The Cost of Magic #21
Feb 26th, 2009 by Jack Lhasa
This is the 21st section of my novel. If you haven’t read the first 20, you might want to start here.
Electric Lights
—-
Minus was aware that he was unconscious. He knew he was seeing his past. He saw the memory from the third-person. He was shocked when he heard his own voice begin to narrate the memory.
I lie awake at night, watching the air sparkle, like electricity.
When I was a child, they told me these things were not real. But, one day, I reached out and grabbed at a sparkling strand. When I did, life changed, and fell, and melted.
Shortly thereafter, I found my nine-year-old self standing at the foot of a long staircase cut out of rock, laid with wood, and dirt, and cement in certain places. I was utterly confused. I did not know where I was, or how I got there, but I started running up the stairs. I remember tripping over a step, and falling. My knees and elbows were scraped, searing with pain. I blacked out.
When I woke up, I was on a sofa, in a large, rustic house. A fire crackled in front of me. I sat up, surveying the room. There was a grisly old man sitting in a chair across from me.
“Hi there,” he spoke when he noticed I was awake. “What brought you to my steps, young man? Few people show up around here these days. My name is Othin, what’s yours?”
I stammered through a story of the confusion and the electricity, and the sparkles. Othin merely nodded as the story went on.
“I understand,” Othin said as the story came to a close. “I have a feeling I know your father. Let’s talk. There are two pills on that table next to you. Take the red one, it’ll make this easier..”
That little pill that tasted like jelly, was the cause of a grand awakening in Minus. Grabbing that electric spark had changed his life. Curiosity. Insatiable. And it would be that way for the rest of his life.
He thought about this for a long time in the black-out that was forced meditation.
—
Jack
I Listen.
The Cost of Magic
Section #21
Electric Lights
flashback
