Bespelled
1700 words fantasy short story
By Teresa Krasnichuk
It was supposed to be an easy spell—just something to get the Sheriff off my back. I realized I hadn’t used magic in a few years, but I didn’t think it would backfire so spectacularly.
It started when I moved back to my hometown. My parents had died, and since I was their only child, I had to settle their affairs and arrange the funerals. I had been between jobs and relationships, so I decided that I might as well use the whole situation as a way of starting over. It was hard to turn down living for free, especially since I had no job prospects, my savings were pretty thin and living in the city was getting expensive. I know I might sound a little heartless, but my relationship with my parents had been strained for most of my life. I was a surprise baby when my mother was in her forties, and I was often on my own because my parents had a pretty established lifestyle before I showed up. So, I may have caused some trouble when I was younger to get some attention because even bad attention was better than none.
I had been home for about a week when I got my first visit from Sheriff Carson. Honestly, I had gotten myself in trouble quite often in my youth, but I didn’t think I had been that bad, but it seemed like the good Sheriff hadn’t forgiven me for my youthful indiscretions, or he didn’t think I’ve changed.
“Miss Kathrine Parsons. Just wanted to make sure you were staying out of trouble and to find out how long you plan on being in town,” he had left his sunglasses on, but I could feel the disapproval through the dark lenses.
“Good to see you too, Sheriff. As you know, I’m here to handle my parent’s affairs and arrange a funeral, so I’ll be in town as long as it takes,” I said with a wide grin, trying to keep my temper in check.
He stared at me for a couple of minutes, and I kept my smile in place until he grunted, placed his hat back on his head and walked back to his car. I didn’t miss how he inspected my car that sat in the driveway, including the stickers on my plate. I huffed and slammed the door. My emotions were already walking a razor-thin line as it was, and the Sheriff was pushing me toward losing it. I wiped the tears from my face and went back to work, sorting through the painful memories of my past. It turned out to be harder than I thought it would be.
After that first visit, I seemed to see him everywhere. I’d see him when I went to the diner or the coffee shop. He would be at the grocery store, sometimes in the store or outside, leaning against his car in the parking lot; either way, he would just be watching me. For the most part, I ignored him, but then he would start showing up at the house to question me about every crime that occurred in town; it was beginning to push me too far.
“Why would I be walking around town in the middle of the night to spray paint weird symbols all over the place?” I asked him on the fourth visit he paid me.
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you,” he replied, looking over the top of his aviator sunglasses at me.
“Look, Sheriff, I’m twenty-five; vandalism doesn’t really interest me, and neither do any of the other things you have come here to accuse me of. This is starting to look a lot like harassment,” I was trying to control myself so that I didn’t reach out a grab those damn glasses off his face and stomp on them.
“mm-hmm, well, Miss Parsons, you have a history of causing trouble, and since you have arrived back into my quiet little town, crime seems to have increased. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t question you,” he gave me his biggest grin before turning around and walking away. I slammed the door, feeling my anger rising.
“Stupid fuckin’ Sheriff, that man should have retired decades ago,” I start stomping around the house, throwing things in boxes, “it’s been almost ten years since I was here last. Can’t he get over it?”
The way the Sheriff was acting, you would think that I killed someone or committed armed robbery. My record only had a couple of vandalism charges, but maybe he was sore about the B&E charge I wiggled my way out of or the shoplifting charge I managed to avoid. Or, he could just have a problem with me because of the time he caught me making out with his son in high school. By the time Sheriff showed up to kill the mood, things had gotten rather handsy. We had a police escort as I was driven home.
As I was moving a box in my old room, thinking about my past, I knocked over a stack of books, stubbing my toe, “Fuck,” I put down the box so that I could fix the books and get them off the floor.
“What do we have here?” I sat on the floor and pulled out the old black leather-bound book that was in the middle of the pile, “ah yes, I remember you now.”
I flipped through the book smiling. It was a spellbook that one of my high school friends had discovered in a used bookstore when she had gone on holiday with her family. I, at the time, had been going through a rebellious stage and had been heavy into black, so she thought I would love it. At the time, I was thrilled by the book and spent many hours reading it and practicing the random spells, but it didn’t take me long to lose interest. What most people don’t realize about using magic is that you have to build up your power before you can do any powerful spells, and the only way to build up power is to do magic. I spent many hours for months working the more minor spells, trying to build up my power, but like most teenagers, when it became evident that it would take too long, I quit.
Flipping through the book brought back memories, making me forget about the visit from the odorous Sheriff Carson when I stopped on a spell near the back of the book. It was a spell for altering memories.
“Maybe I could get the dear Sheriff to forget who I am. Maybe he would leave me alone if he could forget what I did when I was young,” I read through the spell, and it seemed easy enough once I got the ingredients together. I shrugged. I didn’t think it could hurt just to give it a try. I felt that the worst thing that could happen would be that it didn’t work. If only I knew.
Over the next couple of days, I began searching for the ingredients. I had to order some stuff online since my hometown did not have anything close to a New Age shop, so I depended on the online sources I found. It took about a week for everything to arrive; in the meantime, I tried to avoid the Sheriff as much as possible, but he still visited me at least once a week. I was thrilled when the last package arrived.
I had everything set up in the backyard; I didn’t need the smoke detectors blaring at me in the middle of the spell. It took about half an hour to light the candles, mix the ingredients, and chant the spell. When I was finished, I closed my eyes. I had expected sparks, fire igniting, or an explosion, but there was nothing. It was a little anti-climactic.
“Guess I’ll have to wait and see if it worked,” I shrugged and began cleaning up the mess I had made.
Over the next week, I waited for the Sheriff to show up at my door, but all was quiet. I even stopped seeing him when I went out. I was so happy that I didn’t notice that everyone in town was looking at me oddly. It wasn’t until the second week that I figured out why.
“Excuse me, sweetie, are you in town visiting someone?” asked the checkout lady at the grocery store. The same one that has rung me up about 100 times since I’ve been back.
“No, I’m Marie and Carl Parson’s daughter, Kathrine,” I said, frowning.
“Oh. I didn’t think they had any children,” she said, giving me a weird look. I smiled at her and left with my groceries and a growing feeling of unease seeping into my bones.
The rest of that day, I went around and talked to, or at least tried to talk to, everyone I knew in town. I hunted down a couple of old high school friends, my old boss at the coffee shop, and even an ex-boyfriend or two, but none of them knew who I was. It turned out my spell had backfired. Everyone had forgotten about me, not just the people in town but everyone. It was like I didn’t exist in anyone’s memory anymore. Even if I talked to them or spent time with them, they would forget about me again by the next day. I was alone again.
So I spend my days trying to work on my magic to try and find a way of reversing the memory spell I did. It helped to distract me from the thought of not existing. Now when I go out, I get weird looks from everyone instead of just the Sheriff, who has managed to look up my name in their files and is back to bugging me every other day or so; whenever he gets suspicious enough of the strange woman in town to look her up. I really hope I can reverse the spell.