Life Is A Temp Position, Chapter 5: The Super Bowl

7/31/2019 Life Is A Temp Position, Chapter 5: The Super Bowl

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Life Is A Temporary Position

CHAPTER 5: THE SUPER BOWL Ross W. Allaire

8/28/2002 9:02:01 PM

5/28/2012 10:06:13 A5/P5


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[Eric's picture-perfect fake suburban life comes screeching to a

bloody halt. For five years he's been "hiding" here in plain sight.

But Eric has already received what he thinks is a warning from his as-

yet-unmet nemesis, the similarly-immortal Queen Polyxo. When last Eric

pissed her off, he'd killed her transgender daughter Pollux in

Antarctica. When last we heard from Eric, he'd just found his cat

killed and decayed, dumped in front of his house. He took a picture,

then quickly cleaned it up before his wife, Deborah and their kids

come home. Some time has passed before he's been able to write again.

+RA]

5) THE SUPER BOWL

We're back. Relatively. And tentatively. The battery on this laptop could go out again at any

moment, I fear... and then... where will we be? How many years will have gone by, then? Ten

years gone? A thousand? Fuck if I know. It's been a year since I wrote.

The uh... deterioration of my mental health seems to wax and wane in severity and

composure, a bit like anyone else's I suppose. My sanity hasn't disintegrated, but evolved. My

swings on each ride in the playset seem so vast, so over-reaching here in the new exile, I have

used the golden shell to re-remember it all - that first life. A boyhood in Brittany, and the well-

off farmer/jet set lifestyle that my adoptive parents afforded. Jean-Luc grew white grapes and pipe

weed, and sailed a small yacht. Marie was his first cousin, but from a different aunt than her

sisters. My parents called me Thomas. I had a keen interest in nature. I kept a small bug collection,

with preference to butterflies. Every day I wasn't studying the bugs I was playing and laughing

outside with them, it seems. Even then...

Then Anne died.

Then the Crusades: war, blood, debris on the beaches, detritus in your throat. Black clouds

and explosions lingered on a blurred horizon through iron bars on a prison coach. I was able to see

the torturous removal of my wings, on the Isle of Man I escaped with a few others, brought the

Black Death and AIDS to Europe (to which, the both, I'm naturally immune), and I kept on living


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and running away from death. It follows me, but surrounds us all. Everything in that life was taken

from me. Everything from every life. But I don't have the monopoly on loss. Not by far. I was

abandoned, I felt, so thus have become the abandoner. I lose everything because I go away. And I

go away because everyone else leaves or dies anyway. I've lost or shit all over everything I've ever

had.

Except Alex and Helen. We're together. For now.

And yet, still... WANTED: what I can't have

Have I grown or even cheapened since the technical end of that first life? Have I ever

become anything more than that worried little Brittan boy? Who pet bees and made fires? Who

burned ants alive and broke his finger trying to climb the abandoned barracks at the north end of

the shore? Who got beat up by girls? Who teased that one little girl in the village, across the way?

Oh, Anne... of fair heart and stubby face. I wish I could tell her I'm sorry I'm sorry, my true love,

I'm sorry... You deserved better from me. An (otherwise) unutterable guilt has forever been upon

me, and I shut it out for so long... as near to forgetting as one can do.

But I brooded ceaselessly for her for about the first hundred years. And the weight has

obviously ground down my soul. I never told anyone about her until I told Helen and Alex about

how stupid and childish little boys can be. Anne was rosy-cheeked, draped in crisp auburn curly

hair. A tomboy just before the assets began to emerge, from a troubled family. And I was mean to

her about it. I was an uncaring half-cocked angry little juggernaut.

I would have been put on Ritalin if this were the 1990s.

Why was I so nasty? Because I could be. Because I had to be, to try to make myself feel

better for being the freak that I already knew I was, pointing out the freak that she was as well.

Because I was a little different. I was a little richer, or maybe just not as poor. But she wasn't very

poor, either. A commoner, but not a peasant. We were both freaks too smart for our own good. We

should have banded together.

I liked her friend Rose, an athletic blonde, but Anne liked me. Therein lie the guilt, that I

did not know. Her friend didn't like me so much, and I plainly didn't know to care. She was blonde

and cute, with green eyes and a pointy nose. That's why. I didn't get her preposterously obvious

hints that this other great, not-so-blonde girl REALLY liked me, and she only lived just across the

way a five-minute run over the next bluff from the front edge of my home.

My fucking home!

So... WANTED: what I can't have


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She fell from the roof of her home in the narrow plow of an alley between little rows of

homes near the edge of Grenuit proper. The alley was paved just wide enough for a two-horse

carriage. Just. I imagine her falling screaming, maybe her family hearing it. Hearing her head

hit the wall on the way down, against the cheap brick, her scream cut short, and then the thud and

cracks of her body landing. There is so much of whatever energy that's inside me that wants to

have rushed in and saved her, somehow, at each and every point along the way down. My heart

desires nothing more than to leap out of my chest and lasso its arteries around her as she falls, or

else strangle myself for my own preoccupied uselessness.

WANTED: what I can't have

And no matter how long it's been I refuse to forgive myself. For not being there, or being

there for her, instead of poking fun at her. For something I probably couldn't have even done to

begin with, in either case. But mostly for being mean. She died a child, which no one should do,and I can never repay the debt of my injuries to her. I shudder to think that her soul or spirit might

feel one iota of pain in the next world or this one, again, because of stupid shit I said to her for no

good reason. Surrounded by all the wisdom here in The Temple of The Great Conjunction in uh

Way Northern Ontario, I still can't fucking let go of this one little girl in this one town in this one

life. Even if it is the first lifetime. But I simply must to let go. I have to remember to let go. There

is nothing more that can be done, to atone for something no one else even knows. I've done all I

can.

I remembered that much before grasping the shell in the first place, to remember. "Gently,

but purposefully." Reach deep. Breathe deep. But rest easy. And I had hoped this would happen. Iknow perfectly well now that it's not a curse, everyone around me dying, and one thing hardly ever

has anything to do with another that there simply is no debt to repay other than with

remembrance, respect, and maybe even some fucking hope.

Like Deborah - I never told her I loved her and meant it. I probably would now if I could.

Just to say I'm sorry, I love you, instead of a sorry-ass excuse for I love you's like I gave her.

Years. All of my I love you's were bullshit. But she's dead, and so is her son, to repay my killing of

Polyxo's daughter.

And I've hardly even thought of her since she died. But I've imagined Leia, what she must

have become in this meantime.. what she must think of me. Lying and deceiving all of them... It

doesnt matter now if any Witch ever reads these words. I don't even have to hide them from

anyone here, or even Polyxo. There's no internet, or phone, or anything. It's been exactly one year

since Polyxo and Castor found me.


5/15


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Somebody moans that Deb's talking was interrupting the game, and I clicked my teeth at

them as if to say 'Bitch, that's my wife,' while leaning forward.

"I'm comin' over, Deb... see what this all about...," I lean on Gary's head to stand up. I pullhis local sports team hat down the front of his big head, hard, and walk off past the TV to the front

door, halfway down a small hallway across the front of the house.

This hall joins the long (great) living room to the library/toy room which goes into the

kitchen. A left at the kitchen will take you back out into the living room at the other end of the

gigantic television. My house is essentially shaped like a square donut.

As I opened the door to usher Alex and Helen inside and out of the rain, I winked at each

of them separately to let them know it was me. Alex looked well, just a teenager by now, right?

Just. And soaking wet. They both seemed to be wearing evening gowns with fur overcoats. I think

the two of them would have come in even I wasn't me at the door, the way the rain was soaking

them. I quickly ushered them to the right as they walked in, into the toy room. There was a coat

rack, and that's where Deb stood, with her arms crossed. She tried to take her visitors' coats, but

Helen cut her off with, "Oh, we are fine, thank you. We probably won't be staying long."

Deb seemed satisfied with that much, and eyed me like a devil, extending but a single

finger to invite me into the kitchen. I pulled across a small, folding door between the two rooms to

mask Deb's whispering. It probably didn't work.

"Who da fuck izat?" she asked.

"It's... complicated."

"Un-fuckin-complicate it."

"She's my uh m- mother's... sister." In a way.

"Bullshit." She crossed her arms.

"Pssht. That's my niece in there."

"Really...?" Sarcastic and flat is how she said that.

"Really," I plead.

"That ain't yo baby."

"Baby...," in the eyes. "You know dat ain't my baby." For the record, this is usually how we

talk in private, when the kids aren't listening. I continued to look directly at my wife. "She don't

look nuttin' like me. My step-niece. Or uh, step-cousin-t. Whatever removed, I dunno how that shit


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work." I was a little tipsy, maybe, and broke her gaze to smile and shake my head a little, taking in

a sip of the beer I just then realized I was still holding. Or I may have been still in some sort of

shock from thinking it was Polyxo ringing my doorbell. I reasoned at the time, not-so-cleverly, that

she could be white as well. After all, I was what I was.

My wife reluctantly smiled, shoved me away a bit, then hugged me while directing me intothe toy room. She whispered again, this time purposefully, so that Helen wouldn't hear it. "Then go

see what the fuck they want, already." Then she strutted back out into the living room thru the

other end of the donut, just as the more popular team scored. My guests were bursting with the

kind of clueless excitement that usually precedes impending doom.

Skulking to the toy room, I pawed at the door a second, then slid it open with a delicate

hook, so it didn't make its usual screech on the way back. For some reason, no amount of WD-40

in the world would ever make it go away.

"This is a surprise," I said to the girls. Helen looked older for some reason. She stood up.

"There's no time," she said. "Polyxo may know you're here."

"W- What?" My eyes darted from hers to Alex's. "How?!"

Helen squints, "Something called the uh face book...?"

I wasn't on it, myself, but I somehow instantly knew. The Witch and I had had a fight the

day of the dialysis excursion about a her wanting a profile picture with both of us in it, so guys

would stop hitting on her.

The gorgeous and usually-curtained picture window in the living room seemed to vibrate

for a second before it exploded. Chunks of the frame and supports fly out into the small crowd of

people on my blue corduroy sectional couch. Two indistinct black blurs of light tear more holes in

the wall as they swoop into the living room full of people. Those not hit immediately by the blast

were almost not yet reacting to it. A woman from down the street with a curly bleach perm had her

hands over her ears and was screaming, but her eyes were fixed on the television still, even as he

husband elbowed her to get down. One of the dark winged creatures was glowing yellow, and the

man's head started to burn. The top of his wife's hair burst into flames in the crossfire.

Castor turned the Fever Torch away from the man when he began to char, only seconds

later, and took a wide swath around the other side of him, torching the television with something

like a laser beam. Instantly the party crowd was on its feet looking to fight these intruders.

A small slice of the ultra-chartreuse beam came into the toy room's upper corner of the

ceiling, and we three in there ducked and hid best we could. The beam had sliced my house

halfway in half.


8/15

As best I can gather, Polyxo ran a few laps around the room before she began slicing heads

off. Mrs. Kean's and her husband's charred head fell off, and her incessant screaming ceased. The

Farraday brothers and the one's fianc were all sharing the daybed section of the couch, all sharing

a bucket of fried chicken that was also sliced in half. Wings and drumsticks fly onto the couch's

just-shampoo-ed surface, and all their heads seemed to all fall in the same pile. Old George from

around the corner was pitched over a coffee table, almost on his knees, when Polyxo decapitated

him after a few swoops around him. He had been muttering, "Oh Lord, Holy Jesus, please God,"

while the blurry, dark mass did laps around him. As the giant framed poster behind the couch

crashed down to the floor, the man's head bounced on the Ethan Allen double-decker and rolled

into the tv stand the old oblong coffee table.

Polyxo slowed down, then, and brought the gleaming steel katana to my wife's throat. "You

are HIS wife!" she shouted at Deb, who was already on her knees, at the center of it all. She had

been kneeling next to George.

"Wh- Eric!" she cried, such as she could with the sword to her throat. "Eric! What thefuck?!"

"Yes, come out, Eric!" Polyxo screamed. "Eric Leeland Christmas!" Her voice was a

smoker's voice, with a dart's tip. All of the consonants were bull's-eyes. "Come out and give us a

kiss!" Her accent sounded vaguely Asiatic.

Deborah squirmed a little in the queen's grasp, wrenched her gut, and whispered absently,

"Just don't hurt my babies, don't hurt my babies," to Polyxo.

"Babies?!" she roared back, then scanned the room. A curtain on the window to the back

seemed to flutter. "If you scaredy-cat little babies don't get out here, right now," she said expertly,

"I'm going to fucking murder your whore of a mother. I'm going to slice her chubby little throat

right here," she shook Deb's small second chin. My wife's eyes went wide with rage, but only her

eyelids seemed not to be paralyzed with fear.

Luke and Leia slowly, and bravely presented themselves for inspection. They each wore a

full pajamas set of the opposing teams in the Super Bowl. They were both the quarterback. Each

had cost 5 times as much as I had haggled the Ethan Allen down to at a yardsale up the street. Both

children flitted their eyes and back and forth from their mother's eyes to the knife and back again,

with only a few half-attempts at watching Polyxo's twisted face staring down at them. "You don't

happen to know where New Daddy keeps his magic mussel shells, do you?" she hissed.

By this time Alex, and Helen, and I were all hiding in the coat closet under the stairs in

front of the front door. The Harry Potter room. We were all jammed together under the sloping

ceiling, hidden by the girls' twin green shells and the whole galaxy of long coats Deborah owns.


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Her old wedding dress is at the very back, and we have to be still to keep the laundromat plastic

from crinkling. Castor kept patrolling up and down the corridor outside, vibrating the yellow shell

and crackling the walls with heat as he stalked. He had already melted the locks on the front door,

then flung and seared the daybed under which Alex had originally hid, before they both ran into

the closet with me. "Come on!" I had whispered into the room while Castor had quickly left to

check the pantry and garage. Helen had been in a tiny cupboard under the display case in the toy

room. Both of them were invisible, and I only felt the air move as they joined me inside. Hands

held mine has soon as we were deeply barricaded inside, and I could see them as green outlines in

the darkness. I realized I was invisible as well, in their firm grasps. I looked around, and had a sort

of night and heat vision. I could see Castor walking toward the steps to check the upstairs.

"Well I didn't know these things could do this," I mumbled.

"Shhh!"

A single hand reached thru the ceiling above me, grabbed my arm, and tore me thru threeor four of the steps above. In the confusion Alex and then Helen's shells blinked out and

deactivated. "Mother!" Castor cried, in Mandarin. Polyxo swung around with Deb still held

hostage, and roared again.

"Get over here!" Her eyes seemed to glow red in the various flames smoldering about the

room. Castor threw me onto the couch, amongst the various headless bodies. Some still with beer

or chicken wings in their lifeless hands. One of the beer bottles jabbed me in the ribs as I fell.

Helena and Alex simply stood. They were both the picture of elegance in the face of defeat.

Mother placed her daughter behind her now, shielding her. "No, my queen. We'll stand here, thank

you."

"Whatever," Polyxo snarled, then backed up with Deborah right over to where the kids

stood, still rigid with fright, almost as if they were standing at attention for her. She threw The

Witch down, and as she knocks her knee against the Ethan Allen she curses.

The children gasp a little in shock, and waver in their places. Polyxo explodes with

laughter, and strides over to them, laying her strong calloused hands on their shoulders. She

removes a small brown leather pouch from her purple trenchcoat, and unties the knot holding the

pouch closed. From it, she pulls a black mussel shell, and brings it slowly to Leia's shoulder.

Deborah seemed too stunned to cry out, or in too much disbelief or confusion to even think. I'vebeen there.

Leia disappeared in a torrent of black light, without a sound. The light turned an ashy,

grainy grey and seemed to be sucked into the black shell at the point where it touched her.

The Witch cried out the girl's name as she vanished. "Leia!"


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"Yes!" Polyxo raved, "Cry out! Cry her name all you want! She won't hear you!" the

former queen screamed in her face. "Tell your liar of a husband that I'll need the white mussel

shell, before I go."

Then, with a small gold dagger, took a swipe at The Witch's eyes. From where I lay, dizzy

and bruised, all I could see was the dagger, and then Deb toppled over to her right. She didn't fallto the floor, but braced herself as she howled gutturally in pain. The force of the blow must have

dazed her, for she seemed to scramble helplessly on her hands and knees, turning to face me. One

eye was gouged clean out, and the other hung from its socket, crumpled and broken. The bridge of

her nose was gone, and I could see brain matter through the hole. She died only moments later,

after trying to mouth her daughter's name, and maybe mine after that. Deb's son Luke could

only watch, still frozen in place.

"So, Eric?" she hissed. "Where's the shell?"

I lied, of course. "Norway."

"Why Norway?" she asked, and I flummoxed for a half second before trying to answer. The

Seed Bank. That's what I was going to say. "You're a liar and a thief and a murderer," she

interrupted my liar's thoughts. Polyxo turned suddenly and chopped the boy's head clean off, then

wiped her knife clean on one of the bright yellow napkins on the buffalo wings table, held up by an

anthropomorphic hippopotamus with long feminine eyelashes. These were from Luke and Leia's

favorite show. The boy's body stood in place for a complete minute, spraying and spurting blood,

before finally collapsing. Polyxo took that time to roam around the room, sighing and snickering to

herself.

By this time I was no longer dazed, now just frozen in astonishment and fear. She had us

all. My wife's body lay at my feet, my may-as-well-have-been-adopted son a meter away... and a

short Mongol-looking blonde woman relishing their murders with a childish glee. The queen's chin

jut out like the man in the moon, but her cheekbones were impeccably high, lording over dimples

and a small space between her two front teeth. Her sickening snorts about the room were just

audible to me over the sound of my own heartbeat, echoing a staggeringly fast dubstep beat in

every corner of my addled, terrified brain.

Every weapon I had prepared for this day may as well have been a thousand light years

away, instead of just in the backyard.

"Those pipe bombs you built are useless now, Eric," she hissed again at me. Her voice

seemed to echo and flange about the room.

"Shut her out!" Alex shouted. "She's using the silver shell to read your mind!"


11/15

"Empty your mind!" Helen shouted, using the gold shell in response. He voice sounds fluty

and chorused, angelic. There is a tune to it, freeform, as she shouts again, "Your thoughts are

nothing! The mind is all!"

"My mind is all," I heard myself saying.

Polyxo seethed and inhaled dramatically, then crooned, "Your soul is mine. And you will

die." Everything in the room turned blood red, except Polyxo. She took a step forward, out into

midair as the room seems to flatten and pull away like it was only a painting of the room. "I will

make you kill. Then kill you."

"I will kill, and die," I whispered back. Then I had a small seizure, and I remember

crouching and shaking my head clear. "Wait, wait, wait... stop fuckin' with my head! Stop it!" I

think I said. The room was fuzzy. Instantly, I felt a weight lift, and a sound like growling in the

background echoes and fades away. The room's lighting seemed to return to normal. Polyxo and

Helen had both backed off from having my mind in both their grasps. "We can, uh... work this out.Let me just, uh...," I rambled, then tried to make a run for the back porch, still unlocked I hoped. I

got as far as the doorway to the kitchen, and the house was suddenly rocked by an explosion. The

floor beneath me leapt up and all of the walls jerked to my right. Piles of dirt and rubble rained

down on the roof of the porch, and I realized the backyard had exploded with the force of only a

few of the pipe bombs. The rest would be destroyed.

"I told you the pipe bombs were useless," Polyxo whispered. Her voice echoed in my ears

again. She may as well have been shouting to my face.

"I had to do something," I said. Was allowed to say. "I knew you'd try to kill me," I

moaned. "I knew this day would come."

"No, no, no...," Polyxo cooed, "I'd like you and I to become the best of friends, BFFs, and

then together we'll kill the brat and that demonspawn."

I cringed.

Helen and Alex shuddered. Polyxo turned her gaze at them and, if it's possible, screamed

with her eyes.

"Uh... w- I uh, I have a question," I stuttered.

"Hmmmm?" Polyxo inquired absent-mindedly.

I asked, "W- Which one is which? The brat and, uh, or the uh, demonspawn? I mean, either

one could be either one of them."

The room seemed to freeze and burn simultaneously.


12/15

Then it happened: Polyxo laughed at my joke. At first a chuckle, then an explosion from

her gut sent a roar of a laugh. She pitched forward in shock at her own uncontrollable laughter at

my quip. Castor began chuckling mildly, too, through clenched teeth. He looked around nervously,

between me and the girls and his mother doing something she rarely, if ever, did. Cass' shouldersbounced up and down as he found the situation itself more and more funny. Polyxo's eyes met his,

and for a moment she stopped. Cass stopped too. His shoulders were stuck in the 'up' position, his

hand halfway covering his pursed-lipped smile. Then Polyxo grunted, snort-laughed, and began

cackling even more maniacally. Castor exploded, his nervous smile now replaced with a grin. His

laugh was high-pitched, quick bursts of multiple, rapid laughs, like Morse Code. "Ha-ha, ha-haha-

ha, ha-ha-ha, ha...," and so on. Polyxo laughed every kind of laugh there was. The funniness

moved about her body like a tickling bee loose in her clothing, from belly to spine to feet and

hands, then up to her head and eyes, and then she's leaning back with tears forming at their corners.

She raises her hand to cover her eyes, and Castor stamps his foot in hilarity.

I break into a run again, and in a flash of a second I stood and hopped straight over the

Ethan Allen and the TV stand (old coffee table) past the Buffalo wings, to the steps. I shove Castor

straight at Helen, and I can see her already turning to grab one of the ornamental swords on the

wall. I launch up the steps three at a time, then turn at the landing on all fours, leaping up into the

hall toward my bedroom door. Around the corner, in there, is the closet with shells.

The corner seems to turn to ash before my eyes, then crashes away as the Fever Torch

scorches it. The windows in the room shatter, and for the first time I begin to hear sirens in the

distance. The explosion was probably what tipped the scale to make someone call 911. (Besides,

the neighbors on all sides of us were there in the living room. Dead.) The windows being brokenand all these demigods flying and prancing about the room, all the screaming and alien sounds, and

all the headless corpses in the front room were apparently not enough. The explosion is what did it.

It might have knocked out the cable.

The floor fell away, the whole closet and the suitcase with it. I fell back into the living

room as Helen attacked Polyxo with the sword using Castor as a meat puppet. Polyxo could only

defend against her own son. I broke my arm and leg in the fall, and crawled in panic over the pile

of debris for the suitcase. There. I ripped off the cover, pocketed the Colts, and struggled to enter

the code. My fingers wouldn't work right. I felt a tickle in my side, and looked down to notice that

I was impaled just under my ribs on my left side.

The code. I focused. The box unlocked, and tendrils from the Blue Shell reached out to my

numbed hand. Instantly I began to heal, and swung my other arm over to grab the Fire Sword, just

as Helen began losing control of Cass. He started to scream like a madman. "Get out get out gout

gout oh my oh my get out my head! Get outta my head! I'm outta my my my gout gout gout got got

got gotta gotta get you outta my head!"


13/15

Helen whined, "I can't hold on much longer!"

I tossed the Fire Sword to Alex and took both guns out. Both of them were loaded with full

barrels. Ready to go. The Witch and I were probably horrible parents.

Just as Helen lost control of Castor and knelt down on one knee to reel in pain, Alex racedup her back and leapt through the air right at him, the fire sword becoming a wide double-blade as

she swung it. Castor's grip on the Torch changed, and his personal shield went up. Polyxo took her

hand from her inside pocket (where I presume she had held the silver shell) and dove into an

outside pocket. She began pulling out her own Fever Torch to attack Alex.

I started shooting. From Castor working left, over to Polyxo with the rest of both barrels.

Castor was knocked off kilter by three or four shots, and Alex started to beat him down to the

ground. One end of her double-blade swelled and became a baseball bat. My bullets started hitting

Polyxo in her outstretched arm, and I could see little explosions of blue as her Healing Hand did its

own work. She held fast to the Torch as her arm was thrown off its aim, and I began aiming at hercenter mass as she swung to fry me with her weapon. Two shots hit her in the chest, and the third

and fourth (my last two bullets) seemed to melt and burn in mid-air. I lunged forward, and as the

beam of the Torch hit me I began to glow blue as the Healing Hand made me able to keep walking

forward. My fingers looked ghostly as I reached out to try to strangle Polyxo, as they were being

blown away by the blasts of heat from her shell, and the nerves and bones glowed purple as they

repaired themselves while burning red hot. The floor around me caught fire.

There was suddenly, for the second time that night, an unexpected knock on the front door.

This time no one moved to open it, so the visitor let himself in most ungraciously.

"Hello? Anybody alive in here?" What looked like a firefighter appeared around the door

as it creaked open, slowly. He actually wore a hockey jersey and dazzler shorts, but with fire boots

and a turnout coat and helmet, open and loose. "H-hey, are you guys..., uh?" He stopped. The

fighting had not ceased for his entrance, as each of us were locked in struggle.

But this... this middle-aged man, looking perfectly normal and average (and possibly

slightly drunk) and standing there idly while I glowed royal blue while half-disintegrating. I was

struggling and howling against what must have looked like a Mercury rocket blast of yellow

energy coming from Polyxo's hand. Alex was trying to drive a fiery corkscrew spike of a sword

into Castor's chest, having pinned him against the floor. Helen sobbed and wheezed, still kneeling,

only feet from the front door with the baseball bat end of the sword. The bodies of my neighbors

all lay dead and mutilated around us, and were starting to smolder along with the dumped chicken

wings. The fire chief sized up the scene, adjusted his loose white helmet, and blew a breath,

"Sheezus Christ."


14/15

As a variety of emergency apparatus appeared around the house, the light of the room

shifted into a strobing kaleidoscope, and all of a sudden the fighting noises and indeed the buzz of

the air itself seemed to fade. Polyxo broke off her attack, and dove past me. For Castor. I followed

her logic and movement, and dove for Alex.

In another half-second the girls and I were alone in the room, and police were coming upthe front lawn with guns drawn. I hadn't noticed, but the fire chief was shouting about wizards and

witches and swords and ghosts or something. He was leaning flat against the door, and if he had

moved another inch his cockeyed helmet would have fallen off. Helen reached into her purse, and

grabbed Alex's hand.

She grabbed mine, and we were instantly vanishing before the fire chief's eyes, into a puffy

whirlpool of black and glittery smoke that hangs about for a second. Not a single policeman saw

us, and the chief probably had to retire after that.


15/15

Life Is A Temp Position, Chapter 5: The Super Bowl

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