Forced Magic
Authors: Jerod Lollar
Forced Magic
By
Jerod Lollar
Forced magic
Copyright 2013 jerod lollar
Publisher: jerod lollar
Published: January 30, 2013
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Cover Design by Lucas Berlin.
DEDICATION
I dedicate this book to all those who helped.
To Peggy Hertel for editing and telling me that it was great! Troy and Djuana
Berlin for their encouragement, love and all around support, to Bob and Sherry
for just putting up with me .And to Lucas for the awesome cover.
I would also like to dedicate this book to all
who spent their days in a fantasy world of their own. Hope you enjoy reading
this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Prologue
Do you believe in Magic? I’m not talking about
what you see on TV or in the movies. I’ve seen them all. Trust me, I am a big
fan of the kid with a scar on his forehead. I’m talking about a driving
presence that can make extraordinary things happen in your life.
Any true fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy
will tell you how they want to believe the stories can be true. H.G. Wells
wrote so many tales of Science Fiction that ended up in some way coming true.
Why not Fantasy? There has always been a hint of true history attached to all
of the mythological creatures and stories. If you were to look online into the
origins of a lot of the stories, you might be surprised at the grains of truth
that are attached to them. Who is to say that they don’t exist? I know for a
fact that they do.
My mom used to tell me that I had my head in
the clouds, my feet on the ground, and my heart in my comic books. She was
right. But I never let it overwhelm me. I wanted to believe it was real, but I
always knew it wasn’t. I guess you could call me a practical Fantasy geek.
My name is Jack, Jack Dewitte. The best way to
describe me is average, brown hair, brown eyes, and average height. Well,
that’s how I would describe myself. Others would describe me as odd, I guess.
One of those people would be my older brother
Paul. He always took care of me. He was an anchor in my life.
Let me tell you a little secret. This story is
being written by magic. Right now it is explaining, in my own words, what is
happening to me. It may seem as if I am telling a tale as a survivor, but I’m
not. I have no idea if I am going to make it through this. There are times that
I feel that all of what I am now a part of is not real. That I have lost my
mind and will wake up in a strait-jacket somewhere awaiting shock treatments. I
guess in the end I’ll let you decide if I’m crazy or not, unless, this story is
part of the delusion. What a paradox.
One more thing before I begin my story, a kind
of warning. This isn’t a typical tale of fantasy. It goes down dark paths and,
much like the true fairy tales written long ago, my story can get pretty horrific.
I'll let you decide for yourselves. Just remember this one thing; Magic is
real.
Chapter 1
A little over a year ago I was hit by a
truck. I was crossing a street on my way to work when this jerk, who was in a
hurry, tried to beat a light and hit me. My hip was broken. Nothing magical
happened to me at that time. I remember lying in the street and seeing people
bending over me looking at me with concern on their faces. I was rushed to the
hospital and into surgery.
I was lucky enough not to have to have an
artificial hip, just three pins holding my hip together and some pain. After a
year of physical therapy, my body was healed to the point that I could go on
with my life. I was lucky, but I didn’t feel like it at the time. It was the
last straw for me.
Physical therapy may have helped my body, but
the damage to my spirit was my biggest problem. Basically my life sucked. I
didn’t really want to do anything. I was just going through the motions. I was
living with my brother during this time and I couldn’t help but feel like I was
a burden to him. I knew I had to get out of there and be on my own again, but
after a year of not working, I lacked the confidence to go back to what I was
doing before the accident. The accident seemed to take more away from me than
the use of my hip. It wasn’t like I had the best job in the world before. Even
though I worked in a restaurant as a waiter, it was hard for me to relate to
people in general. I have always been a kind of misfit. I’ve never really fit
in.
Going for long walks daily was part of my
physical therapy. Starting at first with a walker, then graduating to a cane,
and finally making my way without artificial help, I was getting better every
day. I still had stiffness in my leg and a slight limp on my left side, but I
was getting around fairly well. The walks got me out of the house and gave me
time to think. During that time many of my thoughts turned to a nagging
question I would pose to myself,
“What Now?”
I was on my daily walk when my life changed.
It was warm when I left the house that morning. I took the same route I always
take. I had change in my pocket for a cup of coffee and I could hear it
jingling against the rock I had found a few days before. I’m always picking up
interesting rocks, and keeping them as good luck charms. This one looked cool.
It was black with silver speckles. Eventually my rocks would end up on my
dresser, forgotten. I would find another one to take its place. This kind of
quirky behavior drove my brother nuts. He would walk into my room and see the
pile of rocks on my dresser, shaking his head with a little frown on his lips.
I really think my brother was disappointed in me. That bothered me.
I could feel the slight stiffness in my leg as
I started my walk that day, the same feeling I always felt when I started my
day. The warm weather would help ease that pain.
Tucson is a unique place to live in. You can
go to any place in the city and it will give you a different view at which to
look. All you have to do is stand in one spot and look around and you could
swear you are in a different city. You can admire the stark beauty of the
desert and then look up and enjoy the mountains that surround the city.
From that neighborhood you could look to the
right and see nothing but a long stretch of desert. Kind of desolate, not much
to see, unless you were lucky enough to see the beautiful flowers that bloom on
the cacti. To the left you can find neighborhoods of desert colored houses all
in neat rows. This is was what I would see every day as I took my walk. It was
when I looked over at the desert across the street from my usual walking path
that I saw her.
She was the most beautiful woman I had ever
seen. Long blonde hair reached down past her waist. She had a perfect nose and
mouth, the latter turned down in a small frown. She was wearing a white cotton
summer dress that went down to her knees. Her eyes were a piercing blue. Even
from the distance I could see them. She stared intensely at me.
It was love at first sight. Everything about
her was perfect, from the top of her head to her slender bare feet.
She was floating, swaying gently side to side
in the air. FLOATING! I thought I was losing my mind.
She reached out to me and moved a little
toward the road, and that is when I saw how she was staying in the air. She had
wings. She was flying. There was no doubt in my mind that what I was seeing was
in fact a
Fey, a beautiful fairy, an image of grace and beauty, right
out of my fantasies. I am sure I had imagined her before. I had to be imagining
her right at that moment.
“Is she real?”
I thought to myself.
“Am I
just imagining her?”
No, she was better than anything I ever imagined. She
was perfect.
She reached out to me again and moved toward
me. I was mesmerized by her beauty. I took a step into the street toward her.
She was trying to tell me something. She was getting ready to speak.
She pointed at my leg and said something. I
couldn’t hear her. The horn of the blue truck heading straight for me was too
loud. I had stepped out into the middle of the street like I had been in a
trance.
A blue Dodge pickup had come running down the
street. Its brakes squealed and it swerved to keep from hitting me. I was standing
in the middle of the street. The driver never stopped pounding the horn as it
swerved to dodge me.
I saw a strange light. She led me into the
street and disappeared. And I couldn’t help but ask, “Why did she do that?”
As the truck screamed past me I felt air in my
face, a sharp pain in my hip as the driver blasted the horn. A phantom pain as
the memory of the accident that caused me to break it continued to flash in my
mind.
As the truck continued down the road, I heard
the driver screaming at me. That broke the spell and I backpedaled toward the
curb, keeping my eyes on the pickup as it continued to make its way down the
street. I hit the curb with the back of my heels and fell backwards, sitting on
my butt hard, knocking the wind out of me, and still watching the truck
disappear down the street.
Quickly turning my head, I looked across the
street to the spot where my fairy had been. There was no sign of her. Did I
imagine her? If she was real then she just tried to kill me.
Even as the thought formed in my mind, I began
to feel foolish. Fairies do not exist. I let out a strange coughing laugh at
this thought, as I sat there staring across the street at the spot she had
stood. She seemed so real.
I sat there thinking over and over these same
thoughts trying to piece it all together. None of it was making any sense to
me. The only logical explanation was that I was losing my mind. This thought
scared me but it seemed to be the right conclusion. When you see a fairy and
you are convinced she is trying to kill you, you have lost it. The panic that
started to swell in my chest felt like someone had hit me with a baseball bat.
What a truly unique fear it is, when you
convince yourself that you are losing your mind. You search your thoughts for
something normal to latch on to. Something that would snap you back to reality
and wake you up.
I did the most normal thing I could do, I
started walking down the sidewalk again. I started feeling better. Another
nervous coughing laugh.
“This was nothing more than an over active
imagination.”
I said to myself. With the massive collection of Fantasy and
Science Fiction novels and DVD's spread across the room, I am definitely a fan.
Add to that the boxes of comic books and graphic novels and you might even
consider thinking I’m a fanatic. Years and years of reading those incredible
stories have taken its toll a little. My fairy is nothing more than a wake-up
call to get rid of it all. I made a vow that I would pack it all away when I
got home.
I told myself that I was ok.
”I didn’t see
a fairy,"
I said to myself.
“It must have been some kind of
reflection, from a car window, that I had seen out of the corner of my eye, and
my imagination just took over for a second.”
I couldn’t help but glance across the street
every few steps as I continued my walk.
“Is she back?"
I would ask
myself.
“No, she’s not real. She was too beautiful to be real. What a
face."
Then it hit me like a ton of bricks.
“That face, that
beautiful perfect fairy face.”
I had seen it before. I was sure of it. This
thought stopped me in my tracks so suddenly that I almost fell over. I stumbled
and my feet did a little awkward dance as I struggled to keep my balance. I
somehow managed to keep from falling on my face as the words sunk in. I had
seen that fairy before. Her face now familiar in my mind’s eye, was so clear,
that when I closed my eyes it was there like a photograph. A familiar face of
someone I had seen before today. ”But where have I seen her before?” I asked
myself out loud. This thought that I had seen her face before today became very
important to me. I knew that if I could remember where I had seen her before,
I would understand why I had imagined her. I had stopped walking and had been
standing there awkwardly as a car slowly stopped next to me. The window rolled
down and a friendly voice asked ”Are you ok?”
I jumped at the sound of that voice, realizing
just how silly I must look. There was a little old lady sitting behind the
wheel of a big Cadillac.
“Um, no, I’m fine. I just remembered
something.”
I said in a shaky voice.
“It must be very important,” she said. Giving
her a weak smile, I mumbled “Just one of those days.”
She smiled at
me, waved her hand a little and slowly pulled away. It was starting to get hot
and I needed a place to sit down and try to piece this all together.
I finally made it to the store. Walking in, I
felt the air conditioner hitting me with a gust of cool air that gave me an
idea of just how hot I was. I walked up to the little coffee counter that was
at the front of the store, trying to decide if I was too hot for my usual cup
of coffee or not. Giving in to the idea of holding on to something normal, I
went ahead and got my usual and sat down at a table close to the door. I kept
seeing that fairy's face in my mind as I sat at the small table trying to piece
it all together. I knew I could figure out where I had seen that face before.
As I sat there staring at my coffee, I heard a
loud cough. I glanced up to see a man with a shopping cart full of groceries
glaring at me. He had a scowl on his face and was griping the handle of his
shopping cart so tightly his knuckles were turning white. He was mad, and the
way he was glaring at me, I got the idea he was mad at me. I looked at him,
trying
to figure out exactly what I could possibly have done to him. I shrugged my
shoulders and mouthed the word “What?”
He pointed at me and mumbled something. I
couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I knew that it wasn’t nice. Then it hit
me who he was. He was the driver of that truck I had walked out in front of.
The look of realization on my face must have been very apparent. The little old
man wagged his head in an exaggerated 'yes' and said, loud enough for me to
hear the word, "Nut" as he wheeled his rickety shopping cart out the
door.
My face felt hot with embarrassment as I
looked down at my coffee. I sat there wishing I could have started this day all
over again. If I knew how it was going to start, I would have stayed in bed. A
bead of sweat fell on the table next to my cup as I let my mind wonder back to
the question of the fairy and where I had seen her face before. Why could I not
convince myself that it was all just my imagination? Why did I see her again
today of all days? And why was I so hot?
My entire body was covered in sweat. I was
breathing heavily. My hands, dripping with perspiration
,
started turning
red. They started to shake and a tremor moved down my body. I started to spasm
and I knocked my coffee off the table and across the floor. I grabbed the
corner of the table, desperately trying to keep my body from shaking. The heat
coming off of my body continued to rise. I wanted to call out for help but I
was unable to form the words. Through all of this I started to feel a focal
point for the heat. The heat was coming from my right leg, the same leg that
the fairy had pointed to. I reached for my leg, trying to find the source, and
felt a bump where my pocket was. I reached into my pocket and let out a yell as
my hand touched the bump. It was my lucky rock. It had attached itself to my
leg. I tried to pull it free as a white-hot pain shot up my body.
It felt like an electric shock. My body shook
so hard that I tore the top of the table off of its base. People in the store,
seeing I was in some sort of trouble, started to walk toward me. I sat there
shaking uncontrollably. I could hear voices asking me If I was ok or if I
needed help. There were several people on their cell phones talking to 911.
Others were taking pictures and videos of me with their camera phones to show
to friends the nut who had obviously lost it. The burning pain continued to
climb and my right leg started to throb. I wanted this to end! I wanted help. I
had no control over my body. I stood up knocking my chair over. I was still
clutching the table. Pain shot through my body and another spasm shook me
violently. In my head I saw the fairy pointing to the leg that now had the rock
attached to it