Sarah bound her hands in tape and went to it with a passion. The punching
bag rocked back and forth, occasionally interrupting her rhythm, but more
often than not, she kept the punches and their force in check.
She grunted softly with each blow. Around her, the other students were set up doing similar exercises, practicing punches, blocks, and kicks. Master King walked among the rows of students, stopping every so often to give criticism or praise. When he came by, Sarah was careful to mind her technique.
She passed, and Master King continued his circuit in silence. She smiled slightly. She'd been coming to this class for almost two years now, and she was pleased that her technique was finally beginning to come up to par.
This twice-weekly ritual had begun out of a sense of paranoia. All her life, Sarah had been inclined to watch her back with every step. But at nineteen, when she'd gone off to college, the feeling that she was being stalked worsened. A friend suggested Master King to her, and she'd been here ever since.
The feel of her own muscles beneath her skin gave her confidence. The feeling was still there, the feeling that someone was always watching her, but at least now she was prepared to kick their butt if they ever confronted her.
Master King wrapped up the session with a brief period of meditation and reflection, and then Sarah went to the bathroom to change back into street clothes. Her ghee felt far too formal for ordinary life.
She walked to her car and drove home—the dorms—and promptly fell asleep. She didn't even notice the light left on by her studying roommate.
***
Sarah started to run across campus as she realized that she was already late for her Psych class. Halfway there, however, she dropped her two textbooks. "Damn it!" she cried. To top it off, the skies were rumbling ominously, and she hadn't seen the sun since yesterday. Rain was imminent, and it would be just her luck to be caught in it.
She knelt to grab her books and dashed under cover just as the downpour began. "Shit," she cursed. She looked at her watch. 1:34. She was officially late.
As she looked out at the falling raindrops, she considered not going at all. She checked her watch again, and decided. Instead of class, she headed for the school library.
The first time she'd seen the awesome building from the inside, she'd had to blink to be sure it was real. The towering architecture was nothing compared to the rows and rows of books. Only a handful of students was scattered around the tables when Sarah arrived today, and she was grateful for the peace.
Dropping her satchel on a vacated table, she slumped into a chair. Her hand immediately reached for her small novel, which she usually kept in her bag. When questing fingers found nothing, she sighed in frustration. She must have left it back in her room when she left that morning.
Deciding to be optimistic, she reached for one of the abandoned books on the table. The previous occupant had left it behind, and Sarah was too lazy to get up to get her own book. She cracked it open, but not before raising an eyebrow at the title. "Tabula Rasa: Spells of Remembering and Forgetting". Spells, huh? She supposed the book would be full of satanic rituals meant to hex other people's memories.
But the introduction adamantly disproved her notion. The author stated, in no uncertain terms, that Wicca and witchcraft was most certainly not of the devil, nor related to Christianity in any way. In fact, it was a religion of the earth, and the author claimed that the spells within were only meant to aid certain natural processes already contained in a person.
Intrigued, Sarah kept reading. She flipped to a chapter entitled 'Remembering Lost Dreams'. Something niggled at the back of her mind, but she ignored it and read on.
"I see you found my book." A shadow fell into her light and obscured the pages. Sarah looked up.
A blonde girl was standing there, one hand casually on her hip, smiling tolerantly. "What?" Sarah asked, blinking. What time was it? How long had she been reading?
"My book. It looks like you're enjoying it. You a Witch yourself?" Again, Sarah blinked owlishly and shook her head.
"Oh. Alright then. I was just going to grab it and go, but you look like you're enjoying it too much for me to take it from you. I'll just grab a copy from a friend or something. Good luck with those spells, by the way. I'm told they're particularly potent, but then, that's no surprise coming from that author."
Sarah nodded dumbly. She had to do a mental check to make sure her mouth wasn't hanging open. The girl in front of her was not particularly beautiful, nor did she have any kind of remarkable features. She was slightly on the heavy side, though Sarah would call her voluptuous instead of fat. She wore a blue long-sleeved shirt and jeans. And yet, somehow, through all this normalcy, Sarah detected something otherworldly about this girl. Maybe it was the way she carried herself, maybe the way she spoke so knowledgeably, or maybe it was the fact that she herself was obviously a Witch. Sarah didn't know. But she finally managed to get a word in edgewise.
"I-I'm Sarah." She smiled self-deprecatingly, and held out her hand. The other girl smiled and took it. She had a good, firm grip, and her hand was warm.
"Name's Katie. Listen, if you ever want to learn anything serious about the craft, you ought to come to one of our groups. Daughters of the Earth, you know? We meet Wednesdays at the cafe on fourth street. Seven o' clock, every week. You should come some time."
Sarah smiled, gulped, and nodded. Seeming to take this as an approval, Katie gave her one last smile and left, presumably to find herself another copy of the book.
You should have given her yours, you dumbass, Sarah's internal voice piped up. It's hers, anyway, and you were just incredibly rude to possibly the first person to talk to you all day. No wonder you have such a crappy social life.
Sarah blinked and looked up at the clock. It was 3:30. She'd been here for almost two hours! Fortunately, she didn't have any other classes until four, but she still packed up her stuff and headed for her next class. With the way her sense of time was turning out today, she'd better be on the safe side. Her attendance record was already suffering from her inattention. No need to make it worse.
***
Wednesday rolled around, and Sarah had completely forgotten about the freaky Wicca girl. She still had the book, though, and it was currently in residence on her bedside table. It was a fascinating read, and though she didn't intend on trying any of the things it suggested, the science of it was still amazing. She'd expected magick to be more about turning people into frogs, not paying homage to the cycle of life and the importance of the God and Goddess.
She really, honestly hadn't intended to go to the meeting. But she happened to be taking a stroll along fourth street at six-thirty, and she decided to step in for a cup of coffee. Decaf, of course. Anyway, she spotted a few students milling around a table in the corner, and she remembered suddenly what Katie had told her. But she shook her head in denial. The last thing she needed was to get mixed up in some kind of cult. That would certainly be the end of her acting career, sad as it was.
But then, she saw Katie. The girl walked in alone, and went up to the counter to order. Sarah watched her like a hawk over the rim of her coffee cup. She still could not pinpoint exactly what it was about the girl that made her shiver. She didn't even know if it was in pleasure or fear.
Katie noticed her almost immediately. Sarah blushed slightly and tried to hide behind her coffee. It didn't work. Katie came over to her table and stood next to her.
"So, you decided to come after all. I just know you'll enjoy yourself; we're having a discussion about dreams tonight. Here, come with me. We can sit together."
Meekly, Sarah grabbed her stuff, took a sip of coffee for courage, and followed Katie to the circular table where about seven students were set up. All but two of them were female. The two guys were sitting together, but not at all uncomfortable in the primarily female group. One was a brunette, the other a blonde. Both wore their hair shoulder length long, and both were dressed primarily in black.
Sarah sat uncomfortably, crossing and uncrossing her legs, and shifting her balance back and forth. Katie sat down in a chair next to her, and happily sipped her coffee.
Another glance at the clock, and the meeting was about to begin. A brunette was the last to take her seat, and she was clearly the leader of the group, though she was not visibly different from anyone else.
She took a folder from her bag, and began to go over a checklist. Most of the questions she asked were concerning ideas, special events, and some holiday called Beltane. Sarah tuned it out for the most part, wondering why in all hells she'd agreed to this.
But then the meeting proper started, and things started to change. Rebeckah, the leader, asked them to all meditate for a brief period, which Sarah was already pretty adept at. And then, when they opened their eyes, she went around the circle and asked them to describe a dream that had been bothering them, or seemed significant. Again, Sarah tuned out all of the discussion. Until it was her turn.
"Um, hi. I'm Sarah, and Katie here brought me. Um...I don't really know a dream I've had..." Sarah trailed off. She sounded dumb and childish to her own ears. She took a deep breath and tried to collect all her stray thoughts. And then she had a sudden sense of deja vu. It was a small thing, just a crystal ball that she'd remembered. But somehow, it was very, very important.
"I had a dream about a crystal ball. And...there was a man holding it. He was like a magician or something, and he dressed so strangely. I remember he was playing with the crystal ball, changing it into different things. He wanted...he wanted to take my little brother away. He said he was the Goblin King. And..." Sarah bowed her head, the threads of the dream lost.
Taking the hint, Rebeckah moved on to the next person. Sarah sat still through the rest of the meeting, too intrigued to be ashamed. What...where had that come from? Crystal ball...She was sure that if she hadn't said anything, the pictures would be gone from her head already, like dreams often do. But she had said something, and now she struggled to recollect the man in her dreams.
He was blonde, she recalled. And he had the most striking eyes...She almost didn't want to think to closely about him. He seemed like a wisp of smoke, one that would dissipate at the slightest disturbance. At the same time, he radiated an aura of danger. Like a deadly snake. He smiled at her in her head, and bared fangs like a vampire.
And then, like a soap bubble, he popped into nothing.
***
When Sarah woke the next morning, traces of a dream still lingered like fog around her head. He had been there again, haunting her dreams. It seemed that she couldn't get rid of him, now that she'd found him.
Did she really want to? The feelings around him made her feel like he'd been a real person. A real, flesh-and-blood man, who'd played games with her and made her feelings into toys. More disturbing was that she was almost certain that it was partially her fault. He'd done something bad, but only because she asked him to. And if he'd played games, they were games she'd invited him to play.
She went to the sink and washed her face. When she looked into the mirror, she saw a disheveled, disturbed girl. Something was wrong with her. Maybe she was getting sick. But that couldn't be; she almost never got sick. So maybe there was something else. She struggled dimly to remember what had happened the night before. All she remembered was coffee and...him.
She shook her head and splashed more cold water on her face. Someone had probably slipped something in her coffee. Strange, but it would serve her right for going to a meeting full of perfect strangers. How could she have been so stupid?
She went back to her bed and laid back down. After failing to count the number of bumps on her ceiling, she realized that maybe she hadn't gotten enough sleep.
She rolled over, and, realizing that class was a lost cause today, went back to sleep.
Her dreams tumbled through her head like dancers. Crystal balls and soap bubbles crowded around her head. A room full of staircases in all dimensions. A stinking, sucking bog that threatened to swallow her whole. And that man. Jareth. That was his name. His strange, mismatched eyes stared out at her from beneath styled blonde hair. He was saying something to her, with those eyes, but she couldn't read it. They looked like crystal balls to her.
She woke, gasping. She quickly sat up in bed, and her hand went to her head. She traced the raised scar along the side of her skull. The one she'd gotten in an accident long ago. She didn't remember anything about it, but then, she'd had a concussion. Of course she didn't remember.
There was a heavy, sticky substance between her legs. Blood. Her period, of course.
But when she held her red coated fingers up, the blood was from something else. She gasped again, and felt like her heart would stop. Of course. She knew Jareth. She knew who he was.
He was the man who'd raped her.
She grunted softly with each blow. Around her, the other students were set up doing similar exercises, practicing punches, blocks, and kicks. Master King walked among the rows of students, stopping every so often to give criticism or praise. When he came by, Sarah was careful to mind her technique.
She passed, and Master King continued his circuit in silence. She smiled slightly. She'd been coming to this class for almost two years now, and she was pleased that her technique was finally beginning to come up to par.
This twice-weekly ritual had begun out of a sense of paranoia. All her life, Sarah had been inclined to watch her back with every step. But at nineteen, when she'd gone off to college, the feeling that she was being stalked worsened. A friend suggested Master King to her, and she'd been here ever since.
The feel of her own muscles beneath her skin gave her confidence. The feeling was still there, the feeling that someone was always watching her, but at least now she was prepared to kick their butt if they ever confronted her.
Master King wrapped up the session with a brief period of meditation and reflection, and then Sarah went to the bathroom to change back into street clothes. Her ghee felt far too formal for ordinary life.
She walked to her car and drove home—the dorms—and promptly fell asleep. She didn't even notice the light left on by her studying roommate.
***
Sarah started to run across campus as she realized that she was already late for her Psych class. Halfway there, however, she dropped her two textbooks. "Damn it!" she cried. To top it off, the skies were rumbling ominously, and she hadn't seen the sun since yesterday. Rain was imminent, and it would be just her luck to be caught in it.
She knelt to grab her books and dashed under cover just as the downpour began. "Shit," she cursed. She looked at her watch. 1:34. She was officially late.
As she looked out at the falling raindrops, she considered not going at all. She checked her watch again, and decided. Instead of class, she headed for the school library.
The first time she'd seen the awesome building from the inside, she'd had to blink to be sure it was real. The towering architecture was nothing compared to the rows and rows of books. Only a handful of students was scattered around the tables when Sarah arrived today, and she was grateful for the peace.
Dropping her satchel on a vacated table, she slumped into a chair. Her hand immediately reached for her small novel, which she usually kept in her bag. When questing fingers found nothing, she sighed in frustration. She must have left it back in her room when she left that morning.
Deciding to be optimistic, she reached for one of the abandoned books on the table. The previous occupant had left it behind, and Sarah was too lazy to get up to get her own book. She cracked it open, but not before raising an eyebrow at the title. "Tabula Rasa: Spells of Remembering and Forgetting". Spells, huh? She supposed the book would be full of satanic rituals meant to hex other people's memories.
But the introduction adamantly disproved her notion. The author stated, in no uncertain terms, that Wicca and witchcraft was most certainly not of the devil, nor related to Christianity in any way. In fact, it was a religion of the earth, and the author claimed that the spells within were only meant to aid certain natural processes already contained in a person.
Intrigued, Sarah kept reading. She flipped to a chapter entitled 'Remembering Lost Dreams'. Something niggled at the back of her mind, but she ignored it and read on.
"I see you found my book." A shadow fell into her light and obscured the pages. Sarah looked up.
A blonde girl was standing there, one hand casually on her hip, smiling tolerantly. "What?" Sarah asked, blinking. What time was it? How long had she been reading?
"My book. It looks like you're enjoying it. You a Witch yourself?" Again, Sarah blinked owlishly and shook her head.
"Oh. Alright then. I was just going to grab it and go, but you look like you're enjoying it too much for me to take it from you. I'll just grab a copy from a friend or something. Good luck with those spells, by the way. I'm told they're particularly potent, but then, that's no surprise coming from that author."
Sarah nodded dumbly. She had to do a mental check to make sure her mouth wasn't hanging open. The girl in front of her was not particularly beautiful, nor did she have any kind of remarkable features. She was slightly on the heavy side, though Sarah would call her voluptuous instead of fat. She wore a blue long-sleeved shirt and jeans. And yet, somehow, through all this normalcy, Sarah detected something otherworldly about this girl. Maybe it was the way she carried herself, maybe the way she spoke so knowledgeably, or maybe it was the fact that she herself was obviously a Witch. Sarah didn't know. But she finally managed to get a word in edgewise.
"I-I'm Sarah." She smiled self-deprecatingly, and held out her hand. The other girl smiled and took it. She had a good, firm grip, and her hand was warm.
"Name's Katie. Listen, if you ever want to learn anything serious about the craft, you ought to come to one of our groups. Daughters of the Earth, you know? We meet Wednesdays at the cafe on fourth street. Seven o' clock, every week. You should come some time."
Sarah smiled, gulped, and nodded. Seeming to take this as an approval, Katie gave her one last smile and left, presumably to find herself another copy of the book.
You should have given her yours, you dumbass, Sarah's internal voice piped up. It's hers, anyway, and you were just incredibly rude to possibly the first person to talk to you all day. No wonder you have such a crappy social life.
Sarah blinked and looked up at the clock. It was 3:30. She'd been here for almost two hours! Fortunately, she didn't have any other classes until four, but she still packed up her stuff and headed for her next class. With the way her sense of time was turning out today, she'd better be on the safe side. Her attendance record was already suffering from her inattention. No need to make it worse.
***
Wednesday rolled around, and Sarah had completely forgotten about the freaky Wicca girl. She still had the book, though, and it was currently in residence on her bedside table. It was a fascinating read, and though she didn't intend on trying any of the things it suggested, the science of it was still amazing. She'd expected magick to be more about turning people into frogs, not paying homage to the cycle of life and the importance of the God and Goddess.
She really, honestly hadn't intended to go to the meeting. But she happened to be taking a stroll along fourth street at six-thirty, and she decided to step in for a cup of coffee. Decaf, of course. Anyway, she spotted a few students milling around a table in the corner, and she remembered suddenly what Katie had told her. But she shook her head in denial. The last thing she needed was to get mixed up in some kind of cult. That would certainly be the end of her acting career, sad as it was.
But then, she saw Katie. The girl walked in alone, and went up to the counter to order. Sarah watched her like a hawk over the rim of her coffee cup. She still could not pinpoint exactly what it was about the girl that made her shiver. She didn't even know if it was in pleasure or fear.
Katie noticed her almost immediately. Sarah blushed slightly and tried to hide behind her coffee. It didn't work. Katie came over to her table and stood next to her.
"So, you decided to come after all. I just know you'll enjoy yourself; we're having a discussion about dreams tonight. Here, come with me. We can sit together."
Meekly, Sarah grabbed her stuff, took a sip of coffee for courage, and followed Katie to the circular table where about seven students were set up. All but two of them were female. The two guys were sitting together, but not at all uncomfortable in the primarily female group. One was a brunette, the other a blonde. Both wore their hair shoulder length long, and both were dressed primarily in black.
Sarah sat uncomfortably, crossing and uncrossing her legs, and shifting her balance back and forth. Katie sat down in a chair next to her, and happily sipped her coffee.
Another glance at the clock, and the meeting was about to begin. A brunette was the last to take her seat, and she was clearly the leader of the group, though she was not visibly different from anyone else.
She took a folder from her bag, and began to go over a checklist. Most of the questions she asked were concerning ideas, special events, and some holiday called Beltane. Sarah tuned it out for the most part, wondering why in all hells she'd agreed to this.
But then the meeting proper started, and things started to change. Rebeckah, the leader, asked them to all meditate for a brief period, which Sarah was already pretty adept at. And then, when they opened their eyes, she went around the circle and asked them to describe a dream that had been bothering them, or seemed significant. Again, Sarah tuned out all of the discussion. Until it was her turn.
"Um, hi. I'm Sarah, and Katie here brought me. Um...I don't really know a dream I've had..." Sarah trailed off. She sounded dumb and childish to her own ears. She took a deep breath and tried to collect all her stray thoughts. And then she had a sudden sense of deja vu. It was a small thing, just a crystal ball that she'd remembered. But somehow, it was very, very important.
"I had a dream about a crystal ball. And...there was a man holding it. He was like a magician or something, and he dressed so strangely. I remember he was playing with the crystal ball, changing it into different things. He wanted...he wanted to take my little brother away. He said he was the Goblin King. And..." Sarah bowed her head, the threads of the dream lost.
Taking the hint, Rebeckah moved on to the next person. Sarah sat still through the rest of the meeting, too intrigued to be ashamed. What...where had that come from? Crystal ball...She was sure that if she hadn't said anything, the pictures would be gone from her head already, like dreams often do. But she had said something, and now she struggled to recollect the man in her dreams.
He was blonde, she recalled. And he had the most striking eyes...She almost didn't want to think to closely about him. He seemed like a wisp of smoke, one that would dissipate at the slightest disturbance. At the same time, he radiated an aura of danger. Like a deadly snake. He smiled at her in her head, and bared fangs like a vampire.
And then, like a soap bubble, he popped into nothing.
***
When Sarah woke the next morning, traces of a dream still lingered like fog around her head. He had been there again, haunting her dreams. It seemed that she couldn't get rid of him, now that she'd found him.
Did she really want to? The feelings around him made her feel like he'd been a real person. A real, flesh-and-blood man, who'd played games with her and made her feelings into toys. More disturbing was that she was almost certain that it was partially her fault. He'd done something bad, but only because she asked him to. And if he'd played games, they were games she'd invited him to play.
She went to the sink and washed her face. When she looked into the mirror, she saw a disheveled, disturbed girl. Something was wrong with her. Maybe she was getting sick. But that couldn't be; she almost never got sick. So maybe there was something else. She struggled dimly to remember what had happened the night before. All she remembered was coffee and...him.
She shook her head and splashed more cold water on her face. Someone had probably slipped something in her coffee. Strange, but it would serve her right for going to a meeting full of perfect strangers. How could she have been so stupid?
She went back to her bed and laid back down. After failing to count the number of bumps on her ceiling, she realized that maybe she hadn't gotten enough sleep.
She rolled over, and, realizing that class was a lost cause today, went back to sleep.
Her dreams tumbled through her head like dancers. Crystal balls and soap bubbles crowded around her head. A room full of staircases in all dimensions. A stinking, sucking bog that threatened to swallow her whole. And that man. Jareth. That was his name. His strange, mismatched eyes stared out at her from beneath styled blonde hair. He was saying something to her, with those eyes, but she couldn't read it. They looked like crystal balls to her.
She woke, gasping. She quickly sat up in bed, and her hand went to her head. She traced the raised scar along the side of her skull. The one she'd gotten in an accident long ago. She didn't remember anything about it, but then, she'd had a concussion. Of course she didn't remember.
There was a heavy, sticky substance between her legs. Blood. Her period, of course.
But when she held her red coated fingers up, the blood was from something else. She gasped again, and felt like her heart would stop. Of course. She knew Jareth. She knew who he was.
He was the man who'd raped her.