I didn’t know what to think or feel, but I did know that I needed a drink and didn’t care how far away from noon it was. The cashier at the grocery store tried to look like she wasn’t judging me, but it was pretty obvious she was. I looked rough around the edges and was paying for the cheapest beer I could find with money mostly pulled out from between the couch cushions.

With a beer in hand, I pulled out the copied pages I had been avoiding from the now empty bookcase and set to trying to decipher the flowery cursive. I hadn’t written in cursive since third grade and I certainly didn’t know anyone that still used it, so for all I knew, most of the document was written in a totally different language. I poured over the crude drawings instead, the depictions of a man casting spells drawn little better than a stick figure. The fact that Alan’s grandfather wasn’t a marvelous artist made the document seem all the more real, only in movies does the old book of magic look professionally illustrated.

A few beers in, I was making a little progress on the text. I had started transcribing the text onto a new piece of paper as soon as I felt certain that I could make out a word. Eventually whole sentences emerged and I was able to read what the first three pages probably said. The hours had flown by, the sun had long began its descent towards the horizon and I was having to strain to read the pages. I stood and stretched, ready to turn on the light and work on when the flashing LED on my phone caught my eye. At some point during the translation marathon Daniel had texted me if wanted to go out with him that night. I had promised myself that I would try to be more of a normal person and less of a creepy shut-in.

“Sure, have a place in mind?” I replied to him and went to get dressed in something presentable to the public. By the time I was finished changing, I had a reply.

“House party, be there in 10.”

I hated parties. In a bar I could at least pick a dark corner and avoid any and all social pressure, but parties forced people to try to figure out who you knew to get you in. People also seemed to lose a little bit of their sense of personal space at parties, people were willing to press together five or six to a couch and that’s just not my style.

On the way there, Daniel explained that the party was being thrown as a beginning of finals kegger by some girl he met in class. No doubt he had more invited himself than been invited, he had never mentioned the girl before. He knew how to definitely get in though, his truck bed held several full kegs.

“Try not to be weird.” Daniel said while I helped him unload.

“What am I even supposed to say to that?”

“Don’t need to say anything, just don’t be weird. There should be a lot of chicks here and even if you don’t care about that, I do.”

I stood there confused for a moment, if he was taking me somewhere, he usually accepted that I might end up being a little awkward or weird so it felt a little out of place; then it dawned on me where we were, a section of town colloquially known as “sorority row.”

“It’s a sorority party.” I said, shocked that I hadn’t put the pieces together.

Daniel grinned widely. “What gave it away, the giant greek letters?” He gestured to the giant, concrete letters in front of the house that I had somehow managed to completely overlook. “Yeah, it’s a sorority party and we’re going to be the only non-frat guys here, so don’t screw this up for me.”

“How did you get an invite then?”

“I didn’t, but no one kicks out the guy who brings the booze.” We finished unloading the kegs, then began wheeling them one by one to the front door, cheers erupted as the arriving partygoers saw what we were doing. “See? They don’t care who we are.” Daniel was certainly correct, we were welcomed like heroes and allowed to party with them without a second thought.

The party was definitely not my kind of scene, there was a lot of questionably-aged college girls, loud music, people trying to drink each other under the table, and a distinct lack of food. It was like they were daring each other to get alcohol poisoning. I was more of the opinion that the only good parties are dinner parties, there had to be an abundance of food or the crushing pressure of social interaction was too much.

I managed to find a small tray of cheese and crackers and clung to it in a corner. I tried to avoid any and all eye contact, which I tended to be pretty good at. At these kinds of parties, my main focus ended up keeping Daniel out of trouble, which in hindsight, was probably the main reason he dragged me to them. Much like the night at the biker bar, it was common for these nights to end with me dragging him out of the house while apologizing profusely and hoping that if they did end up calling the cops, that they left my name out of it.

As if on a schedule, Daniel appeared, hanging all over a girl who looked a smidge too old to be at the party.

“This is Martha,” he screamed over the music, “she’s the house mother.”

“House mother?” I screamed back.

“I take care of the girl’s emotional needs and act as kind of a parent figure for them.” Even over the music I could hear her deep, scratchy voice, the voice of someone who had intimate knowledge of the gradual increase of tobacco taxes over time. “I’m more of like a cool house mother though!” She let out a dry, raspy laugh and downed the rest of the drink in her hand. Daniel would find the one cougar at the sorority party.

“Don’t wait up!” Daniel screamed with a wink, subtlety was not a strong point. That was our agreed upon signal that I could drive his truck home and pick him up in the morning when he was sober enough to text me.

More than glad to be able to leave, I polished off the rest of the snack tray and went out to the truck. The world felt much more muffled outside of the house, I was pretty certain that they were all going to go deaf before they graduated. The party had spilled out onto the lawn and I had to step over a frat guy already passed out on the lawn while his friends played an impromptu game of checkers on his back using beer bottle caps.

I nervously pulled myself into the driver’s seat. Ignoring the fact that I was not a very adept driver, the image of very slowly driving away from the crazed redneck ran through my head. At least this time I wasn’t being chased off and afraid for my life, but something about remembering the whole situation and ensuing nightmare still gave me the heebie-jeebies. It probably was a good idea that I had started counseling.

I managed to get home without burning out the transmission and settled in to my much desired quiet evening. I opened up the copies to where I had left off and began translating once more, focusing intently. My eyes burned by the end, but after a lot puzzle-work and educated guesses, the document was complete. I jumped when my phone beeped loudly just a few seconds after finishing, it was a text from Daniel.

“Come get me.”

“You’re done already?” I replied.

“Dude, what are you trying to say? It’s been hours.”

My brain finally caught up to the situation, it was already morning and I had managed to get lost in the process. I knew there was little chance of me not being obsessive over this.

I went to pick up Daniel, who walked stiffly, and a little bow-legged, out the front door of the sorority house. His hair was a mess, his cheeks were covered in lipstick, and I was pretty sure that he hadn’t arrived in that outfit.

“Had a good time?” I asked after he managed to weakly pull himself into the passenger’s seat.

He grunted in response, pulling down the visor to shield his eyes from the morning light. “Just drive, Martha parties hard for a grandma.”

Feeling a little sick at the potential mental images, I kept my mouth shut out of fear that he would elaborate. He groaned and winced at every bump in the road and made me pull over once so he could gracefully fall out of the truck and puke in some poor person’s yard.

“Thanks.” he managed as I pulled up to my building. It was pretty obvious that he wasn’t going to be able to drive home. “I’m going to just take a quick nap on your couch.”

I helped drag him to the elevator and lean against the rail so that he wouldn’t puke on the way up. I got him on the couch and tucked in with a blanket, he passed out as soon as his head hit the cushion. Feeling the effects of my own sleepless night, I passed out on my bed, not even bothering with a sleeping pill or method for lucid dreaming.

Despite the lack of preparation, I fell directly into a lucid dream. I found myself in my bedroom, alert, the room still as I had left it. My body still lay in the bed, the chest not rising or falling. A wave of panic washed over me as I considered the possibility that I had died and that this was the afterlife instead. I reached out and touched my arm, which felt solid and warm, at least I hadn’t gone deathly cold yet. As a test, I stopped breathing and kept my attention on my sleeping face. After about thirty seconds, my sleeping form began to stir and struggle, my mouth fell open and began to gasp. I felt the world around swirl as it seemed to begin to melt away, but the fading stopped as soon as I gasped in a deep breath. Somehow my dream and real self were still connected, I didn’t want to think about the implications of what that could mean if lucid nightmares were a thing.

I ventured out of my bedroom and found Daniel still on my couch, snoring loudly. I reached out to touch his arm and found that it went right through to the fabric beneath him, it was nothing like my body in the other room. I did the only thing I could do with such an opportunity, I willed the clothing he was wearing to become a frilly, lavender ball gown complete with diamond encrusted lace and sliver stilettoes. It was somewhat surprising that the dress laid over him and didn’t just fall through, yet somehow I knew that it would work. It seemed that I had an innate instinct about how the dream world worked, except for how I would interact with it.

In a stroke of genius, I pulled a blank piece of paper out of my severely neglected pile of textbooks and school supplies and laid it over his face, it fluttered with his snoring, but I was able to balance it just right. I willed up an image of my grandmother’s holiday makeup, the style she reserved for only family get-togethers. While I would never say it to her face, it always looked like she put on makeup with a kitchen sponge and without her glasses. The paper shimmered and melted onto Daniel’s face, leaving a perfect recreation of grandma’s makeup look last Thanksgiving, complete with the false eyelashes barely holding on for dear life. Finally, I willed one of my textbooks to turn into an instant camera, snapped a picture of the sleeping prom queen and tossed it on top of his chest. I didn’t care if he would never see it, it made me feel better.

I ventured out of my building, not encountering anyone on the way down in the elevator. It seemed strange that everything was so quiet, even the street outside the building was silent with every car parked. I listened closely, but could not hear any traffic sounds or lawnmowers in the distance either. It was like one of those old horror movies were someone accidently stops time forever, only there was no one standing statue-still in the streets. I walked across the street and pulled open the door to a little coffee shop that I had meant to check out years ago. The shop was unlocked, but empty, though I could make out the distinct, sharp smell of darkly roasted coffee as if from far away. Standing in the middle of the shop, it felt like the air was vibrating gently with small pulses of more intense vibration here and there. Moving around seemed to change the vibrations, some areas feeling almost like a small earthquake. I followed the most intense of the feelings through the shop to in front of the register, there the air seemed to quiver in front of my eyes from the movement. As I was stepping behind the counter, I jerked awake in my bed, gasping for breath. Daniel was standing over me, looking pissed off.

“The fuck is this?” Daniel demanded, holding up a very well composed picture of him as I had dressed him up in my dream. I blinked heavily, expecting to slip back into the dream. “Oh no no, you’re not going back to sleep until you explain yourself.” He pulled on my arms and forced me to sit up.

“I, uh, don’t know what happened.” I said, unconvinced myself of what I had managed to do.

“You want me to believe that I just spontaneously dressed myself like this in clothing I have never seen in my life, took a selfie, then undressed, cleaned up, and fell asleep again?”

“You know how you get when you drink.”

He paused, lips pressed together in annoyance, but his brow furrowed in thought. “Okay, that is somewhat of a good point, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t quite that gone last night. Something similar has happened once, admittedly, but where would I have gotten a dress this elaborate in your apartment?” He raised his eyebrow suggestively at me.

“You really wouldn’t believe me even if I did explain,” I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, “trust me this once.”

“I’m not going to leave this alone. If you managed to pull this off, this was the smoothest thing you’ve ever done. I know I was gone, but you managed to dress me, put make up on, undress, and wash the makeup off without waking me up at all. This knowledge is important to all my future pranks.”

“Again, you won’t believe me,” I insisted. His response was to put his hands on the top of my head.

“You’re not getting up until you agree to tell me. Yes, I am this childish.”

I had no doubt that he was. I deeply sighed and nodded, then swung my legs over the side of my bed. “Fine, but I’ll need coffee. You probably do too.”

I got dressed and we went down to the same coffee shop I had just visited in my dream. I took the same route, only this time we encountered several other tenants in the hallway and elevator and there were plenty of cars driving up and down the road. The shop itself had several people at tables enjoying their drinking and lined up waiting to put in their orders. There was a gentle hum in the air from their conversations and the coffee brewing equipment, but there certainly wasn’t the same kind of vibrations.

Coffees in hand, we found a small table a bit away from everyone else by the front window. Daniel took a large gulp of his coffee and plopped the picture out on the table. I picked it up and took a closer look at it, it was certainly the picture I took in my dream. My stomach rumbled sickly at it, but my heart fluttered with new possibilities.

“You’re not going to believe any way that I put this,” I began, “so, I’ll be blunt and to the point. I started lucid dreaming, turned your dream clothing into this dress, a piece of paper into the makeup, and a textbook into the camera that took this picture. I guess this picture kind of proves that magic is real.”

Daniel scrunched his eyes together, and rubbed them with his hand. “Really, this is what we’re doing now? Have you been talking to that long-haired weirdo again? What was his name?”

“Alan.”

“Yeah, him, guess you’ve had him over for tea and snuggles?”

“Well we kind of hung out while lucid dreaming then he came over and showed me some magic to prove it was real.”

“That what the kids are calling it these days?” he dryly replied.

“I’m being serious, this all happened. I’m starting to seriously think this whole magic thing is very real.”

“I’m going to go with the belief that he’s drugged you. I mean, he did roofie me the very first time we met, not exactly someone very trustworthy. I’m having a hard time thinking of a shadier thing he could have done.” We sat in silence, sipping our coffee and awkwardly staring at the photo. “Though, I still can’t think of a logical way you got this photo,” he finally admitted.

“I can prove it, maybe. What if I we set up a camera and I do something like this again. That way you can see that I’m not making it up or drugged.”

“Hmm,” he swirled what was left of his coffee before downing it, “sure, probably for the best that we figure out how he’s drugging you into believing all of this before he does some permanent damage. Good job selecting coffee though, now we won’t be able to set this up until later.”

“Good point, guess come by tonight and we’ll just have a sleep over.”

“I see where you hope this is going. I told you a long time ago that I like you as a friend, but I just can’t be in a long term relationship, I need to play the field, test the options and that’s just not fair to someone like you.” He gently caressed my hand, then gave it a sympathetic pat. It was the only affection I had felt in a long time and he knew it. “Maybe one day. Probably not, but it feels cruel to crush your dreams.”

“I absolutely hate you sometimes.”

“Good, let that grow and maybe your heartbreak will fade.”

We parted ways after finishing up our coffee, agreeing to meet back up at my apartment that evening. I was excited at the idea of having some very compelling evidence for my new found abilities and it inspired me to go right back to studying the magic pages. I settled in and began reading what I had transcribed, it started out with the same disbelief I was feeling. He had written about how unlikely it seemed magic to be and how he had been advised to record his experience as they may help later on discern just how magic worked for him. He suggested that my first action be to pick out a journal or other notebook that I really liked to make a sort of spell book and another one to journal my experiences. I should use the journal to record everything, then the spell book to specifically record what works and finer details I may have neglected in the journal. I wished that I could see his spell book to get a full picture of what he meant, I made a mental note to ask Alan about it later.

I didn’t know if there was a significance or importance to if what I chose to write in would be considered fancy, but I wasn’t someone who typically cared about that sort of thing, so I chose a random black spiral notebook and wrote “Magic Stuff” on the cover with a silver marker. On the first few pages, I recounted how I had first learned about magic and everything potentially magic related I could think of so far. I was pretty surprised how easy it was to fill up page after page, it seemed like when I would remember small detail, the act of writing it would spur me to remember at least one more. It seemed pretty obvious after the first five or so pages why he would consider this part essential, I was certain that while I still had a great deal of details in my memory of the events, I probably had already lost many more.

After I had completed that, I read on about how to start considering what your first spell should be. He wrote that it was important to go with the first idea that pops into your mind, as that is likely going to yield the best success. While it might be tempting to heavily consider your options and wait to figure out the thing you want most, it is not the freshest and ripest idea. I didn’t know just how much more difficult it would make the process, but I had a feeling that taking into accounts Alan’s insistence that magic was extremely difficult in general, I would not want to find out. The first idea that stuck in my mind was Alan telling me about the first time he had lit a candle from across the room. I don’t know if he had inadvertently planted the idea, but I had to run with it, plus it would be a pretty cool thing to show off. To anyone who believed in magic, it was slightly flashy, but to anyone else it would seem like an interesting parlor trick, maybe just plausible enough to have them guessing at how I managed it.

There was no other real instruction on how to complete the task, the pages merely said to just do what felt right and record everything. It seemed way too vague to be considered a guidebook on magic, but after the experiences with lucid dreaming, I was willing to give it some trust. I set up one of the dusty candles my mom had gifted me when I first moved into my apartment as decoration on the coffee table in front of me and took a moment to make a quick sketch of the candle on the table along with noting the date and time of day. My sketching abilities certainly matched those of the original author, so I had that going for me.

My first instinct was to visualize what the candle would look like lit and focused on that image. I tried to imagine what it would look like if I lit it, then if it spontaneously lit on its own. With my eyes closed, nothing seemed to happen, so I tried it with them open as well. Neither method seemed to do anything to the actual candle in front of me. I tried various positions sitting and standing around the candle, different magical sounding spell words, and even touching it and imagining that my fingers were coming extraordinarily hot, but nothing seemed to do anything. The text did tell me that it would take a while to figure things out, but since lucid dreaming had come easily to me, I was hoping that everything else would be as easy as well.

I had given up and already recorded everything by the time Daniel showed up for the night. He came complete with bunny slippers and his own pillow. I had made sure to hide my journal and put the candle back in its place before he arrived, I didn’t need to hear it.

“What no pizza? Every sleepover needs a pizza?” He complained while fluffing his pillow on the couch.

“I’m not buying you pizza every time you come over, you’re getting spoiled.”

He scoffed and shooed me away. “You sound like my dad and he’s lame. Just get to bed so I can set up this camera in a place where you can’t see it and we can see just how crafty or drugged you are.”

I took a hot shower to relax me for sleep while he prepped the camera, then crawled into bed. I felt excited to get proof of what was happening. I laid with my eyes open as I drifted off, not wanting any chance to miss being lucid. It was tough through the excitement, but eventually I felt myself muttering the same chant as before and slipped off into the dream world.