A Knife in My Chest: Best Vacation Ever

I guess I've been gone a long time.  (understatement of the year)  Its not really my fault, I swear.  As Pocketwatch told y'all, I was in a coma with a hole in reality shaped like a knife jammed into my chest.  

Truth be told, I'm not entirely sure how it happened. I ward my room at home, and ever since this business with the Evil started up, my house too. I was pretty secure in my, well, security when I went to bed that night. You see, I was visiting home for the weekend and had intended to return to school the following day.  

But I wouldn't be back for some time.

The next morning, I awoke to myself with blue hair.  I haven't had blue hair in 3 years.  Upon opening my door to greet the day, my dog ran in followed by my Siamese cat, rascal.  Who died in my freshman year.  As accustomed as I am to the unusual, this threw me for a loop. Opening my laptop (which melted down for the last time January of 2010), I saw the date.

December 25, 2007.

Oh. Bloody. Hell.

The spirits had done it all in one night it would appear.  Three and a half years ago, I was plucked from the world as I knew it and landed smack in the middle of another place.  There, music was the basic building block of reality.  I had a grand adventure with some amazing composers.  At the end of it all, they worked with the fae of that world to try to send me home.  Unfortunately, it sent me to this world.

Magic doesn't exist where I'm from.  It's the stuff of tales and legends.  Here, everything is pregnant with the stuff, if people know how to draw it out.  Of course, I do have ideological concerns about using it.  For the past three years, I've been trying to get home.  I've made it to a few other places, each with their own stories, but my own home seems to be blocked off from the rest.  Until now.

Considering the lack of evidence to the otherwise, it was actually pretty easy to dismiss the whole thing as a dream.  I actually lived out my next semester at school as a normal 18 year old.  (after a hell of a lot of making sure magic didn't work and I was actually home).  

As wonderful as the magical side of the world can be, it was kind of nice not having to worry about wards or the disturbing array of demons that seems to afflict my life.  I didn't need to worry that I might be breaking some ancient law which binds my kind.  Heck, I didn't even need to worry about the metallic contents of my rings!  It was nice to be "normal" again.  I won't say I didn't miss the dream world alittle bit, but I'll admit I got really caught up in the joys of no cosmic responsibility.

And then Friday the 13th of May happened.

I was lying in bed in my dorm room when I felt a wrenching pain in my chest like someone had stabbed me.  I couldn't breathe.  I couldn't move.  And suddenly I was lying in my bed at home with Pocketwatch and my parents standing over me.  A fourth creature, a delicate looking female faerie in iridescent surgical scrubs, held a black knife in forceps behind them.

Oddly enough, there wasn't any wound on me.  No pain.  I even felt like I had just gotten a good night's sleep!  The sun was just going down outside.  My parents and Pocketwatch spent into the wee hours of morning explaining what all I missed in my absence and listening to my tale of my return home.

The next day, they drove me back to my university to attend my graduation.  The Faceless Lady also had some things to tell me.  I'll get to that soon.

It's good to be back.

Things Happen in Threes

Some time ago, I mentioned a bracelet I had made which carried a curse or somesuch.  Blah blah blah it concentrates negativity in people blah blah blah.  I have now come to find myself in possession of two other objects which are likewise bedeviled.

The first, or rather second of the three, is my high school class ring.  It seems to be given to roam.  Two years ago, at the end of my freshman year of college, I put it in my jewelry box with my scouting medals and hadn't seen it since.  Until two weeks ago.  I bought my new (relatively speaking) backpack shortly before I returned to school last year.  Two weeks ago, I found my class ring in one of its pockets.  A bag which I had only had for one year and which had never been anywhere near my jewelry box (rather it was always at school or in my car's trunk for the Summer) suddenly contained a ring I hadn't seen much less touched in a little over two years.

Then it gets weirder.

I put it in my dorm room with the other unusual trinkets on my bookshelf.  But then four days ago, it was there in the same pocket.  Back to the bookshelf.  Today, after my swimming class, the lifeguard approached me and asked if a certain class ring they had found the previous day by the pool was mine.  And bloody hell if it wasn't.  I wouldn't call it a true curse per se, but my class ring seems to have a very "One Ring" personality about it.

And then there's my "Brittney Glasses".  They're a pair of rose-tinted frameless sunglasses which started at camp as a sort of in-joke (which I might share if I get around to it) with other staffers.  I still wear them at school if I need a distinctive look or to get my creative juices flowing with an unusual view of the world.  Today they started showing me things.  In mirrored surfaces, I would get a reflection of creatures which were not there.  Tonight, I've seen silhouettes of small animals move across campus only to take off my glasses and see nothing.  I have excellent night vision and should have seen whatever they were without trouble with the glasses off.  Just before I returned to my room, I saw a strange gentleman who reminded me of the Hitchiker I saw back in the early Spring standing outside my dorm.  But only with the Brittney Glasses on.  And THAT can't be a good omen.  The problem is, I don't know if my glasses are showing me things that are there or are cursed to show things that aren't.  I've had "the eyes to see" for a while and I don't really get why I wouldn't notice these things before, but there you have it.

Good Strange things happen in threes.

I Made a Cursed Bracelet (On Accident)

Magic is everywhere in our world.  It exists in almost-nauseating amounts.  It bleeds from everything humans have made contact with.  Doubly so for things we consider important.  One might consider it the inherent potential of anything once so imbued by the human spirit.  For better or worse.

During the episode with my last roommate, I almost mechanically churned out little polymer clay charms.  Mostly for practice.  Sort of to while away the time until the police took action.  Anything to stay out of my room when the cops showed.  The waiting was killing me.  A few of them were of my signature piece: a strawberry.  I finally made something of a color-inverted strawberry charm on a chain bracelet last week.  And it has been nothing but trouble.

As with anyone else, my negative feelings tainted my work.

Lo and behold!  The bracelet is cursed.

Since I made it, myself and two others have worn it.  Our moods have been endlessly dragged down and nothing but bad luck has followed the wearer.  It's currently warded away in a jar of dried rosemary but I don't know how I'm going to get rid of it, or at least divest it of its curse.  Or for that matter, what I should do with the other charms I made around then.

So much wasted clay.