The Thing about Invocations
Jul. 12th, 2011 01:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonMidnight, a West Side loft off Tango Boulevard.
Veronica, with the ‘r’ purred like the revving of an engine, steps barefooted across the hardwood floors littered with questionably tasteful black and white nude photographs folded into a menagerie of origami animals. As she steps towards the photographer, she slips her thumbs under the straps of her dress, tugs them over the shoulder and lets it slip off her stride. Naked, she crouches down on all fours and snatches a folded swan by a provocatively decorated wing between her teeth. The camera whirrs, clicks and fires. She crawls towards the photographer slowly, muttering the incantation beneath her breath.
The photographer doesn’t move.
He’s crucified to the white stucco wall of his studio, with the snapped off legs of his tripod pinned through both palms and one spiked through overlapped ankles. A very expensive digital camera sits in the hollow of where the photographer’s face had been caved in.
Despite this, the zoom lens telescopes and illuminates Veronica’s advance with a bombardment of flash strobes. When she reaches the photographer, she slithers up and rises off her knees in an impossible fluid motion. The camera ceases fire. She glances into the lens and catches her reflection.
With a grin that marks the line where seduction ends and dementia begins, she throws back her head, spits up the glossy gray swan and snatches it back out of the air with a swallow.
Veronica chews away at the swan, never taking her eyes off her funhouse reflection, swallows…
… and spits forth a word in the language of flames.
From between her lips an incendiary butterfly flutters free from the mangled paper shell of the swan. It circles around the cameras lens precisely three and a ½ times before landing on its center. The camera whirrs, extends, retreats, and fires. The shot extinguishes the fiery butterfly in a puff of cold lightning.
Only a violet luminescent film remains, caked and glittering across the surface of the lens.
Veronica stands up, takes the photographer by the cheeks, straightens his head so the camera’s eye faces her and he leans in and kisses the lens; carving with the tip of a lick the sigil of her true will’s intent.
Tongue numb and crackling with the taste of electrified candy, she leisurely reels it back in between her grin.
The camera whirrs, clicks and fires…
… but when it does it bathes the studio in an arcane radiance of ultraviolet and fluorescent green that preternaturally lingers long after Veronica blinks.
The grin tightens into a satisfied smile that pouts and speaks:
“Adam Last – by shadow, blood and flame – I summon you to come forth before me!”
The violet and green haze fades. Reality begins to drip back in. The oblivious footsteps of the upstairs neighbors and the muffled laugh track of a sitcom hums through the walls. The central A/C kicks in. A floor vent blasts frigid air and sends the origami animals skittering a few inches in flight before resettling. Blood trickles off the tripod stigmata, splattering a steady cadence across the floorboards.
Veronica scans the room, wide eyes drifting over every cracked door, every shadow, every corner, each space between the shelves, around the stairway and then, finally behind her where she knows he’ll think she won’t think to look.
Nothing.
She stands there with blood caked rubbing her face in disbelief. Several minutes pass. Nothing, just the dripping blood and dampened late show guffaws.
Veronica puffs out her cheeks and sighs frustrated.
Maybe next time she figures, maybe a group shoot instead of a one-on-one session. Still, she felt… something. A seismic nudge in the nebulous country of intuition and a sense that she…
… the camera whirrs, clicks and fires from behind her.
She spins around.
Adam is leaning on the wall next to the photographer, so that it appears that the photographer is draping his right arm over his shoulder. He’s got a cigarette dangling by the hook of a smirk and the camera plucked out of the cavernous remains of the photographer’s face pressed up to eyes cloaked under a pulled up black hoodie.
“Give me…,” Adam snarls through the smirk, “fierce!”
“Sonuvabitch!” Veronica spits startled and takes a step back clenching her fists.
“Yeah, sorry I’m late…,” Adam lowers the camera and through the mask of shade cast by his hood the reflection of the Terminus skyline burns back at her, “had to stop off for some smokes first. Which, by the way, is the thing about invocations. They usually ends with a ‘now’... otherwise you get some smartass demon showing up some twenty odd years later after you call them.”
She laughs despite herself and unclenches her fists.
“It’s been awhile, Veronica.” Adam takes the smoke between his fingers and puffs out a stream of smoke towards her, “S’up?”
“You perfectly know why I called you here.” She snorts dismissively and steps towards him. She opens her right hand and twists her wrist ventral side forward. There, tattooed along her veins, are thorn speckled vines that end in a red rose’s bloom across her palm. The petals ignite with a crimson glow and from its center an ebony blade extends out.
“Y’know, technically speaking, by the rules of invocation you have to answer three questions before I’m obliged to meet your challenge?”
“Yes,” she sneers through the curve of her grin, “and now you’re down to one.”
“Heh,” Adam chuckles with a conceding nod, “good point. So, besides the obvious, why do you want me dead?”
“I don’t.” She raises the blade to thrust towards Adam, flattened parallel to the floor and aimed for his stubble flecked jugular. “The Lie does.”
“Now, y’see that’s what I never get about the magick scene here,” Adam takes a thoughtful drag off his cigarette completely indifferent to his impending rendezvous with a slit throat, “why do y’all follow something that calls itself – ‘The Heart’s Beautiful Lie’?”
“Your three questions are up, 'ghettomancer'…”
“… yeah, but y’gotta admit it’s a good one.”
Veronica goes to growl, goes to attack, but instead, pride pricked, she indulges him: “Hir name is a cage. Nothing more. It binds the light of hir truth so it does not blind us. Hir name is a cage, yes true, but one we, the vigilant, are so very close to unlocking. And when we do…”
“Yeah, yeah…, “ Adam interrupts with a yawn and flicks his cigarette into the hollowed out head of the photographer, “… y’all will rise up and magick will flow like rivers again. Alright, let’s do this then.”
Veronica snorts and lunges for Adam.
In that collapsing space between blade and throat, Adam holds up the camera.
Whirr, click and…
… bang!
Veronica’s face evaporates into a mist of blood that splatters across Adam, as a muffled bullet explodes through the back of her skull and impacts into the stucco with a thud just inches from his right cheek. The shot’s momentum sends Veronica sprawling off course to crash lifelessly into the Photographer and slide off his corpse.
Adam lights up another cigarette and watches the mystical blade recede back into Veronica’s hand. “Cutting it a bit close aren’t you?”
Adam lights up another cigarette and watches the mystical blade recede back into Veronica’s hand. “Cutting it a bit close aren’t you?”
On the other side of the studio, through a haze of lingering gun smoke a silhouette manifests and Sarah K comes stepping out of the space between nowhere with her pistol drawn. “Well, I wanted to hear what she had to say for herself.”
“The same as the last seven…”
“Eight.” Sarah corrects willing the pistol to vanish into subspace with a flick of her hand.
“…eight who tried summoning me. The Lie wants us dead before he leads the city’s covens out of the closet. Only thing I don’t get is why they call me all the time and not you?”
Sarah answers with a bob of her chin to Veronica.
“Good point,” Adam nods and fishes from his pocket a sharpie marked only with a small black pentagram across its tubing. He walks up to a framed photograph of a chained up and blindfolded model. In the background of the shot there is a skyline of Terminus through a window. Adam draws a small circle over a single building in the photograph. The ink seeps through and a black oval portal appears in the center of the room.
“Ladies first.” Adam bows and gestures to the portal.
“Appreciate ya.” Sarah giggles with a mock southern accent and steps into the portal before vanishing from the loft.
Adam steps up to the portal, pauses and looks back over at Veronica. “And that’d be the other thing about invocations. Always insist that those you summon come before you alone or you never know who'll show up.”
Satisfied, he steps through the portal and it closes instantly behind.
Nature rushes to fill the void, a light breeze rushes into the space where the portal was, sending origami porn animals to scrape against the floorboards in advance. Veronica says nothing. Blood drips from the photographer’s palms as a faint sizzle of televised applause seeps through the wall behind them.
Veronica, with the ‘r’ purred like the revving of an engine, steps barefooted across the hardwood floors littered with questionably tasteful black and white nude photographs folded into a menagerie of origami animals. As she steps towards the photographer, she slips her thumbs under the straps of her dress, tugs them over the shoulder and lets it slip off her stride. Naked, she crouches down on all fours and snatches a folded swan by a provocatively decorated wing between her teeth. The camera whirrs, clicks and fires. She crawls towards the photographer slowly, muttering the incantation beneath her breath.
The photographer doesn’t move.
He’s crucified to the white stucco wall of his studio, with the snapped off legs of his tripod pinned through both palms and one spiked through overlapped ankles. A very expensive digital camera sits in the hollow of where the photographer’s face had been caved in.
Despite this, the zoom lens telescopes and illuminates Veronica’s advance with a bombardment of flash strobes. When she reaches the photographer, she slithers up and rises off her knees in an impossible fluid motion. The camera ceases fire. She glances into the lens and catches her reflection.
With a grin that marks the line where seduction ends and dementia begins, she throws back her head, spits up the glossy gray swan and snatches it back out of the air with a swallow.
Veronica chews away at the swan, never taking her eyes off her funhouse reflection, swallows…
… and spits forth a word in the language of flames.
From between her lips an incendiary butterfly flutters free from the mangled paper shell of the swan. It circles around the cameras lens precisely three and a ½ times before landing on its center. The camera whirrs, extends, retreats, and fires. The shot extinguishes the fiery butterfly in a puff of cold lightning.
Only a violet luminescent film remains, caked and glittering across the surface of the lens.
Veronica stands up, takes the photographer by the cheeks, straightens his head so the camera’s eye faces her and he leans in and kisses the lens; carving with the tip of a lick the sigil of her true will’s intent.
Tongue numb and crackling with the taste of electrified candy, she leisurely reels it back in between her grin.
The camera whirrs, clicks and fires…
… but when it does it bathes the studio in an arcane radiance of ultraviolet and fluorescent green that preternaturally lingers long after Veronica blinks.
The grin tightens into a satisfied smile that pouts and speaks:
“Adam Last – by shadow, blood and flame – I summon you to come forth before me!”
The violet and green haze fades. Reality begins to drip back in. The oblivious footsteps of the upstairs neighbors and the muffled laugh track of a sitcom hums through the walls. The central A/C kicks in. A floor vent blasts frigid air and sends the origami animals skittering a few inches in flight before resettling. Blood trickles off the tripod stigmata, splattering a steady cadence across the floorboards.
Veronica scans the room, wide eyes drifting over every cracked door, every shadow, every corner, each space between the shelves, around the stairway and then, finally behind her where she knows he’ll think she won’t think to look.
Nothing.
She stands there with blood caked rubbing her face in disbelief. Several minutes pass. Nothing, just the dripping blood and dampened late show guffaws.
Veronica puffs out her cheeks and sighs frustrated.
Maybe next time she figures, maybe a group shoot instead of a one-on-one session. Still, she felt… something. A seismic nudge in the nebulous country of intuition and a sense that she…
… the camera whirrs, clicks and fires from behind her.
She spins around.
Adam is leaning on the wall next to the photographer, so that it appears that the photographer is draping his right arm over his shoulder. He’s got a cigarette dangling by the hook of a smirk and the camera plucked out of the cavernous remains of the photographer’s face pressed up to eyes cloaked under a pulled up black hoodie.
“Give me…,” Adam snarls through the smirk, “fierce!”
“Sonuvabitch!” Veronica spits startled and takes a step back clenching her fists.
“Yeah, sorry I’m late…,” Adam lowers the camera and through the mask of shade cast by his hood the reflection of the Terminus skyline burns back at her, “had to stop off for some smokes first. Which, by the way, is the thing about invocations. They usually ends with a ‘now’... otherwise you get some smartass demon showing up some twenty odd years later after you call them.”
She laughs despite herself and unclenches her fists.
“It’s been awhile, Veronica.” Adam takes the smoke between his fingers and puffs out a stream of smoke towards her, “S’up?”
“You perfectly know why I called you here.” She snorts dismissively and steps towards him. She opens her right hand and twists her wrist ventral side forward. There, tattooed along her veins, are thorn speckled vines that end in a red rose’s bloom across her palm. The petals ignite with a crimson glow and from its center an ebony blade extends out.
“Y’know, technically speaking, by the rules of invocation you have to answer three questions before I’m obliged to meet your challenge?”
“Yes,” she sneers through the curve of her grin, “and now you’re down to one.”
“Heh,” Adam chuckles with a conceding nod, “good point. So, besides the obvious, why do you want me dead?”
“I don’t.” She raises the blade to thrust towards Adam, flattened parallel to the floor and aimed for his stubble flecked jugular. “The Lie does.”
“Now, y’see that’s what I never get about the magick scene here,” Adam takes a thoughtful drag off his cigarette completely indifferent to his impending rendezvous with a slit throat, “why do y’all follow something that calls itself – ‘The Heart’s Beautiful Lie’?”
“Your three questions are up, 'ghettomancer'…”
“… yeah, but y’gotta admit it’s a good one.”
Veronica goes to growl, goes to attack, but instead, pride pricked, she indulges him: “Hir name is a cage. Nothing more. It binds the light of hir truth so it does not blind us. Hir name is a cage, yes true, but one we, the vigilant, are so very close to unlocking. And when we do…”
“Yeah, yeah…, “ Adam interrupts with a yawn and flicks his cigarette into the hollowed out head of the photographer, “… y’all will rise up and magick will flow like rivers again. Alright, let’s do this then.”
Veronica snorts and lunges for Adam.
In that collapsing space between blade and throat, Adam holds up the camera.
Whirr, click and…
… bang!
Veronica’s face evaporates into a mist of blood that splatters across Adam, as a muffled bullet explodes through the back of her skull and impacts into the stucco with a thud just inches from his right cheek. The shot’s momentum sends Veronica sprawling off course to crash lifelessly into the Photographer and slide off his corpse.
Adam lights up another cigarette and watches the mystical blade recede back into Veronica’s hand. “Cutting it a bit close aren’t you?”
Adam lights up another cigarette and watches the mystical blade recede back into Veronica’s hand. “Cutting it a bit close aren’t you?”
On the other side of the studio, through a haze of lingering gun smoke a silhouette manifests and Sarah K comes stepping out of the space between nowhere with her pistol drawn. “Well, I wanted to hear what she had to say for herself.”
“The same as the last seven…”
“Eight.” Sarah corrects willing the pistol to vanish into subspace with a flick of her hand.
“…eight who tried summoning me. The Lie wants us dead before he leads the city’s covens out of the closet. Only thing I don’t get is why they call me all the time and not you?”
Sarah answers with a bob of her chin to Veronica.
“Good point,” Adam nods and fishes from his pocket a sharpie marked only with a small black pentagram across its tubing. He walks up to a framed photograph of a chained up and blindfolded model. In the background of the shot there is a skyline of Terminus through a window. Adam draws a small circle over a single building in the photograph. The ink seeps through and a black oval portal appears in the center of the room.
“Ladies first.” Adam bows and gestures to the portal.
“Appreciate ya.” Sarah giggles with a mock southern accent and steps into the portal before vanishing from the loft.
Adam steps up to the portal, pauses and looks back over at Veronica. “And that’d be the other thing about invocations. Always insist that those you summon come before you alone or you never know who'll show up.”
Satisfied, he steps through the portal and it closes instantly behind.
Nature rushes to fill the void, a light breeze rushes into the space where the portal was, sending origami porn animals to scrape against the floorboards in advance. Veronica says nothing. Blood drips from the photographer’s palms as a faint sizzle of televised applause seeps through the wall behind them.