Vol. 2 - “Track One:” Black Magic

“Halloween is here with me, you left in this home…” Anna’s voice catches in her throat, her mouth unsure of the words. 

Through dim lighting, Anna glances down at a set of notes. She strikes a match. The sulfur smell, the snap of the match head igniting, the hiss of the flame. A set of three candles begin to glow. 

“Stitches on my body, closets full of bones…” Her hands shake as she places the candles into the center of a circle constructed from two old t-shirts, rolled and set to make a crude circle. Anna’s pale eyes glance down at that paper again; as instructed, she lifts a sewing needle in one hand, angling the tip toward her left pointer finger. 

With one breath in, Anna pierces her finger, letting a pin’s prick of blood drip on a photo of a handsome young man; Ethan. 

Anna closes her eyes, the words tumbling out of her mouth. “Blood that won’t stop running, ‘cause this wound won’t ever clot.” 

She breathes out. “Come back to me now-” Anna opens her eyes. “Shit-” She snaps the notes up from the carpet again. Her eyes pour over the paper furiously, the black ink now feathered from stains of spotted red wine. 

Anna holds the words at eye-level… “Damnit.” She taps a button on her cell phone. “Genevieve? Hey- …yeah, I’m doing it but- …no not yet. I’m in the middle of it- …I know I’m not supposed to stop but I can’t make out the last line.”

“‘And leave me never, or disappear from my mind forever?’- got it! Thanks!”

Anna re-centers herself to continue the spell. Her breath slows, her cell phone tucked away.

“Come back to me now and leave me never, or you should disappear from my mind forever.” Finished, she lets out the breath she’s buried in the depths of her chest. 

Anna moves from her homemade alter to her turntable, dropping the needle to a record already set to play and plucks a photo album from her coffee table. 

From her couch, she flips through her past life with Ethan; he peppers nearly every page mixed amongst the faces of her family and friends. But the look of longing on Anna’s face every time her eyes land on Ethan’s charming grin is too much. 

She snaps the album shut. 

Idiot… she thinks to herself, taking in her sad sight of wanting. The photos, the candles, Genevieve’s handwritten spell. All this trouble just to try and bring a love back into her life who left her so easily. 

Anna stands, then blows out the candles on the floor.

Huddled in the racks of the small occult section at the back of Anna’s book shop, Lost Letters, Anna’s found herself cornered by her mortified co-worker, Genevieve. 

“Anna, I am so sorry.” Genevieve clutched a book in her arms.

“You copied it from one of our books?” Anna buried her face in her hands, “I thought you asked an- an elder or something!” 

Genevieve shook her head, gingerly passing the book to Anna, a page already marked. “It’s actually just ‘come back to me now, or you shall disappear from my memory forever.’” 

Anna could not believe she had entrusted something as precious as her love for Ethan to the hands of her part-time co-worker and fledgling witch simply because Genevieve is pale and passionate about The Craft. 

“So the ‘leave me never’ was?” Anna asked.

“An accident… I scribbled it out so fast. I think I doubled copied, or got distracted? …My bad.”

Anna stared at Ethan’s picture on the backdrop of her phone, her heart breaking all over again. Never and forever were two very different sides of the same coin. Anna felt her hopes drop in her gut, like that coin had just been lost down a well of hollow wishes. 

The minutes ticked by like hours for the remainder of the day. Anna was even more attached to her phone than usual. Though Genevieve wagered the spell might have still worked, she warned Anna that these things take time, even when cast perfectly. 

Anna was filling her thoughts with all the ways that Genevieve had already been wrong when the bell on the book shop door rang out. She looked up from her post at the register, and a wave of relief crashed into her; it was Ethan in the doorway, holding a bouquet of roses.

“Ethan?” Anna was gobsmacked. 

“I Just- I had to see you.” Ethan said, in front of her now. “I had this horrible feeling that if I didn’t see you again, if I didn’t spend every minute with you… That I’d forget you, or you’d forget me and-”

“You did?” Anna said, genuinely surprised his was actually happening.

Ethan stepped toward the register. “I just knew I couldn’t let that happen.” His eyes were glazed but his intentions were focused. 

The day after that, Ethan came back to Anna’s shop.

And the day after that, he brought Anna coffee on her break. 

And the day after that, he met Anna out in front of the shop with breakfast.

And the day after that, Ethan met Anna on her walk into work.

He waited for her across the street until her shift was over the next day. 

And the day after that, and the day after that. 

And the day after that.

In the shop, Genevieve watched Anna’s smile fade with each passing day. 

After ten days of Ethan’s presence suffocating the space in and around Lost Letters, Genevieve pulled Anna from her position at the register into a dusty stack of used books in the corner of the shop. A thick brown leather book was tucked away under her arm. 

“We need to break the spell.” Genevieve began to flip through the pages, furiously searching for guidance. 

But Anna stopped her. “But what happens if we break the spell?”

“I imagine you get your freedom back for one-”

“But, ‘Or leave my memory forever?’ …If we break it, will I forget him? Or he’ll forget me?”

“I don’t know.” Genevieve, unable to answer, returned to scouring the pages.

“I love him. Genevieve. This- him… coming back. This was what I wanted.” Anna closed Genevieve’s book and resumed her post at the register. 

She put herself in plain view of Ethan, fully within the frame of the storefront window, but she stopped looking out to smile at him days ago, and just went back to her work. 

Two weeks later, nothing had changed. At least not for Ethan. 

Anna, on the other hand, had been setting up a display of a debut author’s first book in advance of his scheduled reading in the shop. She had read it quickly, having devoured his words from cover to cover. As well as a series of interviews she would never have admitted to reading to anyone, not even Genevieve. His novel was a charming; Gatsby-esq with a Black Mirror twist, and she had consumed every inch of it. And though she had read the contents printed on the flaps of the dust jacket on more than one occasion, Anna had once again found herself studying the author’s charming photo on the back flap of the duster.

Iain Bowery. 

The handsome Scotsman, due to arrive in their little book shop the next day for a series of scheduled readings along the East Coast as he made his way down to New York, had just walked through the doorway of Anna’s storefront.

“How’s that one then, any good?”

Anna turned to find that Iain Bowery was even more stunning in person. She caught herself lingering on his accent and getting lost in his pale blue eyes that had been hampered by the black and white photo on the jacket of his book. 

“Mr. Bowery! We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

“I came in on an earlier train, wanted to get the lay of the land.”

“Well, welcome!” Anna could feel her cheeks rush to what was surely a noticeable red. “Oh, and yes. I quite enjoyed your book.”

Iain smiled at Anna in a way that made her forget all about Ethan and how desperately she had wanted him to come back. 

In fact, Iain’s presence all together made Anna forget how Ethan was even still sat across the street on the bus stop bench he utilized for the view of Anna in the front window. 

“You wouldn’t want to go for a spot of tea after your shift change, would you? I don’t know anyone in town and-”

“I’d love to.” Anna beamed. 

“Fantastic. I passed a place on my way here. Abbey’s, do you know it?”

“Very well. I’m off at six. If that works?”

“I’ll see you down the road just after then.”

Iain pulled a gorgeous gold and black pen from inside his jacket, then a card from his wallet. Quickly, but neatly, he jotted his mobile number on the card and offered it to Anna. She accepted it delicately, and then after he was gone, she clutched it for the remainder of the day.

Anna was pure light for the rest of the day, counting the minutes until Six O’Clock and daydreaming about the words Iain had already written, and even more about the words he might speak to her later.

At five past, Anna left through the back exit and took the long way around to Abbey’s, taking every precaution she could to avoid Ethan and the bus stop bench he’s laid his claim to.

At Abbey’s Café, Anna sat waiting at the only little corner booth it had until half-past six. 

By a quarter to seven, her tea cold, and thoroughly embarrassed, Anna set off for home.

Walking up the cobblestone path toward her home, Anna found her heart heavy with the loss of joy from the day’s earlier prospects. Then she rounded the corner, and her heart sank further. 

Ethan was waiting on her doorstep, writing in a notebook.

“Ethan?” 

“My love!” Ethan’s face was plastered with a smile, but his eyes were still glassy and distant, clutching his notebook and pen. 

“What are you doing?”

“Writing about you. About every feature on your perfect face. So that I never forget it.”

Anna was stricken with guilt. For wishing this upon him him. Wishing it for herself. 

“Ethan, I-” She pushed her nails into her palm, willing the words out. “I don’t think that this is working.”

Ethan rose to his feet. “But it has to. You’d forget me-” Ethan panicked. “And I can’t let that happen. I won’t.”

Anna looked down at Ethan’s notebook to avoid his glazed and pleading stare. Her eyes fell on the gorgeous gold and black pen clutched in his right hand. 

“Ethan?”

“Yes, my love?”

“Where did you get that pen?”

Ethan reached out with his free hand to clutch Anna’s. “From him.” His grip felt like a shackle, not delicate like a lovers. “I got rid of him. For us.” 

His touch struck like a wildfire in Anna’s core. She tried to move inside the house, but he mirrored anything Anna did. He was smothering. All-encompassing.

Ethan kept his left hand wrapped around her right as she turned the key in the lock of her front door and followed Anna into her home.

Inside, Anna suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about Genevieve’s brown leather book, her thoughts running in circles.

‘You wanted this.’ 

Then Ethan locked her front door behind them, latching the bolt shut.

‘You asked for this.’

Ethan led her by the hand through her own home, and Anna shuddered with each step. Her mind taunted her as Ethan solidified his place in her home. ’You better want what you wish for. It might happen.’

*Inspired by the first and last lyrics to Ruston Kelly’s, “Black Magic.”