In The Hour of The Moon, On The Day of Belzebuth, the Moon a Crescent:

While I sat at the cash register at the cafe, working my final shift before I would cross the threshold, my mind continued to dwell on tonight's ritual. Scrolling through the notes on my phone I had already double checked that the incantations and the sacraments would be done in the right order. I made sure I understood what every step in the process was supposed to do and represent. I had even gone through the trouble of making sure that the astrological influences would be right for the hour and the occasion.

Most of all I wondered how my lord would actually appear before me. To see one of the spirits in the flesh was rare still... Or was I just kidding myself about the whole thing anyways? Well, too late to back out now.

I was jolted from my dark daydreaming by Grant's face standing in front of the register. Right before I could open my dumbfounded mouth Rene swooped in and took charge of the situation.

"Oh, hey again! What can I do for ya?" She beamed.

"Uh, hey, my friend and I sitting over there just want the turkey sandwich and two lattes." He explained.

"Sure thing! Coming right up!" She announced.

Grant turned to return to his table. A grinning Rene slithered to my side and began hissing in my ear. "Come on! Now's your chance to get his number! Bring him the order and get his number!"

"I'd really rather not." I whined.

"Come on! What have you got to lose?"

"Peace of mind. Equilibrium. Dignity." I said.

A moment later, Kurt set the food out on the counter and filled with trepidation, moreso than even braving the woods, I brought the sandwiches and coffee to the table where Grant and his friend was sitting.

Then I noticed who he was sitting with. It was Ashley, one of my high school tormentors, the rich sneering bitch who would ridicule me every day when we were inevitably stuck together in class.

I swallowed my disappointment that the two of them were together. There was zero opening for me to make any kind of romantic intercession even if I hadn't been completely chicken shit. I sighed quietly to myself in dismal defeat and started to lay the dishes on the table, when the coffee tipped off of the side of the tray I was holding and spilled all across their table.

Ashley shrieked and bolted up from the table.

"Yikes!" Grant exclaimed.

"I'm sorry!" I cried, frantically bending down and dabbing napkins from the nearby booth onto the over the table, even though the tea had spilled and dripped onto her leather handbag.

Grant continued to sit at his side of the table which remained unsoiled. I turned my back to hide from him as I began soaking up the pooling coffee.

Ashley grunted and looked down on me as I cleaned. "Oh, aren't you that retarded girl who used to sit alone by the bleachers every day after school>"

I pretended not to hear her and continued to soak up the spill, but the insult opened deep old wounds.

"I heard she used to give handjobs out there to all the stoners." She said snickering to Grant.

None of that was true of course, but it still hurt to hear those things after all those years. Like a scratched record that will never stop turning over and over again.

I now fisted stacks of napkins and rushed to soak up the last of the spill as tears began to pool from my eyes. I grit my teeth in anger and anguish as I stood up.

"Sorry about that!" I lied as I stood up from the hastily dried table, turning and fleeing without looking back on the couple.

"Hey!" Rene called after me from the counter as I passed by her.

"I have to take out the garbage!" I called back. An utter fabrication, but I needed to escape.

I heaved the blivoted bag out from the trash can in the back of the cafe and into the dumpster that rested opposite side of the cafe's wall. I slumped down and crouched on the pavement. I tried to keep myself from tearing up at work, but I hadn't expected to have to relive more of my seemingly endless alienation. High school is like this prison you can never escape, like an identity assigned to you at the most vulnerable time in your life that assigns your status on the pecking order of this feudal hellscape.

Maybe I was kidding myself. About magic. About everything. Here I am mired in this stymied moment in history, my life decaying and eroding around me. There was nothing to do about it. I wasn't born into money, and I couldn't even find stability without grinding myself away, if that.

As I sat there crumpled up besides the trash my phone started to vibrate. It was my mom calling.

"Hey Mom, what's up?" I answered.

"Hi Honey. Well, the bank just called. Now they're after some documents that I don't seem to have at all, and I was wondering if maybe you could look for them with. It's some incidental parts of the deed, so maybe dad had them stored away with everything in his desk."

I sighed. "Yeah... Okay... I'll... I'll look through dad's things and try to find anything like that."

"I'm sorry to have to bother you with this... it just... it doesn't look good. I don't think we have what they're asking for. I don't think we're going to be able to get the refinance."

I sat there by the dumpster for a few seconds in silence. I took a deep breath and felt baked by the warmth of the midsummer sun and the heat of the sheet of metal I leaned against.

"Okay. I'll look for any papers that look useful in the old bedroom... If things don't change by the end of the week I'll pack my things and move in with you."

"I'm sorry, Honey." Mom said.

I hung up and expelled a weary whimper. I hugged my knees and buried my toes into the gravel, staring out at the row of gently swaying elder trees that lined the cafe parking lot while the cicadas hummed their August whine.

I was backed into a corner. There was no future. My past was nothing but an echoing loop of regret and mourning, and soon even my past would be taken away from me.

I looked to the back door of the cafe and thought about returning to work. Fuck it. Rene caused this mess, she could take care of the rest of my shift. I couldn't waste my time with this bullshit anymore. There was only one thing left to do.