You Shouldn't Play With Magic

Ted had chosen to take his bike to school instead of being driven so he could take it into town afterwards. He had a report to write about whether or not magic is real, and he knew a certain thrift shop owner who possessed a ‘magical’ spell book. The teen scoffed at the idea of a spell book as he pedaled into the downtown area.

He stopped outside Mick’s, dismounting his metal steed and guiding it into the second-hand store. Mick didn’t mind if he brought the bike in; they both worried a passing stranger might steal it. Ted smiled as the little bell chimed upon his entrance. He took a deep breath, inhaling the smell of old books.

“Hey, Ted!” Mick called out from behind the counter.

Ted leaned his bike by the door and approached the elderly man. “Hey, Mick.”

“Come to look for any new additions to my stock?”

Ted shook his head. “No, actually. I’ve got this writing assignment. Do you still have that book of spells?”

Mick frowned. “Oh, I brought that old thing up as a joke. You don’t want it. Half of it’s in some kind of dead hieroglyphic language anyway.”

“I know,” Ted said with a shrug. “But we have to back up our argument with something solid, and I thought if I tried to do a spell and it failed, that would be a pretty good argument.”

“Why not just say you used it?”

Ted looked affronted. “That’s lying, Mick! I can’t do that.”

“Ah, Alice raised you too well. Let me go get that book.” Mick disappeared through the door behind the counter labeled ‘EMPLOYEES ONLY’.

Ted waited patiently, killing time by perusing Mick’s wares. He had all kinds of interesting knick knacks, and a couple items that even belonged in an antique store. There were a lot of old items he really wanted just to look at and examine, but he knew if he started buying this stuff, he’d have nowhere to keep it all.

Mick reappeared with a thick tome covered in a fine layer of dust. He blew the dust off to reveal a cover of intricate designs and glyphs that looked utterly foreign to Ted. He handed the book to the boy. “You can have it for free - since it’s for educational purposes.”

“Thanks, Mick,” Ted replied as he worked on awkwardly stuffing the tome in his already full backpack.

Mick gave no reply, so Ted walked his bike out of the store and mounted it. He pedaled home in a hurry. It took a littler longer than he liked to bike home from school, and it was winter now, so the sun would be close to setting by the time he got home.

*

Weighed down by a hefty and tattered bag slung over his shoulder, Ted was taking the steps up to his room two at a time when his sister called up to him. "Theodore Dean Moore, you slow down on those stairs before you break your neck!"

The teen stopped mid-step, groaning. "Alice, I'll be fine. I've lived here literally all my life, and I've gone up these stairs a minimum of twice a day literally all my life." Regardless, he continued up the stairs at a calmer pace.

"That's malarkey! Did you walk up those steps before you could walk?" Alice called from the kitchen. "I don't think so!" Ted rolled his eyes as he crested the top of the steps, rounding the corner even as his sister continued scolding him. "You know how many times I tripped on those stairs while carrying you?"

Ted's head popped out from behind the wall he'd just passed. "You dropped me?"

His question was met with a pregnant silence, and then quietly, "No..."

As he began to question possible brain damage from his early childhood, Ted continued on his path to his bedroom. Slinging his backpack aside, he flung himself into the old swivel chair. Idly, he let it rotate until he was facing his computer. The teen tapped the space bar impatiently, as if the frequency with which struck the key would affect how quickly the desktop woke up.

"Hello, Theodore," the computer greeted robotically.

Ted smiled, thinking fondly of his sixteenth birthday, when Alice had presented him with a special surprise. She had snuck a copy of the AI prototype that she had been developing out of the software company employing her to install into his computer.

"Homework first- first, Theodore." It was a very simple AI and a moderately glitchy one at that.

Ted sighed. "I know, Al," he said. "I have a writing assignment today," he told the computer slowly.

The teen watched with a smile as Al the AI very slowly booted up a word processor and wrote his MLA-style heading. "What class-grade-class is this- is your assign-assignment for, Theodore?"

"English Four, Al. Thank you; I'll take over from here." Ted readied himself to type out the intro of his assignment before doing the research. The whir of Ted's computer quieted as the AI shut down.

Shortly after, Ted's introductory paragraph was finished and he spun out of his swivel chair. He dug out Mick’s ancient tome, its cover torn and tattered, some candles, and a swath of burlap. He laid the burlap out flat on the floor, kicking away the occasional pair of underwear to make room. Ted dug through his desk for a thick permanent marker, landing on his knees in front of the burlap. He spent a couple minutes flipping through the book. Alot of it was impossible for Ted to read, but he stopped when he found a page clearly marked ‘SUMMONING’. As he began to replicate the cryptic design from the book, Alice walked into her brother's room.

"Hey, do you want mac and... cheese for... dinner? What are you doing?" Alice asked, leaning back skeptically. "Is that a pentagram?"

Ted looked up from his summoning circle awkwardly. "Well, technically, no. But it is what you think it's for. I have this assignment for English. We have to write a persuasive essay about why magic does or does not exist. and I thought, if I try and do magic, and it fails, then I can use that as the base of my argument." As Ted continued to receive an odd stare from his sister, he continued with, "And yes, mac and cheese sounds nice."

Alice started backing out of Ted's room before rushing back in "You know you don't have to actually do it. You could just say you did it. Also, that's not how proving a point works. You have to do it several times, like a science experiment."

Ted continued drawing the summoning circle. "Then I'll do multiple attempts at it. This book is full of all kinds of hocus pocus bologna."

Alice just rolled her eye, leaving to make dinner.

Ted finished the design on the burlap, double-checking to make sure it was right. Then he place the candles equidistantly around the circle. Lastly, he took a comfortable criss-cross position and started struggling through the Latin in the book. The verses were long, and by the end of it, he was hardly even trying to sound correct. Ted lowered his book and looked up to the summoning circle. When nothing happened, his face shifted with a lazy smile.

"Of course nothing happened," Ted muttered as he stood up, placing a hand on the back of his swivel chair for support. He started to flop down on his seat, saying, "Magic doesn't exist."

Ted's hand slipped as the ground began to shake violently. Instead of landing gracefully in his seat, he stumbled backwards. His head slammed against the edge of his desk and his hand, reaching and failing to find support on the desk, scattered a tower of papers everywhere.

The teen's vision blurred, and he lost consciousness as a bright light flashed and he heard a male voice shout, "Well if that isn't the worst Latin I've ever heard..."

Ted's only thought as his consciousness began to fade was, That's odd. There hasn't been another guy at the house since dad died.

Author's Note

The major thing I want to add to my stories is descriptive detail. But that doesn't come as naturally to me. So I'm writing how I do naturally, and when I have more decisions made about the story, I want to go back and add detail.