Ch 3. High School Ritual: A Woman Scorned (SepSceneWriMo)

~ Hetty Eliot

Four high school students encounter an evil spirit. Thoroughly cliched and hopelessly derivative.

Why hadn’t he called her yet? Last night was everything Vanessa had planned for and more. Chad’s team won the championship and he had scored the final points. He even let her hold the trophy for the newspaper photographs. And after everyone left the party, Chad stayed over. Yes, everything went just as planned. But Chad left early in the morning, saying something about having to go to work. Chad didn’t even have a job. What the hell was he talking about?

By evening, after not hearing anything, Vanessa was furious. She hadn’t moved away from her phone once that day, not even to eat her celery. But she would not call him. It didn’t matter if every single person she knew on earth had died and there was no one left to drive her around except Chad. She wouldn’t call.

She smiled. There was other stuff she could do.

A Wiccan friend told her about a certain ritual and said it never failed. Vanessa hadn’t had a reason to use it yet, since she always got what she wanted. However, something clearly went wrong in the universe this time, and she was going to make it right.

She went out in her mother’s flower garden and brought three white painted stones inside. She set up a makeshift altar using her vanity and laid out the stones and some incense. Her friend said to use polished gems and a certain sort of incense, but she didn’t have any gems, and was pretty sure the incense came from a home goods store that was going out of business, but it was good enough. As she lit each stick, she whispered the words her friend taught her, her face glowing as the tendrils of smoke emerged.

The tendrils seemed to take on a life of their own. They spiraled away from the incense and wove themselves around the altar. While she was no physicist, even Vanessa knew this looked unusual. Her spell was working! After circling several times, they rose towards her and separated themselves around her, caressing her cheeks and hair.

She shrieked and stumbled backwards over her chair and ran to the window. She grabbed a folder and tried fanning them away but they seemed oblivious to her motions. They suddenly darted away and all of them streamed to the door knob. She heard a click. In sheer terror, she got dizzy and collapsed onto the floor. The tendrils descended, swirled around her face and hands, snaked through her mouth as she inhaled and then out of her nostrils. As she passed out, the last thing she saw was the smoke.

16 thoughts on “Ch 3. High School Ritual: A Woman Scorned (SepSceneWriMo)”

      1. I’m ready for more character twists! Maybe Chad is hooking up with Natalie on the side. Or Mikhail! Or conjuring up an counter-evil spirit of his own!

        (I just saw you posted another chapter and I haven’t read it yet – feel free to detail this comment if it inadvertently contains spoilers!)

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  4. Not bad! Getting better as you go along. And thanks to you and Phil Huston for visiting my blog. Forgive me if some of your comments weren’t clear to me. I’d blame the alcohol but i don’t drink. Keep on visiting! You too Phil!

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  5. Not a returned item in the whole bunch. No accounts due or credit cards lost. No slinking around behind somebody’s back. Congrats. It’s a start, thin, but a start. Please take a look at Trans-Atlantic, by Witold Gombrowicz. Maybe you already know him. Kundera called him the greatest writer in the world. Here are a few quotes from the guy that sort of pertain to you.

    We say ‘forest’ but this word is made of the unknown, the unfamiliar, the unencompassed. The earth. Clods of dirt. Pebbles. On a clear day you rest among ordinary, everyday things that have been familiar to you since childhood, grass, bushes, a dog (or a cat), a chair, but that changes when you realize that every object is an enormous army, an inexhaustible swarm.

    Not surprisingly, because too much attention to one object leads to distraction, this one object conceals everything else, and when we focus on one point on the map we know that all other points are eluding us.

    You can find Trans-Atlantic if you have a library e-book app. Most big libraries have T-A and other titles by him. Otherwise, go to Amazon. I think you’d like Trans-Atlantic because there is a lot of retail/business stuff in it, but not in the way you write. It is weirdly funny and would give you a different take on the subject. It is what you might call an “experimental novel”.

    Anyway, you have the trifecta for a great writer: various ailments, a strong sensibility, and a good education. You stand young and alive. You just need to dig into your blood and bones. Find your unique voice. As always, good luck. Of course, maybe you want none of that and if you ever grow tired of my public bullshit, just say so. Duke

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    1. Hey Duke. Thanks for the recommendation. In fact, I think I will add it to the collection. I’m trying to read more instead of binge-watching YouTube and this looks like a better alternative. I used to be into that stuff. I want to get back into things I liked before instead of avoiding thought in the most mind-numbingly stupid way possible.

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