Torches

The Casting

    Tears streamed down my cheeks as I hovered my hands over the bowl. I could still feel it. His fingers caressing my spine as he left wet sloppy kisses down the back of my neck. A shudder coursed unpleasantly throughout me as I felt warmth envelop my hands before I saw the first spark ignite. One single tear fell into the bowl and caused a flame to erupt, catching a strand of my hair and a couple of ingredients needed for the casting. My body was locked in place in the middle of the pentacle, the stone bowl burning with a part of me inside.

    "I banish the memory." I hiccuped, swirling my hands in a specific pattern. "I sew the mind shut."

    A shiver ran down my spine, replacing the fingers from my memories. His face poked out of the bowl, swirling within the white spoke and flames. It was a hollow face, with dark beady eyes, pinched features, and a cruel smirk on his lips. It was the face of someone I wanted to forget forever.

    "I, Faith Bevarton banish the memory. I, Faith Bevarton sew the mind shut. Let the ashes smoke-" I waved my hands abruptly in front of the bowl as if to catch the fire. The flame, like a candle, extinguished and caused a puff of white smoke to sail up towards the ceiling. The face completely gone. "erase all that is needed to be forgotten. The void will swallow it hole and leave nothing in its place."

    I hurriedly leaned over the bowl and inhaled sharply. The smoke burned as it sailed through my mouth and nostrils, I jolted in surprise. Fire erupted within my throat, muffling the scream I let out into mere gasps as I collapsed onto the ground. The flames expanded, soaring down into my lungs and up into my brain. Everything went black, yet the memories of his touch, his face, and his cruel malice voice echoed into my ear over and over.

    I shrieked, clawing at my ears as I felt the smoke reach the memory. It burned! Gods it burned! Something pried, sending a white haze to cover my eyes as the seam of the memory was plucked at. Each black string fraying and snapping painfully. It was being split in two, its image quivering and flickering as a mass of darkness seeped out of the open wound of the seam. The darkness was cold and prickly, it came so fast it stung and I clutched my head as I wailed soundlessly. In its wake it left a trail of numbness, swallowing the smoke and flames down my throat. It ended in my lungs, where it allowed the first scream to erupt and my eyes to fly open as fresh tears fell down my cheeks. But by then, the pain was gone and a sudden rush of relief and calm washed over me. My scream faded out into confusion as I looked around myself.

    Why was I screaming? I'm happy!

    Sudden joy bubbled from my chest and caused a sudden round of uncontrollable giggles as I drunkenly sat up. The cold was still there, but whatever I was trying to forget was a mere dark smudge that I could barely consider important. I smiled and grabbed the stone bowl, hugging it to myself as I looked around my quiet home.

    After the first time doing the spell at age sixteen, I never thought I'd do the spell again. I thought it was all I needed and be done with that kind of scrambling magic. But then more and more memories piled up as the years passed by. It buried me and drowned me to the point of suffocation. I couldn't bare it. I did the spell again... and again, and again, and again.

    It became my friend, a toxic friend. It might have wiped my memory clean, but it left holes in its place. All these little holes formed a never ending void that was cold and frightening at times. I kept telling myself it was for the best. Eventually, the pain subsided and the cold felt normal. I began to welcome the freedom it brought, but it only brought with it sudden sadness and anxiety. After the sixth spell, sudden grief brought so much pain and sorrow it ached to the point of madness. Then anxiety came, bringing with it panic attacks that made me spiral out of control. My freedom became a prison I created. This void wasn't welcoming me anymore, it was beckoning me into its cold grasp until I was the void.

I knew it was dangerous gambling with the memory spell. I knew there wasn't a safe way to break the spell. I was just so desperate at the time. I wanted to forget everything. It hurt too much. I couldn't sleep without the nightmares opening the closed wound until it was fresh and bleeding. The spell might have erased it from memory, but the nightmares were still there. I might not be able to remember them when I wake up, but I know that even after I wake up I can feel the pain that was once there.

    Three years I played this battle. You'd think I would have learned after the first symptom began, but I didn't. I knew what it could do. I had seen it first hand. There was a woman who had suffered so much in her life, she did it often. Tragedy followed her like a dark veil. She was a magnet for it. She erased so much, she forgot her life, her name, all those she loved, just so she could forget the pain. I had only heard of one person breaking the spell. It's the most dangerous thing to do. Once the woman was greeted with her memories, everything was fresh and painful.

    The woman killed that person, then five minutes later killed herself. That woman was my grandmother. And that person was my mother.I was only eleven years old. I knew what I was getting into when I did the first spell. I knew that when you do that spell on yourself it could lead to addiction or death. I knew if you wanted it done properly I would need someone to help me with the spell and for them to cast it on me. But I knew after everything that happened with my grandmother, no other Witch would help. I knew what the Coven would think of me if they knew. I knew the disgrace I brought upon myself when I followed in my grandmothers footsteps.

    I should have known it when I began to space out for long periods of time. The first time I had it scared me. I remember opening my eyes to find myself with my forehead pressed to the white wall. All I could see were my hands on my thighs, covered in something red and sticky that left a crimson trail on my white jeans. I just remember looking up in utter horror to find the white walls of my childhood home covered in blood finger painted writing. It wasn't until after my brief panic attack that I realized the blood was my own. I had cut my own fingers open to draw on the walls in a language I hardly knew. I only knew enough to know it was in a grimoire my grandmother had. I'd tried to learn the language after I found out it was Latin, but I could never fully grasp it. I just knew that this was taking over my life.

    I began leaving paper and pens around the house for myself, anticipating another space out. Luckily, this seemed to help not harming myself, sometimes. I had painted the walls over and over again to hide what I had done, but every morning I would find the blood had somehow leaked through the paint. I painted every wall black, though it didn't hide the blood stained writing, it did camouflage it a bit. If I didn't look too long, I sometimes would pretend it never happened. I could pretend I was normal.

    I covered the pentacle in the middle of the room with a black large rug and put an oval glass coffee table on top of that. Even after trying to hide what I'd been doing, every time I came to it after spacing out, the rug and coffee table would be shoved away and the pentacle would be staring up at me.

    My mother tried to hide me from what my grandmother was doing. I knew she thought she was hiding the moments my grandmother spaced out or whenever she cast. What my mother forgot was how quiet a child could be when sneaking through halls, or how I could hear them from my room whenever my mother would scream at my grandmother for doing another casting. Even home-schooled, as all Witches or Wizards do with their children, I had what they called Coven Sisters and Brothers. Although overly kind to me growing up, they still whispered whenever they thought I was out of earshot. Long before my grandmother, I was the talk of the Coven. My father was mundane and left shortly after finding out what she was. It scared him so much the Coven had done a carefully crafted memory spell on him, then sent him on his way. I just knew it must have hurt my mother so much.

    She never wanted to talk about him or even tell me what he looked like. Did I look like him at all? My mother was a pale blonde, tanned skinned, with large blue eyes. A beautiful slender legged woman with a thin body that I hoped I'd grow to inherit. But I was nothing like her, my hair was raven black and eyes an emerald green. Whereas she was elegantly tall and lean, I was five foot and had chunky curves that I'd learned to start loving over time. I often wondered whether my father was short and wide, black haired and green eyed. Or was he short and slender, muscled and chiseled with brown eyes.

    I blinked back the memories and looked around my living room. My families house hadn't been the same since they died. There was an ominous air about the rooms, empty of life and as still as death. Until sixteen I had lived with another Coven family that had willingly taken me in. Those five years had long ago been erased from memory. At sixteen I was deemed into adulthood and allowed to reclaim my families home as the rightful owner. After this there are smudges and darkened edges where I had erased sporadically. Everything would lead up to a certain moment, then it would drop off into a void of darkness that I always would end up shying away from. These tainted memories were so cold, I always feared falling into the void and never being able to surface.

    Breathing in slowly, I glanced towards the pictures of laughing faces. My mother holding me and my grandmother holding me as I walked for the first time. Slowly the pictures became fewer and fewer until there weren't any passed the age of five. I suppose that's the time when my grandmother began to erase memories. I never truly knew why she had started. I'm sure I had a good reason, if I could remember them.

    Grimacing away from the void, I hastily stood and hurried away from the living room. Away from the pentacle. I remember when I was seven and I loved magic. I loved summoning things to myself without lifting a finger, only uttering a word and it come to me. I remember I used to believe I could talk to the Gods and Goddesses we often pray to. I remember believing they'd save me and love me as their own daughter. Then after eleven years old, the first void began in sporadic places and the belief and love for them somehow vanished. Suddenly, they were just myths to me. Magic was no longer the same. I saw beauty in it long ago. I had learned spells, charms, potions, and even had a familiar at one point in time. It was a little cream colored kitten I had named Milo. I used to think I could hear him speak to me and I'd have lengthy conversations with my little kitten Milo. Then another void began, I only remember him up until eleven years old. Did he run away? I had no clue. I had erased only partial of the memory. I loved that cat with all my heart, then suddenly the void stole all the love I had and was replaced with a darkness I always stayed clear of.

    I believe something happened to me and that's why I kept using the spell. This thought brought me much anxiety. I stopped venturing passed my front porch and stayed within the confinement of my childhood home. I lost the luster of life I had once had. All these voids had made a hole that stopped all feeling. I just knew I couldn't trust anyone anymore. The Coven allowed me to slip away, only sending monthly meals and keeping all the charms placed upon the home from when my mother was alive. There was protective charms, charms to keep the house from aging, and even a charm to supply an electric current of magic to keep the house powered without the cost of money. In the Coven's community money was worthless to us unless we were in the mundane parts of the world. Daigranot was the only Coven town within the state of Pennsylvania, invisible on a map, it has been kept safe from the mundane eye for nearly three-hundred years in the making.

    I remember running throughout the town without a care. Until one day I shut them out and never looked back. I think the Coven just takes pity on me and that's why they let me be. Or maybe they think one day I'll return to them.

    I climbed the stairs and returned to the room I've had since I was a little girl. Of course things weren't the same, but I never dare move to another room and disrupt where the dead had once slept. I could never bring myself to go through their belongings or open their bedroom doors. I had placed a charm on their doors to keep them shut. I never want to be spaced out and find myself sitting on my grandmothers bed where we would cuddle and read through her many grimoires. I never want to wake up and find I've trashed the one place their memory would be kept sacred and untouched since what happened.

    I bit my lip to suppress the pain behind those memories. No matter how much I grieve them or how much it hurts, I'll never erase their memory or what happened to them. It serves as a reminder of how far these castings could go. That's why I have stopped magic and casting all together. That's why I've locked myself into my childhood home. I don't want another reason to erase a memory and feed into the addiction. It's better off to be alone, I often tell myself.

    I sat down on the window seat and pulled my knees up to my chest. It was gloomy in Daigranot, a gentle drizzle splattered my window as I leaned back into the wall and stared down at the groomed lawn below. Witches and Wizards walked by on the sidewalk, chatting, holding hands, and kids ran around or playing with colorful sparks of magic within their palms to watch the rain droplets reflect in all kinds of colors. I felt a sad smile tug onto my lips as I watched in envy. I wish I was as innocent and naive as they were. I wish I could see the beauty in magic as I had at seven years old. I wish I knew why I had erased my memories. It's to the point that the freedom I welcomed after every casting now felt like a haze of utter depression and despair. I made myself alone. I made myself like this. It's what I deserve, isn't it?

    I shut my eyes from the world as tears attempted to welled up. I damned myself to this life.

    I deserve it.