What a novel idea
Spelled Wrong
A comic supernatural murder mystery… excerpt!
How Pants Work readers, we’re pleased to bring you the first chapter of the new novel by founding contributing editor Matthew David Brozik (with a link to purchase below, of course).
1. Jessamyn
“Look this way,” Jessamyn insisted, manipulating my head with the fingertips of her empty hand. I’d noticed that her nails were trimmed short and painted… if not black, then a very dark brown. In her other hand she held the principal instrument of her craft, and I appreciated that she didn’t want to poke me with it by accident. I too didn’t want her poking me with it by accident, for the obvious reason: I wanted to keep both of my eyes. Nonetheless, I was fidgety.
“Hold still!”
That afternoon, I’d ventured into the town of Bricklaine to meet a woman at her place. She’d buzzed me in to a three-story corner building on a small street off the main avenue, and when I’d reached the second floor, I’d found her standing in the doorway of her apartment completely nude, framed by the jambs and transom, looking like a pin-up of old. She wasn’t old, though. She was older than I am, but still young, and beautiful. And naked.
“Skyclad,” Jessamyn had informed me, clarifying nothing, even before asking if I was the man she’d been expecting. “Nathan?”
“I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” I might have squeaked. “I’m here for… a haircut,” I’d remembered, finally.
“Come,” she’d laughed, turning around in the doorway, giving me an unobstructed view of her backside. I’d followed her, closing her apartment door once I was inside, wondering if I should be concerned that someone might have seen me… there… with her. But then she’d shown me to a short, wooden stool in her living room — a room full of rugs and books and pillows and tapestries and candles, all of which I’d been only half-aware of in the periphery — and when I’d sat she’d taken up a position on my left and looked over my scalp, brushing my shoulder with one of her bare breasts in the process. I’d flinched.
“Keep your hands in your lap!”
“I wasn’t — !” I’d begun to protest, unsure if she’d been merely teasing me or not. “Maybe if you…,” I’d started to suggest, less defensively, but then I trailed off.
“Clothes keep the magic from getting out,” she’d stated, then had come around to stand directly behind me. “You seem tense. You should try yoga.”
“Maybe,” I’d said. “Wait… magic?”
“Magic,” Jessamyn had confirmed, evenly. “Didn’t Carolyn tell you?”
Carolyn is one of my students, one of the young undermotivated undergraduates I have the pleasure of teaching. Despite her decent grades, however, Carolyn was just then suddenly in danger of failing my class. Or was I to blame for my ignorance and confusion?
“I’m not sure anymore,” I’d confessed warily. “She said that her cousin — her older cousin who used to babysit her — could help me, and I assumed….”
“Ah,” Jessamyn had said. “But when you assume….”
“Yes,” I’d agreed. “I know how that goes. So what were you planning to do to me, then, if not cut my hair?”
“Spell it shorter.”
“Spell it… shorter,” I’d repeated, but it hadn’t helped me to understand what those words meant, though, in that order.
“Yes. With this.” Jessamyn had produced a thin wooden rod, about the length of a ruler, that looked like a sturdy twig stripped of its bark. She’d produced it from… I still have no idea where.
I’d jumped off the stool and backed away from the naked woman with the wand.
“Oh, stop it!” Jessamyn had chided me. “Here, I’ll put it away.” She did. “Now come back?” She’d taken a step toward me, then another. She’d reached me, then reached up toward my neck with her empty hands. She’d fixed my shirt collar, which I suppose had become rumpled in my sudden spring and retreat. “Please?” Jessamyn had purred.
On the stool again, while Jessamyn was again appraising my hair, at one point I’d turned my head without thinking and come face to… well, my face had turned red, anyway, I’m sure. It certainly had gotten hot in a hurry. I could see less of the lower half of Jessamyn’s wand, which was also remarkably smooth.
Still, I probably should not have remarked on it.
“Is that your own work?” I’d asked, trying to sound impressed, not lascivious. I don’t think I’d managed it.
“Look this way,” Jessamyn said. “Hold still!”
She turned my head so that I was facing my reflection in the small round mirror she’d placed on the folding snack table in front of me.
“Ready?” Jessamyn asked.
“Sure.” I swallowed.
“This won’t hurt even a little. As long as you behave yourself,” Jessamyn added, and she gave her wand a playful but meaningful thrust at my reflection. I swallowed again.
“Close your eyes,” Jessamyn requested. I complied. Jessamyn began murmuring incantations. Something occurred to me, and I opened my eyes and my mouth.
“This is all… ‘white’ magic, right?” I asked, interrupting Jessamyn.
“Black magic is the new white magic,” she said coolly, and before I could contradict her, she added: “I’m kidding. Yes, only white magic. It’s a superficial styling spell, Nathan! Hardly the stuff of demons and dark forces.” Jessamyn went back to murmuring, so I closed my eyes again. Jessamyn’s voice became more distant. At first I thought I might have been going into a trance, perhaps, but then I realized that Jessamyn was just moving away from me. So I was surprised when I felt her fingertips — her fingernails, actually — in my scalp again, even while she was on the other side of the room. I forced myself to keep my eyes closed, confused though I was.
When I felt a series of rapid, sharp jabs on my skull, however, my eyes flew open and I yelped when I saw in the small mirror that there was a bird — a black bird — standing on my head.
“What the — ?!” I sprang to my feet once more. The bird took flight, passing Jessamyn on its way out of the room and — it sounded like — out of the apartment by way of an open window. “There was a bird on my head!” I told Jessamyn, not calmly.
“That’s Renée,” Jessamyn told me.
Oh, I thought, my heartbeat returning to a normal, less troubling tempo. It had been merely a bird pecking my scalp, after all. “Your familiar?” I asked.
“No,” Jessamyn said. “Just a friend. My familiar’s in a tank in the bathroom.”
“Your familiar is — ?”
“A tarantula.”
“What? Seriously? Why?” I asked.
“Why not?”
“Well, why not a cat? Aren’t cats…? Or, if you don’t like cats, a dog?” I like dogs. Not very small dogs, and not really big dogs, but medium-sized dogs. Beagles, for instance. I like beagles.
“No dogs or cats allowed in the building. Co-op rules,” Jessamyn explained. “And I don’t want to get my aunt and uncle in trouble.”
I wasn’t able to make the connection on my own, and I guess Jessamyn could see as much on my face.
“They own the apartment. My aunt and uncle. Carolyn’s parents. They moved out when she came along. Bought a bigger place, but kept this one as investment property. That’s not public knowledge, though.”
Who would I tell? “Do you pay them rent?” I asked.
“If I didn’t, it would be more charity than investment for them,” Jessamyn mentioned. “But it’s only fair. And I pay less than I would pay a landlord who didn’t love me.”
“I understand,” I said. “It’s a nice place,” I added, even though forcing myself to look past the beautiful naked woman allowed me to see only all of the living room. But Jessamyn’s living room was at once spacious and cozy. Cheery, too. More cheery than one might expect a witch’s lair to be. The living room walls, for example, were painted a sort of sunflower yellow.
“Thanks. Okay, ready again?”
“If you keep the birds away,” I joked.
“Once we do this,” Jessamyn rejoined, “birds won’t mistake your hair for a nest.”
“Close my eyes?”
“Hmm? Oh, no, you can keep them open.” Jessamyn started her murmuring again, though she stood right behind me the whole time, this time. While she murmured, I listened for the sounds of feathered things flying… or hairy things scuttling, though I doubted I’d be able to hear a tarantula approaching, especially if it kept to the rugs. It occurred to me that I was stealing glances at the floor.
Finally, Jessamyn raised her voice and her wand, and with a flourish of both incanted: “Abbrive-derci!”
I thought that was pretty funny. I gave my full attention to my reflection in the mirror. So long, long hair!
But my hair wasn’t any shorter. Well, I mean, of course it wasn’t.
“It takes a few minutes for the spell to set,” Jessamyn explained.
“Oh. Okay,” I said. “What do we do now? Or should I… go?”
Jessamyn laughed, and I realized that I liked making her laugh. “We can talk. I’ll put on a robe.” She did, and I was more grateful than disappointed. Jessamyn was almost as tall as I am, with long straight black hair, green eyes, and perfect skin… everywhere. I did find her attractive, as any man and probably most women would, but… well, the circumstances — and the age difference — made me diffident. We were like Beauty and a guy in need of some cleaning up. Also, she thought she was a witch.
When she stepped into her bedroom, I thought about sticking my head into the bathroom to see whether she’d been just pulling my leg about having a familiar — or just a pet — with eight of them, but I didn’t risk it. Also, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see a big hairy spider, even in a terrarium. Instead I swiveled around on my stool and took in my immediate surroundings. The apartment seemed to be a rectangle, with the front door opening into the kitchen, which was about a quarter of the entire space. The living room was another quarter, maybe a bit more. The bedroom was two-thirds of the second half, with the bathroom being the final piece — and where a large hairy spider might or might not have been.
A creature with just two legs, both of them long, came out of the bedroom again. Wow. Jessamyn’s wrap somehow gave her even more presence.
“So,” she said, “You’re a teacher?”
“Some of the time,” I managed to answer. “I’m an adjunct at Worcestboro.” But Jessamyn already knew where I taught. And she probably figured — correctly — that being on the teaching staff there wasn’t any more prestigious than being part of the student body there. It’s not a great school. It’s not even a good school. It’s a second-tier community college. “My own training,” I mentioned, “is in etymology.”
“Bugs, right? I don’t use any in my spells or potions,” Jessamyn volunteered, probably thinking that I would be relieved to hear it. “And I let Thérèse have her run of the place as often as possible.”
Thérèse? Oh. Jessamyn’s tarantula. (Renée was the bird.) At first I found it odd that a tarantula would be female, but on second thought I realized that of course some — maybe even as many as half — of them had to be. Or else there wouldn’t be any more tarantulas. You don’t get to be an adjunct professor at a community college without a basic understanding of how these things work.
But I didn’t really care whether Jessamyn was kind to bugs or not.
“Words, actually,” I said. “You might be thinking of entomology.” But there was no might be about it. She was thinking of entomology, the study of insects.
“Oh.”
“A lot of people make that mistake,” I heard myself add, but I was immediately sorry, because I’ve never been convinced that that’s the sort of thing that should make a person feel better about being mistaken. “Carolyn’s one of my favorite students,” I offered quickly, thinking that was more likely to be something Jessamyn would like to hear.
“She’s my favorite cousin,” Jessamyn said. “But I only have the one,” she added.
“And your family… knows?”
Jessamyn snorted. “I came out of the broom closet when I was twenty. What about you?”
“What about me what?”
But Jessamyn didn’t have a chance to answer, because an electronic beeping sounded in the kitchen. I realized only then that Jessamyn had set a timer. Either that or she’d been microwaving something to eat.
I looked to Jessamyn for a hint about what came next, only to see that she was looking at my hair with consternation. I glanced at the mirror. Still no change. Still no surprise on my part.
Without speaking, Jessamyn led me from my stool and the small mirror on the small table to her bedroom (two lavender walls, two purple) and a cheval glass — a long mirror mounted on a swivel in a frame, allowing it to be tilted. Then Jessamyn said, “Let me just try again in here.” We were already in there, so I didn’t object.
“Abbrive-derci!” she intoned. Then, with less certainty, “Abbreva-cadabra…?”
Nothing happened.
“Nothing’s happening,” I said, looking at my full reflection. Jessamyn was standing behind me, looking alternately at my reflection and at my actual head. She was biting her lower lip. “I see that,” she said, not without some petulance.
Then Jessamyn started to cry. (Witches cry? I wondered. Some witches scry, I understand, foretelling events to come using a crystal ball or other reflective object or surface… if you believe such things.) This witch cried, anyway. She threw herself down on her bed and sobbed into her bedding. “I’m not good at this,” I thought I heard her tell her comforter. “I’m not even a bad witch. I’m just not good.” She cried more.
I turned away from the mirror and mustered the boldness to sit on the corner of Jessamyn’s bed. I kept myself from putting a consoling hand on her silk- or satin-covered shoulder or back or anything else, but not because I was afraid of her. Intimidated, absolutely. But not afraid.
“You don’t have to pay me, of course.” Jessamyn said, between sobs.
“I do still need a haircut,” I heard myself say, despite wanting to leave, wondering why I’d already stayed as long as I had, and figuring it was simply because Jessamyn was gorgeous, and I was, against all odds, already in her bedroom.
The reason I’d come in the first place, before I knew what Jessamyn looked like or thought of herself, is that I was trying to save money on haircuts, which can be expensive, and which I seem to need more often than the average man my age… and I don’t make a lot of money, even though I have two jobs, teaching undergraduates at a community college being just one of them, and the one that doesn’t pay very well at all.
Even my students had noticed that I’d needed a haircut. More than one had remarked on my appearance on Friday morning — not disparagingly, but not particularly tactfully, either. I might have muttered something about the cost of haircuts in the city and about some men being willing to kill to have the problem I had. After her class, Carolyn Hegel had stayed in the room to tell me in private that her cousin — her older cousin, who used to babysit her — might be able to help me. Carolyn gave me her cousin’s name and number. And when I’d called Jessamyn on Sunday afternoon, she’d invited me to come over right then “for a spell.” I’d thought she was being folksy.
The town that Jessamyn lived in, Bricklaine, is just outside the Benton city limits. My apartment — nothing like Jessamyn’s; much smaller, much less cozy — is in the Benton neighborhood of Crichton, which isn’t quite as run down as its sister neighborhood, Dalton. The Dalton-Crichton area borders on Bricklaine, though, so whenever I’ve felt like taking a walk and taking in better scenery, I’ve headed straight into Bricklaine. The residents of Bricklaine generally seemed happier, too. For sure, the typical resident of Bricklaine was wealthier than the typical resident of either Dalton or Crichton. The men there didn’t all wear three-piece suits and top hats, and the women didn’t all carry parasols, but Bricklaine was a nicer place to spend time. And, of course, Jessamyn was there, I now knew.
The relief I felt when I finally did part company with Jessamyn was substantial.
The beeping of her kitchen appliance had saved me, possibly, from talking about my other job, which might have made my host uncomfortable.
Outside academia — which includes junior college adjunct professorships in this case — work for those who want to put a degree in etymology to use is scarce. I was fortunate to also have a part-time government job, something I didn’t know if Carolyn had mentioned to her cousin. I’d mentioned it, probably on the first day of classes and then never again, to my students. Carolyn had once mentioned to me that she (believed that she) could see others’ auras — in fact she’d written a fairly coherent essay about her ability that had been passed around my department’s faculty — but if she’d neglected to mention her cousin’s leanings to me, it seemed likely that she’d also neglected to mention my other career to Jessamyn, if for no other reason than because those who believed themselves enchanted did not associate carelessly with those in the employ of the government. Especially not since the passage of the Act Necessitating the Oversight of the Regulation of Magic through Affirmative Legislation — ”Act NORMAL.”
Likewise, government employees, even part-time government employees, did not consult witches, officially or otherwise. Granted, I didn’t believe that I’d consulted an actual witch… but it wasn’t so much what I believed that could have been bad for me as what others might believe I believed, or merely entertained. Getting my hair cut every month was expensive, but suspicion that I’d been enchanted or even just had tried to become so — whether it was even possible or not — could have cost me my government job. And I needed my government job. My government salary was the bulk of my modest income, and the government provided my health insurance.
My visiting Jessamyn hadn’t been just a risky comedy of errors, though. In the end, she had cut my hair herself instead — with everyday scissors; not an athame, seax, yag-dirk, or any other supposed witch’s implement — and in that manner the episode had ended in something more like tragedy, as Jessamyn evidently did not know the first thing about cutting hair.
