Black Magic

Quinn was about to get on her bed when she heard someone knocking at her door impatiently loud. It was Friday night, Quinn was so sure her friends weren’t the type who would like to invite her to spend their calm and peaceful night to some loud, crowded, and chaotic party. She knew it wasn’t one of her friends who knocked at the door at 9 PM — she knew they would be at their houses, reading the book they exchanged to each other this afternoon —, so she walked away from her bed towards the knocking sound, opened the white-painted single door and found out some girls she barely even knew standing there. There were five- six- no, eight women looking at her helplessly. What the heck, she thought. She raised her eyebrows, looking at them up and down before she decided to open her door wider to let them into her apartment as she understood what these women wanted.

The girls entered the room one by one. All of them gasped once they entered the room and the whole thing inside changed immediately, but nobody said a word. Maybe too amazed with how Quinn’s apartment actually looked like, or maybe even too scared to say anything that would accidentally wake some evil spirits up. To be fair, anyone would be surprised by how dark the room was. Only a few candles with the weird scent that lighten up the room. There were also a lot of weird ingredients hanging on the ceiling near the small kitchen counter that they were sure one of it was fur of some animal. Not to mention there was a star inside a circle sign on the dark hardwood floor drawn with white chalk. Their expressions were too hard to explain, but Quinn didn’t bother. It was them who decided to come anyway by their own will.

It was a quite big studio apartment for Quinn who was living alone — if Ink, her little female black kitten, wasn’t included. The normal apartment room one. But sure enough, Quinn didn’t like how boring it was until she changed some furniture into her likings and got carried away to the point she decorated the room too much darker than the original. She had to make a spell barrier in front of her door so that no one could see her very dark and mystic room, only the boring and bright normal one as a disguise until she decided to let them in. The girls knew Quinn was always a big fan of black by the way she dressed to classes and thought she was only one of those girls who obsessed with gothic stuff. But they never knew before that this girl could do a single swing with her finger and would make a single person do whatever she wanted them to do, own a black act, had a whole room which looked exactly like a common witch would have in a fantasy movie with quite strong, strange scent in the air.

“So,” Quinn started, finally broke the silence. Looked down at the women who were sitting on the sofa and some of them on the carpet as she standing in front of them, arms folded.

“Tell me how do you know about what I do.” The women immediately talked at the same time that all she could hear was gibberish, made her confused as hell which one to hear first. “One by one, please,” she added, raising her voice a bit and interrupting them. It worked because a blonde woman then decided to be the first to speak.

“We knew it from Mia. She told us she bought this secret potion from someone that makes her boyfriend will get down on her knees and worship her by only a single drop,” said the woman, then followed by the other women who nodded their heads, agreed because they also heard it from this woman named Mia.

Quinn remembered that name clearly. It started with Mia who was broken-hearted enough to had the audacity to cry out loud beside her who was at the time enjoying her nice, quiet, and peaceful lunch break under the big old tree behind the campus building. Couldn’t think of any other way to silence the woman up and didn’t brave enough to use her spell on a non-magic human being, Quinn decided to be a good friend to a complete stranger and asked her why she cried. Which was actually a bad decision to do because the woman then answered her with a gibberish sound while crying and Quinn could understand only a bit. She was being cheated on by her boyfriend. Quinn was then telling Mia, the woman, to stop crying, told her better luck next time, patted her back a bit, and then back to her own business; enjoying her lunch under the nice, bright sun. It was none of her business anyway. All she wanted was silence, which then was what she got for only a few seconds until Mia decided to cry louder than before. Quinn sighed. So annoying, she thought.