Rachel's Love Potion
Today's the day! After month's of finagling and finessing, I was finally going to enact my sinister master plan. The final ingredients had arrived, and soon, my love potion would be complete! I don't care what anyone says, days like today merit sinister laughter.
Rachel Levine was going to be mine.
I snatched up my package from the front porch and waved to Mrs. Lundegaard across the street, who was out watering her herb garden. She didn't wave back; the old bitch hates me. And I her, I should add, but today I couldn't help but smile at her wrinkly old ass. Smile right through it in fact, then through the house behind her, through two more, and right at where my quarry dwelled. At least, until I had her move in as my permanent live-in love slave.
Back inside it was straight to my laboratory, where the early stages of the concoction were in full swing. Plural, actually: concoctions. That's what most people don't realize about love potions -- they think you toss some ingredients in a blender and force it down her throat. Not remotely. There were in fact three distinct portions to it, each of which need to be maintained separately until the crucial stage of the process, which with my new package in hand, I would see to presently.
The first was to personalize it. After all, a love potion given to the wrong person doesn't usually work right. Everybody experiences love differently, see, so if you go feeding a love potion to someone it wasn't brewed for, what you're more than likely to wind up with is a thoroughly confused woman staggering around trying to fuck a chair leg. Nobody wants to see that.
Thanks to modern home security systems and the neighborhood's general dislike of their warlock neighbor, it had taken me six months to find an opportunity to get close enough to dear Rachel to get a serviceable hair sample. Now that hair sample was affixed in a perfect double helix with one of my own, dissolving together in a swirl of imbued chemistry. It would work for Rachel and myself alone -- none of that "whoops, she looked at the wrong person first" garbage you see on TV.
The second essential was something all too often neglected: the base. Every good potion needed a competently brewed base to empower it. Only a moron forgot it altogether, and then he didn't have a potion at all but instead some expensive, foul-tasting sludge. My base had been brewing for over a month now, infused at intervals with enhancements that had, quite frankly, nearly bankrupted me. Still, when it was done, my love potion would have the most potent base of any potion I'd ever seen, much less made myself. Rachel would be so blinded by infatuation, I could do anything to her and she would only beg for more. Abuse her, humiliate her, torture her friends and family right in front of her, and she'd still be utterly besotted.
(I had less than no interest in such macabre pursuits, but still, it was nice to have room to operate.)
Finally, there was the alchemical instructions for the potion itself. This was where the alchemy could trigger the mix to cure (or cause) a disease, enable flight, induce fire breath, or -- in the case of my potion -- cause romantic infatuation. It was actually the simplest part of the potion. It was formulaic, and perhaps disturbingly straightforward. After an anxiety-inducing two-week delay, the ingredients had been delivered today. I tore the package open with boyish eagerness.
I did a quick inventory. Glauber's salt, caustic potash, purple of Cassius, white vitriol... On I went down my checklist. Everything seemed to be in order right up until I got to the lunar caustis. No. No, this couldn't be right. No no no nooooo! I picked up the order confirmation, scanned down its contents. There it was, lunar caustis, 10g... wait, no. It was supposed to be 100g!
Damnit all to hell!
I had a mere three hours before I needed to be ready! Four, if I was willing to risk being fashionably late. Even if I had the silver on hand right now it would hardly be enough time! My instinct was to call the chemical supplier and raise bloody hell, but there was no time. I had the narrowest of windows to make this right.
Ripping around like a wild man, I drove around to every store I could think of, scrounging up what little I could find of use. After two hours, I was convinced I'd found all I could and raced back home to start the processes. All the while, I knew full well this was a doomed effort. I'd gotten up to 40g, and I might be able to get another 20 distilled by deadline, but still! Still. I allowed myself an exasperated sigh.
It might be enough. Everything else had been done so perfectly, and I had all the other ingredients. Insufficiency wasn't the same as a mistake. It might just... dilute it. Or maybe I'd been overly-ambitious to begin with, right? Sure, that could be. Maybe this would actually be better than my incredibly meticulous plot that I had so carefully planned, researched and perfectly executed with this one exception.
Damnit!
The block party was set to begin at noon sharp, and the love potion was done only shortly thereafter. I didn't have time to get tidied up like I'd wanted, but I was presentable at least, and with less than no time to spare. Thank the dark powers of the void that the rest of my things were already packed in the van and ready to go. As I pulled up to the strip of parking spaces alongside the park's east edge, I saw more than a few irked glances cast in my direction; there were still those in the neighborhood who were none too pleased to see me arrive.
I swear, one little story in the newspaper about about disseminating aerosol toxins not approved by the FDA, and you're the neighborhood nemesis. (OK, so there were three stories.) In my defense, I was only trying to kill mosquitoes. All of them, for about a twenty mile radius. Even if it hadn't made those lacking the antidote (i.e. everyone but me) a little sick for a week or two, it was a small price to pay for not having to worry about West Nile, right? Lucky for me the judge couldn't live without his morning coffee, and the flavor of coffee handily masked my mercy potion.
That was years ago, however, and of late I had been a model community member. Organizing the community watch, buying excessive amounts of cookies from the girl scouts, competing in last summer's home garden competition, you name it. (Fourth place, but still, all agreed my tomatoes were the sweetest!) I don't think many of them had forgotten past transgressions, but I was only looking for tolerance, not acceptance. More than a year of intensive boot-licking later, here I was, finally invited to the annual block party largely thanks to a promise to furnish the booze on my own dime.
Now to pray to all the dead gods of history that it wasn't going to be for nothing.
Things were in full swing by the time I arrived. The younger kids were entertaining themselves on the playground and the older ones were isolating themselves with phones and tablets. Three grill pits were churning out meat (and veggie burgers for the Thompsons), and tables were overflowing with the potluck offerings. There was both sullen grumbling at my arrival and fervent expressions both relief at the contents of my van.
"Sorry everyone -- had something come up last minute, but rest assured, your alcohol has arrived!" I opened the back end of the truck to the sound of grudging applause and started unloading coolers, quickly joined by a few other neighbors who helped me set up. I'd sprung for beer, wine, some fruity girly things, and a not unimpressive stock of liqueurs. All told, it had set me back more than the potion itself (which had not been inexpensive).
We had a rather large neighborhood, using the term "block party" lightly, as it was really more like five blocks. There were around two hundred attendees expected, and we may well have exceeded that with friends and party crashers. In all the hubbub, it took me some time to spot Rachel, especially as I was trying to look like I wasn't looking.
She was so mesmerizingly beautiful, this whole charade might have been worth it just to see her. There she was with a dozen or so others playing volleyball in the park's sand pits. She wasn't dressed for sex appeal, or if she was, she didn't know how to do so. All she had on was a simple pair of jogging shorts and a sports bra, not even socks or shoes. Her golden brown hair was tied up in a simple ponytail; without it, it would hang midway down her back with the slightest hint of curls. Her skin was perfectly bronzed; I couldn't detect the edges of a tan line anywhere.
It was strange, really. My appetites generally ran to big boobs and big butts on big girls, yet Rachel was the antithesis of my norm. She was on the short side, thin near to the point of skinny with petite breasts and a runner's ass. She had the face of an angel, undeniably, but usually that wouldn't be enough for a man like me. There was something about her, something unaffected and simple and quietly unashamed, and it had sparked a need in me. A need to possess this woman.
I bided my time. Rushing over with a special drink just for her would blow the whole thing; this had to happen organically, or at least seem to. So I settled in, handing out beers, pouring from bottles, guarding against ambitious teens, and increasingly displaying my skills as a mixologist as word got around. Within the first hour, I might have been welcomed on my own merit. Soon enough I had a small group of neighbors gathered around the bar, laughing and telling jokes, myself an equal member of the circle. It felt like I could live like them, simple people with normal lives, if I so chose.
But I didn't. I was waiting. Waiting for my moment.
