Ethan Rayne

This is one of the easiest questions to answer. Perspective. Everyone is the hero of the novel of his own life.

Take me, for example. There are those who think me quite the consummate villain. They are very eager to point out my faults: I put spells on them; I work for any arch-fiend willing to pay me; I endanger the lives of the innocent. Without doubt, I am suspected of everything from genocide down to drinking milk out of the carton and hogging the television remote. That is their picture of me.

Yet, I think of myself as offering relief from the excruciating boredom these people have allowed their lives to become. One gray day to the next. When the unexpected happens, when I make the unexpected happen, they have something to talk about for the rest of their lives. "The Time We Were Woken Up from Our Stupor." Doesn't my bringing danger into their lives make them appreciate living a great deal more? Of course, it does. Shouldn't I wear a hero's mantle for giving them that gift? Of course, I should.

Up/down, hero/villain, it's all in one's perspective.

Ethan snapped the book shut. Oh, bollocks! He held the book in his hand, weighing its heft, wondering whether to throw it at someone in this ramshackle Quonset hut they called a terminal. God, it was hot. Sweat was rolling down his arms toward the already limp pages of the book. He decided not to heave it; it was the only thing he had to read in English. And if it was going to annoy him, even that was more engaging than watching the fellow stranded passengers, glum and sweat-stained as they were.

He watched a few languid clerks come and go at the boarding desk; they stopped to chat with each other and Ethan was sure it wasn't about when the plane he was waiting for was going to leave. He could also see a few mechanics tinkering with the flying machine out on the tarp. They were he thought probably stapling the motor back in. He wished he could teleport where he wanted to go. But that required a coven, lots of concentrated power. And groups weren't really his "thing". Once or twice in the past he attempted to form a circle but in no time at all, there'd been "office politics". Someone accused someone else of not returning a thurible; a flat owner wanted to be paid for spilt candle wax, and what usually broke up the gathering for good was Ethan giving in to an impulse to bring in a little extra Chaos, just to see what would happen.

So, for his sins, he was virtually camped out in some tin foil terminal waiting to make flea-like hops from island to island in some obscure archipelago until he reached its most remote corner (if they could be said to contain corners) where some rich, slighted plantation owner wanted revenge for something. He (the offended party) was willing to buy the services of a wandering, C.O.D. mage and to pay handsomely. Ethan was willing to be paid handsomely.

He returned to the book, thinking that it was people who forgot things, willed themselves to forget, pretended to forget. People who denied things that once existed ever did. Not "the world", certainly not the earth; the earth always remembered. He began to open the book at random intervals looking for sex scenes.

I'm a little behind here. Have all the characters in your wide-roofed tent written about dreams? How fascinating that must have been. Like being cornered by an endless string of fellow party-goer who wants to share. Here, I had the weirdest dream last night.(drawn out babble about ladders and kangaroos and popular tv actors) Wha' ja thinks it means?

But I'm never averse to talking about myself so let me see if I can join the throng.

Well, let's see, when we were all knee-deep and wading through the publicity for "Lord of the Rings" I did have a nocturnal confrontation with Gandalf. The scenario of the dream is sketchy now but I believe we did have a sort of "magic-off" contest. I won, of course, and I was better dressed. There was also a yellow brick road which I was on that lead to the "Eye of Sauron". I never arrived, which was disappointing. But that's what I get for jumbling my movie references.

At times, at low points, I sometimes dream about being a child again and at the beck and call of my father. He tells me to join him in his office and puts me on a high stool, copying boring numbers. A diminutive Bob Cratchit. I can be quite out of sorts when I wake from that dream. I usually find it signals I've lost interest in my surroundings and that I should move on.

Nothing else comes to mind in the category of recurrent dreams; I've emptied my bag of dream memories. Have I bored you sufficiently? I rather feel myself building up to an enormous yawn. Perhaps I'll take a nap.

(Locked to all: a dream Ethan never speaks about)

I'm grateful for the "temporarily". Would one want to go through the whole thing again?

But what age child? Before the age of reason? Gawky transition to adolescence? I'm rather a "now" person, not inclined to look back.

If I did go back, would I have memories I have now? In that case I would save my pocket money, the pitiful amount of pence I could squeeze out of my father or cajole from mother and buy computer stock as it came on the market. Or since these things are all the rage now, never play with any toys I was given but, instead, tuck them away, in their original boxes, and bring them out in pristine condition on one of those hidden-treasures-in-the-attic television shows, when I returned to my present adult shows. What "ohs" and "ahs" they would draw. And better still, what fabulous prices.

If I didn't have prescience on this jaunt to the past, well, I'd really rather not go.

Or did you mean, I would be a child in these present times? Loll about in front of the television for hours of the time, eating whatever fast food my parents flung at me on their way to doing something that was more interesting than their child. Where I would be strapped in everywhere I went, tested against some rigid "norm", warned repeatedly venturing of any kind.

No, thank you. I see no magic in childhood; mine came to me with adulthood.

Write two letters.


Dear Rupert,( Read more... )


Dear Slayer, ( Read more... )

Well, the first thing that springs to mind is uncomfortable clothes. I seem to remember long hours spent sitting in pews in scratchy slacks and shoes that pinched.

My father’s family were chapel goers but he married up and as suited his ambition, he became a church goer. No ordinary worshipper of course, but one of the pillars of the congregation, working his way by dint of bribes and coercion, genteel and overt, on to the Church Council. Nothing would do but that we spend our Sundays when I was young hanging about the church. Morning services, Evensong. So many opportunities for him to network, to play the ‘mover and shaker’. I can’t remember when I didn’t take the hypocrisy for granted. The conversations my parents indulged in over the Sunday joint, castigating the fellow worshippers they had just been so “hail-fellow-well-met” with just moments before probably influenced me in that.

There was the obligatory attendance at services at the boarding school I attended. I suppose some students were allowed some latitude in that, but my father insisted I conform to the traditional ways. (Of course, it wasn’t exactly his tradition but the one he aspired to.) I never believed anyone else believed in it. It was about keeping order in society. A place for everyone and everyone in their place.

No doubt that's why Chaos attracted me so. And I didn’t have to wear a tight collar.

Perhaps this is my moment of triumph. I’m alive. I’m back.

It was touch-and-go there for a bit. Some mages are much too territorial; there were accusations of poaching. Totally groundless accusations. Clients, it’s obvious to me, are like lovers. If they’re kept happy at home, you can’t steal them. I was put to great inconvenience because others did not see it this way. There were threats and much posturing on the part of these unhappy (and I must say incompetent) workers of (inferior) spells. I was chased about like one of those unfortunate foxes or rabbits. I would even say harried. I thought lying low the best option.

The worst part of these contretemps is the boredom one endures waiting for them to blow over. No large spells, no disturbance of the ether that can be traced. I was stuck in cheap motel in a sweltering dot on the map in which mosquitoes were the dominant life-form. Well, I try to look on the bright side. My tan is quite attractive and I’m up to date on all the trashier novels and steamier memoirs.

I’m back. I’m alive. I triumph.

What song best describes your life?

Song? Song? Let me think.

I’m not what one would call a musical person. Even as a boy I was never in a choir, evidently I didn’t make lovely cherub sounds. And after my voice broke, while I had compliments on my reading voice, any singing was heartily discouraged. It was of no importance to me, truth be told.

As these things work out of course, I spent a great deal of my teenaged and uni years with a friend who attached great importance to music (funny old world, isn’t it?). He played guitar, was always being asked to sing. Oh yes, he had many attractive qualities.

I had to pay a high price, though, to have him as companion. The music I was forced to listen to! It seemed, to me, to be either to be electric guitar music with the same twangy notes played repeatedly or even worse, one note spun out, in some sort of contest of longevity (rather like the children’s game of holding one’s breath. Regrettably, the guitarists weren’t in danger of passing out). Then there was the grubby brigade, with the proudly untamed hair and their soulful renditions of songs detailing the woes of Appalachian coal miners. I did point out to their listeners (who would insist I partake of their pleasure) that most of these gits singing about tarpaper shacks were middle-class poseurs whose personal acquaintance of abysmal poverty involved not having leather upholstery in their automobiles. I was instructed by the connoisseurs of this music to listen, just listen and stop being a prat.

Finally, I had to insist, just to get some peace, that the study of magic demanded absolute silence. Not true but who could blame me?

So, I won’t look to songs of my youth to define me. I think I’ll choose something more grown-up, a touch world weary, I’ll go with Edith Piaf and say “Non, je ne regrette rien”.

The mun for Ethan will be taking December off.

Photograph

Ethan was leafing through “coffee table” book of photographs while waiting for his companion. He stopped and gazed intently at one of the pictures, so intently that he didn’t hear Carlo come into the room.

“What is?” said the young man, coming over to Ethan and looking over his shoulder. Carlo spoke and understood English better than he let on; he found that tourists he met enjoyed correcting him, that they thought his slight mangling of the language endearing. Ethan was aware of Carlo’s deception in this matter, but felt he should be the last person to object to a little hoodwinking of the gullible.

“Oh, just a photograph. It reminds of a place I used to know. A tunnel near the school I used to go to. It was place I used to meet friends.”

“It looks very lonely, yes? And frio, cold!”

“Yes, cold and I remember it as usually raining, too. But in the tunnel a chap could escape the weather and the vile school. One would have a fag, a cigarette, and a chat with a sympathetic friend. Many, many happy hours were spent in a tunnel very much like this.”

“You met the boys there? Fun, yes?” Carlo asked. Then he sighed elaborately and began to fidget.

Ethan looked at him and smiled. “Shall we go to dinner, Carlito? You look famished.”

“Yes, Ethan, dinner now, I think.”

Ethan slipped a bookmark to mark his place and went with his young friend to a loud and trendy restaurant to eat.

Many times when I'm summoning, the thought passes through my mind, something Ripper said to me once.

"Doesn't it ever you strike as odd, that you must use a ritual, an unvarying ritual, to call up a Chaos demon?"

His saying that, that's why I kept him around; he could be very amusing.

The autumn makes me melancholy and nostalgic. I need to leave here and find an island in the sun, I think.

Summer

The nice thing about the earth tilting on its axis is that it’s always summer somewhere. Has that ever struck you?

There’s absolutely no excuse for staying in a dank place that forces you to wear layers of protective and eventually odoriferous clothing, no excuse for one to be sniffling and shuffling along amidst gray buildings and only see gray skies for months when you can go south and be where the naughty earth turns its bottom up to the sun to be warmed. Ah, forgive the flightiness of that image, but if you had been raised as I was, --well, I remember my hands always being cold from October to May. Warm hands, warm face, warm feet, Eliza Doolittle had it right; it is loverly.

So, seeing that I try to be sustained by a perpetual summer, I have many fond memories. Beaches, soft tropical breezes, endless languid days. The lovely boys and girls who flock to sunny climes. Many, many fond memories. Shall I share them with you? Perhaps I’ll write a book, why should I construct a fantasy world for you for free?

Tell the truth about something you usually lie about.

The truth:

1. Yes, you are boring me.

2. I’m inviting you back to my room because I’m drunk which makes you more attractive than you are and because you’re the only one who responded to my overtures.

3. No, I won’t repay you.

4. I’ve heard that joke told much better and I’m only laughing because I want (a job, money, sex) from you.

5. No, I didn’t read the book you wrote but I have read the reviews and it sounded appalling.

6. Yes, I have read the book you wrote and your plotting and characterizations make me believe you indulge in a little chaos worship yourself.

7. I did drink all the (scotch, wine, vodka).

8. I don’t think you are the most put-upon, ill-treated ex-spouse in the history of time and I’m listening to your whinging only because you haven’t yet paid me in full for my little spell.

9. I don’t remember you.

10. No, I don't love this song.

And finally,
11. Yes, it does make you look fat.

Revenge

Is sweet. Is best served as a cold dish. Is best extracted by living well. Is liable to cost someone an eye.

You get the idea. People are quite obsessed with it. Just ask a Jacobean playwright. It has to do with one’s “amour propre” being punctured, doesn’t it? We can’t really have that. We all think we are the center of the world and that if we are slighted, the world laughs at us.

I would never make any derogatory remarks about this human trait; it’s buttered many a slice of bread at my table. I’ve been hired as nemesis on occasion, anything from inflicting profound embarrassment on the offender to...to...well, let’s not put anything in writing.

I may even have fallen prey to this desire on my own account. To revenge myself. When one has the power of magic, chaotic magic, the temptation may be too great not to use it. But I’ve grown away from that tendency. I felt it should be looked at logically. I am so much more important than anyone else, why should I waste my time thinking about annoying people? I try to deal with anyone who crosses me summarily, then move on. No hatching plans in a dark room to come back later to do him dirt. Honestly, I’ve had “clients” who want something horrible to happen to primary school teachers who treated them badly. It’s as though the victim has lived his life accumulating all the world’s goods that he has just so he can pay me to avenge a humiliating dressing-down he got when he was ten. One can only marvel at the energy it took to hang on to that memory.

I may, on occasion, wish to taunt an old friend. But that’s because Ripper deserves it. He is so very stuffed full of goodness now, he’s quite the Michelin Man of virtue. I just like to let some of the air out, now and then. Calling it revenge is giving him too much importance. Altogether too much importance.

Friends

I always think “having friends” is over-rated.

This belief is no doubt influenced by the dismal time I spent at school. All that forced comradery. Before I went to boarding school, I could pick and choose my companions. I did not choose very often. I was fortunate in that I was able avoid the bullies (and there are always bullies). I developed charm, to beguile the ones who could be amused, and quick feet to distance myself from those whose only pleasure lay in causing another bodily harm. But the usual occupations of the neighborhood children, puerile games and japes, had little appeal for me. There were a few not-so-usual ones I developed an interest in, but these I had very little chance to explore.

One would think that being sent to the closed society of a boys’ school would be a boon to me. However, my father, who already begun to cast a jaundiced eye on me, sent me to an establishment that emphasized hearty sports. My fellow boarders and I had very little in common. I feigned illness a lot to get out of those miserable games which always seemed to take place in a cold, stinging rain. Of course, the manly types despised me. I was routinely debagged and humiliated. I found it difficult to form lasting, warm associations under those conditions.

At the uni I found more congenial companions. I found someone I thought was my friend. It turned out badly. It was then that I realized there was only one person who deserved my attention and devotion. Myself.

So far that relationship is working out very well.

Have you ever woken up in the morning and not remembered what you did the night before?

You mean, my early twenties? That’s the sort of answer you expected me to make, isn’t it? Yet, it isn’t true.

Any mage who makes a habit of summoning and indulging in incapacitation is one who will suffer the fate of Monty Python’s parrot, that is, he will soon be an ex-mage.

I put long hours in studying the arts I’m proficient in. I’m certainly not saying that I don’t like a bit of the grape and the grain, but I like my wits about me, thank you.

The chaos I strive to create doesn’t spring from some liquor or drug haze inspiration. Perhaps there’s a paradox about it. I’ve used my logic to set up scenarios in which the participants I’ve chosen are whirled about; they are (I feel nautical) anchorless in the sea of confusion I’ve created.

And, lastly, what’s the point of having a bit of fun if you’re not going to remember it?

What doesn't kill you can make you stronger.


I don’t know about making you stronger but I do know that what doesn’t kill you can still leave great bloody bruises.

In addition, I’m not sure that this straight-backed bromide has much to do with my life. I’ve been brought close to death by a demon or two; I don’t really see how that has made me stronger. More cautious, perhaps; more careful to secure an escape route before I seek to tangle with one, it’s had that effect.

It’s not out of line to ask, I think, how the Slayer batting me about was supposed to improve my strength? It didn’t improve my muscle tone; again, all I got out of it were black-and-blue marks in the shape of a tiny fist. And all that hectoring from her high moral plane. If she’s not careful, she’ll be turning into a middle-aged harridan. With very unattractive lines about her mouth from pursing her lips in disapproval.

Her assaults on my person didn’t kill me; neither did it dissuade me from trying to inject some refreshing chaos into her life, every chance I got. Her and her little Watcher, too.

No, no, I’m afraid this precept is just meaningless blather to me. Sorry.

Lamest Excuse

Who was that very rangey cowboy star with the rather sashaying walk who said, “Never apologize, never explain.”? I’d like to think if I ever felt the need for an excuse for my actions that I have a sterling one, but as it is, really, I don’t think it’s come up.

First of all, I try to be unavailable by the time any explanation would be needed or expected. Out of town, out of the country, out of the hemisphere. Whichever seems most prudent.

Second, why would I want to offer an excuse? Those to whom I’ve extended myself and my talents obviously wanted or needed them. They’ve either hired me or their dull lives needed some chaos introduced into them. I have to admit that on occasion, on rare occasion, the magic didn’t quite go as I envision it would. But that’s magic, isn’t it? It’s not the multiplication table; if there weren’t mystery, where’d be the fun?

There may have been more mundane situations where I’ve felt the need to say something to explain events that have taken place. I usually say, “I was drunk”. I don’t know if that qualifies as my lamest excuse; it’s really the only one I’ve ever bothered to offer.

What is your favorite retreat from the world?

I find that sex works well for that.

Luckily, I’ve been, well, I almost said blessed. That is to say, I’ve always been open to experience. I have my preferences, much as everyone else, but ‘why be small-minded?’ has been my rallying cry.

If I daydream, when the stresses of causing mischief to the pompous gets overwhelming, of sun-kissed cabana boys, that’s all very well and good, but I’ve been known to be perfectly happy as the indulged plaything of a well-endowed (in all senses of the phrase) widow for a time. Indeed, if I didn’t insist on trying to engage this lovely lady in actual conversation once or twice, I could very well still be ensconced on that private island with the momentous decision of the day being, ice or no ice in the martini?

Still, the point being, if I need to retreat from the world, whatever’s handy does fine.