A Maze of Glass, Chapter Eleven, Pt. 2
What did people do all day? What did people do with their hands?
Zoe itched like fever. The initial physical symptoms had seemed bad enough. Going from seven per day down to three per day had seemed bad enough. Going from three to zero? It felt impossible. Even in the first week of August, fourteen days after the First Confessional, somewhere between six and nine days before the Proclamation, it felt threadworn, unrealistic, tenuous as a single molecular chain encountering hostile forces. The nic fits and heightened frustration lingered on even after the last queasy symptoms of physical withdrawal died out.
And, increasingly, the boredom.
The ritual consumed between seven and nine hours of the day. The meditation, food prep, cooking, and eating took up another four hours. On a good night, Zoe managed to sleep for six hours. Added all together, she still ended up with at least five hours of…
What? What did people do?
She paced. A small TV played a re-run of a re-run of a re-run, the screen occasionally fritzing and snowing as a natural but inexplicable response to prolonged exposure to magic. She turned the volume up but couldn’t care about what any of the characters said or did. She paced. In the kitchen, she finished leftover dinner—more salad, now wilted.
She flicked the butt of her cigarette.
Wait.
She flicked— Wait.
She stared at the slim black clove between her fingers. She felt something brewing in her head. Her mind blanked, her zen the calm before an apocalyptic storm. Her Zippo felt heavier in her pocket. Had she even put it in her pocket that morning? And where had the clove come from?
She dropped the smokestick to the tile and stomped it dead. When she picked up her shoe, nothing remained. She paced.
Upstairs, Jill screamed.
Zoe froze. Jill screamed again. Something heavy crashed against the floor of her room.
Zoe ran. Every light in the house flickered and buzzed, flashing shadows on the walls. Whispers pressed up from the floorboards, too many overlapping phrases for any of them to make sense and all sharing a single voice. Zoe hammered the stairs up to the lounge, the left turn toward the bathroom and the darkness outside of it—she rushed forward passed two other doors before reaching Jill’s.
Jill shrieked and cried. Another heavy something slammed against the hardwood.
“Jill!?” Zoe shouted. She’d sprinted too fast and couldn’t slow down before crashing. Rebounding, she grabbed the doorknob. “Jill!?”
Jill drove out a series of wails, each sharp cry a whip through the air.
Zoe twisted the knob and put her shoulder into the door. No magic held it fast—it blew open and she staggered into the room, body twisting and unbalanced from the momentum. She threw herself back mostly out of instinct. No threat greeted her immediately and still she leapt back toward the entry threshold.
Jill curled on the floor, fetal, surrounded by overturned furniture.
In the center of the bedroom, painted symbols and Kosher salt formed a seal. Zoe felt a layer of wards crackling dome-like up from the seal’s perimeter. In the center of it all, a small bag of heroin, a spoon, a butane lighter, and a rubber hose waited.
(never-y-story)
Jill’s screams stopped, reduced to sobs. She shook, rattling her bones against the hardwood.
“What…happened?” Zoe asked.
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