Twisted Wishes

The tea was getting cold.

A pretty floral tea set sat on a small, antique patio table. A slightly disheveled butler stood in the doorway of the room, having been waiting for his mistress to tell him to brew a new pot. He sighed.

Despite the windows in the opulently furnished office being closed, the tapestries flapped and the paintings were crooked, and there were papers floating to the ground after being flung from their perch on a desk on the other side of the room. The butler called a maid in to tidy the mess, while he neatened his appearance. His mistress wasn’t fond of mess, despite the unfortunate side effects of her frequent summonings.

Once the room was set to rights and he no longer looked unkempt, the maid was dismissed and he assumed his position by the teapot. There he waited for the inevitable command for a fresh pot.

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Maggie Blinkman sat cross-legged in the middle of a pentagram, holding the half burned taper candle that she’d found in a drawer in the dining room, tucked in a corner for who knows how long.

The room was a mess, not just because it belonged to a 14 year old, but also because of the near cyclone that had preceded the violently beautiful woman now standing in front of Maggie’s cupboard. The woman stared at the girl with a dangerous gleam in her eye and the girl stared back, dazed.

“Are you sure that’s what you want?” Maggie blinked at the wicked tilt of the woman’s mouth, unsure if she’d understood the voice that sounded like a chorus of purrs and growls. “You really should be sure about things like this.” the voice continued when there was no response.

Maggie ummed. Her reason for summoning the woman forgotten when she realised the summoning had actually worked.

She glanced around distractedly, at the disarray that was now her room, and thought to herself “my mother’s going to kill me”.

The woman was now leaning against the cupboard door, rhythmically tapping obsidian nails on the rim of a prettily flowered teacup, stopping only to lift the cup to violet lips and take a dainty sip.

“Damn, it’s cold.” She shot an annoyed look at Maggie, who shivered at the glare but didn’t move. She wasn’t sure her legs would work, they felt almost numb.

A huff accompanied the shake of the woman’s head, hair the same colour as the leaves on a California Lilac shimmered in the candlelight. With a remorse-filled glance at the now cold tea in her cup the woman straightened and the teacup vanished.

Maggie blinked. Still seated in her pentagram, she noticed a cramp starting in her previously numb leg and winced. Not willing to move yet, for fear of the strange woman now leisurely assessing the catastrophe of her room, she resigned herself to the pain in her near future. The woman’s gaze snapped back to her at her sigh.

The silence in the room was starting to feel like a physical presence. They both stared.

“Well, if you’re not going to change your mind, so be it.” She snapped her fingers.

Maggie Blinkman blinked and the woman was gone.

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Lyle Bonaparte sat in his dressing room, eating red licorice twists, as his stylist put the finishing touches on his fashionably messy hairdo. He was due on stage in 10 minutes and hadn’t realised his pack of antacids was empty until he’d gotten into the dressing room a half hour before. There was no time to find a chemist this close to the show, so his manager had scrounged up the sweets from one of the stage hands, who apparently had no problems with anxiety but did have a sweet tooth. They were at least a distraction.

The stylist twisted one more curl over his forehead, spritzed what seemed like a full can of hairspray over the masterpiece of his head, then walked to the door with a determined warning not to touch his hair no matter what, only leaving after he’d nodded his agreement.

Just as the latch on the door clicked into place there was a long, loud whoosh, a concerto of rattles and a series of loud bangs. Lyle’s stylist wrenched the door open to a disaster site, with chairs knocked over, papers fluttering in the wake of what had sounded like a mini-cyclone, clothes racks settling into brand new positions and hair and make-up tools scattered around the room.

And no Lyle.

The next 10 minutes were a frenzy of every pair of eyes, from the managers to the stage hands to the ticket checkers to the sound engineers, being radioed to comb every inch of the stadium for the missing star.

The opening act was told to keep going to buy time, but when a chant of Lyle’s name overpowered the fifth extra song they started, and with still no sign of the missing singer the event manager had to admit defeat.

The show was canceled citing a sudden illness, and to quell any errant rioters, a partial refund promised in the near future.

The rest of the night was filled with paperwork and phone calls to sponsors and dealing with reporters and complaints from various people and companies.

Then, as dawn broke with still no sign of the star, and increasingly demanding phone calls from his parents, a call was made to the police to report Lyle Bonaparte, teen pop-star and heartthrob, missing.

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“More tea Mistress Rhamnous?”

The butler asked as he stood unobtrusively by the door while his mistress lounged on a rose pink velvet chaise longue, watching a figure flitting across a phantom mirror hanging mid-air in front of her. The pretty floral tea set laid out on a mahogany coffee table by the chaise floated up and toward the door, an engraved silver tray appearing beneath it.

“Brew me some of that delicious Rose leaf, Georgie my love.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As the butler disappeared quietly out the door carrying the tea set, her attention returned to the ghostly floating screen.

The pictures on the screen showed a young teen girl screaming in front of the open doors of her bedroom cupboard. Tears streaming down her face as she collapsed, hysterical in front of the limp body of a boy slightly older than herself. His limbs were twisted to fit inside the closet, his face pale and drawn, hair a little windswept but otherwise perfectly styled.

The girls parents barreled through the door, frantic at the sound of the girl’s terrified shrieks, only to stop short at the gruesome scene. No sound came from the spectral mirror, but the distress was obvious in their body language.

The goddess chuckled to herself as the tea set re-materialised on her coffee table. When the pot tipped to fill her cup, she leaned to pick it up, and raised it to her violet lips. Taking her first sip of the steaming, aromatic tea, her eyes closed in bliss and she sighed contentedly.

As her ruby eyes opened again and flashed back to the scene of the girl and her parents, the corners of her lips kicked up into a gleeful little grin and the amused purr of her voice rolled around the room, rustling across the carpet and down the curtains.

“You really should be careful what you wish for.”