Petlife logo

Little Black Magic Book

A Familiar Story

By Ted StrikerPublished 3 years ago 28 min read
1

I used to be good looking. I had a distinctive look, and I was appreciated, not only for my appearance, but for my wit, my intelligence, and my skills. I was companion to the powerful ones. I guarded them, I guided them, I even gave my life to protect theirs, for all the good it did me.

It seems, as Sam Clemens said several millennia after my time, that the rumor of my passing was greatly exaggerated. In the circles I move in, death generally transfers power from one entity to another, like moving the funds from a liquidated bank account. It’s a zero-sum game.

Not everyone believes that. Some say that the dead are simply freed from earthly constraints and that they can see everything; that there’s a Heaven, a Valhalla, or an Elysian Fields bed-and-breakfast out there for them and the friends who think the same way they do. Some say that life is a one-way ticket and that death is the end. You’re born, you live, you die, and you’re gone; the elements that made you return to their separate planes. That makes more sense to me, if there’s no one around to suck your essence up. If you’re strong enough, you might actually hang around wherever you died for a while. Now that, I have seen. But that wasn’t my experience. I was doing my thing, protecting my bosses, and then…

Boom! I was gone.

And then I was back.

I knew something was wrong, even before getting a glimpse of myself. And when did, I almost keeled over. I mean, just look at me! I’m ridiculous! I was once as big as a grizzly bear. My mouth used to be a fearsome maw filled with sharp teeth that could rip open even the gods. Now I can hardly get my teeth around a chicken drumstick and a grizzly could swallow me in one gulp. And even though my fur is still black, it’s short, and it’s always shedding! How’s a person supposed to stay warm with fur like this?

And my magic just isn’t powerful enough to return me to my former glory. And no, I was not reincarnated. At least, not naturally. Somebody did this shit to me.

And brother, are they going to pay!

So I’ve spent the last few thousand years looking for help with my dilemma.

That’s when I felt that long-sought-for tingle of power playing over me, making my fur stand on end. I followed it… like a dog follows a scent.

And it took me straight to the outer door of one of the student condos Texas State threw up in Arlington about six years ago. No way that I was going to open that door, or any door, for that matter, on my own, so I did what any reasonable dog would do: I sat on my little round butt and waited.

Sure enough, a door-opener, in the form of a cute sandy-haired co-ed arrived before long. “Aww,” she said when she saw me, “are you lost, puppy?”

I didn’t bite her. I hate being called puppy. I hate it almost as much as I hate kibble.

The co-ed was going in, which wouldn’t work for me. I needed to be free to move around and find my sorcerer. If I went in with this do-gooder, chances were that whoever was casting this spell would be done long before I could escape her clutches. I needed someone who was going out so that I could dart in and up the stairs before they could turn around and catch me. Most probably wouldn’t even try. People these days are in way too much of a rush to take time for anything outside their narrow self-view. For their sakes, I hope that the nothingness-after-life crowd wins. Otherwise, there are going to be millions of smart-phoning, too-busy-to-really-live-life souls haunting eternity, wailing their fruitless regrets and twitching their thumbs.

Damn! She swooped down on me like a condor on a baby llama, her long, spandex-covered arms wrapping me up. I tried to escape but she must have been part python, because those arms just kept winding around my stupid, clumsy, tiny black body, keeping it trapped no matter how I tried to scramble away. I was unceremoniously swept up as she bounced up the stairs. My only consolation was that the chest she held me against was very nice.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing or feeling as the sandy-haired chick carried me into her apartment. There was a dorky kid, black notebook in hand, standing by the bed where a blonde, a brunette, and a sleaze ball were intertwined. All were buck-naked and magic was pouring off the kid like stink off a skunk! He was my sorcerer, all right – and he didn’t even know it! I could make something out of this. The problem was, the kid was frozen in place, right in the middle of the kill zone.

Maybe you’ve never been around a woman who just caught her man cheating, but I have. It was obvious that Sandy had suspected this bozo for some time. She’d been giving him the benefit of the doubt, but deep down in her heart, she knew that he was a cheating, worthless piece of shit, and her rage had been building for a while.

Now she had the irrefutable proof right in front of her in the form of two naked bimbos, her beau, and my sorcerer, and she was about to blow up worse than Vesuvius, with results just about as deadly, and I didn’t blame her a bit. In my time, that sorry bastard would already have been dead meat; not only were those old school Mesopotamian women jealous, they were stone killers who would have slaughtered the cheating dick right there in the bed and stored his mummified remains in an urn in the closet.

Modern women vary in their responses. One might break down and cry while another will whack off your business with a butcher knife and throw it in the street. My money was on Sandy for the kill, and I didn’t want to have my get-out-of-pug-free ticket murdered along with his idiot friend should I be right, so I took a long shot and revealed myself. “For Pete’s sake, kid, take the damned notebook and grab your clothes and get out before she kills you, too!”

He heard me. Better, he believed me. After a startled glance in my direction and one at Sandy, he grabbed his stuff and split. We got out of there right behind the girls, who were obviously also adept at reading the danger signs. Lots of practice, no doubt. The door slammed practically on the kid’s skinny butt, and there was the sound of breaking of glass and screaming from inside.

The brunette ran off, but the blonde stood there in the hallway, barely dressed, her panties still in her hand. “Hey,” she said to the kid, “You’re kind of cute. Listen; if you ever want to get together, I’ll show you some of my magic, okay?” She pulled a sharpie out of her little denim purse and wrote ‘Presly’ and her number on the tiny triangle front of her pale blue thong. She handed it to the stupefied kid and left, commando.

So there he stood, little black notebook in one hand, Presly’s little thong in the other, bare-foot because he’d forgotten his shoes and socks inside the apartment, his mouth hanging open waiting for a fly to land in it.

“Kid,” I said to him, “you should definitely take her up on that, if you live long enough. C’mon, let’s vamoose. That sandy-haired chick is crazy mad and just as likely to kill you as her idiot boyfriend.”

The kid looked at me blankly. “You talk,” he said like a moron.

“Yeah, and I sing, too. I’m no Sinatra, but I can carry a tune. Let’s go to your place and I’ll audition for you. Anyplace but the vicinity of crazy women with access to heavy things or cutlery, okay?” Another crash emphasized my point and maybe got the attention of Rain Magician, there, because he finally said “Okay,” in that dazed voice people get when their brain has checked out and they’re running on empty, and started moving. We walked up the hallway to the next apartment.

“Lock it up,” I warned, “or sure as the Great Flood, that Nimrod is going to be knocking on your door wanting to bunk with you now that his sweetie has kicked him to the curb. That’s it, set the top lock, too.”

“Frank is my best friend. How is it that you’re talking to me?” he asked even while he obeyed me. “Am I going crazy?”

“Going!” I snorted, and regretted it. Pugs have the most disgusting nasal architecture. Whoever had put my spirit into this body had either been as pissed off at me as Sandy was at Frank, or else they had a truly sick and twisted sense of humor. I licked my face clean – gross – and said, “You already are bat-shit crazy, boy! You know how I know that? Because only a bat-shit crazy sorcerer would be reciting at spell that would open a portal to another plane to let a demon come through and chow down on all of you. Then it would have gone after anything else it could eat, which is pretty much everything else in the world, until the unlikely event that someone with powerful enough magic or a bazooka came along to stop it. Kid, you and brainless horny Frank almost wiped out the whole Metroplex today.”

The kid sat down on the floor, still clutching the little black notebook. He looked at me. “It was supposed to be a money spell,” he said vaguely. He shook himself. “I must be crazy. The dog’s talking to me and I’m answering.”

I took a little pity on the poor schlemiel. “Listen up, Kid,” I said. “I’m talking to you because you’re a magic user, the real deal. I’m your new magic coach, so listen to me: What you need to do right now is suck down something that’s full of sugar, maybe get some protein into you, too. That’ll help you feel better. After that, get a nap. But first, take a deep breath and concentrate, and listen, for cryin’ in the friggin’ sink!”

He actually did it. He closed his eyes, inhaled through his fantastic human nose that actually takes in air, and breathed it out with a little Buddhist hum. “Good!” I said. “Now: imagine that your door is impervious to sound, that no matter how much someone knocks, nothing is going to get through. Fix that thought in your head. Got it? Good. Now say, ‘Susitikim shi vakara kavos puodukui.’”

“Susitikim shi vakara kavos puodukui,” he repeated dutifully.

A faint buzz came from the door. “That wasn’t something I expected,” I said, listening for anything else that might warn me that the whole thing was going to blow up. Not that there would be any warning; if he had screwed up this entry-level, easy-as-pie warding spell, shit would explode and we’d die.

Magic is a touchy art. That’s why old sorcerers and witches are always careful. The ones who weren’t never got old; another shining example of Darwin at work, just like Frank.

“I imagined a Star Trek force field,” said the kid by way of helpful explanation.

“Of course you did.” I should have expected that. Magic users tended to be nerds. Not that jocks can’t be magic users; they just don’t tend to develop their magical talents fully. Even though “Magic” Johnson really wasn’t magical, for all that the man could handle a basketball, Michael Jordan had more talents than just playing ball. Just try to make a physics equation stick to his hang time.

“Well, as long as you imagined it keeping sounds out as well as people… whatever floats your boat. Now get that soda and chow. And while you’re at it, if you’ve got some steak or bacon lying around, I’m starving!”

Tim

The pug was making sense, which should have worried Tim more than it did. He found a few grease-clotted pieces of bacon and some ham of questionable age and put it on a pink plastic IKEA plate. The dog gobbled it up in a way that made Tim wonder if it really mattered what he ate. He must have noticed Tim’s look. “What? Dogs have taste buds in their stomachs.”

Tim didn’t have enough energy to care. He poured a mixing bowl full of sugared corn flakes and added milk that was just beginning to turn sour. He ate the disagreeable mix almost as fast as the dog had scarfed the bacon, so he had no room to criticize. After draining the sugary-sour milk from the bowl, he felt sleepy, so he dropped onto the bed without bothering to cover up. He’d left his shoes at Trish’s, so he didn’t have to take those off. She’d probably throw them at his door, or maybe out the window, depending on how pissed off she still was by the time she found them. His thinking got even more fuzzy and disjointed, and he drifted off to sleep.

A cold nose and a very wet tongue against his cheek brought Tim to wakefulness. “Wha – ” He looked over to see a furry pop-eyed muzzle inches from his nose.

“Wake up, Kid!” said the pug in his gravelly voice. “And, for cryin’ in the sink, brush your teeth! You could kill dragons with that breath.”

Tim sat bolt upright. “Shit!” he said, looking at the little dog. “You’re real! I thought that it was all just some weird nightmare!”

The pug sat down and looked at him, then yapped. Tim sagged back against the wall that served as his headboard. “Oh, thank you, God!” he said, closing his eyes. Then he opened them again and looked at the pug. “But where’d you come from?”

A doggy grin spread over the pug’s mashed-in face, and the eyes that looked back at Tim held a sardonic knowledge that wasn’t at all doglike. With a gravelly chuckle, the pug said, “Remember, Kid? Apartment down the hall, lying, cheating friend, three hot women, narrow escape from sandy-haired death?”

“Shit!” Tim jerked upright, staring at the dog.

“Gotcha!” the pug said, chuckling. “And that smell emanating from your mouth is way past shit. Did you and your toothbrush break up? Get moving! You’ve got a lot to learn so we’re going to start over a breakfast of bacon, sausage, and eggs. Not before you scrub those choppers, though.”

Tim rolled off the bed and turned toward the bathroom. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Believe it.” The pug headed into the tiny kitchen.

“Oh, by the way, what does ‘Susitikim shi vakara kavos puodukui’ mean?” called Tim, his voice garbled by the brush and suds.

“It’s Lithuanian for ‘let’s go get a cup of coffee,’ but it sounds like a magic spell, right? Which helped you to activate the magic and meld it to your thoughts. Now, whenever you say it, your sci-fi force-field will pop up. I’m a little surprised that you remember, as wasted as you were last night.”

“Eidetic memory,” said Tim, his voice clear now. “Whatever I hear or see, I remember. Besides, I wasn’t wasted. If I get drunk it interferes with sex.”

“If you got drunk more, you’d probably get more sex.”

The pug had a point.

“The only blank spots in my memory are from the couple of times I got really stoned. I was in the talented and gifted program in fifth grade, which mostly meant that I got to do extra work, but my folks didn’t have the cash to get me into any real programs for smart kids, so I just stayed in my regular grades until I got scholarships to college.” Pulling open the fridge door, he showed the bare wire shelves to the pug. “Not that it helps much; I still don’t have much cash. Looks like breakfast is going to be generic sugar-frosted corn flakes with sour milk, dude. I’ll hit the ATM for some cash and get some groceries later. You should be eating some kind of dog food, right?”

“I may be stuck in a dog’s body, Kid, but I don’t eat kibble. Gimme steak or gimme death, that’s my motto.”

“Hunh. Well, I’ve come close to eating dog food a few times myself. It’s called undergrad life; you can’t work a lot of hours while you’re studying and you can’t earn much cash in Texas without working a lot of hours. The state is great for big business and rich folk; they even declared a tax break on luxury yachts last year. But for the rest of us it’s a lot harder. Hence the money spell. Well, Frank had the idea that we could convince these two girls… we knew that it was all fake…” Watching the small pug shake his black head in pitying contempt, the triangle ears flopping a little, Tim let his explanation trail off.

“Next time, numb-nuts, make sure it is a money spell,” growled the little black dog. “You almost summoned a killer demon.”

Tim pulled out the milk. “No eggs. Sour milk and sugar flakes okay?”

Pazuzu

So we had our first breakfast: sugar-coated corn flakes with milk that was just this side of chunky. “The sugar helps to keep the milk from tasting too sour,” Tim said optimistically.

“Right.” My physical form used the senses of a pug, which was a good thing. Dogs are attracted to nasty smells and will even eat stuff that smells bad. I tried to focus on the days of dates and rare roast meat on the bone as I gobbled the disgusting mess with doggie enjoyment.

While we ate, Tim questioned me. “So what’s your name? How come you can talk? Why do you want to teach me magic?”

“My name,” I said importantly, “Is Pazuzu.”

“Like in Constantine or The Exorcist.”

““Yeah, Kid, and none of those stiffs ever paid me a dime in royalties. I’m your typical Hollywood-exploited demon. I promise you that I’ve never possessed anyone, and if I ever did, it wouldn’t be that ugly little girl. And as cool as that Constantine guy is, if he ever ran into the demons I’ve consorted with, he’d be toast like you almost were. And I talk because I’m not your ordinary average lap dog; I’m one of the main players in Mesopotamian theology. I want to teach you magic for entirely selfish reasons, which is good for you because you’ve got power but no knowledge, and sooner or later, you’re going to get noticed by the wrong people.”

“What wrong people?”

“Never mind that right now. Like I was saying, you need me because although I’ve got a lot less power than I used to, I’m chock-full of magical knowhow. I need your power to help get me back to the way I was before. So the deal is this: I’ll teach you and how to do magic and you help me to change back to the old me.” So that I can find out who put me into this disgusting little doggie body and tear their liver out through their navel, I didn’t say. No sense in cluttering up the landscape with too much truth. I burped sour milk. “First things first. Enough with the poor-student- eat-cheap-disgusting-food’ crap. You’re with me, now, and I always go first class.”

“I’m a finance major,” said Tim. “I’ve learned that it takes money to make money.”

“Kid, it’s embarrassing that you would admit to be studying how to get and use money and still be living like this. Either you’re a disgrace to the spirit of entrepreneurship, or your teachers all suck.”

“My macroeconomics teacher owns a half-dozen duplexes. He’s stashing the cash from that in a Roth IRA. I, on the other hand, I earn a measly two hundred-forty dollars a week from the thrift store and spend it on tuition, books, rent, and sometimes food.”

“Hunh. Well, that explains it. So grab that notebook of yours and sit here so I can look while you turn the pages. Let’s find you a real money spell.”

The kid leafed through the black book. “How come this has magic spells in it? I thought it was someone’s lost diary when I found it.”

“I keep telling you, you’re a sorcerer. This may look like a notebook but someone turned it into a grimoire, a book of magic spells. Stop! This one could work. ‘What was lost now is found, As my magick circles round. Whether you are hidden far or near, I call you now to come to me here.’”

“This guy sure liked to rhyme. It sounds like a spell for finding lost things.”

“A gold star for you, too! I bet you were a great kindergarten student. This mug probably used it when he lost his keys or something. The rhyme is how he remembered the spell. The really nice thing about it is that it we can use it to find money that someone else lost. You’re right, by the way; it does take money to make money. Where’s your emergency stash?”

“What?”

“C’mon, c’mon, we don’t have all day. The sooner we find the cash we need, the sooner I’ll be eating a steak. I know your type, kid, you have, what? a c-note or two stashed away?”

“Five hundred in twenties,” he admitted reluctantly. “But it’s my emergency cash.”

“And this isn’t an emergency? Your refrigerator should be declared a disaster area. Just bring it all, kid. I need to smell the notes, one at a time.”

I sniffed each bill twice, and then put my paw on one. “We’ll use this one. You can hide the rest back in your coffee can.” When he looked at me, I gave a pug shrug and said, “The nose knows, kid. Grab some thread. Oh, and that salt shaker, too.”

He returned with dental floss and the rest of the stuff. The floss was waxed, with a minty smell. Nice. “So why that particular twenty?” he asked.

I’ve got to give credit: Tim could ask some insightful questions. “Because this bill used to be together with a lot of money that has a tendency to be lost, if you know what I mean.”

He didn’t know what I meant. “How can you tell?”

“Like I said, the nose knows. Now shut up and set the floss aside for the moment. Open the salt shaker and make a circle of salt around the twenty.” I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him the full reason I picked that note, not until he could handle himself better, anyway.

As it turned out, he couldn’t handle a salt shaker, either. “Stop,” I said impatiently, “before you waste all the salt. It has to be a circle; an oval will give us weird results.” Oh, for a pair of opposable thumbs! Or even a pair of hand-like appendages. If I’d been put into a raccoon, I would have been a thousand per cent happier. I thought for a moment. “Get that dessert plate. And use that knife to scrape up all the salt you spilled. Now, put the plate over the bill. Make sure the money is in the middle. Good. Try opening the salt and pouring it – slowly! right around the edges of the plate. Lift up the plate. Fix the circle there, where you smudged it with your thumb.” I refrained from calling him dumbass, shit-for-thumbs, or spaz – magic is ninety per cent about confidence. An unsure warlock is a dead one, so I didn’t want to shake Tim’s self-confidence.

While he repaired the salt circle, I said, “Magic is an art, kid. It’s individual and intimate. Each practitioner personalizes their work based on their experience and outlook. Now is the time for you to personalize yours. Get the knife and stick your thumb. You need a drop of blood.”

“Really?” Tim wasn’t afraid or skeptical; he was simply processing the information I was giving him. He really wanted to learn about magic, now that he was getting used to the idea of its existence.

“The blood carries some of your life energy with it. Your energy powers the spell and marks it as yours.” When he nicked his thumb and squeezed the blood out without flinching, I said, “Nice sharp knife. I can respect a man that keeps his knives sharp. Now, just touch the drop to the circle and say the spell. While you’re saying the words, think about money, and I mean lots of money. Remember, magic is about intent more than words. The words focus your intent, but it starts and ends with your brain and your will.”

He did as instructed, and the result caught us both by surprise. The twenty glowed like molten gold for an instant and jumped up off the table to plaster itself against the invisible cylinder of the salt circle. It fluttered there, trying to break out of its magical prison.

I’d never seen a seeking spell with that much energy before. I’d been able to smell the magic on the kid from miles away, which meant that he was something special. This little display told me that he was really special. “Damn, kid. When you enchant stuff, you don’t screw around. Rip off about three feet of that floss, and grab that twenty quick, or it will be gone.”

Tim was watching the green paper’s movements with his mouth open. “Wow. What’s it doing?”

“It’s trying to join itself to its lost friends, and it’s in a hurry. After you grab it, roll it up like you were going to do some blow, knot the floss around it to make a necklace and put it around your neck. The bill will pull you in the direction you need to go.”

Tim

When the money jumped off the table, Tim almost pissed his pants. He grabbed the bill and it squirmed like a living thing in his hand, worming its way free to flutter off towards the door like a green butterfly. Luckily the apartment door was tight in the frame; it stuck like a bastard even in winter, but that was the only thing that kept the twenty from flying under the door and away. Snatching the bill again, he rolled it into a slim cylinder and wrapped the floss around it in a tight knot. Then he tied the floss around his neck in a short necklace, where it yanked against the bond like an eager puppy on a leash. “Ow!” he said, after a particularly hard pull jerked his head.

“Yeah, kid,” said the pug, “you’re the real deal as a sorcerer. I have never seen that much power in a seeking spell. Now all we have to do is follow the money, as they say.”

The money tugged and pulled like a fish on a line, and Tim could feel his neck beginning to get raw by the time they had walked down the stairs and up the street to his old white Buick Century. It was warming as noon approached, and the car’s red interior was comfortable. By the time March arrived, it would be almost too hot to bear if he didn’t use a sun shield. He slid in and started the car as the pug jumped up and sniffed the seats. “Lots of Taco Bell food in this car,” commented the dog.

“Yeah, I used to eat a lot of TB,” said Tim.

“Used to! Messy eater; there’s still a lot of Taco Bell food in here.”

“Now I’m hungry,” said Tim.

“Concentrate on what you’re doing now.”

“So now what should I do?”

Pazuzu peered at the bill. “It’s pulling at an angle. Get into traffic and go straight.”

They did that for a few blocks before the bill started to slide around. “See? It’s changing direction like a compass needle. Turn right at the next street.”

After a few miles following the sawing tug of the twenty, Tim made one more turn into the entrance of Veteran’s park. “Looks like we’ll have to park and walk,” he said. They headed toward a distant woodsy area. Tim was walking over the wooden bridge when the bill jerked down and to the left, down toward the creek. “It wants me to go down there,” he muttered, glancing at the pug.

The dog sat on his round butt, the tail curling up and to the side, looked up at Tim, and yapped.

Tim looked around and saw an older couple walking nearby. He leaned on the rail of the little bridge, pretending to appreciate the scenery, and waited until they had gone by. When the coast was clear, he glanced at his almost-new white Converse, heaved a sigh and climbed down into the creek.

The cold water made him gasp. “Shit!” he wheezed. “It’s like ice!”

“Oops,” answered Pazuzu, “I could have taught you a warming spell. Want to learn it now?”

Tim’s feet and legs hurt as if a freezing vice was crushing each muscle. “Hell, yes!” he replied through chattering teeth.

Pazuzu said, “Concentrate on feeling cozy and say, ‘The cold wind starts, the cold wind blows, the colder it gets, the warmer I grow.’

Tim did it. Almost instantly, a delicious heat spread through him, feeling like nothing so much as the warmth of a shot of tequila spreading though his middle and down his legs. Now more comfortable, he followed the pull of the enchanted bill and soon found himself in a tunnel of mostly-dead undergrowth, some of which looked like poison ivy. The stream became deeper and he picked his way carefully until he came to where a medium-sized black gym bag was damming up the stream. The twenty was jerking directly toward the bag, which was fat-looking and had obviously been there for a while, judging from the amount of leaves, sticks and other debris jammed against it.

Mustering his courage, Tim caught hold of the bag and jerked it free. The pooling water turned into a medium waterfall as it rushed down the slope. “Ew,” he said, shaking the bag as he came back toward the bridge. “There’s a condom sticking to it! Disgusting!” He gingerly peeled the prophylactic off and returned it to the wild. Back at the Buick, he put the bag into the trunk where the water draining from the bag immediately soaked boxes of old textbooks and made a pool where the plastic cups and Taco Bell wrappers floated.

Tim pulled the zipper. It was so rusted that it broke off. He pulled his folding knife from his pocket and cut a long incision beside the zipper. As he cut, he looked through the widening slit, more than half expecting to see someone’s moldering underwear.

With a gasp, he stepped back and slammed the trunk. He stumbled around and got into the car, almost closing his door on the dog. “What?” demanded the little animal in its gravelly Brooklyn voice. “Was it a lot?”

Tim looked into the pug’s bulging eyes, his own eyes wide with shock. “Paz, the damned bag is stuffed full of money. There must be twenty grand in there.”

Pazuzu

I hate nicknames; they smack of disrespect. “My other sorcerers called me Lord Pazuzu, or just Lord,” I told him haughtily.

Tim just laughed. That would change when he saw my true form. Then there would be screaming and begging and pants-wetting. But for now, “They call me Mister Pug,” he quipped, still chuckling. I blame it on Disney movies; they trivialize everything.

He got a black garbage bag and unloaded the duffel. The ever-lovin’ thing was full of money. I did a quick count by eye as he stacked. “You definitely have the gift, Kid. With what I can teach you, you’ll become one of the most powerful magic users to ever walk the Earth.”

“Really?” said the kid. “I mean, thanks, Paz.”

I started to correct him and then thought better of it. For this much magical potential, I could live with a nickname.

“This could cause us trouble, couldn’t it?”

Not if the guys that lost it don’t know we have it, I didn’t say. I didn’t want to fuel Tim’s case of nerves. “Listen, Kid, this cash sat in that creek for a month. Whoever lost it lost it good. If the guys that lost it knew that it was there, wouldn’t they have got it? Finders, keepers.”

“And what about the drugs?” Cash wasn’t the only thing in the bag. There had also been three big baggies filled with crystal meth slush. Zip-locks are not water-proof. The leather duffel had sat in the creek for plenty long enough for the water to at least partly dissolve the meth. Tim had flushed the sludge down the toilet, then trashed the empty bags and the duffel.

“What about them? You just made a whole generation of rats supremely happy and hyperactive, and for a while, pets and street people downstream are going to be in danger from the little vermin. Don’t sleep on the streets and you’ll be fine. Nobody saw us get the money. You threw the duffel in the trash a mile away in the scariest demonstration of paranoia I’ve seen since McCarthyism. Now let it go and focus on making a shopping list. Twenty or thirty New York strips and rib-eyes should be at the top.”

adoption
1

About the Creator

Ted Striker

I love writing. No, scratch that: I love imagining. I've always been an escapist, and that escape was imagining adventure. I started writing adventure stories when I was nine, scribbling my epics in spiral notebooks. Now I use a Dell.

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.