Negotiating with an evil spirit is no joke. Not from the human side, anyway. The spirit stopped even attempting to hide its snickers as I went through the arduous and occasionally embarrassing ritual to make my request.
But at last I had it: one hour in my hometown fifty years to the moment before I activated the wish. The research on this was almost as much trouble as the ritual. Loopholes had to be anticipated and closed. Choosing the day, for example: it would have blasted the plan to smithereens if I hadn’t checked first to make sure that day wasn’t a Sunday, or legal holiday half a century ago. (No second chances: no way would I perform that sixth step of the ritual again, even if enough albino wasps were still available.) I had to be sure of events in the sky and in the town on the day selected: a hailstorm or a festival parade would have complicated getting through my LIST.
The LIST took weeks to prepare, which kept me busy all the days I spent in bed recovering from the ceremony. Buy this comic book. Deposit that much money in this bank under that name. Send a letter that should arrive in time to prevent a shooting, send another urging a politician to run in an election he opted out of the first time. Leave notes in a lawyer’s office, with an agreement that they should be sent out on schedule so my mother would avoid a certain intersection on a certain day, my sister would not go to a certain dance, and my brother would NOT buy that hat. I had to seek out stamps, unused, of a vintage which would not startle the post office, and provided myself with cash of the same era. That hour in the past had cost me plenty; it would NOT be ruined by technicalities.
Everything on the LIST was ranked, in case anything took longer than expected and I had to leave some items out. Be sure I left some minutes in the hour empty, to allow for my wonder at finding myself in a town I remembered so well (and for getting lost, in case I didn’t remember it as well as I thought.) Ridiculous haircut, vintage clothes that would pass: I had provided for everything. I checked that vintage pocket four times to make sure the LIST was inside. Then I spoke the spell.
Negotiating with an evil spirit is no joke. Did it KNOW I would forget to eat before I set off?
I flickered into being and knew the spell had worked. There was the Sugar Pit. My hometown still boasts a Sugar Pit, but it is tidy and clean and in another neighborhood. This was the original, a drive-in way out on Main Street with a couple of bleached and battered benches on one side. In lieu of a printed menu or even a sign with prices, pictures of every sundae and sugar concoction were plastered on every exterior wall, top to bottom, leaving a small space for the
order window. My childhood vocabulary experienced great growth when I listened to my father’s mutterings as we kids wandered along the walls, debating the merits of strawberry and pineapple and marshmallow before settling on what we always ordered. They also sold one type of hot dog and one type of hamburger. (I said this was fifty years ago.)
The prices staggered me, and I had allowed some extra time. I could certainly afford a hot dog, both in price and time spent, as I worked out where to go first from here in accomplishment of the LIST. I reached for my pocket change and then considered the hamburger. Hot dogs could be unpredictable. Then I saw the sign for that nickel cone. I walked around a bit, looking over the variations on what my grandmother called “ice cream on a stick”. I had time for dessert, if it came to that. Should it be what I had always ordered, way back when, or one of those I never tried, which might have meant risking fifty whole cents on an unknown quantity?
I had time, once I had made my decision, to order, sit down, and consume the hot dog, cherry Sugar Slosh, and pineapple sundae before I found myself back in the present.
Negotiating with an evil spirit: you try it. My brother can KEEP that stupid hat.
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