The Wand

The wand had passed through many hands since it had first been constructed, it was a remnant of a distant past, and a tool held in awe by those that could wield its power.

Elvin life-stones had been crushed and added together to form the power within the wand. A craftsman had hand carved the ancient (even then) tree branch to hold the dust, and so it had taken life, always seeking out those that could best use it.

Over the thousands of years of its existence it had started, and ended wars, saved and taken lives, altered for the benefit of its user the world around them, and to the detriment of those that tried to suppress its user! It was friend and companion and tool all rolled into one, now it is an extremely ancient source of power waiting to be unleashed again!

The wand could, if used correctly, spin worlds on their axis, destroying or creating life; it could be used for good or evil, its only concern that its master or mistress bid its interruption to the flow of life, and instructed its actions.

The wand was lost or hidden away a thousand years ago, locked in a box within a box, within and cave, within a structure, hidden and forgotten as best it could be, its power having been deemed to great a threat to the emerging civilisations.

Now it had returned, it hadn’t been found as such, but it had been relocated; now it sits in a dark basement with many other strange objects, its power unknown, but not for long! It had located its new mistress, and soon it would draw her to its hiding place, and show her the world it could offer. Soon the wand would be a force in modern times, held loosely in the hands of a young woman with a problem and some quite interesting fantasies!

* * * *

Sunday in the museum is normally quiet but we have a party of elderly art aficionados in, and I have been asked to act as surrogate mother to them all! I showed them around for nearly three hours and then managed to sneak off, what with my boyfriend doing a stock-take at his work, and me all alone now and un-encumbered with visitors, and in the museum where I work, I thought that I might as well get stuck into some of the older un-catalogued exhibits.

The basement is quite a spooky place at times, what with all the stuffed animals lurking around every corner, and the trays of insects just beyond that door, still what do I care my specialty is eastern Asiatic and African and Mexican/Toltec, but I have a personal interest in Mayan artefacts, and last week I felt sure that a stone box with a carved lid on it might just hold promise.

Today I intend to find out, well try to at least!

The box was, as I knew, on the third shelf of the second storage room, tagged as unidentified Mayan object of little interest. I removed it to my office and sat looking at it for quite a while. The carvings all around the box edge fitted perfectly with early Mayan, but the fact that the stone lid did not want to come off made investigating the object rather difficult.

‘Use a leaver’, the thought permeated my brain, but as any archaeologist will tell you, mostly crow-bars and archaeology do not mix, but there are times… I had seen a crow-bar in the tool shed earlier in the week, I decided to go fetch it and lift the…

The lid fell off; it sort of catapulted its self across the room to fall undamaged I am happy to report, onto the floor. I looked inside of the now open stone box and was quite surprised to find a wood box with no distinguishing features resting there. I carefully lifted out the oblong of wood and looked all around it hoping for something I might identify or date. There was nothing, no carvings, no glyphs, no nothing just dark old looking wood and dust!

Something strange happened when I touched the wooden box, a sort of electricity fired through my finger tips, tingling but not unpleasant.

With the shock came a vision!

I was floating in a room looking down on the bare body of a man, the vision cleared the man was on top of a naked woman, and what he was doing to her left nothing to the imagination. On the man’s butt was a tattoo of an Indian, this is a tattoo I know only too well! The butt it belongs to is my boyfriends and the woman beneath him is my best friend Emily!

John is fucking Emily!

The vision faded and I was back in the darkened room which is my office, still touching the wooden box. I lifted it clear of its stone sarcophagus and held it reverently in my hands. Thoughts filled my mind, crazy impossible thoughts of capture and torment, with a little fear and revenge thrown in for luck! I opened the box, resting in a perfectly fitted hand carved rack is a stick! A long gnarled slightly twisted stick!

‘The wand, I am the wand!’

I nearly dropped the box with its wand as the words floated through my mind, I placed the box on my desk, without intending to I reached out and wrapped my fingers around the wooden wand, and I removed it from the box.

The strangest feeling occurred: my mouth went dry, my fingers tingled, and deep inside of me I felt as though I had been reunited with a dear, but long lost friend.

Holding the wand in my left hand, gripping its smooth wooden shaft, I picked up a mug of coffee in my right hand, intending to sip down the coffee, it was stone cold and un-drinkable, I turned the wand towards the mug (I don’t know why) and I watched as the coffee boiled!

That day I broke the trust between myself and the museum, I stole the wand, hiding it in my handbag, having returned the now empty box to the stone sarcophagus and that to storage.

On the way home I drove as normal but at each set of traffic lights I touched the wand and they changed instantly. Car drivers normal jockey for position on the highway and in the mayhem, a car cut me up, I touched the wand and the car pored black smoke from its exhaust and flames burst from beneath its bonnet, the car pulled over and stopped, that will teach the driver to cut me up I thought.

Other things occurred, not major things, but unusual or unlikely things! Council road workers cleared a path for my vehicle where normally they would have ignored me! A bin lorry pulled over to allow me to pass, in fact everything that could happen did, and all because of the wand and my touch, this could be fun I decided, but then the image of John fucking Emily returned, along with the deep hurtful pain of betrayal.

I touched the wand and steered of the road into a shopping precinct. In a daze of images I entered one shop and made a purchase and returned to the car, placing the item into the car boot. ‘Lessons must be seen to be learnt,’ said the voice in my head!

That evening when John returned to our home he saw the hamster cage for the first time, and asked about it! I had the wand in my hand but held up my arm so he could not see it.

“That.” I said to him. “Is the place in which I keep naughty boys!”

He started and then looked into the cage, instead of a hutch and feed pots there was a tiny rack and torture equipment, all taken from a fantasy game set. I especially liked the three inch high metal body cage hanging from a gibbet, and I now knew exactly what I intended to do with all my new toys! The voice had told me, explaining in detail, and the wand would do my bidding I now know!

As John stood bent over looking into the cage I reversed the wand, so that it was pointing at him. As he turned, I thought! Before my eyes he froze, I thought some more! Slowly he began to shrink, his normally six foot large frame shrunk past five foot, then four, then three foot, and it kept on shrinking, I thought harder! Watching his face as his perception of the world around him grew in size, terror and screams filled the flat, but the sound shrank as his physical presence diminished.

One foot came and went, six inches arrived, but still he is too big for my toys! Three inches and I halt the process, looking down at him standing on our thick carpet, the pile now over his ankles. I scooped him up in a dog pooper and deposit him through the open cage door. I close and lock the cage as he tumbles into the sawdust, intending to leave him in there to think, but first I needed to supply the thought about which he should think! I said to him coldly and calmly.

“Did you enjoy fucking Emily?”

The look on his face said it all, he had been caught out being unfaithful, and now he knew he was going to pay for what he had done to me, and he also knew that somehow I had the power to do things to him, unbelievable, evil, revengeful things!

“Yes you bastard you are going to suffer, you are going to pay, not right now though, I want you to think and feel the fear and humiliation I have felt, and to know that your life will never be the same from this day forward!”

I locked the cage leaving him in the dark and went to bed; I would sleep the sleep of the just. He would suffer the nightmare of the penitent, wondering what his fate will be!

There was just one little thing to decide upon before I started addressing his betrayal, there was the matter of his companion in crime, Emily and what I should do about her? After all she had been my best friend, and she, like him, had betrayed me!

I smiled to myself as words floated into my head, words originating from the wand. ‘We will see to that problem in the morning!’

16.05.10

story continues in The Wand Part 2: Emily

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