Wizards

Right, I’m just going to write to get the words out of my head because I can’t think words inside my head right now. It’s just a tangled mess, like some kind of sticky wasp’s nest, papery and gloppy and stingy and buzzy all at the same time. I hurt everywhere, like the time I got that sunburn in Brighton, only it feels like the burned part is on the inside of my skin. I look at my skin and I know it’s not, but I close my eyes and I’m sure that it is, blackened and cracked and peeling. I get distracted and I don’t notice it anymore, and then my mind wanders back and it hurts so much I want to cry. The side of my face and down my right arm and on my back, especially. Where it looked at me.
 
Oh god.
 
No, got to think about something else.
 
XX XXX XXX XXXX XXX XXXX XX XX XXXX [several lines scratched out]
 
Shaw has had a rough time of it. Another one of those dust devil things tried to kill him, and might have succeeded if the Professor hadn’t happened upon him. He was a mess, the way I was yesterday after going to Dives’ “office”. Yesterday when I got to granddad’s, my stockings were torn and there was mud on my dress. I must have fallen somewhere along the way but it was a complete blur, and I don’t remember any of it. I think sometimes especially with this magic business, the mind just can’t take it and it shuts off. That’s how Shaw was. Just Not There.
 
He’s a little better now, and he was on top of things enough to save all our lives at the auction, when that guy had - what was it, some kind of bomb? By the time I got over there, he was covered with splatter from where Mallet had just pulped the guy. Now Shaw’s been in a lot of fights. He’s a scrapper and he knows how to fight dirty when he has to. I’ve seen him break a guy’s arm before in a fight, and I wouldn’t expect him to bat an eyelash at blood but...this was bad. Mallet does not play. It barely seemed like he even moved, but Shaw dove onto the guy and immobilized him and then STOMP and the side of the guy’s face was just gone. All of it right onto Shaw. The room was dark, but… you could just tell. Mallet just straightened his tie and walked out, only stopping to scrape his boot on the doorjamb on the way out.
 
The whole thing was over before it started. We couldn’t have been there more than five minutes. And then off to the shop, the Pimander, and … who are we now, even? The Professor’s a wizard, wants to apprentice himself to Dives I reckon. There is something really off about him, and it’s creeping me right the hell out. Trying to open one of those suffocating dust devil letters, but not quite. Just light it up and be done with it! But no, he wants in with those society toffs at the Pimander so much, just so he can get at their books. And it’s not like me with books, or Ann or whatever - it’s a hunger with him. I guess everyone’s got their vices, and he doesn’t smoke or drink or gamble so far as I can tell. Got to have something that gets you out of bed in the morning, am I right? But something in his eyes, looking at that book. All those science types get weird about their research, not sleeping or eating anything, and I guess that’s what I’d written it off to in the past. I’m not going to get between him and his magic, though, because I know what’d win out every day and twice on Sundays.
 
And then there’s Ann, of course. Pretty sure she doesn’t like Dives any more than I do, but she still shook his hand and looked him in the eye, handing over the book. I was mostly looking at Shaw, just making sure he was OK - well that and I didn’t want to look at Dives either. Just out of the corner of my eye, though, seeing Ann smile that businessy smile of hers and take his arm, as he walked her off to talk to this person or that person, all the “right” people. The gracious smile fixed on her face as she laughed politely, and handed out her card to people. An hour before and she’s telling me she doesn’t trust him, saying things about accidents happen and all that….but once that cheque was in her hand, he was her good chum again. Never mind what I had told her about what he did, that didn’t matter.
 
I don’t think any of them believe me, but they didn’t see him -- or it. No waistcoat or shirt, bare as the day he was born from the waist up (and that’s a mercy), chanting and waving and being all wizardy. Talking to that XXXXXXXX [crossed out, scribbled out, the paper almost torn]. I can’t picture it in my head because every time I start to try I… I just can’t. I can’t think and I start to panic, and then I feel it start to burn….
 
Of course, I’m not burned. I know that, rationally. I make myself look at my skin, at my shoulder in the bathroom mirror, and the side of my face because… when I close my eyes and try to think about it, the burning comes back, like acid or fire and I can feel exactly where it looked at me. XX XX XXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXX X XXXX XXXX XXXX. [The last line is scribbled out violently in a different color ink.]