Witching hour
Taglist: @orchidscript @ashintheairlikesnow @vickytokio
‘Ping, ping, ping’, penetrated the silence of Ilya’s paltry student apartment. ‘Ping, ping, ping’.
Thirteen times.
Ping, ping, ping.
Until the email icon in the upper left corner of his desktop blinked an angry erratic red, partly obscuring the photo of Susie the foal, merrily munching away at a carrot. He’d picked it as his laptop background in the third month of his new ‘pony farm dream life’ and couldn’t, for the life of him, bring himself to replace it with something more befitting of ‘a moody wizard looking like he’d got a lemon permanently stuck in his throat’ as Matthew had oh so eloquently put it.
God, that guy had really rubbed off on him, Ilya thought with a snort. The timer on his laptop announced the nearing witching hour and he rose from his softly creaking chair with a yawn. Stretching out tired arms. Joints popped back into place with a satisfying plop on Ilyas way to the kitchenette.
He was in desperate need of a valerian tea if he’d wanted to get a modicum of sleep before the beginning of tomorrow's introduction week. And not lose his head over whatever someone would write him thirteen messages about in the dead of night.
It was a tiny thing, the kitchenette, built into the small hallway connecting his and his potential future flatmates room. A two burner stove sat atop a tiny oven, wedged into the corner across from the still unoccupied room. Jammed between the oven and a sink was the pitiful excuse of a chipboard countertop, no amount of marbled laminate could possibly conceal. But it housed the electric kettle, probably forgotten by some hurriedly moving student, just fine and had enough space under it for a cabinet.
A cabinet with a small single drawer. A rattling, clanking single drawer.
Ilya froze, arm halfway outstretched to grab the kettle.
Something scurried around in there, without a doubt. Cutlery clattered and cheap wood creaked under the weight of tiny steps.
Please don't let this be a kikimory infestation. Vexing vermin like that was the last thing he needed. Last time he'd lived near a kikimory nest he'd been beaten black and blue for all their high jinks.
Ilya`s hands grew clammy as his heart rate picked up. His eyes flitted to the empty room. To it`s door, slightly ajar. There was nothing but darkness in there. Darkness and the standard issue single bed and desk. The provided wardrobe, a perfect twin to the one in his own room and so large his few possessions seemed lost in it.
The drawer still rattled.
`C`mon. Calm down. Just deal with it now and be done with it.´
He quietly, very quietly, opened the other cabinet above the sink and fished his sturdy shopping bag out of it. After a second thought he grabbed the pancake flipper too and peeled one glove from his slightly sweaty hand, stuffed it into his pants pocket.
Sucking in a breath Ilya steeled himself for what was to come and janked the drawer open with two fingers. Shopping bag ready and flipper branded like a weapon. Clutched tight in five soot black fingers. He felt his curse eat into the metal, cut and bite away at the invisible fabric of reality interwoven with all its atoms until they were torn out, separated from the universe's very essence.
From within the drawer, two yellow eyes stared up at him. Blown comically wide in the creature's green scaly face. It clutched a shining silver teaspoon in its paws. Thin body frozen in place.
„A dragon.“ Ilya breathed, his own eyes as round as the creatures. The pancake flipper slipped from his grasp and floated away till it hit the ceiling with a metallic clank.
The sound startled the scaly spoon thief into action. He spit a tiny flame at Ilya’s face. Ilya threw his hand up. Eyes screwed shut. His heart raced and heat tickled the tip of his nose. Licked at naked fingers. But the fire sizzled out, eradicated from existence by his curse before it could burn skin.
Blinking, Ilya got a last glimpse of the dragon's tail as he vanished into a gap so narrow only a very thin ant should have fit through it. The spoon he’d somehow taken with him.
“Time for wooden spoons.” Ilya sighed into the apartment's emptiness. “And knives. And- “ His eyes wandered up to the ceiling. To the silver pancake flipper still scraping against it. Right. Better get than down there.
He pulled off the other glove with his teeth and brought his fingertips together, so that all of them touched, pinkys to thumbs.
A cool electric current bit into them, burrowed deep into his bones, up his arms. A taste of what his curse did to the living, as his powers canceled themself out. Icy sweat dampened Ilya’s neck. He shivered. The flipper reconnected with the world and gravity grabbed it, yanked it to the ground with a loud clatter that made Ilya flinch, despite anticipating it. He pulled his gloves back on, a little awkwardly as not to touch them with all five fingers at once before he tossed the flipper back into the cupboard and filled the electric kettle.
The shivers continued even after his tea was poured.
Sighing, a blanket tightly wrapped around bony shoulders, Ilya settled back at his plain, landlord-provided desk and opened his mailbox.
Thirteen mails without subject line or sender address. Was it even possible to suppress the sender?
Stomach heavy with apprehension, Ilya let the cursor hover over the top one and clicked. The letters, glaring black and sharp edged from the blinding white screen bored into him like a stray bullet fired from the shadows. Only that stray bullets hit you once and not thirteen times. Who, or whatever sent him these wanted to make sure that he, Ilya Balakin got their message.
Death shadows Tamara Rheinfeld!