"- chart shows the trend in sales over time."

I was spacing out during one of our corporate events. They were supposed to be informative, helping us understand how we could help the company. But I was confident in saying that most of us found it mind numbingly boring.

I procured a pen, along with one of the many free notepads lying on the table. My first thought was to start a game of noughts and crosses, but a glance at my seat neighbours quelled it. They were staring at the projector, but with glazed over eyes. Disturbing them would be rude. So I just decided to doodle.

The first were a couple of poor renditions of pokemon. I didn't play it, but my nephew loved them. I had picked up a bit of knowledge from his excited chatter, a much more pleasant one-sided conversation than the one I was currently being subjected to. But with those out of my system, I just took to making random scribbles.

As I drew it, it made me think of fire. I didn't know why, but the shape of my doodle was very indicative of flames. I brought my line back to the start, finishing the doodle in an easy line.

As I completed it, there was a whooshing sound. The doodle flashed, a football sized ball of flames wrenching itself free. It shot upwards, slamming into the ceiling tiles and spreading out in a wave of heat. The tiles instantly caught fire, soon followed by the wail of the fire alarm.

Screams filled the room, as my colleagues saw the result of my doodle. It jolted them awake, leading to a stampede as people tried to flee. I followed suit, less in fear of the fire, and more in fear of what people would think if they knew it was my fault. We poured through the exits, as the sprinkler systems finally activated.

When we got outside, I realised that in my escape I had taken hold of my claimed notepad. Glancing at my doodle, I saw the line had become blackened. The blue ink I had used was gone, seemingly burned away.

I tucked it away, concentrating on getting past this aftermath first. I wanted to know just what I had done, but this was neither the time nor place. Whatever this was, I had a feeling that letting other people realise it was my fault would not bode well for my privacy or autonomy.

My short stint as a runic sorcerer began during a boring sales presentation made by a company peddling yet another digital whiteboard. Nimble with the stylus on my Galaxy Note 7, I'd been creating the most hilariously inappropriate shapes on the notepad when the device burst into a column of flame. My colleagues thought it impossible that I hadn't been injured, so I made a joke that I'd rediscovered runic magic. I expected them to laugh and think nothing of it, so it came as a complete surprise when two people who worked in marketing nodded their heads in serious agreement.

Recently divorced and bored with my life, I decided to go along with it. I told myself it would be fun to string them along and see how far I could take the joke. So I began talking about how I was a rune researcher, had looked into several old scrolls, and knew a variety of spells. Everyone except the two marketing people laughed and walked away. They started asking questions, eventually wanting to know how they could gain the same magical powers themselves. Needing to cover for the origin of my powers, I told them that they were too inexperienced to know my secrets. They asked if they could come over to my apartment sometime, and I said "why the hell not?"

Later that night I researched runic magic for real, learning everything I could about ancient epigraphy and Tacitus. When my co-workers came over for dinner I wowed them with my breadth of knowledge on the topic, telling them that they needed to study "ancient Germanic languages," and that they needed to read a list of eleven books I'd compiled. I'd even put together a scroll of spells that I could cast, with names that sounded like formal versions of several spells out of the 5th edition D&D players handbook, such as "sphere of chromaticus" and "missile of arcanic power." They asked when they could begin casting these spells, showing that they hadn't thought critically about a word I said. I honestly couldn't believe they were that gullible. So I told them that not only did they need to do everything I'd already said, but that they'd also need to take a six-week intensive course with a faerie overlord named "Druphennia." At this point I really expected the gig to be up, but they asked "where do I sign up?"

Unable to create anything more off the top of my head, I told them I'd look into it and that I'd have an answer for them in a couple of days. I hadn't really begun to brainstorm a solution by the next day when they came to me with five of their friends, who also somehow believed I had the capability to give them magical powers and also wanted to take the course. So told them all that they'd need to quit their jobs and spend six weeks out in the woods eating mushrooms and praying to Druphennia. That got a couple of them to shake their heads and bow out, but five of them were all in.

That was the point where I started to regret the whole thing. I told the crowd to write down their names and I would talk to Druphennia. The next day I told them all that Druphennia was too busy to accept new students right now, and that there'd be a waiting list. All of them wanted to be on it, despite the fact that I told them it could be fifty years before they were accepted.

Once they realized that they couldn't learn magic themselves, they started asking me to do spells for them, to which I answered that I wasn't allowed to practice magic in real life and that the ordeal with the Note 7 had purely been an accident. This made the whole thing less appealing to all of them except a woman named Mary. That Friday night she called me up and said she was going to practice for Druphrennia by spending part of her weekend out in the wilderness eating mushrooms. I told her not to and that some mushrooms could be dangerous, but she brushed it off.

With nothing else to do, I went to her house. She led me into the woods behind her place. At this point, I was prepared to confess the whole thing, as the last thing I wanted to do was continue this charade for nothing, but I decided to keep my mouth shut when she showed me a circle of trees covered in strange runes. I thought she had taken this way too far when she told me to kneel down in front of the trees. I tried to say that it was all for naught, all a lie. She told me to hush.

The last words I heard before she teleported me were, "we don't allow imposters."

r/StoriesToThinkAbout

Leo's arms instinctively shot up in an attempt to shield his face from the flames. Sitting still trying to process what just happened, he looked across the room. Two other students were sitting on a couch, both wide eyed with mouths agape . Glancing up, it appeared the flames didn't catch, and stranger still, no markings where the fire would have hit the ceiling. If it weren't for the other student's expressions and the still burning tips of his shoulder length blonde hair, he might have thought he was having a mental episode.

Without warning, a hand grabbed him on his shoulder and pulled him to his feet. Still shaken, he turned around to see a young woman. Clad in a leather jacket, blue jeans, and a look of intensity and purpose, she said, "Grab your things, especially that fucking notebook."

Still dazed, Leo quickly looked at the page he had been drawing on before shoving it in his backpack. It was a symbol he had seen many times over the last few weeks, not in real life, but in his dreams. The markings would appear on clothes in shops, graffiti on walls, tattoos on people he passed in the street, but never clear enough to make out all the details.

The woman dragged Leo out the room and began walking at a brisk pace towards the staircase. The florescent lights seemed really bright, and looking forward it almost appeared there were two of this woman. She looked back and said, "Just a bit further, can you make it down the stairs?"

The last words sounded as if they were coming from underwater and things started to go black. "Oh no you don't." He felt the woman put his arm over her shoulders and begin to walk him down the stairs.

"You have to stay awake. Once we get to my car I can help with the dizziness but I can't carry you by myself. Just walk slowly and lean on me."

The walk down the stairs and through the parking lot seemed like an eternity. After nearly passing out twice, Leo finally felt relief as he was sat down in the passenger side onto a dark grey leather seat. The woman shoved his feet into the car and shut the door, quickly looking around before entering the car herself.

"Wh-who are you?" Leo stuttered, barely conscious as he began to break out into a cold sweat.

"Circe. My name is Circe." The woman said as she started scrambling through her backpack for a small glass jar. Pulling out a small, purple, semi-transparent candy, she said, "Suck on this, and just relax for a minute." Shoving the candy into his mouth, Leo immediately felt his face go numb and eyes begin to water. The dizziness was replaced by acute awareness as he leapt up from his slouched position. A look of mild surprise on Circe's face as she said, "Just calm down."

"What the fuck is this?" Leo said as he spit out the candy into his hand, suddenly aware he had let a complete stranger stick something into his mouth.

Circe replied in a calm voice, "I can explain, just give it another minute. You already have color returning to your face. Are you feeling better?"

Leo took a second and the chills disappeared. He was no longer sweating and his hearing and vision had returned to normal. Seeing this woman clearly for the first time, she had pale skin with auburn brown hair. A thin scar across her right cheek that stretched from cheekbone to right under her lip. It must have been old as it had become barely visible. She also had a light accent but he couldn't place from where.

"I-I don't understand what's happening right now. I was just drawing, a-and some sort of fire shot up in front of me. Was that you?"

"No, it wasn't me. What's your name?"

"Leo. What is this? What did you give me?" He said pointing to the small purple candy in the palm of his hand.

"That is grape flavored candy, which I've infused with a simple arcane recovery spell."

Leo sat still waiting for a laugh or 'gotcha'. After a few seconds of silence and a dead serious look from Circe, "Well, thank you, I think. I don't really know what to say."

"Look, I'm not some crazy person. The candy helped, didn't it?"

"Yeah, but..."

"But I said spell and so I must be insane? Is that it?"

Leo leaned towards the door a bit more as the tone shifted a little. "Look, I'm not judging, if you believe in that sorta thing, ya know, th-that's great. I'm just not really into that sorta stuff."

"That's weird, because you just almost set the whole school on fire back there with 'that sorta stuff.'"

Circe looked forward for a second and took a deep breath. "Look, can I just see this notebook you were drawing in?"

(Continued in comments)

FWOOMP

"JESUS CHRIST, what the fuck Troy?!"

"I-I dunno dude! I was just doodling dicks and I added a sick looking fireball shooting out of one and it did that!"

"Bro, are you fucking high? You can't just summon a freaking Mario fireball by doodling! Where's the fucking lighter, man? Where're you hiding-"

FWOOMP

"JESUS CHRIST TROY!"

"It did it again! You try!"

"NO dude, you nearly set the ceiling-"

"Look, just shut up and try it, okay? Here, take my notebook - copy that, right there!"

"...All right, fine, but you're showing me where you're hiding that-"

FWOOMP

"Ah FUCK!"

"DUDE it worked for you too! Lemme see! Oh, you copied the dick too? Does it work without it?"

...

"Huh. Guess you need the dick too?"

"Okay cool, but can you try drawing something that won't set the house on fire?"

"Oh great idea! Lemme try beer! ...How the hell do you draw beer? Maybe if I do something like this..."

zzzZZZWOMP

"Oh just fucking great man, now there's a weird slime thing in the kitchen. Just great."

"It's kinda cute though."

"Bro, it's leaving a weird ooze trail everywhere. Take your slime and fireballs and weird magic shit outside dude."

"Your mom's leaving a weird ooze trail!"

"..."

"...Okay, okay, jeez! Tough audience! Whatever, c'mon uh... Mr. Slime. Can I call you that?"

glorp

"..."

"..."

"...Hey Troy?"

"What up?"

"Lemme know if you figure out the doodle for beer."

Turns out that shooting a random fireball into the ceiling is a good way to have the university police called on you.

Luckily for me no one was looking at me when it happened, and they couldn't find any accelerant or, well, anything that could make a fireball on me, so I didn't get charged with anything.

They ended up releasing me after a couple hours sitting in the small interview room the one part-time university detective used.

It wasn't until I got home that I could review the doodle I had been making. I've always liked to make up and draw random arcane looking symbols in the margins of my notebooks, it helps me relax.

It was pretty easy to pick out the page, since it was covered in soot. I took the notebook out to the garage of the house I was renting with some friends. My roommate has turned half of it into a welding shop for his side gig, and he was out of town visiting family, so it was probably the best place for some experimentation.

It took two and a bit hours for me to get it right. I finally figured out that it was two symbols, one on the previous page with the second overlayed precisely, the. Simply pressing my thumb on both caused a fist sized fireball to appear when I pulled my thumb away.

Of course, I hit a wall once I figured that out. I had no grasp of why the symbols did that. One of my other roommates had tried to explain computer programming to me once, he had shown me the project he was working on, even with him explaining what the word soup I was looking at was supposed to do I could barely wrap my head around it.

I didn't have the first clue where to begin parsing the geometric shape I had just randomly scribbled in my notebook.

My fruitless tests of variations were interrupted by a knock on the side door of the garage, which was odd, because none of my roommates but Greg ever came out here, and he wouldn't knock.

I closed my notebook, though there wasn't anything particularly odd about it or the workspace. And walked over to the door.

I cracked it slightly to see who was out there. It turned out to be two people. A nondescript looking guy who appeared to be in his mid twenties with unruly black hair was looking down at his phone. Slightly behind him was a woman, with deathly pale skin and slightly red-tinged hair.

The man looked up at me, I caught an upside down glimpse of what he was looking at on his phone, it was my student picture, the same one on my ID card and attached to all my transcripts.

"Joe Tanner?" The man asked in a tone that said he kind of already knew the answer.

"Yes?" I replied uncertainly, "Who are you?"

"You can call me Alex," he replied, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the woman. "This is Natasha, you can call her Nat, or Tasha. I can't tell if switching actually annoys her or not, so I'm doing some experimentation."

The woman just rolled her eyes, but didn't say anything.

"What do you want?" I asked, trying not to sound rude, but feeling unsettled by the odd pair for some reason.

"Today, at around ten thirty A.M." the man said, consulting his phone again. "You conjured a fireball in your advanced English class."

I felt a chill, then immediately realized that it should have been obvious that if magic was real then people would know about it.

The man continued speaking, either not noticing or not caring about the flush rising on my face. "Then starting a couple hours ago you conjured several more fireballs in this garage. Nat could smell the magic from two streets over."

Before I could really get into considering running from what I was sure would be one of those men in black suits disappearing me situations, the man pulled out one of the crappiest business cards I had ever seen. It was obviously printed on the cheap paper they had for students to use in the library, and looked like it had been put together by someone with only the vaguest idea of how the software worked. To top it off, I could see the ragged edges where it looked like the scissors had caught and torn the page.

It was so different from what I was expecting that my mind went blank for a second.

"Between you, Nat, that guy with elemental blood last week and those twins, this is turning into an unseen hotspot." The man said, pulling my attention away from the abomination of kerning in my hand.

"The local council has asked me to put together a support group for newcomers. Next meeting is on Saturday, you can find the details on our Facebook group. There'll be donuts."

"Wait," I said, not really sure what question to ask first. So I was half surprised to hear myself ask, "your magical support group posts about meetings on Facebook?"

"Sure," Alex said cheerfully. "I mean, Zuckerberg is a lizard person you know."

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

Reminders:

>* No AI-generated reponses 🤖 >* Stories 100 words+. Poems 30+ but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* [RF] and [SP] for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

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