Flash fiction by Laura Dorwart
casting the circle
I bought the dagger at a magic shop near San Diego. The shopkeeper chided me because I didn’t know how to hold it. She was right, but it didn’t bode well for the ritual.
I was sleeping on a mattress, then, a necessarily scratchy one, and living in a depression-hovel caricature of a room. It was less of a room, really, and more of the mouth of a Venus flytrap where I had ill-advised sex with unwitting partners (or maybe just unwitting sex with ill-advised partners) and read Sarah Kane. I had no sheets. I did have scuffed leather boots and a lamp that didn’t work. Cliché. One corner was for food containers. The other was for books.
In the books corner, I had my altar to Kristeva, her dense-breathless odes to melancholia sleeping sludge in my throat. Also Lacan, the prick.
I had to clear a sacred space. I threw away some plastic dressing-dotted salad boxes. I took my clothes off. Sanctity was not, is not, my forte. I didn’t know how to cast a circle and I didn’t have any matches for the candles. I could never draw perfect circles, even in school. I envied the girls who knew how, who lined things up neatly: pencils, backseams, dates.
Still, I found a worthwhile spell and removed the deities’ names. (If I ever worship anyone, it will be the one who tricks me into trusting them.) I waited until dark, then whispered the incantations. I pointed the dagger towards myself, then outward. I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to.
I didn’t do it right. But I whispered something into the darkness and felt the power of my own loneliness, the thick of it sadder than anything I’d ever read. I’ve never had good aim, but still I sent it spiraling, its echo tinged with starsprinkle, the last of my hope. I hoped someone would hear.
I bought the dagger at a magic shop near San Diego. The shopkeeper chided me because I didn’t know how to hold it. She was right, but it didn’t bode well for the ritual.
I was sleeping on a mattress, then, a necessarily scratchy one, and living in a depression-hovel caricature of a room. It was less of a room, really, and more of the mouth of a Venus flytrap where I had ill-advised sex with unwitting partners (or maybe just unwitting sex with ill-advised partners) and read Sarah Kane. I had no sheets. I did have scuffed leather boots and a lamp that didn’t work. Cliché. One corner was for food containers. The other was for books.
In the books corner, I had my altar to Kristeva, her dense-breathless odes to melancholia sleeping sludge in my throat. Also Lacan, the prick.
I had to clear a sacred space. I threw away some plastic dressing-dotted salad boxes. I took my clothes off. Sanctity was not, is not, my forte. I didn’t know how to cast a circle and I didn’t have any matches for the candles. I could never draw perfect circles, even in school. I envied the girls who knew how, who lined things up neatly: pencils, backseams, dates.
Still, I found a worthwhile spell and removed the deities’ names. (If I ever worship anyone, it will be the one who tricks me into trusting them.) I waited until dark, then whispered the incantations. I pointed the dagger towards myself, then outward. I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to.
I didn’t do it right. But I whispered something into the darkness and felt the power of my own loneliness, the thick of it sadder than anything I’d ever read. I’ve never had good aim, but still I sent it spiraling, its echo tinged with starsprinkle, the last of my hope. I hoped someone would hear.
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Laura Dorwart is a PhD candidate with an MFA in creative nonfiction from Antioch University. She has published work at Catapult, McSweeney's, Bitch, Bustle, Playboy, VICE, Lady/Liberty/Lit, The Eunoia Review, The New York Times, and others. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/lauramdorwart or read more of her work at www.lauradorwart.com.
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