Charming
by Midnight Medley

"I've had a schoolboy crush on you, I do, I do. A school boy crush on you.
Maybe I'll be wrong someday, and maybe I'll be right.  But just once, this
once, maybe I'll have you for tonight." Humming, humming, always humming.
Thrumming, tumming, sing-sum-summing.

Tonight, tonight, a witches brew.

He stirred the pot, the smell of herbs filled the room, glowing into the
shadows.

Tonight. Tonight.

"I've had a schoolboy crush on you, Ann, and I think it's time it came to an
end." Yes, an end.

Last night had been the turning point, or maybe it was last week. Time starts
tripping, when things go bad. When things go bad. When things go bad.

Smoke came out of his lungs, and he breathed into the pot, knocking off the ash
into a nearby coke can. Never seemed to finish the coke before using it as an
ashtray. The caffeine made you need a smoke.

"So what about coffee, Danny?" A laugh turned into a rasping cough.

Had to get the mind clear for the next part. It was really tricky.

------

"Yeah, it was fun. Gave my first blowjob." She grinned as if she knew she'd
done wrong. Cat in the cream.

He smiled, "Naughty girl, you. Fun?"

"Yeah. Was over pretty quickly." She didn't look upset.

"Got a short fuse, eh?"

"I prefer to think I was doing very well." An impish grin.

"I'll bet so," he smiled.

Something about this coffee shop that always led to dirty talk.

"So, Ann, what next?"

"Definitely going to get laid. Just have to find the right guy."

------

They say it's all about environment. Witches don't have to live in caves, or
keep their rooms so dark, but they do. The environment just seems to help.

The glow smelled like burning coals' fire. Pink-hot cherry stems falling off
the trees in the rain.

Tricky, definitely tricky.

He stood within the circle, the smoke making eyes at his sanity. "Hot, wet
death crawling off the trees, falling in the rain."

"Tricky, definitely tricky."

Memories fade.

-----

"Star Trek, definitely. It's the best. Sucks around here, I have to watch it by
myself. None of my friends like to watch it."

He coughed.

"Except you of course. You just don't live here!"

"I know. So how is The Ann?" He sipped at his hot chocolate, the steam making
him shut his eyes.

"Hey, you got more marshmallows than me."

"Tough." He pulled the cup closer to himself, hunching over it and squinting at
her menacingly.

"Be that way." She crossed her legs and stirred her chocolate. "Well, I'm fine.
Wonderful. Bored for the summer since there's no boys."

"Tart."

"And proud of it." Another of those killer smiles. He was having trouble not
checking her out every few seconds. He put his hand next to hers.  It was
obvious. It was oh, so obvious.

"What's with the hand?"

"You're a girl, I'm a guy, we're in a coffee shop enjoying hot chocolate. We
should be holding hands." Obvious, obvious, obvious.

"Fine. Whatever." She shook her head and smiled. Being eccentric had its
pluses, you could get away with stuff like this. On the other hand, she
couldn't take a god damned hint. Have to be more obvious.

------

Spiders crawled over the attic floor, burning into smoke snakes, filled with
turpentine smiles.

Tricky, definitely tricky. "Cold smoke condenses into snakes smiling fortune in
gold collection plates."

He closed his eyes. Breathed deeply.

-----

"So, this is where you're living now, hunh? Not too bad for your geeky self,
Ann."

"Yeah, I like it."

She moved down the hall in front of him, he couldn't take his eyes off the
downy hair between her jeans and her bare-midriff top.

She continued, "And this is Ann Central, where it's All Ann, All the Time." She
gestured around the room.

He smelled the candles, and the smell of her everywhere, particularly from the
unmade bed which stirred lust, gripping his insides like a cotton candy world
with the leather fanged menaces going ape through the night

----

He opened his eyes.

It was ready.

"He opened up his kit, pulled out the syringe" which he filled from the pot
with its glowing insides fluttering into the shadows like bats

"And once it was filled, he took the syringe, tied the surgical tubing around
his arm, and" waited for just a moment, faltering at the last minute, asking
himself if he really wanted to do this

"injected it into his vein. It burned like he thought it might, then it burned
a bit hotter, then a bit hotter than that, until it felt like it was coming
from behind his eyes, and the whole world went"

black.

See, things are different when you're the narrator.

Sometimes, the narrator gets to speak in second person, and he'd like to take
this moment to tell you, dear reader, what really happened last night.

What should've happened.

-----

"Fu-" she tried to say it again "fu-", this time she got enough breath to
really say it "oh my fucking god!"

She liked what he was doing. He held her tightly with his right arm, hugging
her closely. His left worked softly, gently between her legs. Having teased her
for minutes, he was going in for the kill, his fingers wet with her enthusiasm.
Her sweat across his face as she reached her arm back, her hand against the
back of his head.

-----

No, a bit further back.

It was a bit further back than that. What should've happened.

-----

"So, you're going to kick me out?" He asked with a smile.

"Yeah, I'm going straight to bed. I'm bushed."

"Ann?"

"Yeah?"

"Let me tell you something I've been meaning to say now for a while." A pause.
She looked at him quizzically. He continued before he lost his nerve, "I've had
a crush on you since forever. It's a schoolboy crush, and so I pick on you, and
want to hold your hand in the movie theatre. I look at you, and I see the
beautiful creature I fell for in high school. It's still strong now, no matter
how much I make fun of you, no matter how much stupid stuff we do together. I
want to be with you. I live somewhere else, and I know we don't want a
long-distance relationship. I just want to have fun with you. I want us to not
just have the short visits in the coffee shop. I want to be stupid and watch
Star Trek with you. I want to feel how warm you are and be surrounded by your
scent. Do you understand?"

She didn't have an expression.

"So you mean you were lying to me all those times?"

"What?" He started to protest.

"You hung out with me, you never wanted more. You pretended to like me because
you had a crush on me?"

"No, that's not it at all. That doesn't even make sense!"

"Of course it makes sense. You get a crush on me, you don't really get to know
me, and you obsess over me when I think we're having a good friendship? What
type of friendship is it where one person pines over the other and doesn't tell
her? Would you say that's an honest relationship?"

No, no, no, no, no. That's not what was going to happen.

---------

"So, you're going to kick me out?" He asked with a smile.

"Yeah, I'm going straight to bed. I'm bushed."

"Room for one more?"

She laughed. "Get out of here."

No, that's not it. Alright, it's different. Her name wasn't Ann. Her name was
Debbie. My name was Stephen. And it happened like this,

---------

"Maybe I should go home?" He asked with a smile.

"Yeah. I'll see you next time you come to town."

No, it wasn't like that, it wasn't like that at all.

---------

"Maybe squirrels find hamsters in the winter, he asked with a smile" But no one
was smiling, it was only him in the circle.

"What was that, Danny?" She looked puzzled even though she wasn't there.

"Some owls nested in the parkhouse with the steaming babies of the coal miner's
daughter."

"Ann said, 'it was all a dream that happened when the silver fish flew above
our heads and sailed out of sight below the waters of the stone.'"

The spell was over. Danny's fingers convulsed once more around the syringe in
his arm. He slumped back against the sacks in the abandoned room, the sacred
circle no more than a memory on the dust, protecting no more than the pages of
history.

Sometimes writers try to use their writing to live a different possibility.
Live a different reality that they would prefer. Even go so far as to try to
rip away control of the narrative.

It doesn't last. The same man goes into the story as comes out. We cannot
change our decisions that we made. We try, we beg for something different to
come from our imagination. But all that happens, Danny, is this: what happened.

You can't win her over. She knew you. You knew her. She met someone else. She
moved on. You pined after her, you never said what you felt.

And she lived happily ever after.
