The Wheel by Melissa King (Second Prize)
It’s 4:40am. You’re on the waterfront, bare toes clenched in the cold wet sand. Less than an hour ago you were drunk, full of expensive booze and high on adrenaline.But then you did a thing. An impossible, irresponsible thing, and now your insides are ice water, that last swig of top shelf liquor sloshing in your guts, threatening to eject itself. You’ve never felt more sober in your life.
Above you, there’s a huge empty space that used to have a Ferris wheel in it, and because of you, it’s gone. The sun will be up soon, and you need to be as far away from here as possible, because a missing Ferris wheel isn’t the kind of thing people are going to overlook.
You walk home, while the birds scream at each other and the sun creeps over the water, turning it from black to honey-gold. Maybe they’re telling each other what you did.
***
You’re home now, scanning Facebook for a sign that someone has noticed. Sure enough, one appears.
“Why would they take down the Ferris Wheel in the middle of Summer? Right when we need the tourist dollars! The waterfront looks naked!”
And a reply has popped up immediately, and another.
“They probably sold it to buy gold toilets for the council offices.”
“It’s privately owned, you numpty. The owner must have needed it for another show or something”.
“It desperately needed maintenance. Do you want people to ride on an unsafe Ferris wheel?”
“Does anyone know when it will be back?”
That’s what you want to know.
Stress and exhaustion overwhelm you. You pass out on your bed, and when you wake up, it’s dark again. You walk to the waterfront to collect your car. The Ferris wheel is still missing.
***
It’s three weeks earlier. You’re in the second-hand section of an occult book shop in the city. It’s not really your kind of place; it’s upstairs in a creepy old building, with an atmosphere so thick it almost makes you believe in ghosts.
You’re not here because you’re into this occult crap though. You’re here to meet that flaky friend you’ve had since high school, the one who’s into crystals and horoscopes and all that jazz, the friend who begged you to meet them here, and is now half an hour late. You decide to give them fifteen more minutes- not because you want to, but because you kind of owe them. They were there for you last year, when you were feeling low.
You’re hiding at the back of the shop. At the front counter, a man keeps ringing one of those Tibetan singing bowls and looking in your direction, as if he is trying to cleanse the store of your bad vibes or something. What a wanker.
You squeeze your eyes shut and try to beam more bad vibes at him. He calls out to you, concerned. “Are you OK? You look a bit dizzy. I’ll get you some water”.
He hands you water, and you thank him sheepishly. Now it’s awkward. His name-tag says he is Ari.
“Can I help you find anything?” he asks, and you tell him the truth- this isn’t really your cup of tea; you’re just waiting for a friend. He leaves you alone.
You start leafing through second-hand books; they’re mostly nonsense about crystals and Wicca, a few religious books, and some random inexplicable science text books. And then you find it, tucked away at the back. It’s a small, thin book, home printed by the look of it. There’s no author, no title either. Just a bunch of symbols. You’re drawn to it, but you can’t say why. It just looks- interesting. Like it doesn’t belong here. Like you.
You take it to the counter, expecting to learn that it’s some expensive collector’s item, but there’s no price anywhere on it. Ari just keeps turning it over and over, looking puzzled.
“I don’t like this book” he says at last, handing it to you. “Take it”.
You buy the singing bowl (you don’t know why, you just inexplicably want it) and go home to explore your strange new loot. Turns out the whole book, exactly 49 single sided pages long, (and definitely a home print job) details a spell “to make problems disappear”, complete with a seventy-two-hour preparation guide. You decide to do the ritual. Well, you don’t decide exactly. You almost feel compelled to do it.
You start gathering ingredients and mark a day in your calendar. There’s a long weekend coming up in a few weeks, and you don’t have anything planned except a BBQ that you didn’t want to go to anyway.
***
The spell isn’t overly demanding; no food for 72 hours, no getting jiggy with anyone, yourself included, bathing in a mixture of herbs three times a day, and chanting a bunch of words over a bowl of soy wax beads. Oh, and the blood. One drop from the index finger of your left hand, every 93 minutes. That part is kind of icky, but you’re invested now, so you do it anyway.
The first day goes by pretty quick. You’re hungry, but it’s an excited hunger. It feels good. The instructions say to meditate upon the problems you wish to banish from your life, and you try, but you keep falling asleep.
As the day wears on, the wax takes on a different hue, kind of pinkish. It must be the blood. By the end of the first day, it looks like light pink icing, the kind you find on a strawberry doughnut.
You say your last incantation at 7.15 pm and when you wake up, it’s after mid-day on Saturday. You’re a bit testy this time; you’re starving, and dizzy, and somehow, still so tired.
The wax has deepened in colour as you slept; it’s a dark crimson now. You tell yourself there is some kind of scientific explanation; some kind of reaction between blood and wax, but you know that’s complete bullshit. Something freaky is going on. Your finger is very sore, and you feel weak. Did you squeeze out more blood while you slept? It’s a horrifying idea and you push it away and go back to sleep.
Once, you wake and the bowl is empty. For some reason, this scares you. You frantically chant the words over the missing wax, and it comes back all at once, swirling up from the base of the bowl and making it ring in an unnerving low tone which fills you with dread.
By the third day, you’re sleeping almost constantly. You’ve set your phone to record yourself sleeping, and as you suspected, you’re getting up to chant and bleed into that bowl without even waking. The wax has deepened to an almost black liquid, and it’s moving, bubbling darkly, shapes rising and falling away. One looks like a hand reaching out of the ooze, a skinless half formed hand the colour of week- old blood. Even in your drowsy state, that freaks you out. But back to sleep you go and now it’s Monday morning and the ordeal is over. Sitting in that singing bowl is a perfectly formed black candle, so black it looks like a hole, like the candle somehow exists in negative space.
Now you’ve made the candle, and the instructions say to carve an image of a problem into the wax, and then simply light the candle and wait. You carve a picture of your car, which has been having endless mechanical problems, and as the black candle burns out your car erupts into sudden flames and then melts as if it too is made of wax, and then it’s just – gone. The wax is gone too. Now you’re screwed. You wanted the car fixed, not gone. How are you going to get to work?
***
Four days later, it comes back. You don’t see it return. You hear a faint ringing sound coming from the singing bowl and black wax, blacker than before, blacker than midnight, swirls into the bowl. You race out to your car space, and your car isn’t in it; it’s several meters from where you last saw it, in a garden bed, left passenger wheel chocked up on a bluestone, right drivers side wheel invisible because it’s somehow inside a bush. All of the doors and the bonnet are open. You dig the car free and go inside to find your keys and when you come back out, you have company.
“How the hell did you manage that?” It’s your asshole wife-beating neighbour, the one you call McFisty. You shrug at him, and will him to go away, but instead he walks right up to your car and peers under the hood. He’s got his head cocked and he’s pulling his own hair, twisting it absently between his fingers and squeezing, like people do in a) cartoons and b) in real life when they’re really, truly perplexed, and when he looks at you again, he’s confused.
“Did you pay someone to do this? I don’t understand” he says, and then he backs away and mumbles something about not feeling well, and then he’s gone. You’re relieved; usually you have to lock yourself inside to escape his drunken rambling and complaining.
Under the bonnet does look weird, but you’re not a car person, so you can’t say exactly what’s different. It’s very shiny under there though; there’s way more chrome than you remember and as you slam the bonnet it’s heavier, and more solid, like it’s made of something different now. Something very dense, that makes no sound when you tap on it. The car kind of tingles when you touch it and when you start it, the engine sounds bubbly and powerful. It’s still your car, but it’s better in every way.
Over the next couple of weeks you disappear some smaller items- a broken biro (it comes back with a gold segment where it was formerly cracked; the rest of it still plastic but thicker, almost like tempered glass. And it writes so smoothly; it’s no longer a ballpoint but it isn’t a felt tip either. You don’t know what it is exactly- but it’s lovely).
You try a mouldy orange and that comes back mouldier; the regular cornflower blue mould you expect to see on an orange now a deep shiny blue, the colour of lapis lazuli, and it’s growing before your eyes. You put the orange into a sealed empty takeaway container for now. Maybe it’s the cure to some terrible disease? Each time you disappear something, it comes back similar, but not the same.
Nothing ever returns exactly where it started either. The pen appears in your car; you expect the orange to as well, but that appears in your bed.
***
It’s Sunday night, two weeks since the night you disappeared your car, and you’ve just been for a drive to the beach. There is a storm brewing in the distance, and the air feels electric.
When you return, McFisty is standing in your driveway, blocking your entrance. You think about ramming him with your car, and then making him disappear. How would he come back? Better? Worse? Covered in mould?
At least you feel safe in this car; it’s solid, and it hums around you. You lock the doors and leave the engine running, high beams shining in his face. He’s holding a half-necked bottle of wine, and judging by his unsteady gait, it’s not the first one he’s had today. When he sees you pull out your phone to call the cops, he retreats, punching your window as he squeezes between your car and the fence. He yells in pain, almost as if the car has bitten him.
You go inside and grab your candle and your singing bowl. The bowl vibrates in your hands and it’s humming; higher pitched than usual, like a distant jet engine beginning to fire.
Next door, McFisty is shouting at his wife. You almost call the police- they might lock him up for the night again. But he’ll be back tomorrow. He always comes back.
On your way out the door, you grab a bottle of tequila; the Don Julio your uncle bought duty free and gave you for your birthday. You’ve been saving it for something special, and somehow, this feels like such an occasion. You head for the waterfront. You want to sit on the hill and look out over the water as you work your magic. And it is your magic now, isn’t it?
You pull out of the driveway and McFisty rushes out of his house, his wailing wife running out after him. He slams his hands on your bonnet and recoils, screams, again like the car somehow bit him. The car hums and vibrates in time with the bowl.
You take off quickly, and he gets into his car and follows. You’re pretty sure your car won’t let him hurt you; it seems to really dislike him. You arrive at the waterfront, and he pulls in beside you, music blaring, and he’s slamming his hands on the steering wheel of his stupid oversized truck and screaming something unintelligible. You think he might be more than just drunk.
Ignoring him, you grab the wax bowl from the back seat and realise, with a sinking heart that you don’t have a lighter. How are you going to light the candle? Not sure what to do next, you crank up the music, and you drink your tequila, and next door to you, McFisty does the same with his wine, copycat like- a sulky child copying your every move to get a rise out of you. You drink fast- if he keeps pace with you, just maybe he’ll pass out.
It works; he’s lolling in his seat, head on the steering wheel, and you push your car door open and then his; he’s snoring like an asthmatic farm animal, a cigarette burning through the leg of his jeans. You grab his lighter from the dash.
He’s got your arm. Your car hums louder, and the singing bowl is screaming, like a jet engine during take-off now, howling with octane fuelled fury. You pull away, but he comes after you. You’re not that quick, but he’s heavy, and very drunk, so you have the advantage. You’re at the base of the Ferris wheel and he’s lumbering behind you. You roll under the temporary fencing- no way he’ll fit under there- and he doesn’t. He stands there, slathering at you on the other side of the fence like a wild animal ready to charge. Then he turns back and lunges at your car.
The car isn’t having that though; he recoils, screaming in pain and rage and now he’s opening the boot of his own car and he’s coming back, now wielding bolt cutters, and in the moonlight he looks bright red, like he has a very bad sunburn, and you’ve never seen anyone so angry or crazy looking in your life.
Panicking now, you start to climb the Ferris wheel. You make it into one of the lower cars; what now? He’s below you, red sausage fingers gripping the sides of the car and he, stupidly, drunkenly, drops the bolt cutters in so he can get a better grip and pull his enormous steroid-ripped frame into the cart with you and you pick them up and
Smash
the bolt cutters vibrate in your hands, as if they’re working for you now. He doesn’t make a sound for a very long time. When he finally does, his tone is demanding.
“Ambulance” He actually still thinks he’s in control of the situation. “Call a fucking ambulance you stupid…”
Silently, you climb down to the ground. Of course, you’ll call the police, and an ambulance. It was self-defence after all. Why wouldn’t you?
But now you’re in your car, and it isn’t your phone in your hand, it’s the tequila, and then when that’s empty, it’s the candle. You carve the Ferris wheel, with a stick figure inside it, because carving wax is hard, and you don’t know if you can carve McFisty accurately enough on his own. You don’t want to mess up and make yourself disappear. And now the wax is swirling and the bowl is screaming loud enough to deafen you and the wheel is..
gone.
***
The wheel stays gone for three days, and you’re stressed out of your mind, because what happens when it comes back? What if it lands on someone? What about McFisty? Will he come back too?
In the middle of the night the bowl wakes you, humming, and the wax starts to swirl in. You drive to the waterfront as fast as you can and there’s the wheel, out in the bay, sinking.
Then you see him, trying to climb on top of the wheel, but he’s flailing, and you realise his hands are gone. His mouth is open, like he’s trying to scream, but there’s no sound other than groaning metal and bubbling water. As the wheel goes under it drags him with it and his eyes meet yours, just for a moment, and then he’s gone again, the water above swirling just like the wax in the bowl.
***
It’s a month later. You get home from work, and McFisty’s wife is on your doorstep. She’s been badgering you relentlessly about the night her asshole husband disappeared. You can’t imagine why she wants him back, but her incessant visits are really starting to drive you insane. The guy was a monster; why isn’t she glad to be rid of him?
“I KNOW YOU DID SOMETHING TO HIM” she wails as you push past her, not making eye contact. You wish she would just go away.
As you open the door, the singing bowl begins to hum.