Feeling the Heat

All in all, Doug thought, things could have been worse.

Then the air conditioner gave a frigid, cracking noise, and the bottom of it fell out like an ice machine with a burst trap.

Shit, he thought. “Shit,” he muttered, soon after. “Shit!” he yelled. He barely held in a demonstration as he dove to his grimoire – it was a discount grimoire, which was a bad idea to begin with. It was in Cyrillic, which was his second mistake. The Phoenician might have taken more study, but it was also far less smudged. He could have learned Phoenician. It is much clearer on the details, anyway.

His third mistake was the most basic of mistakes – pride. It cometh before the fall, and Doug was deeply interested in comething, which was his fourth mistake. The flesh suborns the mind, and Doug was downright submissive to his flesh at the particular point to which he had arrived. Doug was not fucked, which is exactly why he was. Sandra was supposed to solve this, but that leads to mistake number five.

Sandra was hard to impress. Never bother with a woman who's hard to impress. Especially never try if you're a COBOL programmer in an age beyond its time. Doug felt the need to impress, problem six, and Sandra was hard to impress. That would be the seventh error, their mix of Jack Daniels and mutual damage that brought them to this room, Doug's room, technically his mystical chamber.

Doug didn't invest in central air, which made his apartment unbearable without a window unit. He did not realize this was his eighth mistake until now. The choice of sweaty lemonade to calm his mind was the ninth, as his sticky-wet fingers further smudged the cheap, Cyrillic words he'd translated with Babelfish. Yes, that would be his tenth mistake. His eleventh was failing to double-translate – it was reliable, right, if it's on the internet.

“It's okay, Sandy...I can fix this. Love conquers all!” That lie was his twelfth mistake, and nearly the fatal one. Love does, in fact, conquer all in a world of magic and mystery. Doug was very much in lust, deeply in need, overwhelmed in confusion, and dancing with the demons of ego. Doug was not in love.

“I promise.” And there it was. The grimoire burst into flames. The frozen, nude statue of his lady 'love' took down a fracture from the heart and outwards...and as he cried out, she shattered.

Thirteen mistakes is too much for even the mystical arts to tolerate. Worst of all, he'd intended to make her more beautiful.

The spell had succeeded, and succeeded still.