October 14, 1983
Homecoming queen Deborah von Teufelsblut stood on the stage, beaming down on her Homecoming subjects and waving like she’d seen some queen from some foreign country do on the news one time, you know with the just turning the wrist? She was a vision in pink chiffon, with her tiara threaded into her platinum locks (freshly bleached for the occasion) and a huge bouquet – a gift from the most wonderful boy in the world – cradled in her non-waving arm.
The band was playing “Evergreen” and she was just about to begin her acceptance speech when suddenly, that stupid, four-eyed, pimple-face geek Bethie Anderson – the one with the antenna attached to her teeth – screamed “Everybody look out! The Homecoming queen’s got a gun!”
Oh, poop.
Debi blasted the little antenna-headed freak with a Bolt of Nishboleth, but it was already too late. So much for the big show with the speech and everything. Who knew that a mousy little nobody could have The Sight? Maybe that stupid headgear was like radar or something…
Guess her Sight needed some Coke-bottle glasses, too, though, Debi thought, taking comfort in spite as she picked off the cheerleaders one by one.
I mean, she knew I was about to do something dangerous…
Buffy’s pom-poms blew into bits. Those huge, overstuffed pom-poms that she was always shaking at Johnny. Cow.
But a GUN? Oh, please!
Mitzi’s head did the splits, her brains prying her skull open with spinal-cord tentacles and skittering to attack other dance-goers. Slut.
She sent the mascot tumbling over a table with an Unholy Touch of Warrang, his internal organs flying away from her at escape velocity and his face melting inside that stupid squirrel head.
She…just pointed at that football player. Huh. Wonder why he fell down like that. Must’ve fainted.
“Stop it, Debi!” Her best friend Julie shouted as Debi started down the stage steps. “You’re embarrassing me!”
Debi ignored her. Julie was, like, totally coked or something. Had been all night. She’d been just about ready to wet her jeans even before all the magic and body parts started flying around. At least now, if she saw a pretty pink bunny floating in mid-air, it might be real.
Instead, Debi set off in search of Tiffany Reistenbaum. It was because of that backstabbing tramp that she’d needed magic in the first place. Time to see how little Tiffany liked being backstabbed. And tramped.
#
Everybody tried to run, most still screaming “the homecoming queen’s got a gun” (stupid Bethie!), but they didn’t get very far. Debi ruled this school now, just like she was always supposed to, and it wasn’t about to let anyone get away. They learned that after Lester Hornaby tried to grab a doorknob and it bit him.
Unfortunately for Debi, she got a little too involved in feeding the Glee Club (wormy little geeks that they were) into some animated gym equipment and she didn’t notice Mrs. Schoenstein sneaking into the Office to call the police. At first. Mrs. Schoenstein was halfway through her phone call when the line suddenly shrieked with interference loud enough to blow her brains out her opposite ear, but it was too late. The police had been called.
#
The police arrived in minutes. Two of them. In one car. The best that dispatch had been able to make of Mrs. Schoenstein’s shrieking, sobbing, garbled message was that one of the preppy, airheaded little bimbos that went to this school was misbehaving. Boo hoo. Yet more evidence that civilians couldn’t function without some real men around to protect them.
Their confidence was a bit shaken when they couldn’t get the doors to open – the doors which, in accordance with local fire codes, opened outward, and which also had several dozen clearly terrified teenagers pushing against them from the inside. Their confidence was shaken still further when the “Exit” sign over the door started shooting some kind’a lasers or something at the students, driving them back toward the gym. They didn’t run screaming for their squad car until the door handle turned into a snake and bit one of them.
The bitten officer only made it halfway back to the car before he turned green with purple polka dots and collapsed to the ground, pink foam spewing from his mouth. It was his partner who called for backup.
#
An hour later, the police had arrived. All of them. They’d brought tear gas, machine guns, even a chopper. None of it did any good. Battering rams bounced off unbreakable doors; windows opened just long enough to slam shut on any body part passed through them (resulting in two broken arms, a severed hand, a crushed knee, three pulled groins and a strangulation); and the attempt to send a team in through the air vents had encountered some…thing that the single survivor just couldn’t describe. Meanwhile, inside, they could still catch glimpses of students being chased by a rabid mimeograph machine.
#
“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Sheriff Brady shouted as a nondescript black sedan pulled in behind his squad cars. “You can’t be here! We’ve got a major situation inside this school! You need to move along!”
Instead of “moving along”, the car’s engine died and its doors opened. Sheriff Brady was about to shout some more, much louder, while waving his badge (and if that failed, his gun), when the passengers stepped out.
He didn’t bother to shout anymore after they did that. The passengers were a man and a woman in dark suits, both of whom were wearing dark glasses despite the fact that it was 9 PM in October. Both of them had dark hair, as well. Hers was pulled back in a bun. They practically screamed “government issue” (as did the car, now that he was paying attention).
“Sheriff John Brady?” The man asked, stepping forward to meet him. The woman walked right past him to the barricade, not bothering to duck down behind the cars as she scanned the front of the school.
“That’s, uh, me,” Sheriff Brady answered, looking back and forth between the newcomers as he spoke. “What can I do for you two?”
“I’m Special Agent Scully, she’s Special Agent Mulder,” the man said, nodding toward his female companion. “And we’re here to help with your ‘situation’.” He reached into his suit coat and pulled out his badge and ID, holding them out for Brady’s inspection.
“You’re a S.W.A.T. team?” Brady asked, reading the ID card. “But we already have – “
“No, sir,” the man – Agent Scully – interrupted. “You need to read more closely. Were a Special Occult Weapons And Tactics team.”
Brady took a moment to think it through. “You’re a S.O.W.A.T team?” he asked.
“The brass is considering a name change,” Agent Mulder said from where she stood at the barricade, completely deadpan.
#
“You got it wrong again,” Special Agent Helen Angelopoulos said to her partner as she inspected the school’s outer wall, around a corner and out of sight of both police and rampaging prom queens. “I’m supposed to be Scully. You’re Mulder.”
“It won’t go on the air for another ten years,” Agent Aaron Durante retorted as he squatted further down the same wall, peering at a bit of exposed foundation with his standard-issue Ghostsight™ glasses. “Get over it.”
“Hey, just because you’re sloppy about getting into character…” She began, before trailing off. This argument never went anywhere. “So what’ve you got?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Unbroken circle of glyphs written in body fluids,” he answered. He leaned in briefly, sniffed, then continued. “…all from the same subject. I’ve got spit, urine, tears, sweat, vaginal lubrication, blood, menstrual fluid…”
“I’ve got the same,” she said. “Menstrual fluid looks freshest.”
“Hey, that could be our solution!” Aaron said, straightening. “The poor girl’s just having a really bad period! If we could get her some of that Grail-class Midol they have in the medicine cabinets at work…”
Helen gave him a withering look. He just grinned in response. “Gotta laugh or you’ll go crazy, Angelo.”
“I’ll laugh later,” she said, turning back to the glyphs. “Look here.”
She pointed and he leaned in to see, once again all business. “This circle is what’s letting her shape reality inside the school. We break it, she has to start using her personal energy reserves again. But look over here.”
He did, and when he saw where she was pointing, he winced.
“Nasty,” he said. “Better be careful when we cut the wires.”
Helen nodded, reaching into their equipment bag to pull out a spray bottle filled with a special blend of anti-magic potions (since some of the simpler, more traditional counter-magical substances – say, holy water and iron filings – didn’t always mix so well, they were forced to get alchemical about the whole thing, which had turned out to be an advantage in a situation like this). She sprayed one of the key glyphs – one of the ones written in menstrual fluid – then wiped it away, being careful to remove the connections to the glyphs on either side first.
“Why do you think she added that nifty little feature?” Aaron asked as she worked.
“Don’t know,” Helen said as she checked her work, gave a final nod of satisfaction and got to her feet. “Let’s go ask her.”
#
Inside, the faculty and students who – for lack of anything better to try – had never stopped pushing on the doors suddenly found that they opened. Screaming in terror and relief, they poured out into the parking lot, pursued by flying energy bolts, animated machinery, and Mitzi’s rampaging brain.
Debi tried to stop them, but found that the doors no longer responded to her commands.
“No!” She shouted. “No, that’s cheating! You can’t leave yet! Come back here! You people are ruining homecoming for me!”
#
The two agents’ satisfaction was short-lived; it ended the exact moment the girl in a pink chiffon dress and a silver tiara appeared in the main doorway, cradling a bouquet and floating six inches off the ground.
“You ruined homecoming!” She shrieked as she floated down the stairs toward her homecoming float, a pink and yellow monstrosity that looked like a giant valentine. Her shriek shattered every window in the building’s façade and sent the glass shooting toward the crowd.
#
“Still think this is funny?” Helen asked as she ducked back behind the corner and drew her gun. “You’d think this job would’ve taught you some respect for menstruating women by now. Especially teenagers.”
“Respect?” Aaron asked as he joined her. “Angelo, we’re standing at ground zero of a full-bore Carrie White event! The whole reason I’m making jokes is because I realize just how screwed we are!”
#
“Throw down your gun and tiara, and come out of the float!” Deputy Hedge shouted through a bullhorn.
Debi ignored him (Stupid Bethie! Do they SEE a gun?), instead focusing her attention on sinking Mr. Russo, the math teacher, into the pavement. There. That took care of next week’s math test.
The police started firing on her from all angles…to no effect. The bullets bounced off in all directions, shredding the float into toilet paper and taking out more than a few members of the crowd, but Debi didn’t even seem to notice. Instead, she just looked around for her next target: “Ohhh, Caaaasey? Where arrrrre you, you boyfriend-stealing slut?”
#
“Bullets aren’t working,” Aaron said.
“No shit,” Helen agreed. “What do you figure? Transplacement field?”
Aaron shook his head. “No, they’re hitting her, they’re just bouncing off. Iron Scales of Tiamat?”
Helen pondered that for a moment, then nodded. “Iron Scales of Tiamat,” she agreed. “Feel up to some Marduk action?”
“Always.” Aaron said as he raised his gun. He whispered an invocation to the winds and waited for his opening. It wasn’t even a minute before the Carrie – by now lashing the parking lot with colorful bolts of energy – turned toward them, and he took his shot. Guided by Marduk’s winds, it caught her straight in the ear, sending her cartwheeling down the float and into a full flip before she came crashing to the ground.
“Weird,” he said as he lowered his weapon.
“I know,” Helen agreed. “She must have still been floating a bit. By the way,” she added as they started to walk toward the scene. “Didn’t Marduk fire down Tiamat’s throat?”
“It’s a body opening that leads to something vital,” Aaron retorted. “You take what you can get.”
#
A brown-haired girl with a polka-dot hair bow and a sleeveless blouse ran to the Carrie’s side, sobbing something that was probably the Carrie’s name: “Debi! Debi, oh, Debi!”
Helen and Aaron looked at each other, sighed, and hurried to where…Debi…lay on the pavement. When you were in the middle of the action, it was easy to think of it all in terms of glyphs and mystical correspondences, firing lines and vulnerable spots, strategies and collateral damage. It was when you were reminded that your “Carrie” had a name – Debi, apparently – that things got difficult.
“Oh, Debi, why did you do it? Why’d you freak out?”
Helen and Aaron both started to hurry. This was what they needed to hear.
The homecoming queen raised her head, a beatific smile on her face. “I did it…for Johnny!” She declared, then fell back, still smiling even in death.
The brown-haired girl seemed to have no idea who “Johnny” was, as she immediately started asking everyone. She did mention a “total geek” who “always had food in his braces”, but she clearly dismissed him out of hand even as she brought him up.
Aaron and Helen didn’t. In their line of work, being a “total geek” (whether that meant “very smart” or “socially inept” or both) actually made someone more suspect, not less.
Brown-haired girl was ranting something about “Citizen Kane” when Helen bent to pick up the huge bouquet that the Carrie…Debi…was still clutching in one arm. It had a very large, obvious note in it that read “Debi, I love you, Johnny,” so maybe…
Helen paused, then straightened up, holding the bouquet at arm’s length and staring at it. “Durante?” She said.
“Yeah?”
“I have no idea who ‘Johnny’ is, but I want to go to him right now, dedicate my life to him and immediately start having his babies.”
Aaron raised an eyebrow. “Good thing I didn’t pick that thing up, then. That would be a difficult birth.”
“Very funny.”
“I thought so. So. Charm spell?”
“Nasty one. I don’t just want to have his babies, I want to kill his enemies.”
“Right. With that in mind, I think maybe going to Johnny might actually be a good idea.”
“I was thinking the exact same thing.”
#
The middle-aged woman who greeted Aaron and Helen at the door was clearly enchanted. This had nothing to do with any charm or eloquence on their part; the woman was staring straight ahead, not blinking, and when she spoke, she did so in a monotone.
“Johnny is upstairs,” she answered when they asked about her son’s whereabouts. “I need to go upstairs and take him his fried fluffernutters and lemonade.” She held up a tray containing the sandwiches and drinks in question.
“Yes, ma’am,” Aaron said. “Do you think we could – “
“I need to take him his fried fluffernutters and lemonade,” she repeated. “It’s his very favorite meal.”
“Tell you what, ma’am,” Aaron said, reaching out and taking hold of the tray. “Why don’t we take Johnny his fluffernutters, since we have to talk to him any…way…” he tugged on the tray, but she wouldn’t release it.
“I need to take him his fried fluffernutters and lemonade. It’s his very favorite meal.”
Helen stepped forward and waved her hand in front of the woman’s face. “Ma’am, it’s okay if we take the fried fluffernutters and lemonade up to Johnny.”
“It’s okay if you take the fried fluffernutters and lemonade up to Johnny.”
“We’re Johnny’s friends.”
“You’re some of Johnny’s little friends.”
“Go on up.”
“You go on up now,” The woman replied as she released the tray and stepped aside. “Johnny will be glad to see some of his little friends.”
“You ham,” Aaron muttered as they started up the stairs.
“Oh, like you’ve never used the Jedi Mind Trick.”
#
“Just leave it on my bedside table, Ma,” Johnny said, not looking away from the green-glowing screen of his Commodore 64. “And take the plates from lunch away, willya?”
“I’m not your mother, Johnny,” Helen said.
Johnny whipped around just in time to see Aaron smirk, say, “And neither am I,” and dump the tray on the bed. He looked exactly like the brown-haired girl had described him: a total geek with food in his braces.
“What the – who are you people?” Johnny spluttered. “What you doing here? Why didn’t my Mom – “
“Let you know we were coming?” Helen interrupted. “Piece of advice, Johnny – when you turn your victim into a remote-controlled toy, they lose the ability to help you on their own initiative, and they become more vulnerable to other magicians’ control. It’s a common rookie mistake.”
“If the rookie in question is an unethical piece of shit, that is,” Aaron added, still smiling serenely.
They’d hoped to throw him off-balance by speaking of magic openly, by letting him know that they were in on his secret. Instead, he settled back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest and gave them a smirk of his own.
“You’re from S.O.W.A.T.,” he said.
That almost threw them off-balance, but they were far too experienced to show it. It’d take more than some self-taught teenage sociopath to rattle two veterans of the third rectification of the Vuldronaii.
“Yup,” Aaron said, still cool. “We like to stop by and check things out when the homecoming queen starts leveling the school. Kinda in the job description, you know?”
Johnny nodded in agreement, then frowned in confusion. “So…I have to ask. Just how did you get from the homecoming queen to the biggest nerd in school?”
Helen held up the bouquet.
Johnny’s jaw dropped.
“That’s right,” Aaron smirked. “We have actual evidence that actual authorities – the ones in our line of business, at least – are going to accept. Having zombie-mommy say that you were in all night isn’t going to be enough this time. Think now we’ll get a bit less attitude outta you?”
Apparently not. Johnny’s face twisted into a mask of pure hatred. “Stupid bitch,” he snarled. “I knew she’d fuck it up.”
“Actually, no,” Helen said, lowering the bouquet. “That magical deadman’s switch you had her hook herself into worked perfectly. If we’d just killed her, or just broken the circle without breaking the circuit first, all of the glyphs would have lit up at once, that school would be a smoking crater the size of Krakatoa and there would have been no evidence left for us to find.”
“And none of the cockroaches would have had the chance to scurry out,” Johnny muttered.
That brought them up short. The two agents looked at each other. Forget sociopathy, they were dealing with a genuine Evil Wizard in the making.
“…right,” Helen said. “In any case, that would have covered your tracks perfectly. We never would have noticed this thing with all of the raw, elemental power she was tossing around. But that just brings us to our next question.”
“Right,” Aaron agreed, picking up where she left off. “And that question is: how did you control a magician that powerful, that completely? I mean, sure, she was a rookie, but then, so are you.”
“Please,” Johnny sneered. “Strong as she was, she had nothing in her skull but hairspray and peroxide. I could’ve controlled her at any time. But she made it easy for me.” His smirk grew to an evilly beatific grin. “She thought that a mystic oath to her mentor could be broken as easily as a promise to the biggest nerd in school.”
“I get it,” Aaron said, starting to pace the floor. “She comes to you for instruction – “
“It was her last chance at homecoming queen,” Johnny supplied. “She didn’t want to take any chances on losing it.”
“Right. So she offers you what – sex?”
“Sex. A date to Homecoming. Entrée into her elite little circle, or at least social protection from on high so the jocks stop picking on me.”
“And let me guess,” Aaron continued, still pacing. “She learned what she wanted to learn, but the first time you tried to collect…”
When Johnny opened his mouth, the voice that came out was not his own – not even the most gifted mimicry – but Debi’s: “Ewww, gross! Don’t touch me, you wormy little geek! Did you actually think I would really, like, do it with someone as gross as you? As if!”
Then he paused, cleared his throat, and went on in his own voice: “That was when I sent the bouquet. I knew she would throw it away the instant she saw the card…but she would touch it first. That would be enough to set off the commands I programmed into her during her training. That would be enough to get her and her friends. After that…” he shrugged. “Who’s going to notice a charmed flower bouquet in the wreckage from a full-bore Carrie White event?”
Aaron scowled. “You know an awful lot of our codes, kid. Is there – “
Johnny just grinned and patted his Commodore. “Wave of the future,” he said. “A modem, a telephone line and a few divinations, and you can go anywhere.”
The agents looked at each other again. They were both having the same thought. Helen nodded at Aaron, giving him the go-ahead to voice it.
“You know, you’re being awfully cooperative,” Aaron said, much more cautious now. “Most people aren’t quite so forthcoming when they talk about their espionage and mass murder.”
Johnny just rolled his eyes. “You haven’t read me my rights, I don’t have a lawyer and I’m a minor without a parent in the room. Legally, this conversation never happened. Besides…” Once again, his face lit up with that evilly beatific grin. Only this time, his eyes lit up as well…with the same green light that was coming off the computer screen. “You have invaded the sanctum of a wizard more powerful than you know,” He declared, his voice suddenly booming and resonant. “And you shall both pay the price! No one shall ever – “
Rolling her eyes, Helen tossed the bouquet at him. He caught it out of pure reflex. Then his eyes and mouth went very wide, and his body went absolutely rigid, galvanized as if by an electric current.
“Yeah,” Helen said, sounding bored more than anything else. “We thought you might do something vicious and stupid. That’s part of the reason we brought this along.”
“I…I…c-c-can’t – “
“Let go? That would be feedback from your own charm. It would barely count as an annoyance if it weren’t for – “
“It…i-i-it…it hur-hur-hur – “
“I’m sure it does. You see, when a spell is broken, there’s always a backlash. I’m going to guess that you’ve never had the pleasure.”
“As you can see,” Aaron said, picking up the narrative, “It’s incapacitating. So we just could not understand how Debi could still be so perky after having such a powerful spell broken. It should have painted the walls with her brains.”
If it was possible, Johnny’s eyes got even wider as he turned them from the agents to the bouquet.
“Thing is,” Helen added. “There was such a complex web of influences and forces in that school – all of the power Debi was throwing around, plus the control circle she set up ahead of time, plus the charm that had forced her to do all of that – that something weird happened. The power didn’t snap back toward Debi, who wasn’t much more than a mindless battery by that point, but toward the one who had really been in control all this time. Namely you.”
“But you weren’t there,” Aaron said. “So the best it could do was ‘ground’ in your bouquet and wait for a chance to close the circuit.”
“And now it has,” Helen finished. “Which means it’s time for us to leave.”
Green sparks were dancing around Johnny’s body, lashing out to set fire to the carpet and blow the monitor out of the computer as they left. The sounds he was making might have been curses or pleas for help, but either way, his teeth were chattering far too hard for them to be clear.
#
The two agents went out the front door of Johnny’s house and started down the street toward the high school. They’d arrived on foot, following the pull of the bouquet, and they needed to get back to their car.
Aaron took out a pack of cigarettes, took one, then held the pack out to Helen, who also took one. As they lit up, the house behind them exploded.
Helen took a deep drag, then blew out a long jet of smoke. “Shame about that faulty wiring,” she said.
“Sure is,” Aaron agreed, nodding. “Now what about the school? School shooting? They’re going to become a regular thing soon.”
Helen shook her head. “Not until the turn of the millennium. And even then, no one would buy it from the homecoming queen. Hell, they have a hard enough time believing that it can actually happen to suburban white kids.”
“Good point,” Aaron admitted. “Gas leak?”
“That should do it,” Helen said. “I’ll have the Rewriting team include it in the mindwipes. We still need to fictionalize this, though, in case any of the mindwipes slip. Maybe a book or movie, like we did with the original Carrie incident?”
Now it was Aaron’s turn to shake his head. “Nah. We do that often enough, people might start believing instead of disbelieving – you know, like they will when Oliver Stone does that movie about JFK? We need to do something different.” He pondered it for a moment, then his face lit up.
“How about a song?”