Ghost Light Sample Chapter
Mages don't do therapy.
In our defense, there's only about six licensed psychologists in the U.S. that are read in on the Otherworld. Patronizing their couches means allowing another mage unprecedented insight into your own life, and they don't even need cognimancy to do it. At best, this makes things socially awkward, if not politically hazardous. Anyone else we'd have to lie to, which is kinda beside the point. That's without even addressing the financial plan. Magic is not a substitute for decent health insurance.
Fortunately, I find chainsaws immensely therapeutic.
Byron kicked in the door of the atrium and took out the first zombie with a Wakazachi as I stepped into the fatal funnel, catching the second zombie with a draw cut across the face. The body jiggled with the chain's vibration until I'd cut off most of the head. The diagonal-cut skull bounced once, spilling remaining brains and ichor on the hotel carpet.
Byron smirked as only a hunter elf can. “You're enjoying this way too much.”
I gave him an evil grin in return. “Hey, we don't have to clean this up. And it's not as heavy as I'd imagined.”
An alto voice cut through the room. “Heads up!”
An unfolded entrenching tool, its handle tightly wrapped with hot pink paracord, flew between Byron and myself. The flight path left it embedding itself in the skull of a zombie that had lurched into the room. The corpse collapsed like the pile of rotting meat it was.
Connie tiptoed on heavy combat boots between us, letting something squish. I high-fived my covenmate as she passed, crouching to retrieve her e-tool. A Kbar knife was hanging loose in her free hand, ready to go. She gave the e-tool a little shake, letting brain fragments splatter on the floor.
“Travis is right about cleaning up. It's still disturbing, but it's kinda fun.”
Thumper slipped past her, hatchet in hand and sack slung over their shoulder. Crouching even shorter than usual, Thumper peeked around the corner into the next room. Without turning to the rest of us, Thumper gave a thumbs up, then slipped their free hand into the sack, drawing forth a fragmentation grenade.
Byron shook his head in disappointment. “You're just enabling him.”
Thumper shrugged, still focused on the open doorway. Using the hatchet, they pointed to the grenade and said, in their thick Mississippi delta accent, “Tool.” Then they pointed the hatchet towards the doorway. “Job.”
For Thumper, that was inspiration worthy of Agincourt.
I took my space behind Thumper as the others stacked up on me. Thumper pulled the pin, threw the grenade into the open doorway, then scurried back to the end of the stack. The explosion was short and felt under our feet as much as in the air. A small cloud of dust and a few splatters of ichor emerged from the doorway. I revved the chainsaw and stepped through, leaving splatter patterns that would've gotten me a B-minus in a modern art class.
I wasn't lying about the weight. The chainsaw was kinda awkward, but fortunately I've got the forearms of a blacksmith to go with my slowly growing paunch. Carving up zombies was good interval cardio, wasn't it?
Byron shook his head, disarming and then beheading a struggling zombie. “The best intimidation weapon in the world, used on things that can't be intimidated.”
I rolled my eyes. “If I wanted to intimidate, I'd pretend to be a thunder spirit or something. I want to relax and enjoy myself. Killing slow and stupid undead counts.”
Byron tried appealing to Connie. “You're a necromancer. Isn't this kind of offensive?”
She shrugged. “I didn't raise them.”
Thumper whistled as the next wave began to arrive.
For the next several minutes, I enjoyed the cardio butchery with my friends. It might not be the kind of magic that inspires ancient legends, but it was incredibly satisfying.
As we geared up for another round, Jazz softly tiptoed into the living room. She was holding a smartphone at arm's length, as if at any minute a cobra was going to emerge from the screen and begin threatening her. Given our current lifestyles, the odds of that happening were better than zero. Fortunately my insurance agent hadn't figured that out yet.
“Master?” she said, “I've got another one.”
I paused the game and got off the couch, leaving my chainsaw-wielding avatar in the lurch. My controller was unceremoniously dropped on the cushions. “You heard the lady, folks. Thumper, take the lead.”
Thumper scurried past Jazz, eager to get their plan up and running. Connie, having only a vague idea of what was about to ensue, gave a stretch before dismounting the easy chair. Byron, easily the most enthusiastic of us, had already put his controller down and was on his feet. I could almost see the points of his teeth flashing in his smile. Leaving swaths of pixelated chaos in our wake was fun, but Byron was a hunter born and raised. And our newfound quest, even though it used different tools, was still a hunt.
The four of us followed Thumper down the hallway to their bedroom.
Thumper, Connie, and myself were all mages. Last summer, we'd all survived some ugly times around vampires. All three of us had tasted vampire blood, survived, and kicked the addiction. We'd had some help along the way, but the three of us understood each other's experiences in ways nobody else really did. So we wound up forming a coven. Renfields Anonymous isn't the most awe-inspiring name for a crew, but it works for us.
Byron started out as a combo bodyguard and parole officer, and wound up becoming my friend. Surviving high school meant I made some badly one-sided bargains. At one point, I turned the Wild Hunt itself away from prime territory. In exchange, I agreed to hunt with them for a season. Byron was left behind both to make sure I didn't try to weasel out on the deal and make sure I had the skills to survive and keep up with them. We wound up joining the Marine Corps and fought in Iraq together.
Someday, my marker will be called in, and Byron won't have a reason to stick around anymore. But until then, I couldn't ask for a better hetero lifemate.
Then there's Jazz.
As far as my coven, or anyone else in the local Otherworld knows, Jazz is an Iraqi witch Byron and I met during the war. She's incredible when it comes to magic, but pretty sheltered when it comes to modern life.
Only Byron and I know Jazz is one of the few Djinn still on earth and still bound to a Solomanic talisman. Said talisman being the ring I wear on my left pinky. In Iraq, I killed her last master, took her ring, and then took her home. In that order. She's been working for me ever since.
Djinn are insanely powerful by modern magical standards. Most also have a serious hate-on for Mages. Mercifully, Jazz didn't seem to suffer from the mage hatred that dominated her species. Or hatred of anyone else, for that matter. She's sweet as a candy store to everyone she meets. She'd also been a scribe and archivist for various libraries for several centuries. Give her enough bookshelf space and tasks to do and she was content as could be. So I'd brought her up on the last century of current events and had her assisting me in magical theory. Having an assistant who could read a dozen languages helped a lot.
She'd helped so much that at one point I was under suspicion of demonic bargaining. Her cover and mine held up under investigation, but it was a close call. Revealing her true nature was a good way to make both of us international targets.
As it stood, we just looked mildly bizarre. My ethics won't let me become romantically involved with someone magically compelled to serve me, no matter the temptation. And make no mistake, she's extremely tempting. Deep sapphire blue eyes, a dangerous set of curves, a scorching case of bibliophilia, and a streak of service submission a mile wide. On top of that, I'm fairly certain she still doesn't own a shirt that isn't cropped.
Temptation.
Unfortunately, wishing her freedom is physically possible, but it would be a temporary solution at best. The spell that bound her into my ring is easy enough to find. But once I freed her, there would be nothing keeping someone else from binding her into another ring or a bottle or something and serving them. All other options were just as complicated and dangerous, if not more so.
While I couldn't safely set her free, I could help her adapt to the modern world. I set her up in a spare room at my house. I introduced her to friends and acquaintances. Powerful glamours left her skin tan instead of blue. She'd gotten in the habit of wearing western clothes instead of bedlahs, at least publicly. I couldn't stop her from calling me “master,” but I could have her wear a black leather collar in public and let onlookers draw their own conclusions.
One way or another, she was going to be a free woman someday. And I wanted her to be confident in whatever choices she made when that happened. So we went to work building her new identity, using magic to make the way a bit easier when we needed to. She had her own ID, bank account, and resume. We were slowly building her online presence and getting her used to the internet world.
You heard that right. I took a sweet, pretty, zaftig, subby and wide-eyed girl who hadn't been dialed in to pop culture since the glory days of the British Empire and I let her dive into social media.
I. Am. An. Idiot.
Fortunately, I managed to keep her from calling down a public curse on any of the poor little morons thus far. If a string of creepy men started being hit by lightning, I'd have an SiS marshal on my doorstep wanting a word. Or worse, some fruitloop from the Nimuen wanting me to join up. What's the fun of being a wizard if you can't even get yourself off mailing lists?
By the time I made it to Thumper's room, they were already hard at work. Thumper was settled into their overstuffed office chair. Two towers, seven monitors, and a speaker array faced them like a church organ with all the options. Several more towers occupied a shelf under the desk. Cables were everywhere. The rest of us piled onto Thumper's bed to watch the show.
Thumper's been a good friend since middle school. Then our senior year teacher tried to murder our entire graduating class. Long story. Short version: The Blue River massacre wasn't a school shooting. That night, an explosion sent Thumper flying headfirst into a tree. When they woke up from the coma a couple of months later, they had a form of aphasia. They could understand people fine. And somehow, they didn't have much hearing damage. But they couldn't respond much. Something between Thumper's brain and mouth was screwy, and nobody mundane or magical could figure out how. Short answers they could usually pull off. But anything with more than a short sentence turned into a frustrating mess of word salad. Even sign language just devolved into charades, and nobody could tell them why.
But they could type just fine.
Thumper hadn't had a great deal of support when they recovered. The injuries combined with being nonbinary in a less than understanding family didn't help any. But they wound up becoming a fairly decent self-taught programmer. They'd even managed to mix the peanut butter of magic with the chocolate of programming to be a fairly stellar technomancer in their own right. And since communication had been their impetus for getting into programming in the first place, they were very good with phones.
Jazz's phone was plugged into a docking station with several indicator lights whose purpose I couldn't determine glowing like small Christmas decorations.
I wasn't into computers for their own sake. They were a means to various ends for me. But like any craftsman, I knew the importance of having good tools when I found them. So when Thumper moved in, I helped out on the hardware side. One USB stick plugged into a tower. Another one plugged into Jazz's phone. A few clicks later, the upper right hand screen showed a full text conversation between Jazz and the unfortunate soul who was now a target in Thumper's sights.
HIM: ur beautiful
ME: Thank you.
HIM: Where ru?
ME: Atlanta. It's very nice.
HIM: u wanna hook up?
ME: No thank you.
HIM: u sure?
ME: Very sure.
HIM: u dunno what ur missing.
ME: I'm not interested. Please leave me alone.
HIM: All this is yours if u want it.
Below his final line was an up close and personal pic of a prominent erection. To the guy's credit, it was as well lit and shot as an amateur could hope for. Shame the guy had learned photo composition instead of modern etiquette.
Thumper's computer had a digital countdown going on the upper-right monitor next to a copy of the phone's screen display. In the top center console, a large font type let Thumper text us details in all caps. The countdown fell to zero, only to be replaced with a banner declaring ACTIVATING TATTLETALE.
Thumper texted, “AND HERE WE GO.”
I couldn't begin to explain how Thumper's technomancy worked. What I did know is that the program was intuitive enough to make the next logical steps. Even if the next logical steps included a device or database it wasn't connected to at the time. That said, we could all pretty much guess as we watched Thumper work.
I sighed. “Crap. It's a burner phone.”
Byron shook his head. “So he does have two brain cells to rub together.”
“WATCH.”
Half of Thumper's monitors showed us the chase, jumping from computer to computer.
Connie pointed out a lit connection. “He bought it at a gas station in... Norcross, looks like?”
Byron munched popcorn as a camera feed popped up. “And here's the register camera.”
Thumper picked up a headset and handed it wordlessly to Jazz, who donned it over her ponytail.
More data appeared. I smiled. “Say hello to Brandon.”
Byron grinned. “28 years old. Lives at home.”
Connie watched impassively. “Mother's name is Kathryn.”
Byron read aloud. “Last known jobs, exterminator, pizza delivery, parking enforcement.”
Another camera popped up. I smiled. “We got his webcam.”
The center middle screen opened up, showing Brandon. He had dirty blond hair and was dressed in dirtier raggedy shorts and tshirt he might have slept in, possibly for multiple nights. The room around him was beyond a mess and well into filthy. When old laundry and old dishes meet, the results are never pretty. I was glad there was no way for us to experience the smell. Brandon was playing with a game controller, occasionally pausing to scratch himself.
I saw more data pop up. “We've got mom's phone.”
“JAZZ, YOU'RE UP.”
A window opened on the screen with Brandon's phone, now showing his mother's cell. After three rings, we could hear her pick up. “Hello?”
Jazz visibly blushed, and her tone dropped the way it did when she was convinced she had done something wrong. “Yes, hello ma'am. I'm terribly sorry to bother you. This is so embarrassing. It's about... Brandon.”
“What? Does he owe you money too?”
“Oh, no no no. He's just...”
“Just what?”
“He's sent some disturbing messages, ma'am.”
“... send them to me.”
“I'm.. I'm so embarrassed, ma'am. I'm so sorry.”
“Don't worry about that honey, go ahead and send them.”
“SCREENSHOTS INBOUND.”
We were all on the edge of our seats. Kathryn hung up, sending all of our eyes focusing on Brandon's webcam. I'm not sure what microphone Thumper was using, but we could hear Kathryn screaming easily.
“BRANDON!”
The flip-flop came screaming into the frame like Connie's e-tool, nailing Brandon straight between the eyes. Kathryn charged into the room like an angry valkyrie, cursing a blue streak with her other flip-flop in one hand and her phone, shining with forwarded evidence of Brandon's misdeeds, in the other.
We all laughed ourselves silly as Brandon got his ass kicked for several minutes. Thumper got high-fives all around from the assembled. Jazz was blushing furiously but found the celebration infectious. Kathryn finally decided to show mercy, stomping out of camera range and grumbling to herself.
Thumper held up a hand, then typed quickly, “STAND BY. THIS MIGHT GET UGLY.”
Brandon picked up his phone, fury in his eyes, and began to text. The screen duplicating Jazz's phone lit up with a new message.
Him: Bitch wtf you think you doin?
Jazz reached for her phone. Thumper stopped her with a raised hand, then started typing again.
A response popped up on that screen.
Me: I told you to please leave me alone.
Through the webcam we could hear Brandon snort as he kept texting. “Fucking bitch think she
is?”
Him: Fuck you!!! ugly bitch I'll cut your fucking face. Fucking flabby whore.
Jazz began to swear in Arabic, making several insinuations about which barnyard animals Kathryn must have pleasured in order to conceive Brandon. Thumper typed away.
“UH OH! DADDY'S HOME!”
On one of Thumper's screens, duplicated on Brandon's home TV, now depicted a grinning green animated skull. Animated fires burned in its eye sockets. It's voice was a guttural baritone that matched Thumper's all-caps typing perfectly.
“THE LADY SAID TO LEAVE HER ALONE, BRANDON.”
Brandon dropped his phone, staring at the screen dumbfounded. “What the fuck?”
The skull continued under Thumper's puppeteering. “THERE ARE WORSE PUNISHMENTS THAN MOTHERS AND FLIP FLOPS, BRANDON. USING A BURNER GAINED YOU NOTHING BUT MINUITES. FINDING YOU WAS SIMPLE. FINDING YOUR MOTHER WAS SIMPLE. IMAGINE WHAT ELSE WILL BE SIMPLE.”
The fury in Brandon's eyes melted into fear as he frantically looked around, wondering how he was being treated like this.
“LEARN HOW TO BEHAVE AMONG LADIES, BRANDON. YOU ARE NOT UGLY, ONLY CRUDE AND FOOLISH. CORRECT YOURSELF. THIS WORLD HAS NO PLACE FOR EUNUCHS.”
Thumper typed a quick command, and Brandon's phone made a series of sharp pops. Smoke began to curl from under the casing, and Brandon dropped the suddenly hot phone.
“DO NOT COME TO MY ATTENTION AGAIN.”
Brandon's TV blipped, then returned to the game screen he had been playing.
Thumper cut the connection, restoring the home screen on Jazz's phone.
“THANK YOU FOLKS, I'LL BE HERE ALL WEEK.”
Byron started golf clapping. “Well done.”
Connie smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. “One down, hundreds of thousands to go.”
Jazz was still flushed, and looked at her nervously. “Truly?”
Connie nodded. “Unfortunately. Most of em ain't even worth this much effort.”
Thumper sighed, then started typing. “IT WORKED. EVENTUALLY, I CAN REFINE IT TO SOMETHING YOU'D JUST KEEP LOADED ON YOUR PHONE. THEN I CAN SHARE.”
I tried to give an encouraging smile. “Altruistic of you there, old friend.”
“THE GIFT THAT CAN KEEP ON GIVING. UNTIL DUDES LEARN MANNERS.”
Mages didn't usually share their custom spells. Constructing new ways to use magic was a time- consuming and often dangerous undertaking. Which is why most learning after high school goes from Master to apprentice. Or within a faction.
Which Thumper didn't belong to.
I tilted my head in confusion. “Wait a minute. Share with who?”
The doorbell rang before Thumper could answer.
Copyright 2023 by Jay Peterson
All Rights Reserved
In our defense, there's only about six licensed psychologists in the U.S. that are read in on the Otherworld. Patronizing their couches means allowing another mage unprecedented insight into your own life, and they don't even need cognimancy to do it. At best, this makes things socially awkward, if not politically hazardous. Anyone else we'd have to lie to, which is kinda beside the point. That's without even addressing the financial plan. Magic is not a substitute for decent health insurance.
Fortunately, I find chainsaws immensely therapeutic.
Byron kicked in the door of the atrium and took out the first zombie with a Wakazachi as I stepped into the fatal funnel, catching the second zombie with a draw cut across the face. The body jiggled with the chain's vibration until I'd cut off most of the head. The diagonal-cut skull bounced once, spilling remaining brains and ichor on the hotel carpet.
Byron smirked as only a hunter elf can. “You're enjoying this way too much.”
I gave him an evil grin in return. “Hey, we don't have to clean this up. And it's not as heavy as I'd imagined.”
An alto voice cut through the room. “Heads up!”
An unfolded entrenching tool, its handle tightly wrapped with hot pink paracord, flew between Byron and myself. The flight path left it embedding itself in the skull of a zombie that had lurched into the room. The corpse collapsed like the pile of rotting meat it was.
Connie tiptoed on heavy combat boots between us, letting something squish. I high-fived my covenmate as she passed, crouching to retrieve her e-tool. A Kbar knife was hanging loose in her free hand, ready to go. She gave the e-tool a little shake, letting brain fragments splatter on the floor.
“Travis is right about cleaning up. It's still disturbing, but it's kinda fun.”
Thumper slipped past her, hatchet in hand and sack slung over their shoulder. Crouching even shorter than usual, Thumper peeked around the corner into the next room. Without turning to the rest of us, Thumper gave a thumbs up, then slipped their free hand into the sack, drawing forth a fragmentation grenade.
Byron shook his head in disappointment. “You're just enabling him.”
Thumper shrugged, still focused on the open doorway. Using the hatchet, they pointed to the grenade and said, in their thick Mississippi delta accent, “Tool.” Then they pointed the hatchet towards the doorway. “Job.”
For Thumper, that was inspiration worthy of Agincourt.
I took my space behind Thumper as the others stacked up on me. Thumper pulled the pin, threw the grenade into the open doorway, then scurried back to the end of the stack. The explosion was short and felt under our feet as much as in the air. A small cloud of dust and a few splatters of ichor emerged from the doorway. I revved the chainsaw and stepped through, leaving splatter patterns that would've gotten me a B-minus in a modern art class.
I wasn't lying about the weight. The chainsaw was kinda awkward, but fortunately I've got the forearms of a blacksmith to go with my slowly growing paunch. Carving up zombies was good interval cardio, wasn't it?
Byron shook his head, disarming and then beheading a struggling zombie. “The best intimidation weapon in the world, used on things that can't be intimidated.”
I rolled my eyes. “If I wanted to intimidate, I'd pretend to be a thunder spirit or something. I want to relax and enjoy myself. Killing slow and stupid undead counts.”
Byron tried appealing to Connie. “You're a necromancer. Isn't this kind of offensive?”
She shrugged. “I didn't raise them.”
Thumper whistled as the next wave began to arrive.
For the next several minutes, I enjoyed the cardio butchery with my friends. It might not be the kind of magic that inspires ancient legends, but it was incredibly satisfying.
As we geared up for another round, Jazz softly tiptoed into the living room. She was holding a smartphone at arm's length, as if at any minute a cobra was going to emerge from the screen and begin threatening her. Given our current lifestyles, the odds of that happening were better than zero. Fortunately my insurance agent hadn't figured that out yet.
“Master?” she said, “I've got another one.”
I paused the game and got off the couch, leaving my chainsaw-wielding avatar in the lurch. My controller was unceremoniously dropped on the cushions. “You heard the lady, folks. Thumper, take the lead.”
Thumper scurried past Jazz, eager to get their plan up and running. Connie, having only a vague idea of what was about to ensue, gave a stretch before dismounting the easy chair. Byron, easily the most enthusiastic of us, had already put his controller down and was on his feet. I could almost see the points of his teeth flashing in his smile. Leaving swaths of pixelated chaos in our wake was fun, but Byron was a hunter born and raised. And our newfound quest, even though it used different tools, was still a hunt.
The four of us followed Thumper down the hallway to their bedroom.
Thumper, Connie, and myself were all mages. Last summer, we'd all survived some ugly times around vampires. All three of us had tasted vampire blood, survived, and kicked the addiction. We'd had some help along the way, but the three of us understood each other's experiences in ways nobody else really did. So we wound up forming a coven. Renfields Anonymous isn't the most awe-inspiring name for a crew, but it works for us.
Byron started out as a combo bodyguard and parole officer, and wound up becoming my friend. Surviving high school meant I made some badly one-sided bargains. At one point, I turned the Wild Hunt itself away from prime territory. In exchange, I agreed to hunt with them for a season. Byron was left behind both to make sure I didn't try to weasel out on the deal and make sure I had the skills to survive and keep up with them. We wound up joining the Marine Corps and fought in Iraq together.
Someday, my marker will be called in, and Byron won't have a reason to stick around anymore. But until then, I couldn't ask for a better hetero lifemate.
Then there's Jazz.
As far as my coven, or anyone else in the local Otherworld knows, Jazz is an Iraqi witch Byron and I met during the war. She's incredible when it comes to magic, but pretty sheltered when it comes to modern life.
Only Byron and I know Jazz is one of the few Djinn still on earth and still bound to a Solomanic talisman. Said talisman being the ring I wear on my left pinky. In Iraq, I killed her last master, took her ring, and then took her home. In that order. She's been working for me ever since.
Djinn are insanely powerful by modern magical standards. Most also have a serious hate-on for Mages. Mercifully, Jazz didn't seem to suffer from the mage hatred that dominated her species. Or hatred of anyone else, for that matter. She's sweet as a candy store to everyone she meets. She'd also been a scribe and archivist for various libraries for several centuries. Give her enough bookshelf space and tasks to do and she was content as could be. So I'd brought her up on the last century of current events and had her assisting me in magical theory. Having an assistant who could read a dozen languages helped a lot.
She'd helped so much that at one point I was under suspicion of demonic bargaining. Her cover and mine held up under investigation, but it was a close call. Revealing her true nature was a good way to make both of us international targets.
As it stood, we just looked mildly bizarre. My ethics won't let me become romantically involved with someone magically compelled to serve me, no matter the temptation. And make no mistake, she's extremely tempting. Deep sapphire blue eyes, a dangerous set of curves, a scorching case of bibliophilia, and a streak of service submission a mile wide. On top of that, I'm fairly certain she still doesn't own a shirt that isn't cropped.
Temptation.
Unfortunately, wishing her freedom is physically possible, but it would be a temporary solution at best. The spell that bound her into my ring is easy enough to find. But once I freed her, there would be nothing keeping someone else from binding her into another ring or a bottle or something and serving them. All other options were just as complicated and dangerous, if not more so.
While I couldn't safely set her free, I could help her adapt to the modern world. I set her up in a spare room at my house. I introduced her to friends and acquaintances. Powerful glamours left her skin tan instead of blue. She'd gotten in the habit of wearing western clothes instead of bedlahs, at least publicly. I couldn't stop her from calling me “master,” but I could have her wear a black leather collar in public and let onlookers draw their own conclusions.
One way or another, she was going to be a free woman someday. And I wanted her to be confident in whatever choices she made when that happened. So we went to work building her new identity, using magic to make the way a bit easier when we needed to. She had her own ID, bank account, and resume. We were slowly building her online presence and getting her used to the internet world.
You heard that right. I took a sweet, pretty, zaftig, subby and wide-eyed girl who hadn't been dialed in to pop culture since the glory days of the British Empire and I let her dive into social media.
I. Am. An. Idiot.
Fortunately, I managed to keep her from calling down a public curse on any of the poor little morons thus far. If a string of creepy men started being hit by lightning, I'd have an SiS marshal on my doorstep wanting a word. Or worse, some fruitloop from the Nimuen wanting me to join up. What's the fun of being a wizard if you can't even get yourself off mailing lists?
By the time I made it to Thumper's room, they were already hard at work. Thumper was settled into their overstuffed office chair. Two towers, seven monitors, and a speaker array faced them like a church organ with all the options. Several more towers occupied a shelf under the desk. Cables were everywhere. The rest of us piled onto Thumper's bed to watch the show.
Thumper's been a good friend since middle school. Then our senior year teacher tried to murder our entire graduating class. Long story. Short version: The Blue River massacre wasn't a school shooting. That night, an explosion sent Thumper flying headfirst into a tree. When they woke up from the coma a couple of months later, they had a form of aphasia. They could understand people fine. And somehow, they didn't have much hearing damage. But they couldn't respond much. Something between Thumper's brain and mouth was screwy, and nobody mundane or magical could figure out how. Short answers they could usually pull off. But anything with more than a short sentence turned into a frustrating mess of word salad. Even sign language just devolved into charades, and nobody could tell them why.
But they could type just fine.
Thumper hadn't had a great deal of support when they recovered. The injuries combined with being nonbinary in a less than understanding family didn't help any. But they wound up becoming a fairly decent self-taught programmer. They'd even managed to mix the peanut butter of magic with the chocolate of programming to be a fairly stellar technomancer in their own right. And since communication had been their impetus for getting into programming in the first place, they were very good with phones.
Jazz's phone was plugged into a docking station with several indicator lights whose purpose I couldn't determine glowing like small Christmas decorations.
I wasn't into computers for their own sake. They were a means to various ends for me. But like any craftsman, I knew the importance of having good tools when I found them. So when Thumper moved in, I helped out on the hardware side. One USB stick plugged into a tower. Another one plugged into Jazz's phone. A few clicks later, the upper right hand screen showed a full text conversation between Jazz and the unfortunate soul who was now a target in Thumper's sights.
HIM: ur beautiful
ME: Thank you.
HIM: Where ru?
ME: Atlanta. It's very nice.
HIM: u wanna hook up?
ME: No thank you.
HIM: u sure?
ME: Very sure.
HIM: u dunno what ur missing.
ME: I'm not interested. Please leave me alone.
HIM: All this is yours if u want it.
Below his final line was an up close and personal pic of a prominent erection. To the guy's credit, it was as well lit and shot as an amateur could hope for. Shame the guy had learned photo composition instead of modern etiquette.
Thumper's computer had a digital countdown going on the upper-right monitor next to a copy of the phone's screen display. In the top center console, a large font type let Thumper text us details in all caps. The countdown fell to zero, only to be replaced with a banner declaring ACTIVATING TATTLETALE.
Thumper texted, “AND HERE WE GO.”
I couldn't begin to explain how Thumper's technomancy worked. What I did know is that the program was intuitive enough to make the next logical steps. Even if the next logical steps included a device or database it wasn't connected to at the time. That said, we could all pretty much guess as we watched Thumper work.
I sighed. “Crap. It's a burner phone.”
Byron shook his head. “So he does have two brain cells to rub together.”
“WATCH.”
Half of Thumper's monitors showed us the chase, jumping from computer to computer.
Connie pointed out a lit connection. “He bought it at a gas station in... Norcross, looks like?”
Byron munched popcorn as a camera feed popped up. “And here's the register camera.”
Thumper picked up a headset and handed it wordlessly to Jazz, who donned it over her ponytail.
More data appeared. I smiled. “Say hello to Brandon.”
Byron grinned. “28 years old. Lives at home.”
Connie watched impassively. “Mother's name is Kathryn.”
Byron read aloud. “Last known jobs, exterminator, pizza delivery, parking enforcement.”
Another camera popped up. I smiled. “We got his webcam.”
The center middle screen opened up, showing Brandon. He had dirty blond hair and was dressed in dirtier raggedy shorts and tshirt he might have slept in, possibly for multiple nights. The room around him was beyond a mess and well into filthy. When old laundry and old dishes meet, the results are never pretty. I was glad there was no way for us to experience the smell. Brandon was playing with a game controller, occasionally pausing to scratch himself.
I saw more data pop up. “We've got mom's phone.”
“JAZZ, YOU'RE UP.”
A window opened on the screen with Brandon's phone, now showing his mother's cell. After three rings, we could hear her pick up. “Hello?”
Jazz visibly blushed, and her tone dropped the way it did when she was convinced she had done something wrong. “Yes, hello ma'am. I'm terribly sorry to bother you. This is so embarrassing. It's about... Brandon.”
“What? Does he owe you money too?”
“Oh, no no no. He's just...”
“Just what?”
“He's sent some disturbing messages, ma'am.”
“... send them to me.”
“I'm.. I'm so embarrassed, ma'am. I'm so sorry.”
“Don't worry about that honey, go ahead and send them.”
“SCREENSHOTS INBOUND.”
We were all on the edge of our seats. Kathryn hung up, sending all of our eyes focusing on Brandon's webcam. I'm not sure what microphone Thumper was using, but we could hear Kathryn screaming easily.
“BRANDON!”
The flip-flop came screaming into the frame like Connie's e-tool, nailing Brandon straight between the eyes. Kathryn charged into the room like an angry valkyrie, cursing a blue streak with her other flip-flop in one hand and her phone, shining with forwarded evidence of Brandon's misdeeds, in the other.
We all laughed ourselves silly as Brandon got his ass kicked for several minutes. Thumper got high-fives all around from the assembled. Jazz was blushing furiously but found the celebration infectious. Kathryn finally decided to show mercy, stomping out of camera range and grumbling to herself.
Thumper held up a hand, then typed quickly, “STAND BY. THIS MIGHT GET UGLY.”
Brandon picked up his phone, fury in his eyes, and began to text. The screen duplicating Jazz's phone lit up with a new message.
Him: Bitch wtf you think you doin?
Jazz reached for her phone. Thumper stopped her with a raised hand, then started typing again.
A response popped up on that screen.
Me: I told you to please leave me alone.
Through the webcam we could hear Brandon snort as he kept texting. “Fucking bitch think she
is?”
Him: Fuck you!!! ugly bitch I'll cut your fucking face. Fucking flabby whore.
Jazz began to swear in Arabic, making several insinuations about which barnyard animals Kathryn must have pleasured in order to conceive Brandon. Thumper typed away.
“UH OH! DADDY'S HOME!”
On one of Thumper's screens, duplicated on Brandon's home TV, now depicted a grinning green animated skull. Animated fires burned in its eye sockets. It's voice was a guttural baritone that matched Thumper's all-caps typing perfectly.
“THE LADY SAID TO LEAVE HER ALONE, BRANDON.”
Brandon dropped his phone, staring at the screen dumbfounded. “What the fuck?”
The skull continued under Thumper's puppeteering. “THERE ARE WORSE PUNISHMENTS THAN MOTHERS AND FLIP FLOPS, BRANDON. USING A BURNER GAINED YOU NOTHING BUT MINUITES. FINDING YOU WAS SIMPLE. FINDING YOUR MOTHER WAS SIMPLE. IMAGINE WHAT ELSE WILL BE SIMPLE.”
The fury in Brandon's eyes melted into fear as he frantically looked around, wondering how he was being treated like this.
“LEARN HOW TO BEHAVE AMONG LADIES, BRANDON. YOU ARE NOT UGLY, ONLY CRUDE AND FOOLISH. CORRECT YOURSELF. THIS WORLD HAS NO PLACE FOR EUNUCHS.”
Thumper typed a quick command, and Brandon's phone made a series of sharp pops. Smoke began to curl from under the casing, and Brandon dropped the suddenly hot phone.
“DO NOT COME TO MY ATTENTION AGAIN.”
Brandon's TV blipped, then returned to the game screen he had been playing.
Thumper cut the connection, restoring the home screen on Jazz's phone.
“THANK YOU FOLKS, I'LL BE HERE ALL WEEK.”
Byron started golf clapping. “Well done.”
Connie smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. “One down, hundreds of thousands to go.”
Jazz was still flushed, and looked at her nervously. “Truly?”
Connie nodded. “Unfortunately. Most of em ain't even worth this much effort.”
Thumper sighed, then started typing. “IT WORKED. EVENTUALLY, I CAN REFINE IT TO SOMETHING YOU'D JUST KEEP LOADED ON YOUR PHONE. THEN I CAN SHARE.”
I tried to give an encouraging smile. “Altruistic of you there, old friend.”
“THE GIFT THAT CAN KEEP ON GIVING. UNTIL DUDES LEARN MANNERS.”
Mages didn't usually share their custom spells. Constructing new ways to use magic was a time- consuming and often dangerous undertaking. Which is why most learning after high school goes from Master to apprentice. Or within a faction.
Which Thumper didn't belong to.
I tilted my head in confusion. “Wait a minute. Share with who?”
The doorbell rang before Thumper could answer.
Copyright 2023 by Jay Peterson
All Rights Reserved
