Rhiannon, 29

Chapter 17

Rhiannon, 27

    So here’s what I know. I walked down to Steven and Nelson’s apartment last night, had  four glasses of wine that I remember, and went on what they describe as a frantic right-swipe fest. Apparently, I was a man possessed, liking everyone, messaging them all, throwing caution to the breeze and ignoring the landmines that I’m sure were scattered all over their profiles and in their pictures - but I just couldn’t stop myself. 

Long story short, because the details of the night onward are little more than snapshots of fuzzy images and long periods of blackness, Rhiannon asked me out to dinner tonight, and I said yes. I don’t remember it happening, but the messages in Match confirmed it - as did Steven and Nelson this morning when I woke up on their couch. 

But this could be perfect. While I can’t recall the state I was in during our somewhat nonsensical conversation that included little more than us exchanging smiley faces, me telling her she was different synonyms for “cute” (often with several words spelled incorrectly), and us exchanging a list of the horror movies we like, I have to imagine that in my inebriated state, the name alone sold me. In addition to it appearing in a song, which could allow me to spread my karaoke wings and fly, it just so happens that Fleetwood Mac is among my favorite bands ever - and Stevie Nicks is among the greatest singers ever. So if things go well, a serenading awaits Rhiannon.

Still, I don’t really know much about her. I looked at her profile this morning and found it sparse but clean, featuring nothing particularly standout-ish in either direction. She works at a salon, lives in Cranston, and doesn’t smoke. She only had two pictures. She’s blonde, very thin, has a longish nose and a narrow, pointy chin - cute, but not in a conventional way. Still, she seems normal enough. 

“Wish me luck,” I say to Luke, who swims right up to the edge of his tank and glares at me with his big bubbly eyes.

“Good luck, mon. Tun up de ting.”  

“Thanks Luke. Keep an eye on your little sister, will you?”

“Sure ting mon.”

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    She was a devout Wiccan, a self-proclaimed witch with “real powers”, and Rhiannon wasn’t her real name. She pulled an elixir out of her bag ten minutes into our date and told me (didn’t ask me, mind you) to drink it, and now that I’m heading home, I believe there’s a chance that the next five generations of my family are cursed. 

I don’t know exactly what she said to me, nor in what ancient language it was spoken as she clenched the pentagram on her necklace with one hand, stared down at the unusual collection of trinkets she’d placed strategically on the table including a pebble, a set of three dice, a mysterious lock of thick black hair, and a long red shoelace… and with her other hand, she herself drank the mysterious red substance out of the corked test tube she oddly happened to have in her hand bag, the “elixir of the unbreakable oath” (her words, not mine) that she’d nearly attempted to coax me into drinking three minutes earlier - but given the tone of her voice and the fire in her eyes (and perhaps it was lighting playing tricks on me, but I think the pebble may have moved) I suspect it was of malicious intent.

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I’m back home and just hung up with my mother. We spent twenty minutes laughing over the whole thing, as I’ve found myself doing frequently of late. I open up my computer, and try to get writing in, but I can’t get my head straight. That’s been happening a lot lately… 

I guess I’ll get some sleep.

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While I may be a dreamer at times, my thoughts are most of the time grounded in some form of reality �" but still, as my eyes shoot open and my body jerks itself up from a resting position, and I stare into the blackness of my bedroom not knowing where Leia is, gently shuffling my feet around the bottom of the bed where she usually sleeps, I’m struck with this irrational and momentarily paralyzing fear that something terrible has happened to her �" that the curse of Rhiannon wasn’t directed at me, but at Leia. I’m sure she’s gone, a sacrifice to the Wiccan gods, until she appears at the doorway �" her collar jingling, her tail wagging, and as soon as I pat the bed she jumps right up and eases my concern. 

    But as I lay here, laughing to myself about my momentary deviation from reality, I can’t help but stray further from this world. For some reason I find myself strangely and obsessively thinking about Rhiannon, whose real name was Courtney �" not about her exactly, but about whatever it was that she said to me earlier.

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Do you ever start reading something on one website, then you click on another link within that page, then another on the next one, and they are all sort of related to the next, but as you continue opening up new windows, you are just getting further and further from the original topic and by the end you are lightyears away from where you started? 

I now have thirty-seven windows open on my browser and have somehow managed to incrementally stray from an article on Wiccan culture and beliefs, to what this website describes as “The world’s greatest three-ingredient meals”. As a single man with limited cooking abilities, I’ll undoubtedly save the link as a bookmark �" but I navigate my back through the ridiculous plethora of website tabs, remembering that at some point along the way I’ve ordered a fast cooker, two books and a Lord of the Rings hat with the words “You Shall Not Pass” on it on Amazon that will be arriving in two days.

I almost fall back into the loop of random web searches, but I resist and find my original page on Wiccan history and I start reading. 

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The sun has come up, and after three hours of research into the fascinating Pagan culture, I’ve come to the belief that generations of my family have not been cursed, however, I now suspect that based on the placement of the pebble, the dice, and the shoelace on the table and the clenching of her pentagram with the left hand and drinking of the potion with the right; there’s a possibility that someone named the “earth father” will toil with me for several days, perhaps play some evil shenanigans, but all in good fun.

But �" if I’m wrong and she held the demonic symbol in her right hand while drinking the potion with her left �" someone named the “earth mother” (his wife, I presume?) will evidently be coming for the blood of a loved one.

I’m not a religious person, so for now I think Leia’s puppy life is safe from the earth mother, but I often wonder what it would be like if bizarre things like this started happening one day out of the blue. Do you ever try to envision something very clearly as you lay down and go to sleep, hoping that by keeping it fresh in your mind, that it will somehow find its way into your dreams, but it never does? I’m doing that right now, wondering what kind of tricks the earth father would play on me.