Forced Magic Read online

  Forced Magic

  By

  Jerod Lollar

  Forced magic

  Copyright 2013 jerod lollar

  Publisher: jerod lollar

  Published: January 30, 2013

  Ebooks are not transferable. All rights are reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any

  manner without written permission, except in the case of brief

  quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.

  No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the

  Internet or by any other means, electronic or print,

  without the publisher's permission.

  Cover Design by Lucas Berlin.

  DEDICATION

  I dedicate this book to all those who helped. To Peggy Hertel for editing and telling me that it was great! Troy and Djuana Berlin for their encouragement, love and all around support, to Bob and Sherry for just putting up with me .And to Lucas for the awesome cover.

  I would also like to dedicate this book to all who spent their days in a fantasy world of their own. Hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Prologue

  Do you believe in Magic? I’m not talking about what you see on TV or in the movies. I’ve seen them all. Trust me, I am a big fan of the kid with a scar on his forehead. I’m talking about a driving presence that can make extraordinary things happen in your life.

  Any true fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy will tell you how they want to believe the stories can be true. H.G. Wells wrote so many tales of Science Fiction that ended up in some way coming true. Why not Fantasy? There has always been a hint of true history attached to all of the mythological creatures and stories. If you were to look online into the origins of a lot of the stories, you might be surprised at the grains of truth that are attached to them. Who is to say that they don’t exist? I know for a fact that they do.

  My mom used to tell me that I had my head in the clouds, my feet on the ground, and my heart in my comic books. She was right. But I never let it overwhelm me. I wanted to believe it was real, but I always knew it wasn’t. I guess you could call me a practical Fantasy geek.

  My name is Jack, Jack Dewitte. The best way to describe me is average, brown hair, brown eyes, and average height. Well, that’s how I would describe myself. Others would describe me as odd, I guess.

  One of those people would be my older brother Paul. He always took care of me. He was an anchor in my life.

  Let me tell you a little secret. This story is being written by magic. Right now it is explaining, in my own words, what is happening to me. It may seem as if I am telling a tale as a survivor, but I’m not. I have no idea if I am going to make it through this. There are times that I feel that all of what I am now a part of is not real. That I have lost my mind and will wake up in a strait-jacket somewhere awaiting shock treatments. I guess in the end I’ll let you decide if I’m crazy or not, unless, this story is part of the delusion. What a paradox.

  One more thing before I begin my story, a kind of warning. This isn’t a typical tale of fantasy. It goes down dark paths and, much like the true fairy tales written long ago, my story can get pretty horrific. I'll let you decide for yourselves. Just remember this one thing; Magic is real.

  Chapter 1

  A little over a year ago I was hit by a truck. I was crossing a street on my way to work when this jerk, who was in a hurry, tried to beat a light and hit me. My hip was broken. Nothing magical happened to me at that time. I remember lying in the street and seeing people bending over me looking at me with concern on their faces. I was rushed to the hospital and into surgery.

  I was lucky enough not to have to have an artificial hip, just three pins holding my hip together and some pain. After a year of physical therapy, my body was healed to the point that I could go on with my life. I was lucky, but I didn’t feel like it at the time. It was the last straw for me.

  Physical therapy may have helped my body, but the damage to my spirit was my biggest problem. Basically my life sucked. I didn’t really want to do anything. I was just going through the motions. I was living with my brother during this time and I couldn’t help but feel like I was a burden to him. I knew I had to get out of there and be on my own again, but after a year of not working, I lacked the confidence to go back to what I was doing before the accident. The accident seemed to take more away from me than the use of my hip. It wasn’t like I had the best job in the world before. Even though I worked in a restaurant as a waiter, it was hard for me to relate to people in general. I have always been a kind of misfit. I’ve never really fit in.

  Going for long walks daily was part of my physical therapy. Starting at first with a walker, then graduating to a cane, and finally making my way without artificial help, I was getting better every day. I still had stiffness in my leg and a slight limp on my left side, but I was getting around fairly well. The walks got me out of the house and gave me time to think. During that time many of my thoughts turned to a nagging question I would pose to myself, “What Now?”

  I was on my daily walk when my life changed. It was warm when I left the house that morning. I took the same route I always take. I had change in my pocket for a cup of coffee and I could hear it jingling against the rock I had found a few days before. I’m always picking up interesting rocks, and keeping them as good luck charms. This one looked cool. It was black with silver speckles. Eventually my rocks would end up on my dresser, forgotten. I would find another one to take its place. This kind of quirky behavior drove my brother nuts. He would walk into my room and see the pile of rocks on my dresser, shaking his head with a little frown on his lips. I really think my brother was disappointed in me. That bothered me.

  I could feel the slight stiffness in my leg as I started my walk that day, the same feeling I always felt when I started my day. The warm weather would help ease that pain.

  Tucson is a unique place to live in. You can go to any place in the city and it will give you a different view at which to look. All you have to do is stand in one spot and look around and you could swear you are in a different city. You can admire the stark beauty of the desert and then look up and enjoy the mountains that surround the city.

  From that neighborhood you could look to the right and see nothing but a long stretch of desert. Kind of desolate, not much to see, unless you were lucky enough to see the beautiful flowers that bloom on the cacti. To the left you can find neighborhoods of desert colored houses all in neat rows. This is was what I would see every day as I took my walk. It was when I loo
ked over at the desert across the street from my usual walking path that I saw her.

  She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Long blonde hair reached down past her waist. She had a perfect nose and mouth, the latter turned down in a small frown. She was wearing a white cotton summer dress that went down to her knees. Her eyes were a piercing blue. Even from the distance I could see them. She stared intensely at me.

  It was love at first sight. Everything about her was perfect, from the top of her head to her slender bare feet.

  She was floating, swaying gently side to side in the air. FLOATING! I thought I was losing my mind.

  She reached out to me and moved a little toward the road, and that is when I saw how she was staying in the air. She had wings. She was flying. There was no doubt in my mind that what I was seeing was in fact a Fey, a beautiful fairy, an image of grace and beauty, right out of my fantasies. I am sure I had imagined her before. I had to be imagining her right at that moment. “Is she real?” I thought to myself. “Am I just imagining her?” No, she was better than anything I ever imagined. She was perfect.

  She reached out to me again and moved toward me. I was mesmerized by her beauty. I took a step into the street toward her. She was trying to tell me something. She was getting ready to speak.

  She pointed at my leg and said something. I couldn’t hear her. The horn of the blue truck heading straight for me was too loud. I had stepped out into the middle of the street like I had been in a trance.

  A blue Dodge pickup had come running down the street. Its brakes squealed and it swerved to keep from hitting me. I was standing in the middle of the street. The driver never stopped pounding the horn as it swerved to dodge me.

  I saw a strange light. She led me into the street and disappeared. And I couldn’t help but ask, “Why did she do that?”

  As the truck screamed past me I felt air in my face, a sharp pain in my hip as the driver blasted the horn. A phantom pain as the memory of the accident that caused me to break it continued to flash in my mind.

  As the truck continued down the road, I heard the driver screaming at me. That broke the spell and I backpedaled toward the curb, keeping my eyes on the pickup as it continued to make its way down the street. I hit the curb with the back of my heels and fell backwards, sitting on my butt hard, knocking the wind out of me, and still watching the truck disappear down the street.

  Quickly turning my head, I looked across the street to the spot where my fairy had been. There was no sign of her. Did I imagine her? If she was real then she just tried to kill me.

  Even as the thought formed in my mind, I began to feel foolish. Fairies do not exist. I let out a strange coughing laugh at this thought, as I sat there staring across the street at the spot she had stood. She seemed so real.

  I sat there thinking over and over these same thoughts trying to piece it all together. None of it was making any sense to me. The only logical explanation was that I was losing my mind. This thought scared me but it seemed to be the right conclusion. When you see a fairy and you are convinced she is trying to kill you, you have lost it. The panic that started to swell in my chest felt like someone had hit me with a baseball bat.

  What a truly unique fear it is, when you convince yourself that you are losing your mind. You search your thoughts for something normal to latch on to. Something that would snap you back to reality and wake you up.

  I did the most normal thing I could do, I started walking down the sidewalk again. I started feeling better. Another nervous coughing laugh. “This was nothing more than an over active imagination.” I said to myself. With the massive collection of Fantasy and Science Fiction novels and DVD's spread across the room, I am definitely a fan. Add to that the boxes of comic books and graphic novels and you might even consider thinking I’m a fanatic. Years and years of reading those incredible stories have taken its toll a little. My fairy is nothing more than a wake-up call to get rid of it all. I made a vow that I would pack it all away when I got home.

  I told myself that I was ok. ”I didn’t see a fairy," I said to myself. “It must have been some kind of reflection, from a car window, that I had seen out of the corner of my eye, and my imagination just took over for a second.”

  I couldn’t help but glance across the street every few steps as I continued my walk. “Is she back?" I would ask myself. “No, she’s not real. She was too beautiful to be real. What a face." Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. “That face, that beautiful perfect fairy face.” I had seen it before. I was sure of it. This thought stopped me in my tracks so suddenly that I almost fell over. I stumbled and my feet did a little awkward dance as I struggled to keep my balance. I somehow managed to keep from falling on my face as the words sunk in. I had seen that fairy before. Her face now familiar in my mind’s eye, was so clear, that when I closed my eyes it was there like a photograph. A familiar face of someone I had seen before today. ”But where have I seen her before?” I asked myself out loud. This thought that I had seen her face before today became very important to me. I knew that if I could remember where I had seen her before, I would understand why I had imagined her. I had stopped walking and had been standing there awkwardly as a car slowly stopped next to me. The window rolled down and a friendly voice asked ”Are you ok?”

  I jumped at the sound of that voice, realizing just how silly I must look. There was a little old lady sitting behind the wheel of a big Cadillac.

  “Um, no, I’m fine. I just remembered something.” I said in a shaky voice.

  “It must be very important,” she said. Giving her a weak smile, I mumbled “Just one of those days.” She smiled at me, waved her hand a little and slowly pulled away. It was starting to get hot and I needed a place to sit down and try to piece this all together.

  I finally made it to the store. Walking in, I felt the air conditioner hitting me with a gust of cool air that gave me an idea of just how hot I was. I walked up to the little coffee counter that was at the front of the store, trying to decide if I was too hot for my usual cup of coffee or not. Giving in to the idea of holding on to something normal, I went ahead and got my usual and sat down at a table close to the door. I kept seeing that fairy's face in my mind as I sat at the small table trying to piece it all together. I knew I could figure out where I had seen that face before.

  As I sat there staring at my coffee, I heard a loud cough. I glanced up to see a man with a shopping cart full of groceries glaring at me. He had a scowl on his face and was griping the handle of his shopping cart so tightly his knuckles were turning white. He was mad, and the way he was glaring at me, I got the idea he was mad at me. I looked at him, trying to figure out exactly what I could possibly have done to him. I shrugged my shoulders and mouthed the word “What?”

  He pointed at me and mumbled something. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I knew that it wasn’t nice. Then it hit me who he was. He was the driver of that truck I had walked out in front of. The look of realization on my face must have been very apparent. The little old man wagged his head in an exaggerated 'yes' and said, loud enough for me to hear the word, "Nut" as he wheeled his rickety shopping cart out the door.

  My face felt hot with embarrassment as I looked down at my coffee. I sat there wishing I could have started this day all over again. If I knew how it was going to start, I would have stayed in bed. A bead of sweat fell on the table next to my cup as I let my mind wonder back to the question of the fairy and where I had seen her face before. Why could I not convince myself that it was all just my imagination? Why did I see her again today of all days? And why was I so hot?

  My entire body was covered in sweat. I was breathing heavily. My hands, dripping with perspiration, started turning red. They started to shake and a tremor moved down my body. I started to spasm and I knocked my coffee off the table and across the floor. I grabbed the corner of the table, desperately trying to keep my body from shaking. The heat coming off of my body continued to rise. I wanted to call out for help but I wa
s unable to form the words. Through all of this I started to feel a focal point for the heat. The heat was coming from my right leg, the same leg that the fairy had pointed to. I reached for my leg, trying to find the source, and felt a bump where my pocket was. I reached into my pocket and let out a yell as my hand touched the bump. It was my lucky rock. It had attached itself to my leg. I tried to pull it free as a white-hot pain shot up my body.

  It felt like an electric shock. My body shook so hard that I tore the top of the table off of its base. People in the store, seeing I was in some sort of trouble, started to walk toward me. I sat there shaking uncontrollably. I could hear voices asking me If I was ok or if I needed help. There were several people on their cell phones talking to 911. Others were taking pictures and videos of me with their camera phones to show to friends the nut who had obviously lost it. The burning pain continued to climb and my right leg started to throb. I wanted this to end! I wanted help. I had no control over my body. I stood up knocking my chair over. I was still clutching the table. Pain shot through my body and another spasm shook me violently. In my head I saw the fairy pointing to the leg that now had the rock attached to it

  “The fairy did it. The FAIRY did IT. THE FAIRY DID IT! THEFAIRYDIDIT!.”

  This thought kept screaming over and over again in my head. The pain was real. The rock that had attached itself to my leg was real. The fairy had to be real.

  Chapter 2

  I stood there shaking as a strange feeling started to enter my body. That feeling was to run. Escape. Flee. Fear and pain had totally taken over. Another spasm hit me and my head whipped back and with a clinching of my stomach I threw up my coffee. I heard people talking as I struggled with my body.

  ”Eww, he just threw up.”

  "Hey man, are you ok?”

  “Someone call an ambulance.”

  The manager moved toward me. He wanted to help me but I knew I must have looked like a lunatic. I wanted his help but, when I tried to say something, another wave of pain overtook me. With a strangled yell of pain, I raised the table over my head and sent it crashing to the floor. The wood splintered and shattered and, with screams and yells of panic, I took off at a full run toward the crowd of people. They scattered in all directions as I ran toward the door. The manager stepped in front of me trying to stop me, trying to help me. I shoved him sending him skidding across the floor. I ran through the doors as the pain throbbed through my body. I didn’t want to run, I wanted to stop but I couldn’t. I screamed as the pain intensified. I bolted for the door.