Lysergically Yours | Page 8

the lottery or anything, you know, just like a
steady supply of cash I don't have to work too hard for."
She ripped a sheet of paper out of one of the notebooks on Johnny's
desk and began to doodle with a pencil for a few minutes. When at last
she was satisfied there was a simple yet evocative glyph drawn in the
centre of the page.
"Give me your hand," she said in a suddenly commanding voice as she
poured a small pool of white paint onto the corner of his desk from out
of a jar that must have come from her bag.
Before he was even aware he was doing so, Johnny had stretched his
left hand out towards her. She grabbed a hold of it and slashed across
the palm with a knife he hadn't realized she was holding. "FUCK!" he

shouted and tried to jerk his hand away but her grip was like iron.
"Jesus," Tinka said, "Don't squirm. It doesn't hurt that much". She was
squeezing the blood out of the gash into the pool of paint. Soon there
was as much blood as there was paint. She was right. After the shock of
being cut, it didn't hurt much at all; it almost felt good. Tinka squeezed
a few more drops from his hand and let go. She began stirring the paint
and the blood together with a tiny paintbrush she had produced
seemingly from thin air. As she was doing so she picked up Johnny's
black binder from beside the desk. "Do you usually carry this with
you?" she asked.
"Yes" Johnny said almost absentmindedly as he held his left hand in his
right and stared absorbedly at the wound. The blood started to run
down his arm and he groped around on the floor until he found a sock
with which to stop the flow.
"Good" she said and she painted the same glyph she had drawn on the
paper onto the front of his binder. The brush strokes looked like
Chinese calligraphy and the glyph itself was in a pink-brown colour
that was strangely vibrant, as though the blood had brought it to life.
When she was done Tinka placed the binder on the desk to dry, leaned
back and looked pleased with herself.
"That's all there is too it?" Johnny asked "Don't we have to dance
around like electric monkeys, burn a bunch of candles or chant some
incantations or something?"
Tinka shot him a look that refused to even acknowledge what he had
just said: "The spell is ready. This glyph is your hope, your desire, and
its potential fulfilment. Now you must memorize it. Learn its every
feature. Notice every detail of every brush stroke."
Unexpectedly, Tinka's handbag beeped. She smiled and swept her
possessions off of Johnny's desk and back into her bag, Standing up,
she retrieved her evening gown from off the floor and slipped it on over
her head, leaving the zipper up the back undone. She crammed the hat
into her bag with the rest of her stuff, mangling it horribly in the

process. "Ten o'clock," she said, "I am needed elsewhere." She glanced
briefly at her reflection in the tiny mirror on Johnny's wall and frowned.
Plucking his Doors shirt from off the floor and putting it on over her
dress she asked: "mind if I borrow this?"
Johnny hardly had time to say "go ahead" before, with a smile and a
wink, she was gone.
-=six=-
That evening Johnny was in his 8pm calculus tutorial when his cell
phone began to vibrate in his pants. Surreptitiously leaving the room he
checked the call display: 'number blocked'.
"Hello?" Johnny answered the phone as he leaned up against the wall
outside the men's room.
"Johnny!" the voice at the other end called out excitedly against the too
loud music in the background, "It's good to hear your voice man!"
"Who is this?" Johnny asked, his paranoid streak urging him to hang up
immediately.
"I'm hurt Johnny. Really, I'm hurt. It's Ivan, you little son of a bitch! Oh
such a sad thing that I should be forgotten so soon. Put your evil ways
behind you have you? Livin' the straight life now? No time for your old
ne'er-do-well friends?"
Johnny was surprised despite himself. "Ivan," Johnny said with real
happiness in his voice, "I was just going to call you myself."
"From you Johnny, I'd almost believe it. Doesn't matter though, only
one thing matters now: I'm at the Beagle and while I might be able to
finish this pitcher by myself, I certainly can't manage the other one I
just ordered without a little help."
"The Beagle?" Johnny asked.
"Yeah. Jeez kid, don't you live here? Get with the times. The Regal

Beagle, Bloor and