"This is now just beyond stupid!" Darla dismissively cried as she stood up. "We have been sitting here, cross-legged and cramped on this floor for hours and it is obvious that your summoning spell is not working. In fact, I bet that isn't even the right chant you are using."
"Just be patient!" Shelia sharply snapped back. "You just have to clear your mind completely of all distractions if we are going to summon the spirit of the Goddess today. Your continued bitching shows a lack of belief and I am sure that the great and glorious Ishtar will not look favorably on non-believers in her coven."
Rolling her eyes and grimacing over at their third roommate Dottie, Darla sighed before resuming her lotus flower position on the floor. Satisfied that Chi would flow again properly now that everyone was seated, Shelia continued "I am positive this spell will work, in fact, there is no doubt about it. All of the signs are perfectly aligned for the ceremony to be successful this morning. The full blood moon is rising in the house of Scorpio as we speak. Venus is in retrograde and won't be repeating that particular alignment with these other fire signs for years."
Pointing down at the markings on the floor she added "We have the sage smoking and the doves blood all harvested and I personally dipped these sacred black cemetery ash candles, so everything is set." Glaring back at her Darla, who was snickering, Shelia spewed. "So....Why don't you try doing something new for a God Damned change and not fuck this sacred ceremony up by being a sarcastic cunt!"
"Now girls!" Dottie interjected as her lips curled into a smirk. "Let's not get ourselves into a snit. We are a small coven and all of this negative energy is starting to fuck up my aura." Nodding in agreement, they closed their eyes, held hands and prepared to start their chant over from the top.
This ceremony was a semi-regular event, one that all three had performed countless times since elementary school but not ordinarily so early in the morning. Known as the "Goth Girls" back in their Dallas Texas suburb hometown, they reveled in pushing the buttons of the big haired, white bread, chipper neighbors. Marked as 'weird' at a young age by their town, the three naturally became friends and that bond had remained resilient even now that they were in their early twenties.
While most girls they grew up with dreamed of making the cheerleading squad, perhaps becoming prom queen and if they were lucky, allowing the high school quarterback a free feel of their tits in the back of his Ford pickup, these three were different. Dying their hair jet black and magenta they definitely stood out in the land where big-haired blondes are some sort of state ideal. Wearing stark white makeup with inky indigo lipstick, they cut a stark contrast compared to the pastel and pink world of the so-called normal girls around them. While their more mainstream classmates thought it edgy to get a butterfly tattoo as a tramp stamp on spring break; the Goth Girls loved the gasps of shock that their matching "666 Mark of the Beast" stomach tats earned when displayed in their smoking hot bikinis at the beach.
Always drawn to the dark side of things, they had been friends all through school, and now that they had recently graduated college, it was obvious that closeness was going to continue into adulthood. Sharing a tiny apartment in downtown Austin Texas, at least here they found a few like-minded souls in their edgy neighborhood. Like all of the residents of so-called "Weird Austin", they felt like survivors of a shipwreck; trapped on a Bohemian island of free thinkers in a sea of beef barbeque, reality tv and small town close-mindedness.
"Now... Let's start again!" Shelia said calmly as they all clasped hands and closed their eyes. Sitting inside the pentagram outlined in black chalk on their wood floor, each girl sat cross-legged and looked peaceful as they began to focus. After three minutes of silence, Shelia began to chant.
"Oh Glorious Goddess of the East, hear the prayers of your faithful servants. Come to us great Ishtar; all-powerful divinity of love and war. Come forth and bestow your blessings on your committed and devoted Priestesses. We beg and beseech thee to..."
The sound of tinkling glass caused all three to snap their eyes open at once as their apartment began to shake. Looking over at the quaking bookshelf in the corner of their living room, jammed to bursting with collectible crystal figurines of unicorns, dragons, and other mythical creatures, Darla screamed. "Earthquake!"
The shockwave blasted all three down flat on the floor while shards of shattered glass exploded everywhere. As they lay on the floor cowering, the room was suddenly filled with an intensely bright light, brighter than a thousand halogen lamps burning at noon. The light flared up in an intense blaze for three minutes before finally subsiding.
Straining to see through the blinding glare that just was fading, Dottie gasped as she pointed into the center of the room and screamed, "Holy Fuck, what is that!"
Waving her left hand up in front of her face as the last wisp of purple smoke dissipated, Ishtar coughed loudly as she lifted up her right up to her face and gritted her teeth hard. Seeing her hand empty, her stomach dropped as she saw her that she was no longer grasping the sword of Chronus. Screaming in a rage she yelled, "Damn it to fucking hell I was so close!"
"Who-who, who are you?" Darla yelled through her now rapidly chattering teeth. Looking at the mysterious creature that had suddenly materialized in their apartment, she could not believe her eyes. Of course, this was what they had all hoped for, but part of each of them never really thought it could actually happen. Tall, painfully gorgeous and dressed in a short gown of pure black leather, the great Goddess Ishtar herself was now standing in their very home. Seeing her great black wings stretch out behind her, all of the girls could not help but begin to scoot their asses backward towards the opposite wall. The terror of the vision rapidly was overwhelming the excitement they had that the spell actually worked.
"Wait just a fucking minute!" Ishtar glowered as she looked down at her body and then glanced around the tiny apartment. This was not at all what she was expecting and the sights of the television set, skull-shaped bong, and Frazetta style occult posters on the wall confused her. Glancing out of the corner of her eye, an image on the far wall caught her attention and she smirked as she pointed. The picture was of a Goddess, supposedly her she guessed, in her full regal dark divine glory. In the painting, Ishtar had her wings stretched out wide as she wielded swords in both hands. Looking at the terrified coven on the floor she asked, "Is that supposed to be me?"
"Ye-ye-yes," Shelia stammered, her eyes wide with terror as she joined the other two girls now plastered against the far wall.
Walking over to the poster, Ishtar shook her head. "Doesn't quite do me justice I think." Spinning back to look at the three girls cowering in the corner she tried to smile as non-threateningly as possible. She knew that mere humans almost always were overwhelmed by such encounters with the Gods, even when they were planned. "So..., Girls, I have a bunch of questions. I sure hope you can help me out."
"We live to serve our Goddess!" Darla burst out, quickly lowering her forehead to the floor.
"That's nice," Ishtar said with as friendly grin as she could muster. "So here goes. First question, where in the fuck am I? It certainly does not look like Babylon."
"This is Austin Goddess, Austin, Texas in the United States."
"Austin?" Ishtar replied with a frown. "This better not be fucking Greece!"
"No, it is not Greece. Austin in the capital of the state of Texas in the country of the United States."
"United States? That is a kingdom I am not familiar with..." the goddess replied as she scratched her head and racked her brain for a frame of reference. Drawing a blank she chuckled and added "Well, I suppose that time rip I got pulled into also threw me way off course geographically as well. Ok, question two, what year is it?"
"Year?"
"Yes, what year."
"It is 2015."
"2015! Well, that explains it. It certainly seems quite different now. Apparently that time tunnel not only threw me off course physically but also quite far into the future." Sniffing the air, she added "And that smell... It seems oddly familiar."
Pointing at the open window Darla said, "You must mean car exhaust?"
"Cars?"
"Yes, I, well horseless carriages might make more sense to you. They put off an odor, coming from the burning of gasoline they run on. That gasoline is made from oil, which you may be familiar with."
"Ah yes! Oil! That I am very familiar with. Back in Babylon we had lakes of the stuff. Damn dirty nuisance really. I remember King Dion praying to me often that he wished it could all be taken away from his kingdom. He was complaining bitterly that it was always catching fire and draining his treasury to keep cleaning it up." Smirking she added "I never did get around to granting that prayer."
"Good for him that you didn't great Goddess! The stuff is quite valuable now," Darla replied.
"Yeah, funny how things work out. Anyhoo..., Where is my closest temple? I have much to attend to." Shaking her arms in front of her as she opened and closed her fists she added, "I am really going to need to bitch slap my current High Priestess for being so lazy. Just look, my mana is very low. Obviously the sacrifices to my deity have slacked off quite a bit in, when did you say it was again?"
"2015."
"Wow! Right, 2015. I am going to need a ton of sacrifices made to recharge my batteries. I feel weak as a kitten."
Starting to shake, Darla cleared her throat and nervously replied "We apologize oh divine majesty, but there are no temples left to the ancient Gods."