this story is part of a series you can find part 2 here and part 1 here
“So what did they say?”
Lana looked down at her phone. Next to her sat a window with the scenery blazing past at high speeds as the train she was on took off. She leaned back against the cushioned train seat and closed her eyes, thinking for a moment. She popped in two wireless earbuds and put some music on and then begun to work on a response.
“They think it’s magic.”
“Magic is fake dumbass”
“While I would be inclined to agree with you, there was literally a lady with horns and bright red skin in a suit at the cubicle next to us.” Lana let out a sigh and turned the music up and then continued typing.
“I was given a packet. It’s pretty dense.”
“A packet”
“Yes! A packet! It’s pretty big and talks about rituals to bring out the latent magic in yourself and your environment. Lots of witchy shit”
“Have you mentioned this to allison yet? She’d die for that kind of public recognition of her work”
“Oh god don’t get me started, I’m not sure if she’d be able to handle this”
“Well you better tell her soon because she just came online. Though to be honest, I’m not sure why you’re doing this. We haven’t forgotten you.”
“Yeah but the other people in my life have and I’d like it to stop.”
“Yeah. BUT those people who keep forgetting you are jackasses. They literally wouldn’t stop screaming at you after you asked them to stop supporting that dumbass terf.”
Lana winced and locked her phone. Her partner was right. Those two friends of her did just kinda fuck her over. She was trans. She was supposedly their best friend. Why couldn’t they have seen how much they were hurting her. It didn’t matter anyways. She had disappeared after they had forgotten her. None of them mattered anyways. She had better friends now. Cooler friends. People that wouldn’t forget about her.
Her phone lit up with a notification.
“I’m sorry, that was a low blow.”
Lana placed her thumb on the back of her phone and the screen unlocked itself.
“It’s fine. I know you just care about me a lot.”
“This is correct.”
“And that you love me and you want what’s best for me”
“Another stellar observation”
“And that through the past 3 years, you’re the only person that has consistently stayed by my side and been the one thing that hasn’t changed.
“Has it really been that long?”
“Just about. 3 years in a month.”
“Other than stating the obvious, Yes I love you, Yes I am hopelessly gay. But let’s get to the important bits. What do they think is the source of all these ‘curses’”
“Fae.”
“Fey?”
“I guess.”
Lana let her eyes glance over the packet she was given. The first line read ‘How to tell if your house has been overrun with fae’
“There’s some stuff about leaving warm milk out in the counter. Seems like it would just be a recipe for curdled milk in the morning honestly”
“I mean there’s a science to everything hun, Maybe there’s a science to this weird curse shit. Like you did mention to me that you’d never met those two in the first place and then it seemed like a week later no one from that friend group even knew you existed. Maybe You’ve just been gifted with a genie.”
“Don’t genies operate under special circumstances? Like they have to announce their presence with a loud explosion of smoke and magic like a pompous jackass that just landed a gig at a bar somewhere.”
“You’re the genie expert, not me.”
“Just because I have an appreciation for no you know what, nope nope we’re done here.”
“Ehehehehehe. Come on. Being cramped up in a lamp like that can’t be that bad.”
“Nope nope nope shut up!!! Shut UP! SHUT UP! I’m not going to just randomly turn into a genie like this is some guys sick fantasy.”
Her partner sent over an X emoji and Lana chuckled.
“Plus, I’m not even sure if genies are real. I feel like I would know if one of my wishes had been granted.”
“You think so? Up until today you weren’t even convinced that magic was real”
The indication that someone else was typing popped up.
“Wait, Weird magic shit is happening and y’all aren’t telling me???? Spill the beans lana! I want to be able to make fucking CHILI after you’re done here.”
“Good morning Allison, happy to see you’ve finally joined the land of the living at… 3 pm again.” Lana typed while putting the papers away in her bag. Her stop was coming up.
“You know she’s two hours ahead so technically it’s 5 pm.” Her partner wrote back.
“Did I ASK for a 5 o’clock roast session on my sleeping habits? No. I asked for beans bitch. Now unless you want me appearifying into your house while you sleep like a fucking gremlin, I suggest you start popping that can opener out and spilling the beans all over my goddamn floor.”
“Okay allison chill chill Let me drive home real quick”
“Chill? No. I want CHILL-I. CHILI. There’s a D I F F E R E N C E.”
Lana locked her phone and slipped it into her purse. She could handle this once she had gotten home.
“Lorrrraaaaaaaaiiiineeeeeee, cooooooooooommmeeee oooooooooooooooooooon.”
“For the last time Allison, I don’t have anything you don’t know. We’ll just have to wait.”
“You gotta have something, some little snippet, some tiny little thing that puts at least a LITTLE bit of my curiosity at ease.”
“Nope. Nothing. What you see here is what you get. I didn’t even know America had a curses department for the social security office in the first place. We don’t have anything remotely like that up in Canada”
“That you know of.”
“Listen Lorraine, I know You think you know everything about your state but maybe you don’t? If the curses department was secret, what else are people hiding???”
“Allison.”
“Lorraine.”
“I don’t know how to refute that.”
Allison sent over a smug emoji.
Lorraine shot back with a gif of an anime girl slowly raising a gun.
Lorraine laughed softly at her computer and leaned back in her swivel chair. Her room was a mess but she liked it that way. She stood up, walked over to her bed and fell face first down on the bed. She was tired. This whole “curses” department her partner was going through with was a lot and it seemed to be the latest in a series of weird things that had just been happening. Sometimes she wondered if Lana was just making it up but it wasn’t like they weren’t at least halfway credible. The Social security department over in the US was slightly incompetent at times and losing paperwork was just normal. But Lorraine wasn’t wrong. Those friends had forgotten about her after she wished for it, and Lana always seemed to be really lucky at the wildest things, stumbling upon stuff through pure accident. If that was the case, and this was another case of Lana’s wishes just coming true, what did it mean here. Did she not want her name to be changed? Or was it some other outside force like Lana’s “gift”
Lorraine buried her face in her pillow. This was giving her a headache. Her phone pinged. Lana was home. Finally. Allison was excited. But it looked like lana wanted to voice chat. Lorraine quickly grabbed her headphones and plugged them into her phone and connected to the voice chat.
“Lorraine! I love you!”
Lorraine smiled, “I love you too. So what’s the story?”
“Please please please, I’ve been waiting FOR FOREVER.”
Lana chuckled on the other end, “Alright alright, so. I head into the office and the ladies already lost my papers! And so I’m like yeah something’s going on and so she tells me to head to this ‘curses department.’ So I do! And get greeted by someone who already has a file on me right? I don’t even know who she is and I think she’s flirting with me and then she isn’t. So We talk and I tell her the stories and she thinks I’ve been cursed by a fey since birth. Which, alright cool. Then she walks away to get this packet and there’s a devil! And actual legitimate devil and she tells me that angels are real and they work here and everyone hates them.”
“Interesting,” Allison quietly says.
Lorraine rolls her eyes, “Do you have your beans?”
“I would say that is a sufficient amount of beans. What’s in the packet though?”
“Oh right, the packet. It’s some stuff on the proper treatment of fey, how to bring them out, how to communicate with them and stuff. Not sure how my roommate is gonna feel about the magic circle though. This looks complicated and I don’t even know if we have that many spoons”
“I mean you could do it tomorrow.”
Lana laughed, “No, I mean this stuff says ‘if you don’t have silver laying around, silver spoons are fine’”
Allison scoffed, “Most silverware these days isn’t even silver. It’s all stainless steel. So you might wanna find something else.”
Lana hummed softly, “I think my parents might have an old set I could borrow but I’ll look around.”
“Keep us posted hun, alright?” Lorraine said, fidgeting on her bed.
“Of course hun! You’ll be the first to know.”
Lorraine hopped off the call and pulled the pillow over her face again. The light hurt her head.
The Belmont's Garden 