Lysergically Yours | Page 8

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 Huron. Should I expect you in five or do I have to make this here waitress drink with me? She's cute, you might like her... yeah love, you'll like him too. Scrappy little skater kid, little on the short side maybe but he--"
"Alright Ivan, for fuck's sake," Johnny cut him off, "I'm on my way!"
###
The jukebox was playing some hip-hop song Johnny had never heard when he arrived. He spotted Ivan right off. At six foot four he was easy to pick out of the crowd. It also didn't hurt that he had all three on duty waitresses at his table dancing and singing along to the chorus with him. Johnny leaned against the pay-phones and smiled as he watched his friend forge on solo into the second verse. By the time Ivan noticed Johnny the chorus had come back around