Another idea that's been with me for a while. I'm hoping that using up the old ones is making room for lots of new ones.
Lame (825 words)
Of course she didn’t really believe him. But it was Friday night and she was a little bit pissed and he was the sexy new American manager at work and he looked so worn out. So she put her hand over his, had to be her left on his right apparently, and repeated “I willingly take this curse from you”.
He turned up at her little flat the next morning, with a pile of books under his arm. He talked about guilt, but a smile lurked around his lips and his steps were dancing.
“The curse can’t be taken back,” he said. “Only passed on, and you know how to do that. The thing travels slowly, on foot everywhere, and it follows your path. It never sleeps. It never stops. Never.”
“And what happens if it catches you?” she asked, laughing.
He shrugged. “Who wants to find out?” He shoved the books at her. “Diaries. Some stuff on ritual magic and demonology. No help to me, but you never know. And here’s some atlases and maps. Get to know your oceanography; the Marianas Trench really slows it down.”
“So all you’ve got to do it stay ahead of it until you die. Can’t you think of something scarier?”
“I’d get going if I were you.”
“Whatever.” She shut the door on him. As a joke, or a hoax, it was totally lame.
She worked, she hung out with her mates and she ran on the treadmill at the gym. After a few months she felt itchy and jumpy. Her stomach got upset, and she’d be sitting in the pub and her heart would pound until she could hardly breathe. Stress, said her mates. It only made sense to take a holiday. She didn’t have much money, but Greece was cheap and she’d always wanted to go. The white ruins, bones of buildings against a delphinium sky. She brought back ouzo and cooked moussaka for her friends.
She felt better for a couple of months, and then it started again. This time she went to see the Northern Lights in Rejkyavik. The fluttering electric ribbons in the sky were worth the last of her savings. She listened avidly to folktales of elves and trolls and bought some anthologies to read at home.
When the feelings started again she saw her doctor, who referred her to a counsellor, who taught her relaxation techniques and meditation. She put a chain on her door and tried a protection spell from a book. But she still slept uneasily.
When she heard the thump-shuffle on the stairs in the night it was almost a relief. She cracked open the bedroom door and peeped. Something snorted, a blast of heat and stink. She became instinct and reflex. Her next thought was as she dangled and dropped from her bedroom window – shit I’ve left my purse. She didn’t notice the pain in her ankle as she stumbled into the road, shouting for a car to stop. She screamed once, in casualty when they reset the break. It left her with a shade of a limp.
She terminated her lease without ever going back to the flat; her parents collected her things. She had enough money for a ticket to Amsterdam. Everyone spoke English there anyway, there would be something she could do, and it was a place to start.
She didn’t talk about it until Tokyo, drinking beer in a little mirrored bar in a forest of neon, staring at her reflection and wondering who it was. A guy plonked himself down opposite, handed her another bottle and asked why so sad and she told him the whole thing, deadpan. Of course he didn’t really believe her. He reached out to put his left hand on her right. As he started to repeat the words, she jumped up, spilling beer and knocking over chairs as she bolted.
After that, she found she was lingering in places, long enough for the feelings to get strong. She came back to London, but her old friends bored her. When she wasn’t working, she wandered the city.
She heard the sound again on a dense, foggy night on the Embankment with the cold mud smell of the Thames in the air and the glowing balls of the Victorian lights hovering in the mist. Thump-shuffle. A towering shape shambled in the fog. She curled her hands into fists in her pockets and forced herself to stand fast. It dragged one crippled leg as it came. Silver droplets sparkled on its brindled shaggy fur. Two pairs of horns curled from a dog-like head, blocky and blunt like a Rottweiler’s. She looked into its bronze eyes, and they were a thousand years weary.
It never sleeps, she thought. It never stops. I doubt it chose this.
The demon held her gaze, dipped its head in an odd little gesture, but it still came on. She nodded back, then she ran.
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