Once again, it seems that my desire to bring you plot and bondage has resulted in a chapter too long for one update. (That might become a running theme with this story.)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But you know the drill. I'll post Part 2 soon, and comments on either part of this chapter will count towards the next overall chapter. Hope you enjoy!
She woke up feeling fully restored. She wasn’t sore anywhere, and she thankfully couldn’t taste or smell anyone’s feet, but she still felt the need to brush her teeth and wash out her mouth for a very long time.
She heard Michael screaming outside. Miranda must have been in a particularly bad mood this morning. Who could blame her? Last night had been rough. Heather had always been scared of Gassy, but she’d never realized just how mean he could be. The strict hogtie, the gross socks, the forced foot smelling… It was enough to knock the fighting spirit right out of her.
Heather went on and on in the bathroom until she could taste nothing but minty toothpaste and Listerine. It was only then that she decided it was time to move on. Upon entering the kitchen, Heather saw Nadine at the table with a really surly look on her face. It looked as though she was trying to drown out the foul-tasting memories just like Heather, only she was using black coffee rather than toothpaste.
Miranda stormed into the room, and Heather suddenly didn’t want to be there. Her cousin was fuming, and Heather was worried that there would be a fight. It was Nadine’s idea to gang up on him, so Miranda probably blamed her for that whole foot fiasco.
Her older cousin looked as though she was about to scream, and Heather braced herself, but instead, Miranda just said, “I am never wearing socks again, and if I ever catch either of you wearing socks, I will burn them right off your feet!”
That… sounded reasonable. Everyone agreed.
“Alright,” Miranda said. “Now, where do we go from here?”
Nadine shook her head and said, “I don’t know.” She sounded so defeated. “We should have listened to Heather. That guy’s unstoppable.”
Miranda sighed. “You can say that again. It doesn’t make any sense! If Gassy is actually Gavin McGuiness, then how did he get to be so tough?”
“Well… maybe that’s what we should look into next,” Heather suggested.
Everyone looked to the timid redhead. She paused and spoke again. “Gassy’s practically superhuman. Either he’s not actually Gavin, or something really weird happened to that boy. Either way, we should look into it. If we can find out more about Gavin, maybe it’ll get us closer to learning how to beat Gassy.”
Nadine was the first one to respond. For a moment, it looked as though she was proud of her friend. “I agree. We’ve gotta keep going, and we still have a trail to follow.”
Miranda folded her arms. “Alright, but where exactly is this trail?”
They let Nadine worry about that. Heather’s quirky roommate was an expert at tracking down people on social media, and in a matter of minutes, they had a list of Gavin’s friends and family. If anyone knew what could have happened to him, it was them.
The trio divided their efforts, and mostly just sent a whole lot of messages that were left on ‘read’, but there was one fish that bit Heather’s hook: Bryan Montoya. Bryan said that Gavin was his best friend, and his Instagram page had a whole lot of posts confirming that. He was incredibly excited to hear Gavin’s name.
“Have you seen him? Where was he? Did he say anything? What was he wearing?”
The poor guy sounded so concerned for his friend. Heather suddenly had no idea how she was supposed to tell him what was going on. Luckily, Miranda stepped in. “We’ve seen him, but our encounter with him was… bizarre.”
His reply was very swift. “What kind of bizarre?”
That… definitely wasn’t the response that any of them had expected. After a bit of discussion, they typed: “Out of this world.”
A long time passed before they got his next message. He told them to come meet him at this campsite in the woods outside of town. It was a really weird request, and definitely the kind of invite that Heather would ghost on a normal day, but she felt safer with Miranda and Nadine to back her up.
When they got to the campsite, Bryan was waiting for them at a bench some distance away from the parking lot. He looked around Miranda’s age and kind of looked like he could be an old member of some bygone boy band. That being said, he also resembled someone who hadn’t slept in days. He wore a wrinkled jacket and had poofy black hair. Heather looked closely at all his features and came to the conclusion that if he would dress a little better and shave his stubble off, he’d actually be pretty cute.
He shifted his eyes around like some paranoid spy and clutched a tote bag close to his chest. Heather couldn’t understand why he was so shifty. There wasn’t even anyone else around. When he saw the girls, he signalled them over and they all sat down at his table. He whispered, “Tell me precisely what was so weird about Gavin? Did he move things without touching them?”
Nadine looked perplexed. “What? No!”
“Well, was he lighting things on fire or levitating?”
“Levitating,” Heather asked. “No.”
“Alright,” Bryan murmured. “Then tell me what he did do?”
Once again, Miranda found the words that Heather could not. “Have you ever seen Groundhog Day?”
“Groundhog Day?!” Heather expected Bryan to walk out on them immediately, but instead, he leaned forward and said, “Go on?”
Miranda continued. “We’ve actually seen Gavin a lot of times, but every time we encounter him, time resets to this morning. It’s looped back six times already, and we’re the only ones that seem aware of it.”
“He’s messing with time now?! Does he make any incantations before it happens? Any hand gestures? What does he do to each time you see him?”
Miranda looked at her companions and started to blush. Everyone became really embarrassed, and no one wanted to explain the next part. Finally, Heather blurted the first thing she could think of. “He kills us.”
Bryan’s eyebrows shot upward. “HE KILLS YOU?!”
“Um, yeah.” Miranda nodded, playing right along with Heather’s little fib. “Murdered every day. It really sucks.”
Bryan shook his head, bewildered. “But, that’s not like Gavin at all. He’s a pussycat! He cried that one time when I pointed out that blind people can’t see puppies!”
Heather gasped and thought to herself, 'Oh my God! They totally can’t!' Soon she was holding back tears of her own.
Bryan rubbed his temples and said, “Oh, Gavin. What have you done?”
Nadine had a serious expression, but she spoke with a soothing voice. “Bryan, if you know anything about Gavin, we need to know it too. It’s urgent.”
Bryan stared down at the bench for a long time before finally saying, “What do you three know about magic?”
Heather was at a loss for words. “Magic?!”
“You’ve gotta be freakin’ kidding me,” Miranda groaned quietly.
“It’s true,” Bryan exclaimed. He opened up his tote bag and dumped its contents onto the bench. Mostly, it was dog-eared notebooks and locked diaries. “Gavin was way into the paranormal. He’d kill me for sharing this with anyone, but this is an emergency. I’m really starting to think that he’s in trouble.”
“Define ‘paranormal’,” Miranda demanded.
Bryan unlocked a diary and spoke as he shuffled through its pages. “A paranormal phenomenon is any phenomenon that defies one or more laws of reality.”
Miranda clapped back fast. “If it defies reality as we know it, then how can you have any understanding of how it works?”
Bryan simply said, “I don’t know how it works. I don’t know anyone who truly understands how it works.”
Miranda started getting exasperated, just like she had after Nadine gave all her money away. “If you don’t know how magic works, then how the hell are you supposed to distinguish genuine magic from an illusion?!”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh for crying out loud,” Miranda moaned.
“I know it’s frustrating,” Bryan said. “I’ll admit, the number of charlatans greatly outweigh the number of actual practitioners, but there are some people that can just do it naturally.”
He flipped to a page that had a photograph taped to it. It was a photo of Gavin standing outside of a cabin in the woods. He was floating six feet off the ground and beaming excitedly at the camera. Bryan smiled fondly and said, “Not even he knew how he could do it, but there was just no other explanation. The dude was magic!”
“Do the words: ‘argumentum ad ignorantiam’ mean anything to you?” Miranda rolled her eyes and turned to her companions. “Why are we wasting time with this guy?”
She may have been unconvinced, but Nadine and Heather still wanted to hear what Bryan had to say. Nadine pointed to the picture and asked, “Where was this taken?”
“Gavin had an old hunting cabin deep in the woods,” Gavin explained. “He was messing with powers he didn’t understand, so he wanted a place to practice where he couldn’t accidentally hurt anyone.”
“Where is this cabin,” Nadine asked.
Bryan shook his head. “Don’t bother. I cleared it out after Gavin disappeared.” He gestured to all the notes sprawled across the bench and said, “This is all there was.”
Heather glanced at the diary’s pages and said, “I don’t recognize the writing. Did he write this in code?”
Bryan nodded. “That’s exactly what he did. But he’s shared enough with me that I can make out his entries. There’s nothing in here about time loops though. That stuff’s way out of Gavin’s league.”
“Why would you need to encrypt something that no one understands anyway,” Miranda asked.
It looked like Bryan was starting to get irritated with Miranda. “Gavin practiced because he dreamed of one day learning how to control his powers. Magic’s a weird thing. It’s not something you can just learn at Hogwarts or anything. Since no one knows how it works, no one knows how to control it; But there are a small number of people that are more naturally talented than others. Have you guys ever heard of the Great Ozolas?”
The girls all shook their heads.
“They’re an old pair of gifted twins from Latvia. Gavin always said that those two were the closest thing to true mages he’d ever seen. They run a travelling carnival called ‘Wandering Wonders’.”
Heather noticed her cousin rolling her eyes at the mention of a travelling carnival, but Bryan seemed unaware. “Valdis Ozola can work wonders with his magic, but Iveta’s the one who really runs the show. She doesn’t perform crazy miracles like her brother, but her prophesies are impeccable. She’s like an oracle or something.”
Miranda looked like she wanted to rip into Bryan’s beliefs, but she held herself back and said, “What do they have to do with any of this?”
Bryan turned to the final entry of Gavin’s diary and pointed to what looked like some lines of gibberish. “This was Gavin’s final entry. He said that Iveta Ozola had spoken to him in his dreams, and he believed that she was in trouble. I think that he was on his way to visit her when he…”
Bryan’s voice broke and he had to stop for a moment. He blinked back tears and said. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been handling the loss all that well.”
Heather gasped inaudibly. She felt so bad for this poor guy and genuinely wanted to hug him, but she was also worried about making things awkward.
“Listen, even if the Ozola’s have nothing to do with your troubles, they’re the next ones you should talk to. If there’s anyone who can help you fix time, it’s them. Their carnival is passing through this state right now. I was going to go talk with them tomorrow, but if everything you’ve said is true, I may never get the chance.”
They spoke for a while longer, but Bryan didn’t have much else to say that was all that helpful to the girls. When he was all done, he gathered up Gavin’s notes and bid his farewells. Once he stood up and started lumbering back to his car, it became apparent just how broken and miserable he was. Heather wanted to hug him all over again, and involuntarily called out, “Hey, Bryan.”
Bryan stopped and turned to her, and the look in his eyes released butterflies in Heather’s tummy. The heartbroken redhead stood there like a moron, saying nothing. After a moment, she blurted, “Please take care of yourself,” and scurried back to her car.
The girls got to their vehicle just as Bryan sped past them, which turned out to be pretty bad timing. He was long gone by the time anyone noticed that Heather’s passenger-side tires had been slashed.
“Awe, c’mon,” Miranda groaned in exasperation. “Who would do…” She stopped herself mid-sentence. They all knew exactly who would do this.
It was Heather who saw him first. She jumped back and screamed as a black figure rose from the floor of her cab. A figure that looked at her through the goggles of a gas mask.