A Moment before Midnight

(Contains a swear word, and some very light cosmic horror)

It was ten minutes to midnight when they started.

Amity wanted to prepare the circle earlier, but the debate over shape alone wasted that time. In the end, they decided on a square instead. An unconventional container for forces unknown, but there was a good reason.

Squares, as any good summoner knew, were ill fitting for even the most basic of spirits or forces. The corner points, without a guiding circle surrounding them, would create a weakness that any creature both inward and outward could exploit. Yet, for the express purpose of their conjecture, it would do. You couldn't summon, or in this case, unsummon a paradox without doing things a little wrong.

The witches, or coven, as the majority would prefer to be addressed, were four in number. There was Amity, the stickler with dyed hair in a variety of mantis shrimp colors. There was Jess, the de facto leader and Math major of the group, her glasses carved with runic sigils that most certainly ruined the prescription frames. Kylie, who was still dressing and speaking as a boy would out of discomfort (her parents did NOT support her decision of transitioning). Lastly, Beatrice, who was both the newest member and most reluctant; and also the source of tonight's experiment.

Beatrice did not believe in magic. Who would? The theories and methods of science had long since replaced the pagan and divine: rockets launched into space, telescopes and microscopes piercing the veil both outward and within, cells and atoms manipulated into new forms. Science was magic. Magic was science. To differentiate the two was a turn of phrase.

No, she was here because she wanted friends, a desire that she knew the other members shared as well. She didn't care about these 'rituals', but she loved fantasy books as a child, and she could fake the whimsy well enough. So that was their lives. Together, the four girls performed experiments and watched movies, brewed potions and attended clubs together. True friendship that blossomed over time. Tonight was no different! Beatrice had gained the courage to share her disbelief with them, and Jess had said that it had inspired her. They would have one final scientific, magical experiment before putting up the robes and crystals for good.

It felt different tonight, final. Beatrice knew that it was her brain tricking her, the mix of whimsy for their final ritual and the superstition of late night. They sat about Jess's backyard, the paved section of a home basketball court covered with seemingly random mathematics. The moon illuminated the square, the chalk outlines blue on the cement. Kylie kicked her legs on the swing set, hair done in a bun to make herself feel a little more comfortable. "So...go over it one last time?"

Jess sighed. "Notation and infinity." She twirled the chalk in hand, continuing to mark down little threes on the interior of the circle. "Pi is 3.14 continuously non-repeating, and so is a fraction like one third; minus the non-repeating. Math is weird in its rules, you can't actually calculate an infinite number to its exact specificity in a problem; there's always a smaller piece, theoretical or otherwise. Pi doesn't end, the fraction doesn't end. Neither does space, or time." She finished with a careless thought. "Theoretically, of course."

"And this is important to the ritual how?" Beatrice spoke up, pushing Kylie on the swing.

"It's important because of it's infinite nature." Amity spoke up, setting candles in geometric positions. "Self similarity, like we were talking about."

"Fractals." Kylie swung her legs, going higher. She liked fractals, the snow-flaking patterns that went on forever.

"Yes, exactly! Fractals. Self-repeating patterns that make up the universe." Amity lit the candles. "So when we do this, we're going to manipulate the numbers of the universe. Throw them off in minute ways till they snap. Pi where its 3.14, and only 3.14. If Jess's right-"

"Which I am." She added, scoffing. Beatrice rolled her eyes. The girl was always right, until she wasn't; and then they had to clean up the mess.

"-then the rules will stop existing entirely, and we'll be able to supplant them with our own. Throw fireballs, teleport, the really powerful stuff." She grinned as she struck her last match, the wax already pooling in the dollar store candle.

Beatrice rolled her eyes as she gave Kylie a final push, and she jumped off to land. Lunacy. It wasn't going to do anything, numbers weren't beholden to anything like this. Still, she could humor it one last time.

With the major preparations finished, there was only five minutes left till midnight. "Now, did everyone remember their speeches?" Kylie still had her paper folded in her hands, clutching it as a charm.

"Honestly, we don't need a chant for this Kylie." Amity brushed her hair, frowning as she too pulled out the paper.

"Oh, please, please, please!? I worked really really hard on it, plus, its not magic without a chant!" She begged.

Jess snapped quickly as she added the lines to nonsensical equations. "Fine, fine, keep it down, will you? My mom has to get up early and she's already skeptical of-you know?" She waved her hand in the air. Kylie nodded, grabbing their shoulders with discomfort.

"It's ok Ky. You're the most passionate of us, you got this." Bea gave them a playful punch on the arm. They smiled back at her.

The four took their positions, each within the corner of the drawn square. Stars shone down like the watchful eyes of the gods. Beatrice felt her cheeks heat up with embarrassment at the thought of someone seeing them. They held out their ritual papers. It was the correct time. One minute till midnight. Give or take.

Jess began with reverence, her eyes closed:

"The numbers are imaginary, but they are also real,

The deeper you go, the less you feel,"

Kylie went next, taking a big breath so she wouldn't stutter.

"But the little parts are important too,

They demand attention, they demand from you,"

Amity spoke, with a Shakespearean warble,

"Let the numbers unburden and peel,

Come away from the world, and leave it anew,"

Beatrice's voice hitched as she spoke, but she didn't screw it up, thank god, as she finished,

"And when the clock turns to strike for real,

New numbers we will all have grew."

They waited. Crickets chirped and fireflies spun around them. The candlelight rustled in the soft spring breeze, and Jess finally sighed.

"A dud." She mournfully spoke, a sense of finality to it all. A closing chapter on their lives.

Beatrice stretched and yawned, content with the end. "Well, it was a good try."

"Do you think the chant was a problem?" Kylie asked with guilt as Amity picked at her nails.

She blew a raspberry in response. "No, no, I only thought it would be a bit of a time crunch, but the rhymes were good Ky! You have a real talent with words. Now lets, lets, lets, lets, lets-"

The word echoed into the dark.

It was .1 continuous till midnight, and now midnight could not arrive inside the square. It no longer existed.

Infinite lengths of time and space ceased to be, the finite replacement burning faster and brighter than any candle. The individual rules that governed infinity vanished with a snap. Linear experience became a superposition.

The sudden lurch in sensation hit the girls as the moon stretched wide in the sky. Air sucked inward, then matter, then dust. The candle fire spiraled into a single point in the center of the chalk outline, the light vanishing into the event horizon. Beatrice tried to move, to yell a question, a scream, but words failed her as the moon projected a spotlight so bright that it scorched skin. Then its light too vanished into the center. As did the four girls, their bodies twisting and spiraling into the paradoxical singularity they had invited into the world.

Then there was nothing but the empty forever, where everything was nothing and nothing did not exist. Every possibility cycled through at all moments, reality, dimension and time squashed into a pure singular form. They were sent spiraling, lost in the void that was not empty. The fractal that was space shattering into nothing.

Jess was the first to snap away from it. As infinity became a single moment, her mind was able to remember key rules and equations to bend them back to being real. Time, space, speed, distance, acceleration. The three laws of thermodynamics. These basic principles were ingrained into her mind from studying them, and the framework exploded back into purpose. The fractal re-knit, but it was bare, a blank canvas.

It was not enough to fill reality as they knew it, but it was enough to give the other three purchase, much like a drowning man clings to wreckage.

Kylie brought back self. She had struggled with who she was so often that the sudden jump into the dark void of everything was a bit familiar. De-realization swept over her, and she broke it back into the real. They were a coven of witches, and they had opened the infinite. She would not be denied her friends, her self.

Without this, they would have degenerated into half remembered thoughts and nightmares. Yet Kylie knew her friends and loved them in exacting detail, and no piece was lost.

As their bodies reassembled, Amity brought with her possibility. As much as she was a stickler, she loved the impossible with a true passion. In this instant, she manipulated the frame, painting it. Reality bent and groaned as new rules took place, allowing their own manipulation. The impossible was now possible, for them and only them.

Power rushed through them, their now paradoxical nature creating cracks in the world beyond. Rivers of imaginary numbers spilled into lakes into oceans into planets. Stars danced on their fingertips, fireballs flung free into self-contained supernovas.

Beatrice shrieked, that raw, animal understanding of reality filling her mind as she reformed. With the final piece, she brought with her the opposite. Limitation. Rules were only so good as the consequences of breaking them, and so in her fear and panic of being ripped into everything, she remade them. Iron hard and bone dry reality: their paradox of power an oasis to what Beatrice knew was real life.

With all that was not taped back to that which was, the square vanished, the superposition folded back. Reality was real again, the four girls were back in it.

Midnight did not strike. Nor would it ever again. Their transgression on reality meant that there was an infinitesimal fraction of time and space, smaller than an attosecond and tinier than a planck where they had created their power. Within that space was their own, personal well of reality, to be manipulated as their framework was able. Though they did not know this yet.

All they knew was that this harrowing experience had caused Beatrice to scream, and Jess's mother's light went on as she shrieked. Jess clapped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late. Kylie fell backwards, eyes closed as they processed what had happened. Amity stared forward, pupils dilating like lungs: expanding and contracting at random.

"Girls?!" Jess's mom ran out, in a near panic herself. She saw them there in the paved square, absent of the ritual materials that had been consumed by the vortex. Even the chalk was gone, the fake numbers whisked away and pulled apart.

"It's f-fine mom! We just-" She stumbled over her words as Beatrice ripped the hand away from her mouth.

"What the fuck was that!?" Beatrice, uncaring of the consequences, shouted aloud. Something was wrong, the tingling in her body, the memory of a trillion sensations embedded into her. Everything was sensitive, like she'd gotten pins and needles through her very soul.

Amity looked at her hands, which to her eyes were a prism. Moonlight sunk into her skin and spiraled back out. The spirals intensified until-

Pale fire erupted from her hands like lighter fluid, dripping off her palms as they sweat coldly. The fire did not burn, nor did it register the panic that came with sudden fire. Jess's mother blinked, unsure of whether to scream or panic.

Kylie snapped awake, her own body luminous with the moonlight. Her limbs stretched, the air around her shimmering with the same warping fire that cloaked Amity.

It proved too much for the older woman, and she fainted right in front of her daughter. Beatrice likewise felt herself about to pass out, but the horrible sensitivity in her skin grounded her. Jess let go of her right then, and the sensations abated.

Jess ran over to check on her mom, as if she unbothered by the spectacle of her two friends lit up like ghosts in old movies. Amity clapped her hands together, then pointed them to the sky. She laughed. "Oh, oh my god! It worked. It really worked!" The fire exploded out in a pillar of blue-white, zipping off into fireballs of rainbow color. Her laugh boomed and crackled in the air, and in moments, Kylie was laughing too.

"No...No, no, no, no!" Beatrice held her hands over her ears and squatted down. This was not a dream for her. This was a nightmare, a fundamental shattering of everything she knew as real. "It was supposed to be for fun! Not this, not like this..." she whispered to herself, tears sliding down her face. She opened her eyes and stared at her hands, forcing them to be normal. That desire became replaced with the roaring reply of pale fire; flames spiraling into silver ratios. She began to cry, terrified at her own body, her own mind. The memory of the experience was at the forefront of her brain. Overwhelming terror. All at once, Jess was behind her, holding her tight.

Then another, and another, joining in a group hug. "It's ok, Bee. It's alright. We're here for you. You're safe." Kylie assured her, the silver light calming. She felt her breath hitch. Her sobs stifled as she found her footing, and they all stood together.

"Ok. Ok..." She shook like a leaf as they watched her with concern. "What was that?"

"Magic." Kylie said, snapping her fingers. Sparks flew, and they formed into tiny images of doves, feathers of ash falling free.

"Magic isn't real!" Beatrice exclaimed, her hair standing up on end. But there was no denying that something had changed. They all felt it, some inescapable reordering.

Midnight tried to strike, found itself unable, and passed. They did not notice.

"Of course its real. We performed it." Jess spoke, moving her glasses. "The how's and why's matter little now, but the fact remains that..." She grinned. "We're real witches now."

A shiver went down Beatrice's spine. Something about that excited her. She had not asked for this. Friendship was the real magic after all. Yet there was no part of any one person that would not be a little excited by the idea. Magic was real, and they had used it! No, they were it!

Beatrice looked to the swing set. She pointed her finger, and the mass of wood and steel altered. It grew sprigs and roots, the grinding sounds of morphing materials a metallic squeal. Soon, it was a tree, complete with a sizable tree house growing in and out of the branches. Branches fractured out in repeating patterns, fireflies burst free of the leaves, silvery like no other.

The girls stared stunned until she spoke again. "You said you missed the tree in your backyard, right? When we first met?"

Jess laughed, the sigils in her glasses sparking into bright, shifting images. She pushed into Beatrice's creation, and the shimmering light from her body surrounded the tree like a blanket. It vanished with a flash, the structure hidden behind the wall of cloaking light. "We'll need to find a way to keep this hidden, for now at least."

She walked towards the tree house with purpose. "Wait, what about your mom-" Kylie started. Jess snapped her fingers, and the unconscious woman floated up into the air. Jess didn't even look back as her mom floated back towards the house. "Do you think that's safe?"

She did not answer. The others shrugged and followed her, each with giddy nerves at what they achieved.

Midnight had been stolen. The world skipped it by, the fragment taken by the four girls, who now discussed the rules that they would set for themselves. The mathematics of impossible powers, the danger of their use. Above, the pale light yearned for its return, but this would take time. Until there had been many, many sleepovers.