When something is broken, I have an unquenchable urge to fix it or, at the very least, be the catalyst that pulls together other resources to fix it. For the most part, if it’s something that affects any aspect of my day’s productivity, whether it’s big or small, and it affects my overall efficiency, I have to eliminate it. It becomes a task that’s on my to-do list, and I have to check it off. If it’s an issue caused by external contributions, I’m very content in my designated role of trying to fix it. If it’s an issue caused by internal contributions, I am very challenged when it comes to self-diagnosis.

I am my own worst enemy. As much effort as I put into diagnosing the faults in others, I cannot do the same for myself. There is effort, but I can never identify the main causality. Typically, I would dwell on a causality for a day, then decide that something else is the causality to that causality and dwell on that one for the next 24 hours. That pattern would continue until I’d finally confront the issue and talk to someone else to get their opinion. Sometimes, just in the voicing of what was broken, my brain would piece it together.

There are occasions though, when the puzzle will be too complex and by thinking and dwelling on it, I’ll lose myself in a cesspool of anxiety and depression; ultimately forgetting what it was I was obsessing over after several drinks.

Due to the recent circumstances, I told myself I wouldn’t drink and I haven’t, mainly because I wanted the stress and the anxiety to keep me going as I puzzled over the complicated logic of Veronica’s appearance and Eleanor’s and mine doppelganger.

One day, I would believe that time was folded upon itself.

Then the next, I would think that I was crazy and just imagining things.

Followed the next day by a conversation with myself about the multiverse and that I’ve somehow worn down the fabric of spacetime to see through it.

Then, I would convince myself that I was insane.

Part of the challenge was that I didn’t talk to anyone. I kept my computer off to avoid the temptation of additional theories entering my already-addled brain. There were good resources out there with experiences of their own to compare against mine, but mine was my own experience and unique only to me. No one else was there to participate in those experiences with me. I kept my phone off for the same reason, except for two pre-arranged times throughout the day that I would call my parents and Eleanor. I had made the excuse that I was working a lot of hours on a big project with a lot of meetings and that’s why I could only call twice a day. They accepted that reasoning without any resistance. I always wondered how much they knew I lied, and if they knew I was just being a bad parent.

My mind is a complicated hell to be present in. There is no sense of control to my thoughts or actions. Since Eleanor has gone to live with my parents, this has felt like a procession of days; marching to the emotionless rhythm of nothingness. On the worst days, it feels like a waking nightmare. I feel like I’m going mad trying to process the fact that Veronica is never coming back and what I felt I saw.

The fact that I’ve resigned myself to saying “What I felt I saw” is an indicator that I’ve begun to doubt what I saw. Besides the scientific theories that seemed to support what I had experienced, it was bordering on fantasy and magic.

While I was in high school, my first real job was working at a local grocery store. I started as a bagger, sacking groceries for customers, limited to a vocabulary of “Paper or plastic?” and “Have a great day.” I was very eager in my job and started displaying those organizational skills that would carry me through college and into the workforce. Good baggers didn’t just put things in bags; they found the pattern in ordinary purchases and organized them in a way where crushable items didn’t get crushed and where space was maximized, while making sure the bag was never too heavy for its contents or the customer.

I was soon promoted to cashier, where the movement of items across the scanner-scale and the keying in of items became my next challenge in efficiency. If you scanned too fast, every item wouldn’t get caught. Likewise, if you had a bagger that wasn’t as good as you and you scanned items in a random order, you would be left bagging groceries at the end due to their inefficiencies. But if you organized the items as you scanned them, sending the products down the conveyor belt in an orderly fashion to your assigned bagger, everyone wins.

During slow times, I liked staying busy. I would stock the non-grocery department, face shelves, ring up customers at the VHS rental counter, or return to bagging. We also had a grocery-loading service where I’d find myself most afternoons, loading cars and minivans with the customer’s purchased groceries, refusing tips because that was against our policy.

Typically we worked in pairs and for a couple weeks I was paired with a self-made albino.

I say “self-made” but he could have been an actual albino. Never having met a real-life albino, it was hard to tell. Self-made was my assumption because his hair was bleached white and he told me that he wore red contacts. He also carried a black marker in his pocket to darken his fingernails and touch-up the homemade tattoos hidden beneath his white buttoned up shirt.

His name was Drake and he was a self-professed Wiccan.

In between customer pickups he would tell me about his occultic dabblings in magick, which he insisted was spelled with a k. He told me of animal sacrifices and guardian summonings. He told me that his order’s priest had given him a special consecrated Air Dagger. When they had begun a guardian summonings on the first night of the six night ritual, a strong windstorm began out of nowhere in the middle of the incantation. On day five of the ritual, he came to work and during a break showed me a massive bruise across his collarbone. Drake told me that during the incantation the night before, he was struck by an unseen force that knocked his Air Dagger into the bushes. He was more upset about the dagger than the painful yellow and purplish bruise.

After that, I didn’t see Drake for a week.

When he came back I asked how the ritual ended. He smiled, telling me it was a success; that they had summoned a guardian.

I asked how he knew. Did it speak? Did it perform any parlor tricks?

“He spoke,” Drake told me. “‘I am Asmodeus,’ it said ‘and I shall be free. We shall conquer death and Hell together and the Earth shall be mine.’”

I asked for a new shift after that.

But even amidst all the creepiness and theatrics, the one thing that still resonated with me was how Drake viewed the magick that him and his goth clique were performing. He said that what we consider science now was considered magick 400 years ago. Even 100 years ago, there was still a strong belief in magick in civilized cultures. The people of Ireland, for example, still believed in changelings at the beginning of the twentieth century. Husbands killed their wives because they thought they were replaced by fairy folk, when in actuality they were probably experiencing postpartum depression.

Drake said that all intentional acts are acts of nature. Everyone, including myself—he was trying to recruit me at one point—had the ability to merge with the primordial flow in the universe and produce changes in their environment. All one had to do was to determine their path and follow it.

“Magick,” he said, “is the science of understanding yourself and once that self-discovery is made, that knowledge can be put into action. We are all microcosmic images of the universe and when we put our will into practice, focusing that energy on an intention, we are using the intention of the universe, because nothing can withstand the force of an indomitable will.”