By the time I awoke to the blare of my hateful-assed alarm the next morning, Vicky was already POOFed and gone. Cursing groggily, I fumbled around for several moments before I managed to turn that blasted alarm off and stumble up. Without bothering to get dressed, I groggily forced myself to stumble up and drunkenly wobble in to Maria's room.
"Morning, Master!" Maria's taunting words hit me like cold water, causing me to jerk upright and look around stupidly in a panic for Vicky. "She's already gone," Maria giggled, smirking at the dazed expression on my face.
"Oh thank God." Flopping down on her bed, this was one of those moments where I truly wished her nerves worked — just so I could probably spank her! "You just about scared the shit out of me," I moodily griped at Maria. "I didn't know what the hell I was going to do, if Vicky ends up becoming a POOF-toy and stuck to my side even during the daytime!"
"Honestly," Maria sighed grimly, "I don't know what the two of you are going to do when the seasons change either. The nights get much longer in wintertime, lasting almost fourteen hours for us, rather than the ten we see in summer. I just don't see how you're going to be able to keep her nightly disappearances secret at all, when we get to where that happens," Maria fretted worriedly.
"I know. I know." Sighing heavily, I forced myself to stretch and get back up from Maria's soft bed. "I just don't have a damn clue what to do about it, you know? After all," I reminded her, "I didn't believe in this magic mumbo-jumbo stuff either until yesterday. Honestly, man, I thought I was going to faint when all her hair just suddenly fell off her head in the tub!"
"I'm honestly glad I wasn't in there to watch that," Maria admitted, wrapping her arms around herself and half shivering. "Even the thought of someone having that much control over someone else freaks me out," she admitted softly, easing up from her seat at her dresser to come sprawl out shamelessly across the bed for her morning inspection. "You've got to figure this magic stuff out," Maria stressed, staring up at me, "before who knows what terrible thing is going to end up happening."
"What type of terrible things," I asked, sarcastically. Terrible things like magically sending a classmate to jail, kidnapping another every night, and turning them into a fully customizable sex toy? Or can you think of anything worse than that?"
"There's always the threat of dragons and demons from another world," Maria reminded me, warningly. "Wasn't your first wish for that type of place to exist so you could travel there and be a hero, or some type of bullshit?"
"I… I think I'm just going to stay home today," I groaned piteously, finishing up Maria's inspection early. We'd bathed together last night and all was well with her. Without any signs of blood, or serious bruising on her this morning, I think it's pretty well safe to call it okay.
"I'll try and do some research into that stupid pond and I'll pay a lot more attention to the legends this time," I promised, helping bundle her into her clothes today. "If you need some help out of these," I reminded Maria, "just make Vicky assist you with them. Don't forget, you're second-in-command over her after all."
"How could I possibly forget?" Sighing heavily, Maria went back over to her dresser to finish putting her face on, while I turned and walked dejectedly back to my room.
********************************************************
Being alone in our soundless, lightless tomb made the day a complete and utter drag for me. The moment Maria left our house, all signs and signals of life left with her. If anyone ever suggests to you that it'd be "neat" to live in a soundproof house with no windows, SHOOT them! Or, for the love of god, at *least* punch them square in their stupid face!
Human beings are creatures that NEED environmental stimulation to survive. It's not just a WANT; it's a basic need that we evolved for survival after thousands of years of being at the bottom of the food chain. With absolutely nothing to stimulate us — an impossible scenario in nature itself — we become *hyperaware* of… basically everything! Our nerves are on edge. Our eyes are nervously twitching back and forth for any danger. Our ears strain to catch the slightest little pin drip of water from a leaky sink…
The only thing that was almost, kind of, sort of, something which might be considered a good thing with me staying home alone, is I *think* I may have been starting to see magic before Maria came in. Either that, or I was just going damn crazy. Honestly, I'm on the fence about which it was.
I started seeing… let's just call it "Something", for lack of a better word…
I started seeing Something — and YES, that's "Something" with a capital "S" — some time around ten or eleven in the morning. It was before lunch anyway. At first, it started almost like seeing some sort of annoying blue gnat buzzing around at the corner of your vision. Nothing big or frightening in any way whatsoever. It was just an annoying like speck of blue light reflected in the corner of my vision.
Honestly, at first, that's all I thought it was. A blue glow from an USB charger, or such, reflecting off some piece of chrome or silver somewhere. The only problem with that hypothesis is that it was blown out of the water when I got up to go to lunch and the light *followed* me ghost-like, always hovering at the edge of my vision.
And THAT was creepy!
I found myself increasingly distracted more and more from my computer, where I should've been researching Mystic Pond, and gradually drawn into just staring at that speck.
And the more I stared directly at it, without blinking or losing focus, the larger it became! Longer. Thicker. Denser. That damn blue glow — or, my insane imagining of one, you decide — expanded to first look like a squiggly little inch worm. Then it grew slowly into one of those nightcrawlers you use for fishing. Finally, it had grown to almost the length of a snake, while still staying the thickness of a worm, when…
"MICHAEL!!"
Maria's scream literally knocked me for a flip! And I don't want you nobodies out there to misunderstand that — it truly, literally, knocked me for a flip! Suddenly interrupting my intense study of the Something, Maria's scream made me jerk backwards in my chair, roll about halfway across the floor, and then flop over backwards when my dirty underroos from yesterday got tangled up in the wheels.
"CRASH!!"
"YEARRGGH!"
"THUMP!! CRASH!!
"STUPID DUMB ASS THING!! LET ME UP!"
"BANG!! CLANG!! THUMP!!"
My heart was ready to leap out of my chest with worry, as I frantically kicked and punched my damn chair across the room, as I struggled to get my fat ass out of it. By the time I'd squirmed my fat self out of the situation I was in, my nose was busted, my knee was throbbing painfully, and it was only the pure adrenaline pumping through my veins that let me rush haphazardly down the hallway to the outside entrance where Maria had screeched so loudly for me!
Dear God, let her be alright! Don't let me be too late! Please God! Not Maria! Plea…
"What the heck happened to you?" There she was, bent over, untying one boot with her ass pointed in the air facing me — Maria. Face all twisted in curiously and worry about my sorry state, it was completely obvious that SHE was just fine. She'd just came home from school a couple of hours early for some reason!
"Here, hold this on your nose." As soon as Maria tugged her first boot off, she hobbled over to me and handed me the handkerchief that she always kept in her pocket. "I was going to get you to help me out of all these clothes," she whined at me lamely, "but I don't guess I can now."
Sitting down in the floor beside me, Maria couldn't take her eyes off my sorry face, as she slowly began to untie and squirm out of her perve-proof gothic leathers. "You're never, ever, not in a million years," she chuckled lightly to herself, "guess what happened at school today!"
"Whab?" With my nose bleeding into her handkerchief, my words didn't come out right at all!
"Vicky started a revolution!"