A Disease of Magic

The door snicked shut quietly behind me, so quiet that the consistent drip, drip of water pooling around my feet was the louder of the two. Lucie, currently a puffed-up gray blob, glared up at me from her hiding spot underneath the coffee table where her scratch pad and enclosed bed were located, as if I were personally responsible for the thunderstorm crashing overhead.

A light turned on to my left, revealing Leo standing in the hallway. He looked disheveled in a pair of stained basketball shorts and rumpled old t-shirt.

“Go back to sleep,” I told him, trying to shoo him back to bed. It was late, nearing eleven, and he had work in the morning.

“What time is it?” he asked instead, walking through the kitchen with its white quartz countertops that seemed to glow slightly with every flash of lightning, coming to a stop before me at the front door. “Why are you wet?”

A vicious clap of thunder sounded just then, and I pointed up.

He considered that for a moment, fighting the drowsiness that still held him half-under, then nodded and turned back around. He shuffled slowly back towards his room, the light automatically turning back off as he disappeared into his room at the end.

I shucked off my shoes and managed to peel off my shirt before Leo emerged again, this time holding a towel in each hand. He glanced at me in my semi-undressed state, shook his head, and closed most of the distance between us before tossing me one of the towels.

“You know, I don’t care if you drip water on the floor. As long as you don’t soak any of the rugs, obviously.”

He wouldn’t look at me, offering what little privacy he felt he owed me, as he dropped the other towel to the floor and started cleaning up my mess, the action going against what he just claimed about water on the floor.

“I can do that, you know,” I offered as I dried my arms first, legs second. When I was no longer dripping, I wrung my hair out before wrapping the towel around my middle. The shorts dropped next, hitting the ground with a thwack.

“This storm is keeping me up anyways.”

I grimaced. “Headache?”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah. You too?”

“Not anymore. But…” He looked to me as I bent over to pick up my clothes from the floor and waited for me to elaborate. “It was the weirdest thing. I thought I was going to have an episode.”

“But you didn’t,” he answered matter-of-factly, since I was still standing and clearly not currently in major pain. “Probably just the storm.”

“That’s the thing though. Maybe the storm triggered it. But it was definitely the start of an episode. I got the same feelings like I usually do. And, here.” I held out my arm to him. “You can check my screen and see how bad I was doing. And then, all of a sudden…I was fine.”

Leo frowned, starting to look more awake. He took my arm and quickly navigated through it, pulling up everything from the last hour, running some sort of report, and coming up with a summary.

“How’d you do that?” I wondered, bringing my arm close to my face as though inspecting it would give me answers.

“Callie…” he trailed off, eyes widening as he assessed the screen. “How quickly did you think to take your meds? Because this was very sudden, and you would’ve had to take them within the first minute or two once your symptoms started to still be standing right now.”

“I, uh…may have forgotten to bring them with me.”

He gave me a blank look. “I don’t understand.”

I looked towards the coffee table and its gremlin underneath, pointing to the bottle of pills that still sat atop.

“Huh,” he huffed, clearly perplexed. I stifled a laugh; it wasn’t often that Leo was confused by something. He always seemed to have the answers. It could be a bit annoying, honestly.

“I don’t know what happened. One second I’m having trouble seeing, clammy hands, head splitting open, and the next I’m perfectly fine.”

He straightened and scratched the back of his head. “It must have been something else, then. There’s no way that could’ve happened. And even with your meds, you wouldn’t be this okay.” He gestured to me standing, having a normal conversation, two of the things that were usually beyond me after an episode.

I flinched back in shock. “You don’t believe me?”

“What you described is impossible.”

“But it happened,” I enunciated slowly.

He shook his head at me. “There has to be another explanation.”

I crossed my arms, tucking the towel under my armpits, and snapped, “Fine. Believe what you want. I know what I felt. You can be wrong for all I care.”

Leo grabbed my arm as I turned away to retreat to my room. I tried shaking him off, but he held firm, stepping with me when I yanked on my arm. I refused to turn and face him as he started pleading with me.

“Callie, that’s not—”

“Just go to bed, Leo.”

“Can we just—”

“Let go of me,” I ground out, patience gone.

“Will you wait a—”

“I said, let go!” I spun around and pushed against his chest with my free arm.

Leo went sprawling, landing a good five feet away from me. Sparkles flitted around, disappearing quickly. I rubbed my eyes, attempting to scrub away the hallucination.

“How did you…?” he trailed off, looking up at me from the floor.

“You must have missed a spot and slipped,” I determined. Still hurt and annoyed, I stalked to my room, leaving him to pick himself up off the floor.

The door slammed satisfyingly behind me, the thick manufactured wood-like material supporting my weight as I slunk to the floor. The towel came loose, slipping onto the floor and reminding me that I was still quite damp.

Scratching at the door indicated my cat was on the other side, and I let her in quickly. I refused to allow myself to look out to see if Leo was still there or not. Lucie strutted the considerable length of the room and over to my bed that sat across from the curtained wall of windows. She tucked herself underneath the bed frame, where no less than three cat beds waited for her. Soft light flashed around the edges of the lilac curtains, reminding me of the strange sparks I’d seen twice now.

I crossed the massive suite that I’d only recently learned was the master, complete with its own walk-in closet, sitting area that I converted to my own personal library, and full bathroom with a separate tub and shower. It was heaven. I set my phone on its charger on my nightstand, definitely out of battery now. I’d have to remember to text Alex later to keep my promise.

Perpendicular to the enclosed fireplace that served as the boundary between my library and bedroom was the doorway that led to the bathroom and closet. I pattered towards it, grateful that I’d stopped creating small puddles. The recessed nightlights in the wall that were set at ankle height turned on as I walked past and into the gleaming marble bathroom. My cheap season-themed hand towels looked out of place against the white and grays.

Gathering a calming-scented candle, fluffy towel, bath salts, robe, and cup of water, I arranged everything in its usual place and started the tub. The steaming water looked irresistible, and I decided not to wait until it finished filling before stripping the rest of the way and sinking in. The warmth of the water eased the tension still in my joints that I hadn’t been aware I carried. I closed my eyes and leaned back, determined to forget the rest of the world even existed.

Well after the water had run cold I finally felt relaxed. A lot of adrenaline had been running through my system and I knew the crash was coming. Every LaShoul’s episode of mine ended that way; a deep, dreamless sleep that not even an alarm could wake me from. Though, with the odd events of the night, would I even react the same way as I always had?

Pondering the answer as I put everything away, I wasn’t paying attention when I set the still-lit candle down on the countertop, right up against the three toilet paper rolls that I hadn’t yet remembered to put away for probably a good three weeks now.

Before I realized what I had done, the small toilet paper pyramid started smoking at the bottom, and moments later was alight. The flames quickly danced their way up higher until I had a blazingly bright pyre on my counter.

“Fuck.”

I glanced around, panicked, and I went with the first idea that came to mind. I grabbed the flaming rolls of toilet paper with my bare hands and quickly chucked them into the draining bathtub, one after the other. Thankfully, I hadn’t missed, and the rolls hissed as they hit the water. I stood there and watched as they slowly sank, the flames extinguishing, as my fingertips tingled uncomfortably.

That would be a hell of a dissolved mess to clean up. One that I would deal with tomorrow.

I reached up to rub my face and noticed the smudges of soot on them. Frowning, I flexed my fingers, waiting for the pain of burned skin to register. It didn’t. Erring on the side of caution, I let my fingers chill under running water in the sink for several minutes before inspecting them again.

The skin was pink but flawless, no sign of burns or any damage at all. Rubbing the tips together elicited no pain either. The stiffness in the joints was likely due to the cold water they’d been subjected to.

Luck must have been on my side tonight. Or, maybe not, since I had accidentally started a fire, even if it was just a small one.

I dressed quickly after that and finished the rest of my evening routine, suddenly feeling the exhaustion creeping into my bones. Lucie grumbled at me from underneath the bed as I fought the several blankets into some semblance of order. Remembering my promise, I grabbed my phone off the charger on the nightstand to reply to Alex’s waiting message. He had jokingly wondered if I had died. I assured him that only my phone had and thanked him again for the date before sleep claimed me.