Authors: Felicia Jedlicka
“I think I’ll sleep on it like Danato suggested.”
“Very well, you know where to find me?” The genie started to turn translucent in preparation for his return to the lamp.
“Wait, what’s your name?” she asked partially as an afterthought to her debate about offering him a farewell handshake since she probably wouldn’t have this opportunity to speak with him ever again.
He smiled broadly and more roguishly than he had so far. “Some call me Rumpelstiltskin, but that’s not my real name.”
She wanted to enquire further about the meaning of that, but he was a wisp of smoke reversing into the lamp before she could.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Gypsy slammed the door to the home office as hard as she could on her exit. The lights flickered in derision for the act. “What?” She threw up her arms to the house. “That’s what doors are for! If you don’t want me to slam doors, then don’t form as a house!”
“Gypsy,” Ethan said from the kitchen as the lights glowed a little too brightly before dimming back to normal. “Don’t take it out on the house.”
“I can’t believe they’re bringing her back here.” Gypsy grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and hopped onto the counter to chug it.
“I’m not very happy about it either,” he said as he worked on cutting up the last veggies for his stir fry.
“Bull shit, you aren’t,” she said after catching a breath from her drink. He offered her a confused look. “Oh, come on. That ought to be the easiest lay you’ll ever get. She’s already your wife.”
“She’s not my wife,” he grumbled.
“So, she thinks she is. Just butter her up with a little chivalry and she’ll put out. Trust me, I know the type. She’ll pretend to be hard to get, but just hint at the prospect of living happily ever after, and she’ll spread wide and high.”
Ethan shook his head at her vulgarity, but she could see his lip tugging into his cheek. “Do you believe her?” he asked not looking at her.
“Do you?” She posed right back. He shrugged not willing to give an answer before she gave hers. “I don’t think disbelief is an option anymore. Let’s face it, a genie can’t be fooled. If he says she’s telling the truth, then that’s it. Lie detector test passed.”
Ethan nodded. “Doesn’t that bother you?” He continued to move his vegetables about, but she knew he was watching her from the corner of his eye.
“What; that I won’t be here?” she asked not really mentioning specifically what he was worried about. “You poor bastard, think how bored you’ll be without me.” He smiled at that. She hopped off the counter and scooted in beside him. She could sense him tense against her. “Maybe we should finally knock one out before she sends me back.” When he didn’t readily respond to her, she grabbed his butt tightly.
“Gypsy, don’t.”
“Don’t what? Doesn’t that sound like a good idea?” She leaned in and smelled him. She knew it wouldn’t take much to get him excited. Despite the image he presented his experiences with women were few and far between.
“It always sounds like a good idea in theory, but in reality you don’t really want it.” He looked at her without the yearning that she wanted. He looked at her with piteous sympathy. She wanted to laugh at him and continue with the ruse, but all she managed was a scoff.
“What are you eunuch?” She snarled before reaching to the front of his pants. He winced, but not out of pleasure, she was gripping too tightly for that. “No, you aren’t.”
“How far are you going to take this, Gypsy?” He lowered his voice to sound stern. “I’m not going to keep playing this game.”
“What game?” She said innocently relaxing her grip so she could return him to pleasure.
“It’s the same fucking game as with Danato!” He yelled though he made no attempts to back away from her hand. “You just won’t rest until one of us finally hurts you. Do you even realize how truly masochistic you are?”
“I always thought of myself as a sadist.” Ethan pulled her hand away clamping it by the wrist tightly. She smiled broadly at him, which made him angrier. “You take it so seriously Ethan.” With some effort she pulled her hand from his grip. “It’s just a game.”
“It’s not a game. It’s your life and one of these days you are going to have to accept that.”
“Apparently not,” she said moving away from him. “Since, I’ll be dead as soon as Cori un-wishes her wishes.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” Ethan said almost snappish.
She leaned on the side of the island to view his desperate rationalization. She always felt bad for tormenting him, but she couldn’t ever seem to help herself. The truth was Ethan was right. She didn’t want to actually have sex with him.
She hated seeing other people derive pleasure from each other. It was like seeing something that she should want, but couldn’t enjoy once she had it. It was the revolving door left from her sexual trauma. It took Ethan a good while to figure it out, but now that he understood that she could never be fixed, he knew not to engage her passing interests, since they were just that, passing.
Ethan understood her enough to put up with it, but her frustrations with the constant debate left her craving something more than sex. Somewhere in the mix of abuses she endured prior to joining the prison, her lines of pleasure and pain got a little convoluted. She called it a game, but it was more than that.
Her sudden change into a safe world left her constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. She didn’t crave the pain, but she did crave the bait leading to the pain. She wanted to know how far she could push Danato and Ethan before they would snap.
She never doubted that someday one of them or both would eventually up and hit her, but it wasn’t the pain she was seeking. It was the anticipation and challenge of breaking their gallantry that fueled her. They both thought they were above it, and she wanted so badly to rip away those masks, and prove they weren’t.
It was surreal walking into her home without feeling welcome. Cori was happy that Danato was allowing her to stay at the house. There was another heated discussion with Belus, but in the end, he had no choice but to concede. With the genie essentially backing up her story, there wasn’t a lot of room to deny her story. Making her stay in the prison would just be rude.
Belus accompanied them home to join them for dinner. It was a rare thing for her to see Belus and Danato in the house together, but neither Ethan nor Gypsy seemed surprised by his presence.
Her
attendance however, was met with silent disapproval. They didn’t outright reject her like a heathen in a puritan village, but they were far from inviting.
Cori wavered in the between space of the dining room and living room, trying to decide what to do. Gypsy was reading a comic book in the living room. It was anima, which explained her current style. The more she looked at her, the more familiar her face looked. If she had met her, it was probably a long time ago and hardly worth mentioning.
Ethan was preparing dinner. He offered her a glance, but nothing that led her to believe she could attempt a conversation.
When Danato slipped out of the room to change, she joined Belus at the fireplace. “I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered so Gypsy wouldn’t hear, even though she probably did.
Belus looked at her, confounded that she was even talking to him. “Why didn’t you object when Danato was insisting that you come here?”
“Because I didn’t want to spend another night in the prison.”
“Another, you haven’t even spent one.”
Cori cringed not wanting to explain anything more about her other life, since the ramifications here wouldn’t exist after tomorrow. “The dream feeders are pretty cruel to me when I’m inside the time bubble overnight,” she answered. Belus seemed to at least sympathize with that. “I know it’s unorthodox to ask this, especially in this situation, but maybe I could stay with…” Cori couldn’t quite finish the request to ask if she could stay at his house. She had actually never been inside his house. Not for reasons specifically unwelcoming, but there had just never been cause to go there.
Belus’s eyes narrowed as he started to predict what she was about to ask. She could see how even the hint of opening his home to her was distasteful to him. She wasn’t sure what she was thinking when she started the sentence, but now with part of it out, she wanted to travel back in time five seconds and slap herself before she could open her mouth.
“Never mind, I’d rather be unwelcome in a house I know.” She walked away before she could see Belus’s reaction. She headed to the island and sat down on a stool. Ethan eyed her change of location circumspectly. “Can I help you with anything?” she asked mostly just to break the silence.
Ethan only offered a head shake in return. It wasn’t the resounding beginning of a dialogue she had hoped for and the longer the silence dragged out, she started to feel like a foreign exchange student trying to find someone to hang out with at lunch.
Cori fiddled with her rings while she waited for Danato to return. Right now he was the only person who actually wanted her there. “How do those work?” Ethan asked.
She looked up at him shocked to hear something resembling communication. Unfortunately, she was too preoccupied to understand what he was asking. He smirked a little at her. She probably looked as dumbfounded as she felt. “The rings,” he clarified, “how do they work?”
“Oh,” she said loudly before she adjusted her volume to match his casual tone. “They protect me other beings powers, and sometimes they absorb it. I discovered it during an encounter with an elemental, but I didn’t really understand them until—well I still don’t fully understand them. I was…” She stopped short when she realized she had taken liberty with the conversation. He probably just wanted to know if she could hurt him.
“Where did you get them?” he asked to her surprise.
“They were a gift from you…Ethan…my Ethan.” She paused to see his reaction, but he was unfazed by the mention of his other self’s actions. “He had them made from a wizard’s gold necklace he took from the time bubble.”
“What can you do? What powers do you have?” he asked as casually as he could, but it was in that calmness that she saw the interrogation forming.
She lowered her head not wanting to show how disappointed she was. “Fire and electricity are the most common ones. They seem to have a mind of their own when I’m scared or angry, as you’ve seen. I also have ice and water power, but they are sporadic. I think I’m going to wash up before dinner.” She pointed toward the bathroom. “If that’s okay?” she mumbled as she slipped off the stool.
“What did I say?” he asked obviously noticing her sudden disinterest in the conversation. She debated on pretending she hadn’t heard him, but he sounded sincerely concerned.
“I’m not here to hurt any of you. I wish you could believe that.”
“I do believe that,” he said flatly. She paused a moment trying to figure out what to do next. “I was only curious about them. I’ve never seen such a thing. Do you know how they work, or rather why they work?”
Cori slipped back on her stool. She was pretty sure this was still an interrogation, but it was the curious kind and not the plotting kind, so she was willing to continue. “If you look very close there are inscriptions in the gold. I assume a spell transferred through the smelting process. Maybe something left from the wizards.”
“So, can anyone use them, or do you command them alone.”
“I don’t actually know. I can’t get them off.” She showed him how her fingers slipped off the rings, despite her best efforts. “They don’t budge.”
Ethan nodded contemplating the solution to that riddle. “When did you add the wedding ring?”
“At our…” Cori chuckled and shook her head in embarrassment. “At my wedding, he wouldn’t let me have the last ring until I made it all the way down the aisle.”
“Was he worried you would take the ring and run?” Ethan smiled.
“He just wanted to surprise me.” Cori couldn’t help but lock onto his eyes. The mutual gaze might have lingered, but the stir fry demanded his attention.
Ethan transferred the main dish to a serving platter and announced the meal was ready. Everyone sat down to a meal of stir fry and uncomfortable graduated silences.
Gypsy couldn’t help but find the entire scene diverting. Ethan was doing his best to avoid eye contact with Cori who was sitting beside her, but when he thought no one was watching he would sneak a peek at her. She could tell he was already contemplating being with her.
Belus was focused on eating, but what no one else noticed was the knife he had hidden in his boot. It didn’t matter what the genie had said, he was prepared for anything. “Be prepared” was a Boy Scout motto, but Belus took his preparations to the next level.
Danato on the other hand, seemed to be completely enamored with the woman, and was sneaking in just as many glances as the horny young man beside him. Gypsy chuckled out loud at the thought of Danato and Ethan competing for the same woman. She was pretty sure Danato knew where to draw the line on inappropriate relationships, but it was still a funny image.
Cori looked over to her. “Something funny?” she asked.
Gypsy smirked at her. Naturally Cori thought her amusement was somehow about her. “Nothing you would find amusement in. My humor tends to be a little dark.”