A Scripta

Rosie Santos' grandmother would have kittens if she ever knew what she was going to do. Even liposuction would be preferable to this. Good Catholic girls wouldn't resort to magic. Rosie knocked on the door to the New Age store. The peephole opened quickly, then slammed shut. A very large woman pulled open the door about six inches wide. "Can I help you?"

Sheepishly, Rosie held up the black business card. On it, the name said "Seagn", not "Shawn" as she had thought. The woman nodded and stepped aside. "Seagn!"

"Hello?" The black haired woman came down the small hallway. "Oh, Rosie. How's it going?"

The floor creaked under Rosie's weight. "Do you have a cellar?"

"Uh, yeah, sure." She glanced around the corner. "Right this way." Seagn brought her around the stairs that were set in the middle of the building, opened the door to the front of the store, then brought her to the cellar. It smelled of must, books, and incense. Seagn pulled out a chair, but Rosie refused it, so Seagn sat.

Rosie paced a little. "I was thinking about what you said. What do I have to do? Do I have to hurt him? Do I have to know him?"

Seagn smiled at her. "Listen, Rosie. The spell will wear off in time. So if you find a guy and you really like him, and he likes you with that glamour, someday he's going to wake up next to you as you are now."

"What if he likes me the way I am?"

She shrugged. "Good luck, then."

Rosie rubbed her nose. "I don't know."

Seagn stood up. "Didn't he hurt you? Didn't he tell you how much he loved you? Didn't he give you something precious and tell you all kinds of nice things, how much he wanted to spend the rest of his life with you? Didn't he promise so much to you? Didn't you believe him?"

Rosie tried to blink back tears. Seagn walked up to her and caught a tear on her fingertip. "See this? He did this to you! Are you going to let him walk all over you like that?" She flicked her finger, the tear splashing against the concrete of the cellar. "Are you going to let ANY man do that again to you? To anyone? You have the obligation to never let something like this happen to anyone again!" Seagn took Rosie by the chin and glared at her. "Even if it's just one man. One at a time."

Blinking, Rosie stepped back. Seagn looked away and stepped back also. "I'm sorry. Look, I'm... you better still think about it. It's a big step." She offered a small smile. "How about you come upstairs and meet my sisters."

"I don't know."

"The floor will support you. You saw Beira, she's a big girl."

"I weigh 800 pounds."

"I assure you, it'll be fine." She motioned up the stairs. As Rosie went first, Seagn made a motion with her hand, and a rune appeared in the air at Rosie's ankles, wrapping around them. She wouldn't weigh as much in the rooms above, at least while she was here.

Seagn (not "Shawn" but pronounced that way) is introduced in a story on my website. She's a veterinary student who's a pagan from Salem, Massachusetts. She and her brother Steven come from a long matriarchical line of ancient witches, who have been trained in assorted schools of thought, from Golden Dawn to Native American traditions. Their mother died when they were still in middle school and their father remarried, bringing on a new stepsister. This stepsister abused them in all sorts of ways, and used their power for her own purposes.

Soon enough, Sarah Beckham became “The Witch of Salem” and people flocked to her store to get love potions, money candles, and fortune telling crystals. Hardly any of the trinkets worked, but if you paid enough money she would call in her “assistants” who would make things work.

Meanwhile, Steven had a boyfriend that he had been seeing on the side, without Sarah knowing. After her second year at Becker College, where Seagn was tracked for veterinary training, it was found out that Stephen had contracted AIDS. Sarah sent a note to Seagn telling her not to return to Salem, that everything will be taken care of.

Seagn takes this as a challenge to find her brother. She starts at the usual places, hospitals and the like, but can’t seem to find him. To make a very long story short, she finds herself buying a small animal petting zoo that’s attached to a traveling carnival for the summer, which she uses as a cover to try and find her brother. In addition, she hooks up with a small band of pagan lesbian bikers called the Sidewinders whose leader takes a hankerin’ to Seagn. Okay, biker part was a little far-fetched, but the characters I created for that gang were too fun to throw away. (Grimaulkin’s name is taken from the gang leader – who also was insane but not quite as over-the-top as Grim-in-game.)

So for the CoH venue, Seagn is a pagan biker that’s part of a gang, who is on the search for her brother. The gang numbers 13, with the exception of “mattresses”. Seagn is not the recruiter for the gang, but could very well be in this instance. I might dust off the novella and pull out the characters to use them in altitis attacks.

Rosie snarled and slammed the mug back down on the bar again. "Men!" She looked up at Sam, the bartender. Sam merely smiled and drew her another beer. A woman quietly sidled up next to her and laid money on the bar. "I'll buy," she said.

"Whatever," Rosie replied angrily.

The woman chuckled. "Men, indeed," she replied. She sipped her own drink. "You can live without them, you know."

Rosie turned to the woman. She wore a black motorcycle jacket and had black hair with purple hilights. She wore tights with a pair of motorcycle boots. "Oh, let me guess," Rosie said haughtingly.

The woman laughed. "Of course, I make it obvious. Makes it a lot easier if people know where I'm coming from. My name is Shawn."

Rosie took the offered hand. "Rosie."

"Good to meet you. Care to talk about it?"

Rosie shrugged. "The usual. Guy says he loves me, gives me gifts, promises to marry me, then takes off." She stared at the mug. "Probably someone tiny, cute, pretty, and skinny."

"You're cute and pretty."

Rosie looked at her. "So I'm batting .500."

"Some people don't like skinny girls, either."

Rosie snorted. "I've heard that before."

"Would you like to be skinny?"

"Oh, no, that probably means I have to give up my soul."

"No, not really. There is a catch. No soul-loss required."

"Become a lesbian? Get raped?"

Shawn gave her an incredulous look. "No. It's a potion that one of my covenmates made, especially made for people just like you, who have been burned by their men." Shawn took a pull from her mug. "It's simple, really. You get to look as beautiful as you want, and all you need to do is hook a man and do to him what was done to you." Shawn smiled. "Ever mind the rule of three."

"What's that?"

"Whatever has been done to you will be returned to you thricefold. Very old Pagan law which, if we can choose to do it ourselves, we might as well, right? Why let the universe do it if we can make the universe bend to our will? That's what magic is, after all."

"Who says?"

"A bunch of old farts, dead now, but we like a few things they said. That's just a few. Interested?"

Rosie put the mug down. "I don't think so."

Shawn slipped a black business card under Rosie's hand anyway. "Just in case."

Rosie got up from the bar, leaving the card there. She turned her back on the woman and headed out the door, stumbling out of the elevator and almost tripping into the stairs. She straightened, didn't know how the hell she got home to her basement apartment. She fell face first onto her bed and fell asleep quickly.

The next morning she woke up, and after coming out of the bathroom, she looked at something lying on her bed, as if placed there by a gentle hand.

It was a black business card.