The LED clock beneath the dashboard glows 11:00pm. My heart pumps Four-Hour Surge through hellfire veins to combat the car’s lulling vibrations. My fists grip the steering wheel. Instead of squeezing, I push. Not with muscles, but with presence. My hands heat up—firing up like a purple LED beneath the skin—and the overlapping, intersecting mosaic tattoos spiral into motion, sailing across the backs of my hands and knuckles.
My brothers would be surprised by me using magic at all and mad that I’m just using it to wake myself up.
Honk! “Drive like you have a license, dickhead!”
Idling at a green light. Okay, I deserve that. Igniting the fire in my bones is a great way to wake me up, but I should have pulled over for that. I’m only in these streets for that healthy and much-needed bonus after 60 rides before Friday morning when I should be catching up on manuscript pages.
My landlord will not wait. My advisor will have to.
I’m trying to write a memoir about my adolescence and fucked-up family dynamic. But they keep referring to my work as speculative. Honestly, the truth is stranger than fiction ... and Father might just be the devil.
Nights like this, I think about doing what Father’d ask so he would pay my tuition, rent, car note, and grocery bill. But this is my life. I choose. And I choose to do the right thing.
The Rover app chirps and pulls me back to the present.
Two minutes away, 58 rides down, 2 rides to go. Bet.
I keep one eye on traffic while the other watches the curb for a towhead with a 90s bowl cut. Spotted. And dude chose a stretch of Sunset where I can pull over without causing an accident? I like Caleb already.
I glide into the empty space in front of him and he climbs into the backseat. “Caleb?” I ask. He doesn’t respond. Maybe he didn’t hear me with the car door closing. He’s singing under his breath. It’s all good, plenty of people wear headphones so they don’t have to talk to the driver.
And, shee-it, entertaining riders isn’t the job.
Good news, it’s a long ride. Bad news, it terminates in the middle of a rideshare dead zone. Westchester at night.
I’m thinking this while pulling onto the 101. Before long I’m yearning for that driving autopilot, that interplay between instinct and reaction. I want to stop thinking about my family and my finances, get out of my head. Caleb’s still singing in the background and I only notice when we get to DTLA and hit traffic. What the hell’s happening Downtown at 11:20pm on a Thursday?
I sneak a peek at him in the rearview. Bowl Cut Caleb wears an all-black suit and white dress shirt with a bolo tie. He’s still singing under his breath, still staring out the windshield. Still super weird, but whatever.
I navigate us through this apparently Lakers-induced snarl of traffic. And I’d find my zone easier if bro wasn’t mumbling to himself. It’s getting louder. But I’m not gonna strongarm him on his own ride.
But ... “Bro, cool if I cut up the radio?” I ask to no response. No change in whatever song he’s singing and no indication he heard me speak. But I’m taking that as affirmative.
I turn the radio on to the voices of Zihanna and Henny C howling like stray cats over a drumline-inspired hip-hop beat.
“Breakfast me just like bacon.
You taste when it’s real, no turkey fakin’.
Once you smell that smell, you’re done, forsaken.
Gonna have to share what’s left, not taken.
Breakfast me, breakfast me.
First thing in the morning.”
Something about two people who can’t sing being on the radio, it makes you feel like you have to sing to add something positive to the situation. I mean, it doesn’t actually matter that I’m legit tone deaf with a negative six octave range. I’m feeling myself.
I don’t know how long I was singing, all I know is I’m going off. Like, windows-up-on-the-405-while-your-jam-is-playing-and-the-subwoofer-knocks-so-hard-you-can’t-hear-any-words-for-all-the-bass. But my car is barely Rover eligible and the sound system is more like a sound system failure.
Then I remember I’m not between rides.
Not only did I just alienate Creepy, Bowl Cut Caleb but someone just listened to me dueting lyrics, demanding sex before daylight.
I cut the music down. “Hey, man, I’m sooo sorry. This was my car before it was my job and I’m a little tired over here. Old habits die hard, so sorry ...” I’m looking at him in the rearview and he’s still mumbling or singing, eyes straight through the windshield to the sprawl.
No ... he’s not singing. Is he chanting?
I turn down Zi and Henny all the way. The whoosh of wind past the car doesn’t help me hear but those are not words. No words I ever heard.
“Yo, Caleb, you good back there?” The passenger just continues his mumble but his eyes shut lazily, excruciatingly slow, like forcing himself to nod off while his lips race.
I finger my phone, suspended above the dash. There’s no alert on the app that the passenger is deaf gained. Please, let him be talking to himself.
“Caleb, you okay, man?” I ask, physically turning in my seat to look at dude.
Then I’m mad at myself for not questioning sooner.
There are no headphones. No AirPods.
As if in response, Caleb opens his eyes, crackling with electricity while the words grow in volume. Not in decibels but in density.
Motherfucker! How did I get caught slippin’? Some Children-of-the-Corn ass, People-Under-the-Stairs looking fool incanting in my backseat? Just channeling the eldritch lightning? Like, no big deal.
The Rover app chirps. I zero in, we’re nearing his destination. I look up through the windshield. It’s a two-story building with the words Praise & Peace COGIC emblazoned across the building. Church of God in Christ? This is a Black Church.
Dude’s eyes crackle the blue electric and I don’t remember what that means. I think blue lightning means creation magic? Or does it indicate dimensional friction? Whatever it is, I try to turn the wheel but then it drags back toward the Black ass Church with a full-ass parking lot. He’s commandeering the car to crash what? A revival, probably. Those shits never end.
So Opie Munster channels primordial lightning and I’m supposed to be his regular ass, human ass, Black ass delivery system to murder a church full of Black People?
“One last chance, Caleb,” I say, but I’m not waiting.
The mosaics and Aramaic symbols coalesce across my arms as my tattoos burn bright. The fire starts in my bones and I feed it with presence to burn hotter, brighter, faster. The tattoos burst into flame, friction between the cooling charms and my internal inferno. The only time I ever have a mane is when I’m using Jinn Magic and the flames erupt within my hairline. My eyes go black before emitting volcanic tears, falling in the wrong direction. My skin burns from caramel to black like obsidian, cracking where the joints flex and showing purple beneath. The volcano within my body threatens to escape and it hurts like hell.
My car smells of ozone and sulfur. Synthetics sizzle and fume, demanding coughs from Caleb. This is the first time his reverie breaks but the invocation continues. He returns to it like he missed his cue in choir and went right back to chanting. His words sandwich between a comic male voice and a lady tenor, a basso profundo and a raspy mezzo.
Electricity sizzles and pops off of him, webs of lightning arcing between him and conductive matter. Mostly me.
One of those wild charges hits me in the neck and it stings like a bitch. My hand flies up like I’m trying to swat a thunderstorm the size of a mosquito.
His ain’t the kind of magic you go to school to learn. Not the kind of forces people like me grew up wrangling either. This that shit you learn at your Granny’s knee. This is poor people magic. But it’s too much power for any Folk Mage.
I love my voice when I’m like this. All cavernous and sinister. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are but you got the wrong one, li’ bitch.”
“You people don’t belong here.” Caleb’s words resound higher but the incantation rings out in harmony, cacophonous. His very first words tonight. I wonder, for a moment, if he’s talking about Inherent Magic Users, but since I’m Black and we’re driving to a Black Church, I’m thinking he’s just a racist or eugenicist, not a magical speciesist.
His hands form a broken circle about chest high. Worms of power circle his fingers, electricity collecting in the invisible receptacle between his hands. The blue lightning drifts to his torso, before burning so bright it looks like it consumes his body. No person using folk magic could survive channeling this much power, not even with teamwork. So this isn’t a lightning strike, it’s a suicide bombing. Great.
With my magic up, I can feel the contours of his. He wavers for a second, I swing the car hard. My seat belt resists my body’s momentum but Caleb crashes into the passenger side. His hair smudges the soot against the window when he rights himself.
A noxious cloud of burnt upholstery swirls overhead. The toss broke his concentration. The coven continues to chant while he coughs.
His open hand closes until the fingers form a bird beak. The car lights up brighter before I feel a sizzling sting on my neck. I slap the spot like I’m trying to squash a power drill on my collarbone.
I look over and he makes another bird beak. This time, I see the wriggling shard of electricity coming at me. I want to dodge but I’m driving. Trying to drive. I take the hit like a boss but that mofo would have blasted through my neck if I wasn’t blazing.
The lightning intensifies, electric tentacles whip around the car. The eye of this storm embeds itself deeper inside him. I focus my breathing. Purple brands from igneous skin drift to the air and around me, widening, swirling like a magical mobile. I push the mosaics and symbols to expand their sphere around my body. I shiver when the sigils pass through Caleb. Does he feel that?
The human side of me knows the car just turned into an oppressive hotbox. The Jinn side of me feels a breeze. I lift my thigh and the synthetic fabric unpeels from my leg with a crunch. Hadn’t even thought about vulcanizing my car against my magic. Probably because I swore off blazing like this when I was sixteen.
The hue around me surges between purple jinn magic and the blue of his electricity against the rising haze. But blue is overtaking purple: he’s channeling more and more power.
We both pull the trigger. He increases his output while I turn on the input. The wild lightning crackles and whirls against every surface in the car. Not just me.
I ingest the charge, bloating with power. My stomach roils and bubbles in its conversion into power I can use. Thick tongues of purple-tinged fire dance against the car’s roof from my head. In the rearview, I see ashes pirouetting onto my head.
I sneak a glance at him, pressed against the passenger door before looking out the rear window. He backed himself into the corner, getting as far away from me as possible. I turn my face forward after I look out the side. No one around, we good ... kinda.
Electricity thunders against the roar of my fire. His mouth and eyes open to blue light—like his skin is all that contains the power. His backlit face twists in rage. Or maybe it’s agony. He gasps before I feel him push out more electricity.
The more charges I take from Caleb, the more wildfire swirls around us. The skin wards circle the car—containing the heat and light and power. I concentrate and the wards reach for my skin like magnets.
Even with the fires of hell burning inside me, it burns. I’m immune to heat and light and flame but this shit hurts me.
The car shrieks beneath the pressure of my contracting skin wards. Then Caleb shrieks as the space within becomes less. He unloads, a last effort to stop the compression. It’s too late though.
He’s channeling too much energy to stay corporeal. He’s just a mass of energy clinging to the outlines of what used to be his body. He screams once more, electricity vibrating between vocal cords that aren’t there anymore.
When he surges, the energy consumes all the matter left of the car but doesn’t pierce the imploding cage my skin wards create and I’m too energy saturated to be harmed, physically. I grit my teeth as his energy pushes against the wards and clench as the circle of force rolls forward.
Head over feet and side over side, I stretch like a starfish. The action feels like control.
Control is a lie.
I take a deep breath and inhale the energy down and draw the wards closer to my skin. I quick sip the electricity that used to be matter. My car. Caleb.
Every square inch of my body blazes in pain and power. I glow like a sunrise against the night. My joints ache against bending like they’re filled with fluid instead of electricity. My cells contain more power than I’ve ever wanted to command. Father would be proud.
I look back at the stretch of asphalt, bubbling where my skin wards touched. There’s no other sign of an averted terrorist attack. No sign of Caleb. No remnant of my car. My fucking car. My cell. My wallet. My clothes. My comfort. My bonus. They’re all gone.
The brothers always told me I’d get used to the excruciating pain of teleportation if I teleported more often. I hoped having so much power on hand would make teleportation easier. And it was easier to gear up, but the pain’s worse than I remember.
I just want to be home. I’m not thinking about the church, the people inside or out. I’m not thinking about the Accords or bystanders. I’m thinking about being home.
And I’m thinking about what he said. You don’t belong here. Static lone wolves run into theaters and churches and schools all the time, to further their military grade assault rifle agendas. But they come from wolf packs in chat rooms, echo chambers offering confirmation biases.
This Folk Mage channeled a whole-ass coven. They were willing to die for what they believed. I guess they did, even if he didn’t accomplish the goal.
That’s why I called you.
“Mr. Bilal, that’s one hell of a story,” Inspector Burgess says, his manicured fingers flick sigils into the air. Green light springs from his delicate runes. His magic travels in straight lines and concentric lines, geometry in motion. Contained, regimented. I bristle against the use of Classical Magic in my crib. “It pleases me that you reported this alleged breach of the Accords of Secrecy. We can’t have the Static community learning about the existence of the Magical World, can we?”
“That’s what I was thinking but I stopped the breach. And I lost everything doing it,” I say, gesturing to my body, which finally cooled off but hasn’t reached my natural, caramel color.
“Your account is only a claim until the forensic retrocognizants verify your version of events, the espers observe and alter bystander memories, and the investigative augurs generate a profile on this,” he looks down to his notes, “Caleb, you said?” It’s not a question, not really. “Assuming we find no further fault on your part, you can expect a settlement check in as few as nine weeks,” he says, his voice cheery.
“’Further fault on your part’?” I ask. “This is LA. I need my car to get around and to work.”
“Maybe you should rethink fraternizing with alleged terrorists, Mr. Bilal,” Inspector Burgess says with a straight face while gesturing, repositioning the glyphs in several sequences. His work is more important than acknowledging the devastation he wreaks on my life.
“I drive rideshare. I was in my car when trouble got in,” I say, lost. “Isn’t there a reward or something for stopping Statics from seeing big magic?”
“You admitted to abetting a terrorist attack,” Burgess says, removing a notebook from his jacket pocket, laying it open in his palm. “And Statics did, indeed, see you and your magicks.” He watches the book flap its cover like leather bat wings, chasing the glyphs floating above their heads, eating them like a predatory bird chasing butterflies. “Do you really believe that warrants a reward?”
“Why would I tell on myself if I was in on it?” I see a flame flicker on the back of my right hand and take a deep breath. It took me three hours to stop glowing and I can’t start over. It’s already gonna be three hours before I can leave the house and I’m hungry. I look back at the inspector. “There was a whole coven channeling a Great Flood level thunderstorm through him!”
“Why do you insist on the involvement of a coven?” The notebook alights onto Burgess’s hand, fatter than it was upon take-off. Too tired to fly farther after consuming so many glyphs.
“Because someone with Inherent Magic wouldn’t have died from channeling that much magic. Someone with Classical Craft wouldn’t have tried something so dangerous. No Folk Mage could pull down that kind of power without collaboration. It was a coven,” I say, flustered. “I heard them.”
“That’s a big claim coming from someone like you,” he says. “Aren’t you directly related to a key figure in an Inherent Magic terrorist group?”
“My father’s choices aren’t mine.”
“And your brothers’?” he asks as if condescending to a toddler.
“I’m a grad student, man! A rideshare driver. I pay rent. Utilities. Taxes. Do I look like I’m launching an assault against the Parliament of the Craft?” I demand.
He looks at me. Pitying? Curious?
“What?” I ask. His smirk widens into a smile. “What is your problem, man?”
“My problem is you, a drain on resources.”
“Resources? You’re acting like I’m not up to date on my craft insurance.”
“What would you expect, Mr. Bilal?”
“I expect you to stop accusing me of a crime I prevented. I expect you to acknowledge the personal cost I paid to make your job easier. And I expect you to cut a check for my losses before I’m evicted from my apartment.”
Inspector Burgess’ smile drips with malice. “Thank you for your concern and contribution, Mr. Bilal.” He turns and uses an iridescent stick of chalk to draw the outline of a door on my decorative fireplace. He chants something and does some hand gestures. More Classical Magic. He turns to me as a door grits open into my living room, backlighting him. “The rest is above my paygrade,” he says before disappearing into the door.
The fireplace door slams shut, and the seams seal. The portal light fades.
I’m alone in my apartment. Seething.
Literally seething.
I look around my studio. I didn’t have much but it was mine. Now I have less and I’m at risk of losing more. What’s more than everything?
I dial the number by rote. Besides mine, it’s the only one I know by heart. Thank God I got a landline.
A woman answers. “Hello.”
“Hey, can I speak to Mikai?” I ask.
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“Tell him it’s Ahmad. His brother, Ahmad.” The line goes silent and I wonder if she hung up. I wonder if Mikai will take my call when I hear a rustle on the other end.
“Hello? Ahmad?”
“Hey, big bro. How you doing?”
“Negro, I haven’t heard from you in literal years. Try again.” He sounds like Morgan Freeman narrating God if God grew up in Baltimore.
“I need some help, Mikai.”
“I figured. You know my hands are tied. I can’t help you unless—“
“Tell him ... I need help. I need him.”
“You know damn well his kind of help comes with strings.”
“I know. I’m not asking for easy.”
“Why now, Ahmad?”
“Because doing right don’t mean nothing if all anyone sees when they look at you is wrong.”
There’s a long pause on the line before Mikai takes in a long draught of air. “Didn’t Father tell you that years ago?”
“It meant nothing until wrong looked me in the face and told me it was right,” I say. “And if that’s right, I can’t be.”
Originally published in FIYAH Magazine, Issue #14, 2020
