Incidental Touches and Magic Spells

The alarm began its tepid beep as it did every weekday morning... but unlike most of those prior, the alarm didn’t get to build up to its climactic klaxon in an effort to awaken one sleepy Miss Edwards. Instead, Jessica’s hand calmly slapped the snooze button as she sat straight up, wide awake, and completely refreshed. She looked about, wide-eyed and unbelieving. How did she feel this good-?

The ring. The wishes. Ernest. Her masturbating until she excised all that pent-up sexual frustration from all his damn wishing.

It couldn’t have been real... but it seemed so completely tangible, and she never felt this good... did it truly happen? Jessica leaped from her bed and, wearing naught but a comfy set of fluffy pink PJs, threw open her bedroom door... and found everything in perfect, clean order in her house.

Jessica groaned in defeat; she never would’ve gotten the house clean after a birthday party like that! She daintily pressed her hand against her crotch... but she felt neither soreness nor wetness. Had he kept his promise? How would she know? She had to trust that another early morning wish would have stirred her awake... and so, perhaps, he really wasn’t going to be the monster her alleged Mom had warned her about.

Determined to see her ring returned, Jessica tried to ignore those thoughts and spun on her heel to prepare for a new Thursday... with new Jessica at its head.

Ernest was fully dressed and prepared for school... and felt absolutely ridiculous.

He wore a long-sleeve polo—one of only two from freshman year that still fit his lanky body—but the butler cosplay gloves were just too much. This was his chance to start over at school, get a decent edge with people, make more friends beyond his favorite posse of fellow nerds and wallflowers... not that there was anything wrong with his 'crew', he sternly reminded himself. But he had to make good on what Jessica was looking for... and then...

... and then what? Take over the world as husband and wife? A bit of a bold step... and one Ernest decided wasn’t worth more than idle contemplation for the next forty-eight hours. In a huff, Ernest pocketed the embarrassing gloves and then his hands as he readied to try and rush past his family. He had snuck a shower in via the guest bathroom—effectively Karlie’s, his, and his mom’s bathroom—before anyone else was up. With a backpack slung on and his hands carefully watched, Ernest quietly opened his door-

“Ernest? You’re up early,” came his surprised mother’s voice from the kitchen. His mother could hear his door open through nothing less than psychic power, he was sure of it. He checked his phone: it was only 6:01 AM. Why was she even up this soon? But he didn’t dare engage her.

"Too excited about the money?" she half-sang.

“Morning, ma. I’m meeting friends at school an hour before class, gotta go or I’ll be late!” he called as he fled down the hallway towards his front door.

“Okay... Drive safe, sweetie!” If his sisters weren't up by now, they would be after that exchange. He was happy to get out before even looking at-

Drive safe?

Oh. Oh. Ernest looked over the sleek, black Corvette waiting for the signal from his fab. Stunned anew, he slowly raised his keys and pressed the engine button. Despite matching the year of Tiff's version, this one's engine was nearly new and roared gently to life. Ernest's car was in perfect condition, of course.

Right... it was his. He still didn’t know how the rest of the world thought he got the car... and he’d have to figure that out later for when/if he was ever asked. But right now, he had his first car... and a bright, exciting start to a wonderful new day, week, life.

Later...

This... was... weird. Ernest had taken an hour-long joy ride all around the suburbs until, with only half an hour to spare, he was **** to queue into the student parking lot and rush into the school. His first class, AP Calculus, was both the bane of his existence and, mockingly, located on the second floor on the end of the school opposite of the parking lot. He just had to get past two halls and a stairwell of people.

That was what was happening, and that was normal enough... but Ernest could feel eyes upon him as he hustled with his hands buried in his pockets. For a teenager who had grown up safe by growing up unseen, even when he was a beanstalk of a kid, the looks he was getting now... from the girls and the boys... ranged from troubling to distracting. Everyone--well, it felt like everyone--was burning holes through him as they saw him in a new light, in a new pose, and in that special, weird way that made him... their type.

It distracted Ernest enough that he took the stairs while appreciating a gentle, warm smile shot his way from a sophomore. She was petite and chestnut-haired, and her lips split into a grin that reminded him of a younger, slimmer version of his sister. He was tempted to skip AP Calculus, though that would probably doom him at this point, and explore the strange attraction... the mutual attraction... that was here. What was this... flutter in his chest? No girl had ever looked at him that way... and this feeling was...

"Hey, watch-"

But the sophomore wasn't saying that-?

Pampf.

Ernest had been so distracted that he didn't notice someone coming down the staircase along the same railing... and with his hands safely in his pockets, his face bounced off of the generous, turtleneck-hidden chest before him and had him tipping backwards... halfway up the concrete steps.

Panic had his hands shoot out in an effort to save him from the fall, and the busty girl watched with terrified eyes as she realized just how dire his fall was going to be. The student behind him -- some jock from the football team -- juked out of the way in advance like he was dodging a linebacker. Fucking what?! She didn't have time to get the words out or chastise the selfish prick that just left this guy to eat stone stairs with the back of his head; she reached forward with the one hand not gripping the rail to try and catch Ernest's flailing grasp...

... and she succeeded.

Ernest anchored himself on an offered arm and then on the rail as he slammed sideways into it instead of backwards to a cracked skull. He steadied his feet... and quickly withdrew his hand from whoever had been gripping it. "S-Sorry-!" he immediately pleaded, his face glowing red like a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar.

The fellow senior was shapely and thick, her hair hung behind her in a brown ponytail, and her cheeks flushed as their brief skin-to-skin contact rushed through her, "Sorry, I... I shouldn't have just stood... there..."

Four bored fingers were gliding down the rail. They had no intention of touching Ernest's anchored hand; it so glided out of habit, really, and its owner didn't even see the near-**** experience Ernest just had on the stairs. Sure, someone had chuckled and pointed, but who cared? The entropy of the universe was going to kill everything and everyone; none of it mattered, not even school, so go ahead, laugh at your fellow man, scumbag. What difference could it-

A slender set of albino fingertips danced across Ernest's knuckles... and paused. It took the bearer of the ring a moment to realize the presence of the hand... and he followed it to a slip of darkness -- black jeans, black t-shirt, black fishnet sleeves, a black-markered medical facemask, long, glossy, and straight black hair, and deep, black eyes set in the palest face Ernest thought existed at Eastlake High -- that had also stopped to stare at him... and kept those dainty fingers on his flesh.

Kris Crow. Kris Crow was touching Ernest's hand... and her cheeks blushed fiercely enough to glow over the markered mask.

Ernest shot his hand backwards from the rail as well, shocked and stunned as he was caught between victims. He needed something sharp and quick-witted to diffuse the confusing feelings the two must have confronted in this bizarre instant. Instant? He had let Kris Crow touch him for nearly as long as he had his sister!

That thought only further muddied Ernest's moral compass at the moment. Think, Ernest: sharp! Quick-witted!

"I-I have to... get to class!"

It was the best he could do.

Ernest quickly pocketed his hands again and ducked his head low before shuffling into the traffic next to the stunned pair. In another second, he was moving upwards in the sea of bodies... and was gone.

Tamara Anderson was quite a few things. She was a talented and well-read student, a movie-junkie, and one of the less excited guests at what turned out to be -- even she had to admit it -- a really fun party.

The party last night was the sort Tamara really didn't want to attend, and normally wouldn't have if not for her brother's urging her to do so... and other, more carnal temptations. But somehow, whenever she tried to think about the party, she just had a good vibe from those vague memories. It was enough to start changing her perspective on such social events.

It was not, however, enough to make her not a lesbian.

Nor was Ernest Redmond -- granted, a handsome guy in that weird way, she now realized -- which was why this... sensation, however fleeting, confounded her all the way up until he suddenly left in a rush.

God, did he... did he know what she just felt? What was her face like? Tamara couldn't even remember...! She glanced over at the stunned goth similarly stranded on the stairs... and grimaced. The strange and sudden arousal felt by Tamara became a weird head cold, or maybe some rush of pressure from changing floors so many times in one morning... or anything other than the idea that touching a man aroused her, because of course, that was impossible.

When she contemplated the danger, of a man spreading some ugly rumor about her being easy, she almost laughed it off when she realized the 'man' she was talking about. No, Ernest wouldn't cause her grief like that... and so she'd only be subjected to the usual volume of unwanted gropes and come-ons. With a huff, she continued down the steps towards the faculty office.

Kristina Crowley was registered under that name, though everyone who tried to talk to her knew how she reacted to their full name.

"Kris Crow." That was her preferred name. Crow, her favorite.

Crow was too much baggage for most high school cliques: even in Eastlake, where goths were not unheard of, Crow had become a roulette of goth archetypes and outfit designs, pushing the envelope of the uniform code until it burned. Goth lolita, vampire, cyber goth, and a (very) brief experiment with gothabilly had marked her middle school years, and she had settled on somewhere between deathrock and cyber: the scrub mask had been painted black with markers to complete the look, but she knew it was as close to a gas mask as the school would let her bring. The rest of the outfit was just easy; Crow was just not in the mood for her usual experiments now that senioritis was kicking in.

The only hobby that still grabbed her interest was what had turned off so many of the more traditional cliques and folks of Eastlake: her obsession with magic, the occult, and the heretical, abandoned paths of alleged sorceries. She didn't publicize this (anymore, at least), but she had been caught with odd foci, carved candles, and all manner of religious fetishes in her experiments to try and find some kind of "magick" that worked. She had convinced herself that some of it really did... at least for a little while.

What Crow definitely wasn't looking for right now was a boyfriend. She also wasn't looking for a girlfriend; she almost found a platonic kindred spirit in Maggie Frost, the spiky, leather lesbian of Eastlake who proved adept at not giving a fuck. But the two of them got along like spiky porcupines: sure, they were of a like kind, but neither took comfort in the other's company. Overall, then, Crow was stuck being the outcast even among outcasts...

... and Crow was quite alright with that, she repeatedly told herself.

Certainly, Crow never had any interest in Ernest Redmond, an inoffensive boy of timid personality and little to no rabble-rousing... and, Crow suspected, one of many likely candidates to secretly serve as an InCel admin or some other kind of weirdo. Crow's natural instinct was to avoid such a man, nevermind become interested in him...

But just the mere... touch of him. The slightest caress... what was that? She had paused... and the warmth, the energy... the warmth that spread through her like a conduit... and warmed her nethers in a way that so few ever could. What was that? Why was she so thrilled by this? Did she really want him all of the sudden?

It would help explain why her panties were soaked through by the time she neared the girl's bathroom for their first period smoke break. She had cast a ritual to find love in... tenth grade? Was it working now?! The electricity she had felt seemed more magical than most of the things she burned candles or broke sticks over... and certainly worth at least some investigation.

Kris Crow narrowed her eyes as she entered the cream-colored bathroom stall. She fished the pack of cigarettes from her purse before squatting on the toilet and rummaging through her black, leather backpack. Yes... Ernest Redmond. They had class together next period, didn't they? Perhaps she'd actually attend it. Crow needed to know just what she briefly touched... and with that, her mind was set. Kris Crow would cast a Wiccan spell for good measure...