Short Story / All She Imagines

She’d figured out the ritual ages ago. Or, at least, she was fairly certain she had. The only way to find out was by actually trying it and she didn’t dare do that while she didn’t have the house to herself. Unfortunately, her parents almost never went out anywhere and when they did, they tried to only do it when they wouldn’t be leaving their only daughter alone. Typical, over-protective parental units. Finally, though, she’d convinced them that, at sixteen, she was more than old enough to spend a few hours in the house by herself on a Friday night and they deserved to have a night out together, didn’t they? It had taken all of the persuasive skills she could drum up but they did, indeed, actually agree and now she was completely alone.

But not for long.

Quietly, even though there was no need, she shut the door to her room behind her. In preparation for this, she’d actually cleaned her room for once. If cleaning meant shoving everything in the closet, in drawers, or under the bed so there was no clutter to be seen at all and plenty of open space in the center of the room. Of course, that space had been filled with a circle she had painstakingly created on the hardwood floor out of more than a little table salt. Around the circle, she’d placed orange candles at five points. Within the circle she’d left a plate of unwrapped Twinkies and a bottle of Cruzan rum she’d found in her father’s liquor collection. The underside of one of the Twinkies had a drop of her blood soaked into it. After looking over the setup once more with an approving eye, she undressed until she stood before the circle in only her bra and panties. She could have done this clothed but it felt more edgy, more cool to do it this way. Besides, she wanted him to see her body, didn’t she? She thought so. She was pretty sure.

The girl had no real idea what he’d see. She wanted to believe he’d fall prey to her imagined womanly charms but even at sixteen, she hadn’t really quite filled out, her figure closer to that of a boy’s than the curvy shape she wished for. Her hair was long, blonde, straight, and forever getting in her way so usually she simply kept it pulled back though tonight she’d let it hang freely. In her mind’s eye she saw her hair brushing against her body in that luscious sort of way one only saw in movies and on the cover of romance novels. There was no makeup on her face, as her mother had never taught her to wear it. She did, however, carefully dab behind her ears, at her throat, on her wrists, and behind her knees a musky perfume she’d taken from her mother’s vanity.

That done, she tossed her clothes on top of the pile in the closet, shut the door, and put the perfume away before she lit each candle, whispering a quiet mantra under her breath for each one as she did so. Only then did she turn out the light in the room so its only illumination came from the candles. Three times she walked around the circle, speaking words that would have sounded strange on her tongue if she hadn’t spent dozens of hours practicing their pronunciation. It wasn’t a language that she knew, but she knew what she was supposed to be saying and that was enough. As she spoke, her voice rose, she could feel the energy gathering in the room, thrumming with anticipation, she was sure of it! When she said the final words, she turned to face the center of the circle, arms outspread, waiting for the inevitable response. Waiting for him to appear.

Seconds ticked by in silence. She let out the breath she’d been holding and waited a few moments longer.

And still, nothing happened. Letting out a frustrated noise, she stalked over to the light and flicked it on. In an instant, the room went from a magical and esoteric place of power back to a teenaged girl’s bedroom with some weird stuff cluttering up the floor.  Scowling, she blew out each candle and set them on top of her dresser before pulling on a t-shirt and then going down the hall to fetch the vacuum. Her mother would kill her if she saw this salt all over the floor. Once she’d cleaned up every stray grain, viciously eaten one of the (non-blooded) twinkies, and taken a rebellious swig of the alcohol even though it burned her throat and made her cough up bits of twinkie, she turned the light back off and went to bed disappointed and not a little bit frustrated. What had gone wrong?

She was sound asleep before her parents returned home and neither heard her mother open the door briefly to check in on her nor her father ask, down the hall, where the rum had gone.

The morning saw her surly and monosyllabic. When finally made it downstairs and her mother wished her a cheerful, “good morning, Maggie,” she only forced an obviously fake smile and grabbed an apple to eat on her way to the door.

“Going to the park. Back in a bit.” She didn’t wait for her mother’s response, already half out the door before she could even react. As the door closed, Maggie’s mother watched it a moment with a resigned sigh. Had she ever been that moody at sixteen?

Maggie trudged her way along the sidewalk toward the little neighborhood park. This early in the morning, it was unlikely any little kids would be out there or…anyone else, really. She ate the apple slowly before negligently tossing the core in a storm drain as she passed. It was a beautiful spring day and Maggie was oblivious to it all. Blue sky, green grass, blooming flowers, birds singing, none of it registered, so lost in thought was she over the previous night’s events. Settling down in one of the swings, she continued to ruminate over what possibly could have gone wrong, what she could do to fix it. She was just in the middle of tentatively handling the idea that this invocation stuff was all a bunch of crock when the rumble of an idling motorcycle engine cut into her thoughts.

Motorcycles weren’t exactly common in their end of suburbia and so, frowning, she looked up to see who on earth it could possibly be. Her breath caught in her throat as she did so. This was no one she’d ever seen around here. He was leaning against the bike, looking for all the world like he didn’t have a care at all. If the indolent smirk curving his lips was any indication. The leather pants he was wearing were so tight they had to be illegal and the black t-shirt that covered his torso was also tight enough she could see all of the definition of his muscles. His hair was long and wild, only marginally tamed by a ponytail holder, and impossibly colored, being that it was palest blonde at the roots and darkened seamlessly into a deep red at the ends. Like flame, she thought, as a wave unreal dizziness seized her. His eyes, she could see even from a dozen feet away, were the green of leaves with sunlight shining through them and she got the vague impression, looking at them, that he was laughing at her.

“Aren’t you going to say hello?”

“What?” she asked dumbly.

The growl of the motorcycle’s engine suddenly cut out as he began stepping deliberately toward her. “Aren’t. You. Going to say. Hello?” he asked, enunciating slowly.

She blinked. He tilted his head. She laughed nervously before letting out a weak, “hi,” and a limp wave of one hand.

He smiled brightly at her, “now we’re getting somewhere, Maggie.”

All of a sudden, she was scrambling backward, the swing hampering her from going too far. “How do you know my name?”

The stranger tsked and rolled his eyes skyward before fixing her again with his gaze. “You called me, dearling. Didn’t you?”

“Called?” Her knees felt like they were suddenly made of fluid and she wobbled where she stood tangled up in the swing, “I didn’t call anyone.”

His expression seemed to suggest she had a lot to learn about telling untruths as he sighed long-sufferingly. “So it wasn’t you last night calling on me in your bedroom in that fetching white cotton panty and bra set? It wasn’t you who left out the twinkies and rum for me?” He paused. “Cruzan, by the way, I approve. Next time though, get the blackstrap rum.”

All she could think was that it had worked! here he was! In front of her! In the flesh! Talking to her. Making fun of her, actually, she was fairly certain. Now that the initial shock was wearing off, worry was setting in. He’d been supposed to appear in the circle! So she’d be relatively safe. Not…not out here where he could do anything he wanted to her. Best to keep him talking. “Oh. Uhm. Y-yes, that was me, I guess.”

In one smooth motion, he pulled her out of the swing and closer to him so all she could seem to see were his twinkling green eyes. “And what, pray tell, prompted you to do that?”

“Well,” she fumbled, “well…you’re Loki.” As if that explained it all.

He laughed, throwing his head back as he did so. “And so I am. But what is it you want from me?”

The words came out of her in almost a whisper, “don’t you know?”

Loki tsked, “I’m a god, pet, not omniscient.”

Something about that statement sounded wrong to her but she didn’t challenge him on it. “Well…I want…” What did she want, now that he was here? She wanted her fantasies to come true. She wanted him to whisk her away on the back of that bike over there. To teach her the ways of the world. To show her the world. To teach her how to be a woman. So to speak. They didn’t say sex in her house. She’d learned about the birds and the bees from health class and whispered giggly conversations in the girls’ bathroom.

He could see it in her eyes. That desperate yearning for something she didn’t even know how to vocalize yet. Whatever she’d been about to add, he cut her off. “Wait, let me guess. You want me to say… just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave. Right?” He looked down at her, expectant.

Mutely, she nodded, cheeks flaming red.

Once more, he laughed and shook his head. “Wrong movie. I’m not exactly David Bowie.” Briefly, he smiled at her, the sort of smile she’d always imagined getting from a boy, from him. “Tell you what, you figure out just what you want, you call me again. But-” mimicking a sleight of hand magician, he made a golden coin appear from behind her ear. One side of the coin was engraved with the Norse rune Maggie knew to be Kenaz and the other side was embossed with a stylized flame sigil. “Hold this and call my name. Much faster.” He pressed the coin in her hand and she accepted it as if it were some sort of holy relic.

Which…well, she supposed it was, in a way.

“Thank you,” she stammered.

“Don’t use it to show off. That’s just annoying,” he warned.

Fervently, Maggie shook her head, “oh no, I wouldn’t ever.” She’d do anything he asked to keep his favor, she was sure of it.

He smiled again and kissed her cheek, “go home, dearling, I’ll be seeing you again soon enough.”

She beamed back at him, clutching the coin to her breast as she started away. She only got a few steps before she turned back to him. “That’s it?”

Loki frowned at her, “what were you expecting? Flashing lights? Smoke? A voice from the heavens?”

“No,” she protested, moving back toward him again, “I just mean…you show up, introduce yourself, and tell me to go home?”

“And give you a gift,” he points out.

Maggie nods, “that, too. But still!”

“Well,” he says, in a reasonable tone of voice, “I can’t exactly do anything until you ask it of me, now can I?”

“Can’t you?” she asked in what she saw as an arch tone, “I thought you could do anything you wanted.”

There’s a flash in his eyes. Something dark and full of madness she doesn’t quite comprehend, doesn’t get more than a glimpse of and it frightens her right out of any thoughts of playing the coquette. He smiles, “let us say that I am being a gentleman today then, shall we?”

She nodded, swallowing, telling herself she’s imagining things. He’s hers after all, she called him up. He can’t do anything she doesn’t want him to. Emboldened once more by that thought, she moves closer to him. “That’s nice of you.”

Once more, his lips were curved in that lazy smirk. “I thought so.”

Bravely, she stood on her tiptoes and brushed her lips over his. “Thank you.”

He seemed surprised by her kiss, but still he smiled, “you’re welcome.” He waited a beat before adding, “now go home before you have to make up a story to your mother about what you’ve been doing all this time.”

That obviously wasn’t what she’d expected to hear and her face fell. After a moment or three she managed to put on an expression that seemed to suggest she didn’t care about his perceived rejection but the rest of her body language suggested otherwise. For the second time that day, she forced up a fake smile,” alright. I’ll…see you later.”

He nodded in the affirmative. “You will.” It sounded like a promise.

Finally, she turned for good and walked toward her home, and even if there was disappointment about how he’d reacted to her still…she’d called a god. She’d called Loki! Her dreams really were coming true!

Back beside the motorcycle, Loki silently watched the girl walk away. Such a child. A scrawny, ungrateful, no-nothing child. He could, at least, fix part of that and Nature would fix the rest. Smiling to himself, he got back astride the bike and started the engine with a roar. It would be interesting to see just how grateful she’d be by the time he was finished with her. She was certainly on the verge of some interesting times, indeed. He rode away without a backward glance, wagering with himself just how impatient she’d be to try out the coin he’d given her. His money said she’d be using it within five minutes of locking herself in her room.

The nice thing about betting with yourself was you couldn’t lose.

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