Seattle, WA, 1967

"Vikki, I don't know why you're being so emotional about all this." Forrest scowled at the redhead sitting across the table across from him.

"Emotional?" Vikki screeched, "You wouldn't know emotional if it grabbed you by the balls and twisted. You might as well be made of wood like your stupid name." Forrest furrowed his brow. He truly didn't understand what was wrong with her. 

"Can we just get on with the date, Vik?" He asked instead, tapping his index finger against the white tablecloth.

"You were forty minutes late Forrest." She responded, "And you didn't even say sorry."

"Sorry." He responded petulantly. Vikki emitted a high-pitched noise, somewhere between a squeal and a growl. 

The waiter interrupted them, and Forrest took the opportunity to slip his cigarettes and the new silver-cased Zippo lighter Vikki had gotten for him out of his coat pocket. He lit one with relief as she ordered the steak and lobster, her eyes clearly daring him to say anything about the extravagant price of her meal. He ordered the steak Diane and a sidecar.

"I just wish you'd be a little warmer to me Forr," She said, her anger cooled as quickly as it had been stoked, " I can't be the only one who cares in this relationship."

He paused and turned the lighter over in his fingers as he breathed in the smoke from his cigarette.

"This isn't a romance novel Vik," He replied, " Real people don't declare their forever burning passion over rose gardens or whatever it is you're imagining."

--

Vikki looked at Forrest's body, next to her in the bed, a lump that barely moved except for his breathing. There were the broad shoulders and narrow hips that had attracted her right away when she'd seen him strolling through the department store where she worked. He wasn't so tall that she couldn't wrap her arms around his neck, nor so short that she couldn't wear her highest heels on their dates. Pale skin and hair of a dark auburn brown that reflected red in the candlelight. The scar on his left shoulder she'd never been able to get him to talk about, no matter how hard she'd wheedled and begged.  He really could have been the perfect man for her except...  He had rolled away from her moments after their lovemaking had ceased, tossing the used condom in her bathroom trash and giving her his back immediately after. She couldn't tell if he was truly asleep or just pretending, but it didn't matter. She'd already made up her mind. She snatched up her rayon silk peignoir, the orange and pink one that she had bought herself for her twenty-fourth birthday, and threw it over her shoulders, tightening the belt decisively.

Without attempting to hide her movements she flounced out of her bedroom and shut the door behind her. She grabbed up the mostly full wine bottle from the kitchen counter and dragged one of her two kitchen chairs over to the broom closet. Standing on her tiptoes, she could barely reach the top shelf, but it was just enough that she could grab the handle of her grandmother's box.

Wine in one hand, and box in the other, she went to her living room and shoved the little walnut veneer coffee table out of the way before kicking the green shag over enough that she could see the smooth oak floorboards of her apartment. She took a drink directly from the bottle before she rummaged in the box for the small, green leather-bound book that had been passed down in her family for generations.

"Fucking Men" She muttered, still drinking from the bottle, "If he can't change his mind, I'll just have to change it for him. I'll show him care. I'll show him burning passion. We'll see how he acts when he feels what it's like to feel like I feel."

Sitting on the bare floorboards, she flipped through the pages of the book until she found something that looked like it would do the trick.

"Un sort pour enflammer l'âme" She read out loud, stumbling over the French words she only barely understood. "A Spell to ... something something love? soul?" She said, squinting at the cramped handwriting. "Enflammer... to something with fire, I think?" She drank again. The rest of the page was covered in that same dense writing, but the diagram had been carefully annotated in pencil by her grandmother's own neat and flowing hand. It was enough. She took the chalk from the box and drew a somewhat wobbly circle on the floorboards. She took out a number of dusty beeswax tapers from the box, and then realized she had no matches with which to light them. 

Forrest's suit jacket was still slung over her other kitchen chair, so she reached into the breast pocket, there along with his cigarettes was the silver lighter he'd been fondling at dinner. She snagged the zippo, and one of the cigarettes along with it for good measure. She lit the cig and used the lighter to melt and soften the wax at the bottom of each taper so she could stick them at the corners of her freshly chalked pentagram.

"Circle, pentagram, candles, flame," She checked each of the list from the diagram, "Personal item," She glanced at the lighter, "Good enough. Then ... Blood, or birdspit. What the fuck is bird..." then she read further and wrinkled her nose, "Oh, gross." But then again, she didn't exactly have to go very far to get the substance in question. It was cooling in her powder room as they spoke.

She drained the last of the wine, then padded over to the trashcan and extracted Forrest's condom with two of her perfectly manicured nails. Holding it gingerly, she stepped back into her circle.

Reading from the book, she began to chant as she lit the candles.

"Transforme cette personne, corps et âme, en feu éternel, libéré uniquement par mon commandement, incarné uniquement par ma volonté"

With each word, she felt the lighter in her hand grow hotter and hotter and watched the flame of the candles grow higher and higher. But she couldn't stop, wouldn't stop. The power felt too good as it slipped from her lips and in into the world.

The last of the words of the spell flew from her throat as if they were alive, given wings by her will. She could no more have stopped them than she could have stopped the wind, and she had no desire to stop them. She barely noticed as the edge of her wrap brushed the candle flame, the silk rayon fabric catching almost immediately.

But then she heard the horrifying, anguished scream coming from her bedroom. The sound snapped her out of her trance, the exhilaration of the power leaving her all at once. She felt the flames lick at her calves, and she flung the peignoir off of her shoulders with a shriek. It landed on her shag carpet, taking several of the candles with her. She dropped the lighter, now also burning hot, and it skittered away across the floorboards to god only knew where. She ran to her bedroom and wrestled it open only to see Forrest, back arched, floating several feet off the bed his naked body barely covered by the sheet. He was screaming, and she watched in horror as he began to twist, and as he did, his flesh took on a nightmarish transparent quality. She reached out to touch him, to drag him back down to earth, but as her hands met his skin, he began to disintegrate, as if he were suddenly made of billions of grains of sand.

The grains of him ran through her fingers to the floor, rushing past her and out the door. Desperately she tried to gather up the pieces, but it was like trying to hold onto running water. She turned to follow the stream but she was met with clouds of billowing smoke. She snatched up the sheet from the bed and stumbled back to the living room to see that her whole apartment had already been set ablaze.

Her grandmother's book had caught also, flames licking over the green leather of the cover. Desperate she snatched it up and wrapped it in Forrest's smouldering suit jacket to smother the flames. Then she had no choice but to dash out into the hall screaming to wake the rest of the building up.