Last Chance
By E.S. Wynn
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E.S. Wynn is the author of over fifty books.
By E.S. Wynn
This is my last chance, I think, and the words almost find life on my lips. This is my last chance. If I can't pull this off. . .
It has been three days since my world ended, three weeks since Rose told me she had found another man, three weeks since my boss stopped just outside of my cubicle with a notice that my job was being shipped off to China. It's been three weeks, three weeks of pounding streets, pounding beers and pounding myself without release. Dear lord, this is my last chance. This is my last chance.
Dipping my fingers in the cup of thickening blood, I draw a sigil on my bare chest, draw another on my forehead. Naked, cold, I sit in the middle of a fraying rug, lips already chanting the strange words scrawled across the paper at my feet. Success, I think, is just a ritual away.
Just a ritual away.
“Eomah bogaa doriah oah oah yotana mioba doriah eomah bogaa doriah. . .” I breathe the words into the air, shaky and quiet at first, louder and stronger as I gain confidence. Fingers paint other sigils on my skin, brush new lines across flesh, cut them with curves and short slashes. Beyond the rug, the candles I've lit for the ritual begin to flicker, flames almost dancing, almost alive.
“Eomah bogaa doriah oah oah yotana mioba doriah eomah bogaa doriah. . .”
Skin prickles as I feel something brush against it, something cold. I hesitate, just for the barest moment, look toward the spot, but there is nothing there. Stumbling back into the chant, I close my eyes, try to clear my mind, focus on the ritual.
“Eomah bogaa doriah oah oah yotana mioba doriah eomah bogaa doriah. . .”
Another cold movement against my skin, like frigid feathers. My eyes snap open, tongue tangling between words, slow to pick up the chant again. Still nothing there, and yet, the sensation. . .
This time, as I push myself back into the chant, I keep my eyes on my arm, the spot of skin that keeps prickling with the movement of some unseen cold. I fight back the fear rising in my chest, and the words come loud, quavering, hurried. I want this to work. I need this to work. This ritual is my last chance.
“Eomah. . .”
The words freeze in my throat as a pair of huge, gray-mottled wings feather silently in from behind me, sweep slow across my shoulders and settle against my neck. I can't move, can't scream, can't even breathe the words of the chant. Behind me, I feel the world drop away, open up impossibly huge, impossibly cold, and as the wings tighten across my chest, I feel them pulling at me, pulling me backward, toward that terrifying abyss.
There is cold, so much cold, a strangled sound that I think is mine as the wings yank me out of my body and into darkness. In an instant, I'm blind, lost, lungs empty, burning for breath. Only the darkness and the terrible wings are left as I slide into a damp void, slide into unconsciousness.
The buzz of my phone wakes me up. Naked, covered in sigils painted with blood, I stumble to the kitchen, pull the receiver off the cradle, manage a mumbled hello. I listen, dumbstruck as Rose pours her heart out to me, tells me how much she misses me, chastises herself for the mistakes she's made. She loves me, she says. She's always loved me, and she'll do anything to get me back again.
What can I say? I manage a quiet sound, a mumble, a grunt, scratch my head. She waits patiently on the other end of the phone, sniffing against tears.
“It's okay, Rose. Yeah, I, I think I'd like that.” I manage, add: “I miss you too, baby.”
She's relieved; I can hear fresh tears in her voice, tears of happiness. She's so happy, she wants to see me-- right away. She's found me a job, a good job, one with a six figure salary, and all I have to do is sign the paperwork she has in her car. I panic a little bit, tell her I need a shower, that I'd love to see her, that I'm excited about the new job, but I need a second to pull everything together. I glance back into the main room of my apartment as she blubbers into the phone, mentally calculating how much time I need to clean the sigils off my skin, hide away the remnants of the ritual, but I pause as my eyes sweep across the rug, the spot where I had been sitting only moments before.
The candles are gone. The cup of blood is gone. The scrap of paper is gone. All that remains is a single feather, huge and gray-mottled, the tip crusted with ice.
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E.S. Wynn is the author of over fifty books.
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