Owl Magic, A Short Tale Of The Occult

The heat came down like the beating of giant wings, suffocating, intense, taking the air right out of your lungs  and sucking it up into whatever was beyond the bonewhite glare of the sun.

So deal with it. Not easy, but I strode into the furnace and somehow made it to the Shamrock filling station pick 'n steal. A short walk across the anteroom of Hell.

"How's it going?" I asked across cracked formica in the cooling blast of air conditioning. She rose up from checking cheap cigars, Swisher Sweets, in all their lurid 99 cent, bluntish glory.

"OK. That it, coffee?" 

"And a pack of cigarettes, Marlboro Light, short, box."

She had the cigarettes ready. It was a morning ritual, regular and repeated but something was different.

"You like the smell?"

Stick incense wafted on the AC, familiar enough; like the odor of tipis in Wales, Austin or San Francisco.

"I smell it," I replied, "It smells like hippies."

She giggled, suddenly coy.

"But hey, better than a toilet, right?"

"So true, better than a toilet. But what's with the owl?"

She paused, laughter most definitely over, and looked at the plastic bird glaring round-eyed from the top of a glass counter and its  sign for burned offerings. 

We gazed in silence, while darkness flickered in and out at the edge of vision, barely perceptible shadowmen, closing in. I ended the spell.

"So what's with the owl. Guarding against evil spirits?"

Liquid brown Aztec Inca eyes met mine and stayed there before another giggle. "No, he's just an owl, you know, like some stupid bird."

I walked out into the heat, coffee in hand, to return the next day; rituals bear repetition.

The owl looked down from his perch and darkness clustered, sharp and flitting, almost out of sight.

"Coffee and cigarettes?"

"That's right, same again."

"You remember the owl?

"Yes."

"You're right. He stops the evil."

"I know."

I looked at Mictecacihuatl and she at me, impassive, empty, a void, this was just the way it was. 

Vade retro, I walked into the searing light of the day, "God bless."

Behind me came a rustle of feathers and the sound of tearing, plucking, ripping and pulling at flesh. I didn't look back.

All Gods, readers, are not the same.

God bless,

LSP