough time to silently slip on my favorite T-shirt. It says "What part of Bwahahahahaha don't you understand?" Subtle, I think, and appropriate.

I crept past the watchdog at my door, noting that it was a girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen, with long brown hair, brown eyes which shone with a really hateful look at me. I didn't see the bottom part of her face, because it was covered with the Vocoder, which looked a whole lot like the bottom of the Darth Vader mask. Wouldn't surprise me if she had a pointed chin, and pointed teeth, the better to eat you with, my dear.

I stepped through my short hall, past my two ton bookcase, and snuck a look around the corner into my living room. A figure wearing a head to toe cloak was going through my other two ton bookcase, the one near my front door, apparently scanning every title, looking for something I knew they wouldn't find there.

"Hey," I said casually, "Would you like some coffee?" I knew I would.

The figure stood up abruptly, and I imagined I could hear their spine cracking. The person turned their face at me, which didn't help at all, since they were wearing a ski mask. A ski mask? In this heat? I smelled the tell-tale build up of ozone in the air.

"Huh uh!" I hissed at them, "you did NOT just try that again."

I flicked a finger at a spot on the other side of them and pushed just a little bit of thought that way. My staff flew out of the corner near my front door and decidedly whacked the cloaked one on the side of the ear. Maybe not enough to knock them out, but definitely enough to distract them from doing any hocus pocus.

Whoever it was dropped like a stone. Maybe I hit them too hard. I mean, it was pretty early in the morning and I might have been just a tad more grouchy than I had intended. Regardless, they crumpled straight to my floor.

"That reminds me... I need to vacuum." I said to pretty much nobody who cared.

I left the body where it lay and turned to look at the little girl still watching my bedroom. Man, she must have been bored. I debated for about a minute and then cut her loose.

Sure enough, she lept at me, snarling. I sighed, held out a hand and stopped her in her tracks with a muttered word. Yeah, I was going to get hungry, and my stomach rumbled in agreement.

"Look," I used the same voice I use when I tell someone that they are just about to do something really, really stupid because... well, she was. "You have a choice. I make you unconscious like your master there," I pointed to where the crumpled figure lay, "or, you can join me for some coffee and tell me what this is all about." I shrugged. "I'll give you a minute or two to decide." I left her frozen in my hall while I set about setting up my morning coffee ritual.

Once the coffee was perking and hissing merrily, I went back to her. I flicked a thought and she dropped to the floor. I reckon she must have been struggling pretty hard, because she was gasping for air when she got up.

"Coffee or unconscious?" Easy choice, I thought.

Still she snarled, but she didn't try to jump at me. "Coffee," she growled. "I'm not stupid, you know."

"Good!" I said cheerfully. "Now, how do you like your bagel? Toasted or not? Cream cheese or plain?"