No More Magic

I was sitting in my study alone, as I like it, when I finally realized that it had been many years since my childhood. This was the moment when I was supposed to say, "I don't know where it came from", but that would have been a despicable lie.

I know exactly where this obsolete feeling came from and it came from the silence. I sat in my study, cozy and warm with a glassful of whiskey and a pencil in my hand. It was 2 AM and my family had long been asleep leaving me to my drinks and to my thoughts, just the way it was every night at 2 AM. It was the only time to relax.

I sat right there in my home away from home, my comfort zone, my mother's very own womb and realized how very discomforting it all was. I stopped my writing early for this particular night and was enjoying the peace that I could only find at this late hour. I leaned back in my crummy, beat up plastic swivel chair that the children had used to race through the house on a number of occasions and noticed the dusty collection of books on the red fake mahogany shelves right above my head.

This is when the realization occurred, or maybe started occurring, I'm not sure which. I noticed that the books no longer spoke to me. This was a terrible thing to notice. I thought back on when I was a child and how often I must have read back then. The books used to speak, I swear they did, but now they did not say a word. They lay there on the shelves and were covered by my insurance in case they were lost. They make me look pretentious and they make me an uncaring person, because I have read them and because I will not again.

It was in the middle of this observation, or this realization, I'm not sure which, that there was a knock at the door. A faint knock, barely even noticeable, probably not even there. However, I'd had enough whiskey and I was game for a gamble, so I bet that it had happened and I stopped staring above me at those dreaded books and I walked from my study downstairs to the front door. I looked out the front window and bore witness to the whitewashed world which sent chills to my fingertips. This upset me because I remembered again how far away I was from throwing snowballs, sledding, and taking that first bite of December firmly in one gloved hand and feeling it numb my teeth as I ate it.

I reached my hand up to touch the top of the window pane, but it did not make me happy as I thought it would. My hand quickly retreated into my pocket where it stayed while I continued to look out and be disappointed. A minute or so passed before I decided that I had imagined the knock and that I should get into bed with my lovely wife and keep warm and safe just the way it was meant to end every night, but as I placed my foot on the first step, I heard it again.

I bounced up and down on that first step a few times making sure that I had not mistaken some stranger's noise for my own. After a few such experiments, I deemed it possible that I could have made a noise similar to knocking, but all that didn't justify the pounding at the front door just then. A desperate, horrible, faltering pounding that fell dead against the door with a whimper. It was slow too, I know because I managed to open the front door before a third pound had fallen.

As I stood in the door frame, my hair caught up and tossed about in the wind, I felt happier again. It was something about the liveliness, it was something about the briskness. A girl stood in the doorway, a frail body beneath an encompassing coat, peeking out at me from inside. I caught a glimpse of dazzling red hair and the glint of green eyes and I remembered something. Something was given back.

"The fairy," I muttered, but not audibly. I had needed to say these words, for once I said them I was once again somewhere familiar. Her arms, legs, mind wrapped around me in indescribable ecstasy. I could feel the weight of aimless days and pointedly important nights chasing prey like a lion, aiming for the kill and always coming up short.

A skinny, pale arm snuck out from beneath the coat and she touched the arm I was holding the door open with and my eyes rolled back and I really remembered. I mean really remembered that time we lay beneath the oak tree. We swore that we would watch the leaves come off of that tree. We didn't know it then, but I knew now that we had just wanted to see something die. It was something that was bound to happen with two people like us. Like when we wanted to set the frat house where we met on fire, or maybe that was just me, or maybe I don't remember anymore. My childhood was so long ago.

Childhood, that's when we met, or maybe it was before then even. Yeah, it was before I was born. She was in the womb with me and we were eating from the same cord and I always told her to eat more but she always told me to eat less, so in the end it didn't matter because I was one way and she was another and then we were different. Yet, we were so much the same and so much one living breathing organism, at least there in the room.

"Can I come in?" she said weakly. "I've been meaning to talk to you for some time." Her hand reached into her pocket and pulled out a wallet. She held up her driver's license for me to see. "See? I am someone you know. Let me in."

I read the name but it meant nothing to me. I knew her from her touch, not her name.

"It's cold," she said impatiently, nearly falling over, "I'd like to come inside where it's warm."

"Oh, sure, come on in," I said with a confused smile. She stepped inside my house and it didn't seem so warm anymore, yet it didn't seem right. I was confused. I held my hand out to take her coat, but she dropped it on the floor and brushed the snow out of her hair. It glistened, red and fruitful, in the cheap lighting that hung above us.

"Nice place you have here," she leaned over and whispered through cracked lips and a faltering voice.

"Care for some hot tea?"

She smiled and her eyes rolled back and she wobbled a bit but caught herself on the door knob.

"That would be lovely, darlin'."

She made her way quietly to the dining table nearby and and quickly gathered her coat and hung it on the knob of the closet door. I didn't predict she'd be staying long, but everything was brighter I tell you. So much brighter. It reminded me of childhood.

"What'll you take?"

"Some honey, some sugar. Have any bread?"

I prepared her drink and took out the bread my wife had gotten from the bakery that morning. I brought it over to her on a plate that my eldest daughter had washed that afternoon. Like a nervous animal, she picked at her food and sipped her tea ever so delicately. I watched her slow, graceful movements. She moved like a matador, luring me in and quickly side-stepping my gaze with an uncomfortable shift in her seat. She never used to move like that. I was beginning to wonder how much of her was left.

She finished her tea and bread and let out a satisfied sigh as she avoided my gaze. Her eyes were turned towards the window. I was sure she was watching the moon, or the stars, or something romantic because I could feel that's what she was watching. Her jaw moved back and forth, grinding the tension out of the room.

"Sometimes I sit and wonder how you've been," she said quietly without breaking her attention from the window. I said nothing because the pale winter moonlight across her face said it all. She knew who she was. She finally knew. She was my brilliant fairy, forever stuck in that world that only she knew so well.

She noticed the glass of whiskey that I had rescued from my study. "May I have a sip?"

"How about I make you a drink?"

"That would be lovely."

I made her a drink and I made sure to stir really slow so that maybe her teeth could grind all the tension out of the room and then maybe we could talk about how wonderful she was. Once I had gotten back with the drinks, however, I noticed that her jaw was still moving a mile a minute and that she still could not break her nervous stare from the night sky.

Then I did it. I really did it. I said something and it made her turn toward me. I can't entirely remember what it was I said. To the best of my knowledge it was something like, "There's no more magic." Mostly, it was the booze talking and it was the books not talking, but something made me say it, or something like it, and she turned to me. I mean like a full turn away from the night and the moon and the stars and turned towards my shaggy sideburns, my thick eyebrows and my puffy eyes.

"You have all the magic you need." Her eyes were wide and they didn't move and they weren't looking at my features anymore, but somewhere beyond me. I thought then that maybe it was the refrigerator.

"Care for another glass?"

"Please," she smiled slyly at me, "Share the magic." I poured two more drinks, or maybe I just poured her one, I really can't remember. She relaxed then, though, and that was a good thing. She let her feet out beneath the table and let her back touch the back of the chair. She hacked violently and then looked like she was going to say something, but she was floating. She was floating I tell you and she looked majestic sitting in midair with her eyes that see past everybody and the classy way that she holds her whiskey on the rocks.

My mood changed suddenly and I wanted to bring her down. "What's it been tonight, sweet cheeks?"

She said nothing, but looked down to her arm and then she need say no more. I swallowed loudly, disapprovingly into the silence of the house. She didn't pick up on it though, or maybe she did. She was never the kind of girl that would catch things like that, but on this particular night she seemed as if she might have.

"I don't dream," she said flatly. So flatly, in fact, that it reminded me to take another sip of my whiskey, or her whiskey, whichever was available.

Her comment had angered me. "We all dream," I said mimicking her flatness. "Then we all don't dream. It's the same with everybody."

She raised her voice in protest. "My mother dreamed all her life."

"Your mother was a crack-whore, or maybe a junkie at best. She dreams like you dream. Keep your voice down."

She shook her head. "She dreamed the real way."

"Keep your voice down."

"She did I tell you."

"Fine. Keep your voice down."

We were silent for a while, then she said something interesting. "Can I tell you about how you still have a lot of magic?"

She was floating again, her arms moving about keeping her as high off the ground as she could be. Her face was becoming softer. Her skin was becoming fairer. She was as pale as the dead when she finally spoke again. "You don't know what magic is. If you don't know what magic is, look at me."

I scoffed. "Because you are the embodiment of magic?"

"No," she said authoritatively. "Because I have long given up on magic."

I nodded. "You've got other things now." She was levitating around me now. She was everywhere I looked.

She spat on the ground. "And what do you have?"

"Nothing."

She spat again. "Bullshit."

"It's true."

"Prove it."

I stood up and put my lips close to hers so that they were nearly touching. I could feel her firm breasts against my chest, her heated and troubled breath on my face, and her delicate hand grasping my shoulder. We were floating now, not just in the room, but outside of the house, far above earth. She was my fairy and she held me there through the magic that she still possessed. She embraced me in the cosmos and, for a moment, I felt what it was all like again.

Then, I fell away and slumped back into my chair. The fall left me badly beaten and I doubted if I'd ever return to my feet again.

She was at my side now, holding my hand, stroking my arm. Her eyes no longer saw what was beyond. I wanted those eyes back, but she could keep the jaw, I had no need for it.

"It's my fault too, isn't it?" She sat crying by my side, but I could think of nothing but how I still had some magic left. It wasn't much, but it was still there and it would surely carry me up the stairs to my bed and my wife. I had the magic, but something was holding me back. She was hanging onto my arm shaking me awake.

I grunted.

"Please, stay with me. Just for a little while. It would mean ever so much to me." She was crying again and I couldn't pay attention. She seemed so small there knelt by my side. I think I might have reached out and patted her head. That took a little bit of the leftover magic too. I saved a little bit for her even though she had already taken so much.

"I never meant to hurt you," I heard faintly from somewhere in the distance. It was melodic and it was desperately reaching for me, but I was shrinking away.

"I'm not that way at all." It was her and she was singing and she was trying to get me to come back to her, but she never knew it was in vain and that was the sad part. She was singing with tears in her eyes, but I could see now that she had no more magic. I decided it was time to use the last of mine.

I stood up and grabbed her by the shoulder and lifted her up to stand as tall as me. "I'm dead," I muttered one last time as I lead her crying and pleading to the door. "Keep your voice down," I muttered. I shoved her out of the door and into the snow and I closed the door and locked it and checked the lock three times before I mustered up all my strength and used my last bit of magic. I climbed into bed with my wife.

"What was all that noise, my precious?"

"Just a lost childhood, hun," I muttered incoherently. I was exhausted.

That was the last time I ever saw a fairy in real life, but I remember hearing something about her later that week. Maybe in the papers or something, but it was a story about what she did after she exited my door that night. It was a very dramatic story too, I remember feeling sad when I read it. The story read that after she left my house she walked out into the snow and stumbled a block down the street. This was the coldest night of winter on this particular night and the poor girl didn't quite make it to her destination. About halfway down the next block that she attempted to walk (magic-less no less) she fell down beneath a street lamp. The story had much to say about the way the street lamp enveloped her and how it seemed all too revealing for what took place. The police found her the next morning face up in the snow lying in a pool of her own blood. The slits on her wrists indicated suicide. The story ended on a good note mentioning that she died with a brilliant smile on her face.

Or maybe that story was made up. If it isn't and I've read it, I wouldn't believe it. And if it really did happen, then maybe it was her form of absolution or something, but don't ask me because I don't make it a point to be in other people's affairs. I gave that up with my childhood.

One thing I am sure of, though, is that ever since that night I've had the most wonderful dreams. The fairy is often there and she is hiding in the trees where she belongs, casting sidelong glances and smiles at me as she attempts to escape my view. The game always ends with an embrace, though, and it's the most magnificent feeling in the world to be lifted up to the top of the universe and not have to look down at all because you've got magic and you can always go higher. It's a warm, intense, speculative feeling like I used to have in my childhood.