Workforce - 2 of ?

Part 2 of the epic saga of a crackhead wizard and his delayed journey to post-adolescence, trapped among mortals and mundanes. In this installment, our hero makes a friend, finds his new home, and only (nearly) dies about seven times along the way.




Fortunately for me the oncoming car wasn't coming very fast; it was more of an oncrawling car. Still, the silly little pleb behind the wheel seemed personally offended by my appearance and-

Oh. Well. Possibly that was because I hadn't fallen in front of his car at all. The searing pain in my spine and the smacked-arse feel of my head told me that I had fallen onto his car; and rolled onto the street to collapse in a heap.

I looked up. Yes, the car certainly had a me-shaped dent in the front. I was scraped and bleeding, and I could feel blood dripping from my hairline (oh god, my beautiful hair! Father, I will murder you for this), and the expression on the driver's face and the piquantly sulferous curses he was screeching at me all told me one thing: time to get the hell out of here. I got up, even dizzier than I had been, and made for the sidewalk. I smacked into another car, but thankfully, it was stopped. The woman behind the wheel made a significant gesture; I returned by blasting her in the face with a hex that would make her womb an extremely fertile lizard factory until she was in her mid 90s...only my brain was still fogged, so it didn't even work. Oh well.

I slammed into yet another car as I stumbled to the sidewalk. Fortunately, this one was parked and blessedly empty. My curse on that egregiously mannered woman hadn't worked; and I hadn't even felt the slight tingling nausea I get when a spell fails. Strange. Huh.

My legs managed to carry me to the sidewalk, where I collapsed in an untidy pile on the stained and sweat-smelling asphalt and did what any red-blooded wizard would do when hung over, exiled, surrounded by stupid pink monkeys, and recently struck by an automobile: I howled like a dog.

From the looks I was receiving, this clearly wasn't approved behavior. Oh well, I thought furiously as I blubbered and rubbed my seeping eyes on my sleeve. I'm tired, I'm cranky, and I'm...I'm...

It just wasn't fair. I hadn't hurt anyone! Well, not anybody who hadn't asked me too, and besides that was sexy hurting people!

"Tight-assed, moralizing, buzz-killing psuedo-somnambulist ectoplasmic BASTARD!" I screamed up at the tall, uncaring buildings and at the chill, uncaring sky. The sun was his unblinking eye and he was laughing at me.

I clutched my shirt, prepared to do some seriously foaming-at-the-mouth garment rending right there in the street (that'd show him) when I realized that I wasn't holding cloth, I was holding paper. Specifically, a note taped to my chest.

I sat on the curb in the shade of a dyspeptic birch tree, and read:

"Dear Son,

Since it has become glaringly apparent to me, in my nigh-infinite wisdom, that you refuse to accept any responsibilities either towards the governing of your own life or the natural consequences of your mind-boggilingly stupid actions, it is with profoundest regret that I have exercised my right as Wizard of the First and Lord of the Celestial Palace to exile you to the Morati.

You might notice you-"

I blinked, and read the line again. And then again. And then I turned around and punched the birch tree a few times, my vision going blurry with a fresh onslaught of angry tears. Oh god no, please, by all the infinite mercies of...

"You might notice that you can no longer use magic."

This wasn't exile. This was straight up murder. I rubbed my eyes furiously with one dirty paw until I could sort of see, and kept reading.

"Since I do not actually desire your death (though if I don't see some return on my collosal investment in your siring and upbringing, that is likely to change) I have thoughtfully included a situational loophole to your geas; namely, you may use magic in the defense of your own life or the life of another, but no more."

That brought my anguished sobs up short. He hadn't cauterized my magic; he'd simply laid a geas on me. That, I could work with.

"I have also, in the interests of your not immediately being robbed at knifepoint, raped, shot and dumped unceremoniously in an alley, procured you a home. Rent is paid through the week; after that, dear son, you're on your own. I'll pick you up in six weeks. Make some effort to be less of a poisonous little cretin when I return for you, son. Please, I beg you. Make an effort.

With Highly Conditional Love Swift Running Dry,

Father."

At the bottom was an address; apparently I was in California, if the address was to be believed, in a town called Morganfield. Unless of course I was expected to cross whole continents in pursuit of this tedious little social experiment. I stood. With difficulty, but it was getting easier as time went on. Hopefully I was close; the sky was dark-grey and looked like rain.

I'd been in the Morati before; been coached to within an inch of my life by instructors in how to slide through the mortal fold like a greased knife. I was a master of deception, born to the con. First, to procure directions.

I grabbed the elbow of the first passerby "I say, girl, could you direct me to-"

My polite request came to an abrupt halt when the girl gave forth a startled oath of a tediously scatological nature, pivoted, and clocked me more or less reflexively in the face.

I span around from the force of the blow, letting her go and falling unceremoniously to the ground.

"Ow," I said thinly, clutching a hand to my bleeding nose.

"Ohmigod," the girl said, horror-stricken, as she turned and looked at me. She was short and kind of bouncy - if you catch my drift- and entirely adorable, but she was way too quick with the punches "I'm sorry! You just...ohmigod," she squealed again, eyes wide "are you okay?"

No, you stupid bint, I just got smacked in the face by some painted trollope and I'm exiled from my fabulous magical homeland into your drear meat city.

What I actually said was "I just got hit by a car."

"Shit," she said, helping me to my feet. She was wearing a plaid skirt; was I in Scotland? No, she wasn't a boy. Well she might be. Was I in Paris then? "Look, I'm really sorry, it's just I'm a little jumpy in this neighborhood and..." she trailed off, taking in my bedraggled appearance "you're bleeding."

No shit.

"Look, I live a couple of blocks down from here, I'll get you cleaned up? Please?"

Oho, clearly she had fallen for my fatal allure. The poor thing couldn't help herself; she wasn't the first woman seized with the mad desire to take me home. I agreed that it might be a good idea, that I'd really appreciate it. I debated putting my patented "seduction purr" into the world "appreciate" but I hadn't the energy. Besides, give the poor girl a sporting chance.

I followed her down the street, feeling sexy, empowered, and almost ready to begin the complicated plot to get myself back to my homeland and ensuring my father's subsequent banishment to the bottom of the most hellish planes of torment when I caught sight of myself in the reflection of a shop window.

If she was attracted to me, it wasn't because I was alluring. I would be an object of irrisistable fascination to something meat-eating, certainly, or attracted to the homeless.

I'd started out this morning looking awful. But now I was scraped and lacerated and puffy-faced from tears, and there was blood and dirt and a scattering of brisk autumn leaves in my hair, and to cap it all off I was wearing denim pants clearly made for someone far gone into obesity and a shirt made of some god awful fabric the morati made from ancient dead lizards (true story; oh, how true it was).

I'm not ashamed to admit it: I burst explosively into tears and had a small nervous breakdown that counted as my fourth of the day.

The girl seemed completely unable to handle a bedraggled, ill-dressed man sobbing quietly on the street saying things like "my face, my beautiful face," and cluthing desperately at his hair. Overall, I sympathized. I hardly knew how to handle myself.

"Come on," she said, tugging on my arm "my roommates an RN..."

"A what?" I sniffed.

"A nurse," she explained, and we set off again.

A nurse. Oh my. A nurse with soft, tender hands, a caring soul, who would hopefully see past my injuries to the wounded and terribly attractive soul within...

"By all means," I said, with a 30% approximation of my usual roguish grin "let's meet your roommate. The nurse."

She seemed terribly relieved. Sap.

"My name's Charlotte," she said "call me Carl."

Get me off this street and into your caring arms of your sexy nurse, dear girl, and I'll call you whatever you want.

We set off for her home, while I thought of the two things in life that made me happy: the possibility of sex.

And revenge.