2017 Lesbian story: The Night Zoe & Michele Raised Hell – Chapter 4
It was morning. Michele opened her eyes and sat up, not in her own bed. There was no sign of Zoe…no, wait, there was the sound of the shower, and steam coming from beneath the bathroom door.
Putting her hands over her face, Michele groaned. Oh my god, she thought. What happened last night? The last thing she remembered was—no, she didn’t want to remember the last thing she remembered.
Her head was killing her. And her stomach…
“Oh no.”
Bolting out of bed, she kicked the bathroom door open and just barely made it to the toilet in time, throwing he arms around it like a ship’s mast in a storm and sticking her head in the bowl.
Peering around the shower curtain, Zoe watched. “Good morning, sunshine,” she said. “Guess this means a morning quickie is out of the question.”
“Die,” Michele said, slumping next to the toilet. She felt marginally better now, although it was a low bar. Zoe pulled the shower open wider, inviting her in. Michele wanted to wash away the gross feeling, but didn’t want to get in while Zoe was still there. Her face must have given it away, because Zoe glowered.
“So that’s how it is,” she said, turning the water off. “You’re a piece of work.”
“Me? You got me drunk and—”
“You got yourself drunk, I didn’t force you. What, are you ashamed?” She threw the towel at Michele. “Self-loathing lesbians are really boring you know.”
“I am not self-loathing. I don’t loathe anything.”
“Canned pears.”
“Anything about myself.”
“Why the attitude then? Shit, give me that towel back, I’m dripping on the floor.”
Throwing the towel, Michele kicked off her panties (the only thing she’d put back on last night) and got into the shower. “The problem is—this water is freezing!”
“Jiggle the right handle if you want it hot.” Zoe’s voice came from the bedroom. “I get it: You‘re upset about your boyfriend or whatever. But he‘s not here, right? Out of sight, out of mind.”
“That doesn’t make it okay. Wait, did we really…?”
“Really what? Fuck all night?”
“Yes, did we really—holy shit, now the water’s scalding!”
“There’s no pleasing you. Are you really telling me you don’t remember?”
Wiping soap out of her eyes, Michele squirmed. “No,” she admitted. Zoe, standing in the bathroom door, began laughing. Michele blushed even harder. “It’s not funny! I blacked out.”
“It’s so funny you wouldn’t even believe it. It would serve you right if I never told you what really happened last night…but oh, all right, you can stop worrying, I’m just messing with your head. Nothing happened. You passed out first.”
Sagging with relief, Michele leaned against the shower wall.
“But you definitely wanted me,” Zoe added. “I could tell.”
A denial was on Michele’s lips before she was even done hearing what Zoe said. But then Zoe yanked the shower curtain aside, startling her. The other girl stood fully dressed and looking shockingly alert for a woman who should have been in an alcohol-induced coma after the last 24 hours.
“Hey,” she said. “What you said last night, about how you wanted to know if there’s any way to undo what we did as kids? If you really meant it, I think there’s something we can try.”
Michele looked up from drying her hair off. “Are you sure? Last night—”
“I said it was a terrible idea, and yeah, it is. But if it’s what you really want…”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Kiddo, I’d do just about anything for you. Why do you think I started all of this in the first place?”
For a second Michele was speechless. Then Zoe grabbed her wrist and said, “Get dressed. Follow me.”
Across the hall was the second bedroom, with the padlock on the outside. Now sober enough to be properly curious about it, Michele peered over Zoe’s shoulder as she fumbled with the key. She wasn’t prepared for what was on the other side.
Right away Michele recognized the magic circle painted on the bedroom floor. The wood was stained such a deep red that it was nearly black from having blood poured on it again and again. Books of every shape and size filled the shelves, some so old their spines had cracked, some so new they still smelled like a bookstore stock room.
Other shelves held all sorts of bells, cups, knives, statuettes, bones, bottles, bowls, and even stranger objects. And all manner and shape of candles, most of them black, but some white, red, and deep purple too.
On one side of the room, on a dais made from milk crates covered with a black cloth, sat a gold-colored statue of a figure with wings and horns almost as tall as Michele, its eyes seeming to wink whenever the light hit them. Letters inscribed on its base spelled:
“URIAN.”
Turning in a circle, Michele looked at everything and said, “What…IS all of this?”
“Grown-up magic,” Zoe replied, picking a book from the shelf and leafing through it. “Don’t step in the circle.”
“How long did it take you to collect all of this?” Curious, Michele touched a flat brass knife, then picked up a heavy silver bell to give it a small test ring.
“At least this long,” Zoe said. “Do you remember what the phase of the moon was ten years ago? Never mind, I’ll look it up. Hey!” She snapped her fingers. “Pay attention.”
Michele blinked. She’d caught herself staring into the eyes of the winged statue and for a second hadn’t been able to look way.
Turning, she looked at the page of the book Zoe held out to her. “Is this the…magic…we want?”
“I think so,” Zoe said, nodding. “If you’re sure you want to do this?”
Swallowing, Michele said. “Yes. I’m sorry if it hurts your feelings. I never realized you did all this for…anyway, yes, I’m sure.”
Closing the book, Zoe nodded. “Then we can do it tonight.”
“Wouldn’t tomorrow be better?”
“Tonight‘s Devil’s Night. That’s the best time. But we shouldn’t do it here. Outdoors will work better. You remember Cemetery Hill, on the east side of town?”
Michele nodded.
“We’ll meet there just after sundown. Sound good?”
Michele nodded again, even though she wasn’t entirely sure that it did. Still reading, Zoe looked at her out of just the corner of her eye and added, “And Michele?”
“Yes?”
“I‘m sticking my neck out for you here. Don‘t let me down.”
***
Brushing her hair out of her face, Zoe knelt on the cemetery grass while Michele kept watch. “Tell me if anybody is coming,“ Zoe said again.
Beds of dead, gray leaves crunched under Michele’s feet whenever she moved. The grassy hillside had grown patchy over the years, and the taller headstones had started to tilt, and it seemed nobody was keeping the place up anymore. It had been at least 100 years since anybody was buried here.
Michele said, “I don’t mean to complain—”
“And yet…”
“But do we have to be here?”
“You can’t do these things just anywhere,” Zoe said. She was tracing a wide circle in the ground with the point of a knife, her brow furrowed as she worked to make the characters around the perimeter just right. “Outdoors is best. Isolation is best. And a place with ceremonial importance is best. Can you think of anywhere else?”
“Last time we did it in your mom’s basement.”
“Last time I didn‘t know what I was doing. A lot‘s changed since we were eleven.”
Not enough, Michele thought, as she handed Zoe a Tupperware container full of blood. She imagined it looked like the same purple container from when they were kids. But of course it couldn‘t be.
Any moment now Michele expected someone to catch them in the act, but there was nothing around except leaning trees and the spokes of the cemetery’s iron fence. Tomorrow night this place would be full of teenagers, but now it was curiously empty, as if somehow everyone knew they would be here.
Pouring the blood into a wooden chalice, Zoe filled the rest with water and a splash of vodka (“You can barely taste it after that,” she explained), then poured everything else into the circle. The hungry cemetery dirt swallowed it up.
“This place always creeped me out,” Michele said. Zoe shook her head.
“Not always. You used to love coming here to play hide and seek, remember? We got in trouble once because you hid too well for anyone to even find you.”
Michele blinked. She had forgotten about that. Once she really had loved places like this, and Halloween, playing Bloody Mary, and scary movies on late night TV. Zoe was the one who would always get scared, even though she acted brave beforehand. It wasn’t until that Halloween night in the basement things changed.
“Are you ready?” Zoe said. She held out a book; Michele recognized it as the same one they’d copied in the library ten years ago, although this version was bigger and heavier. She found pages toward the back marked for her. “This is it?”
“The whole thing. Hey, you okay?” Zoe touched Michele’s chin and lifted her face up from the book. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. If we back out now, it’s all the same.”
The suddenly soft look on Zoe’s face calmed Michele’s pounding heart. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she said. “Thank you for this. Really.”
Zoe smiled. “You do my part this time,” she said, pointing to the book. “And I’ll do yours. Ready?”
Michele nodded.
A dozen candles glowed around the circle and Michele knelt to spread the book on the grass. The letters on the page came into sharp relief.
“In nomine Dei nostri Satanas Luciferi excelsi. In the name of Satan, the Ruler of the earth, the King of the world, I command the forces of darkness to bestow their power upon me…”
The words came easily, as if she’d been practicing them for years. Zoe recited the four names and rang a black bell that she’d prepared specially for tonight. Then she sipped from the wooden cup and gave the rest to Michele, who drank it in one go. The hard burn of the alcohol covered up the sludgy organic flavor of the blood.
Suddenly she realized something. “Damn it, I didn’t write down my wish!”
“You ditz.” Zoe produced a piece of lambskin parchment folded over twice and closed up with wax. “I took care of it. I even sealed it for you. It‘s better that way.”
Wind rustled the pines, and somewhere the cemetery gate creaked on its hinges, like an old movie cue. Michele took the paper. “What about yours?”
“I don’t need one. Tonight is all about you.”
The candle flame lapped at the edge of the parchment as Michele held it out, and it curled at the corners, the smoke trailing up into the night air. Here goes nothing, she thought.
The parchment flared and burned and turned their faces orange in the darkness, and Michele tossed it into the circle so that the ashes mixed with the spilled blood, and then they waited. Somewhere in a nearby yard a dog was going mad with barking, and if Michele strained she could hear the rattle of it running to the end of its chain and back.
“How long is it supposed to take?” she said.
“It depends.”
“Isn’t there one more part? Maybe we should—”
“Just be patient. If it worked, I’ll know. In fact…” She paused, as if listening for something. “Yeah, okay. It’s time.” She turned back to Michele. “Step into the circle.”
Michele blinked. “But you always said—”
“Do you want to do this or not?”
“If you’re sure…”
———————