[UA] Ritual Magic: Ghosts and Pneuma (sort of long)

[Gaston Phillips]

I was thinking about what I'd written uop.  Two things came to mind.  One,
I'd forgotten one of the pneuma rituals I'd meant to write up, and two:
Eighty year old bottles of Coca Cola are rare.  If someone in the OU goes
looking for one, there's only one reason to do so, and there are lots of
people interested in making sure that whoever it is, he doesn't get the
ritual finished.  So, here's a little vignette about someone starting the
ritual and trying for immortality, then a writeup of the ritual I forgot.

<FICTION>

    New York in August bears a serious resemblance to Hell.  Like Jules had
always said - "I'm not gonna lie to you, Mike.  I'm not gonna say  New York
is hell, but they share a zip code."  Mike shook his head, rubbing his face
with both hands and coming up with twin palmfuls of sweat.  Jules's voice,
in memory, led directly to memories of Jules's blood, of Jules's intestines
tangled in the seaweed when Mike had found him, face down on the beach on
Long Island.  It was coming up on three years since Jules caught a bad case
of dead, and Mike was finally ready to finish what they'd started back then.

    Rounding the corner onto C, Mike turned right off twelfth and dodged the
latinos stumbling out of the bodega.  Closing his eyes, Mike counted his
steps, and came to a stop.  He turned right, then left, then right again,
looking up and down the avenue.  The sky was still pink, even at three AM,
and still busy - knots of kids from the projects across the street were here
and there, drinking and walking in packs.  The police were nowhere in sight.
A moment's panic mounted at the base of his spine.  He shook his head, hard,
and pushed on the buzzer to the right of the doorway in front of him,
ringing apartment 6E.

    The door opened let him in.  Kid Sinister, an angry-nosed Mulatto out of
Flatbush, leaned out to peer up and down the street, then opened the door
fully and stepped back.  Mike let it fall shut behind him, squinting in the
dim and flickering fluorescents of the stairwell.

    "Yo, Mickey Mouse.  What'chu need, man?"

    The silver row of top front teeth were the Kid's trademark - he'd had
the canines elongated into fangs.  Which, while admittedly being
intimidating as all fuck, made the above into an incomprehensible slur along
the lines of 'Yo, mi'mouf, 'shoonee, ma'?"  Mike thought about telling him
to go fuck himself and his short-counted sacks.  A sigh, and he answered,
"I'll take a bundle.  And I need to see Turkey Joe."  Ninety dollars in five
bills, folded into quarters, were pulled from his back pocket and offered
over.  

    Tugging on his Lakers cap, the mulatto bared a wide grin and plucked the
cash from Mike's trembling fingers, then pulled a rolled bundle of wax paper
baggied from the pocket of his ankle-length shorts and offered it back in
exchange.  He laughed, shaking his head, and pointed at a door behind the
stairs.  "Fucking stupid, looking for Joe.  But he waiting, anyway."

    Mike didn't answer, pocketing the heroin and walking over to open the
door and step into Turkey Joe's office.  Joe had never come any closer to
Turkey than East Queens.  As a matter of fact, he was probably of Swedish
descent - pale hair and paler skin.  Mike'd never seen his eyes, since Joe'd
been affecting a pair of lennon glasses ever since Mike knew him.  But Joe
had, at some point, become the go-to for the Turkish Mafia in Alphabet City.
So he became Turkey Joe, and so he was the man Mike needed to see.

    Joe was sitting at the janitor's desk in his office.  The air
conditioning was cranked, and Mike watched the cloud of condensation his
breath formed, shuddering as it seemed to writhe, as though trying to spell
some warning before it dissolved into tendrils of meaningless dissipation.
Joe didn't say anything as the door shut - he shook his head and stood,
walking over to an antique refrigerator in the corner and pulling out a
small, six ounce bottle of Coca Cola with a faded and peeling label.  He sat
down, laid the bottle on his desk, and spun it.

    "Finally making your run for it?"  Joe's glasses distorted Mike's
reflection.  Swwallowing dryly, Mike nodded and crossed the linoleum floor
to the desk, where the bottle was slowly wobbling to a halt, its dented cap
facing squarely at his navel.

    "I've got everything I need lined up, Joe.  I'm gonna make it."

    "You know this bottle leaves this building, they'll be onto you.  Won't
have much time."

    "Yeah.  They won't catch me."  Mike tugged a thick roll of bills from
the other back pocket and dropped it onto the desk.  "Six grand.  Like we
said."

    "That was three years ago, Mike.  And I owed Jules a favor.  Price is
seven five.  Aren't many of these left, and lots of people are looking these
days."

    Mike's mouth opened and closed, but he simply nodded.  This was not a
place to waste one's breath.  Digging into the front pocket of his ragged
jeans, he found a fold of money, and snapped it open, counting crisp hundred
dollar bills onto the green formica table.  When fifteen had been laid down,
he returned the much reduced fold to its pocket, and reached a hand for the
bottle.

    Joe's hand closed around his wrist before he'd gotten there.  "Listen to
me, kid.  Your friend got you into this, he was the one who knew what was
going on around here, and he bought it trying for the prize.  You touch that
thing, you go outside with it, and you are in the game.  No turning back.
Better hit the street running and don't plan on stopping in this life time.
The cryptophage, he's in town.  No way he won't be coming after you.  You
savvy?"

    Another mute nod as Mike slid his wrist free and picked the bottle up.
His skin stuck to the glass, colder than anything had a right to be, the
chill settling immediately into the marrow of his bones and weighing there.
"Yeah.  I savvy.  Be seeing you, Joe."

    And then, he was walking out - past Kid Sinister and the savagely skinny
punk rock nypmhette in the stairwell.  Past the bodega and back up twelfth,
his steps accelerating slowly, strides lengthening, the panic rising like
bile to the back of his throat, until he was running down first avenue for
the subway at Lafayette Street.  The bottle was his, but God only knew if
he'd be able to get the rest of the ingredients together before they foud
him.  This could be his last chance to die.  But with odds like this, no way
he needed a second one.

</FICTION>

Eeny Meeny Miney Moe: When faced with a choice between a small number of
alternatives, close your eyes and hold your breath.  Recite a rhyme without
breathing out.  Open your breath and exhale the spirit as you point to one
of the choices.  The Spirit's Soul stat is the chance that you have just
picked the right choice.


gaston


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