ф Hexed ф [Part 1]

     Lena’s eyes flared with anger, and she scanned the bar left to right. Ben was nowhere to be seen—at least not from where she stood at. Of course he’d choose to come here after their argument: crowds eased his pain. In those crowds he could find girls who took his pain away, and not because he was a natural-born Casanova, but because he had already been drunk before coming here.

     Drunk Ben does stupid things.

     Drunk Ben knocks on his ex-girlfriend’s door after fucking a cheap prostitute he found on his way home—‘I didn’t even know what I was doing, Jenna…forgive me’. Drunk Ben hits people when they provoke him at bars. Drunk Ben takes his clothes off randomly just because ‘It was too hot, Lena, I swear’. Drunk Ben tries to drink his sorrows away with more alcohol and ends up passing out in the middle of nowhere—usually on our porch.

     He would do anything in his power to forget who he was.

     He wasn’t a kid anymore, though. It was unacceptable.

     Lena felt a thick, unknown hand getting pressed against her lower back, and she jumped. There was a guy staring back at her, his eyes red and his mouth wet with saliva. “Hey, gorgeous. Looking for someone?”

     Lena glared at him, and she would’ve turned him into a pig right there if there hadn’t been so many witnesses. She could handle that, too, but she also couldn’t afford wasting time. Getting Ben before he did something stupid was the priority. “Yes, my brother. So, if you’ll excuse me.”

     Lena tried her escape, moving past him, but the same hand restrained her once again. She was losing her patience. “I’m sure your brother is fine, baby. Come, let me get you a drink.” He tried to take her near the bar, but all he received in exchange were burnt marks on his fingers, a slip of smoke emerging from them, too. “The fuck!” His eyes widened. “Witch!”

     People looked their way, even the bartenders, and Lena let out an innocent giggle, tugging one of the black curls behind her ear. “I think you’ve had too much to drink,”—she glanced around, finding exactly what she’d been looking for in the first place—“and a bit too much Netflix, as well. Tune it down, sweetie.”

     The guy held his red hand with his good one, baffled, but she paid him no mind and walked straight toward the pool tables. Behind them, she found Drunk Ben—Drunker Ben, actually—sitting on the floor, slouching to his side.

     Ugh, twenty one years of knowing him and Lena still never got used to seeing him like this. She felt sick to her stomach. Who would want to see their brother half-conscious, who was probably on the floor because he fell down and couldn’t get his sad ass back up, and on the verge of puking with his mouth agape?

     Lena knelt down quickly, taking both his shoulders on her hands and looking around to make sure no one was really aware of their presence. They were in the bathroom in a matter of a split second, and she’d locked the door to ensure no undesired company joined them.

     The teleportation, however, would make him even more nauseous, so she acted quickly and guided his head over the toilet, hearing the vomit gushing out of his mouth almost instantly.

     “Go ahead,” she murmured softly, combing his thick, black curls. “Let it all out, buddy.”

     Almost ten full minutes of continuous vomiting later, she finally felt Ben’s breathing ease down, his body relaxing. “How did you…?” Ben managed.

     “I figured, you know,” she said, leaving his hair and reaching for some toilet paper. “You always come here after you get into a hardcore argument.”

     Ben sat back up, his droopy, green eyes meeting mine. She used the toilet paper scraps to wipe away some of the vomit from his mouth, and his body followed her movement. He was weak; he couldn’t even hold himself straight. “I didn’t mean what I said,” he slurred. “I’m sorry, Lena.”

     She caught him before he fell sideways, ending up with his head in the middle of her breasts. Well, this would be hard to explain if anyone walked in right now. Lena would’ve considered using magic to fix it, un-drunk him, but she knew damn well the risks of spells in a drunken conjurer.

     Adding magic to him right now would be like giving a hurricane more wind.

     Instead, she carefully draped his arm around her shoulder and stood up. He was built, but lean enough for her not to struggle as much when she accommodated his weight on her. When she knew the grip was tight enough, she pictured the alleyway outside the bar and focused.

     Cold air slammed against her cheek soon enough, and she opened her eyes to trashcans and wet pavement instead of a puke-clogged toilet and dirty sinks. Her car was parked just about five meters away. Truth be told, the smell of seven-days-old trash and rat feces was way better than Drunk Ben’s futile vomit and someone else’s horrible episode of diarrhea.

       Disgusting, yes.

     Getting Ben into the car hadn’t been as easy as she would have wanted. He resisted at first, stubbornly insisting that they had to talk there, solve things now instead of later, but thankfully—and she did mean the word thankfully in its entirety—he’d passed out in the middle of his third attempt on getting out of the car.

     Saving herself another effort, with a quick sway of hand, she saw the seatbelt swiftly securing her brother in place and closed the door.

     “All of this because you wanted to tell her,” she murmured, sighing, but then a sense of numbness took over her tongue. Red flags flashed in her mind. Lena knew that heavy feeling taking over her body all-too-well. Dark magic.

     She wasn’t alone.

     Panicking, she looked around, her vision suddenly swimming, finding nothing but the dark corners all around. She resisted the urge of letting go, though. She had to…sleep? No, fight. Fight the urge of…sleep. God, the word felt so smooth, it wandered around her mind like a beautiful, calm, and comfortable cloud.

     It’s like she was now so…tired.

     She wavered for a moment, gathering strength again and pushing the thoughts away. No, she wouldn’t let whoever was doing this to her win, but her powers were so faint now. Like they’d gone to…sleep.

     Oh, Lena, aren’t you tired? She was. Yes. “Maybe I should…” she mumbled, giving a couple of steps before tripping. Two arms cradled her before she hit the floor, nestling her. Like a mother carrying her child. They felt so comforting, so warm, so strong.

     “Yeah, Lena love, maybe you should sleep,” were the last words she registered before giving in to that hypnotic slumber that so wanted to claim her.

†††