Angelina

A lady was standing in the distance and wouldn’t turn her head, no matter how many times I said hello. Her hair was red, and she had a slender body similar to that of models — nurtured, curvy, and sexy. I tried to call her again to beg her to look at me. She didn’t turn her head or look at me. When her hair got blown by the wind, she looked like a goddess of some kind. Then her dress answered the gentle nudge of the wind, and it was a magnificent sight. I stopped calling her and just watched. Maybe she would turn her head and look at me if I stopped. I felt something on my legs, like I had stepped into something cold, so I looked down, and when I raised my head again, the lady was walking away. “Wait!” I screamed louder than I had done earlier. The wind became so violent that I stepped back.

I woke up panting on my bed. I had been dreaming all along, and I was sitting, wet, like someone who had walked in the rain. I set my feet on the floor and tried to calm down. The dream didn’t make much sense, but it worried me, like an omen, some dark and fearful event. I would be concerned if I had someone with a body structure similar to that lady in real life. But I had no one like that. My mother had more flesh than that, and my grandmother was old.

I rubbed my forehead and looked at the bed.

Where was Collins?

I turned around to check if he was in the room, but he wasn’t there.

“Collins?” I called, looking around the room.

He wasn’t anywhere in the room, not under the bed or the corner of the wall near the nightstand. I got up and walked out of the living room, calling his name as I went along. I checked the kitchen, the toilet, the second bedroom, the living room, and then the bedroom again. He was in none of those places.

Something weird was happening. I couldn’t smell him either. He must have gone far away from the house, so far that my sense of scent could not get to him. I walked out of the house onto the terrace and called him. “Collins.”

Then I needed to be careful when calling out his name. It was quite dangerous to call him Collins when people could guess the name was the same as someone who had suddenly disappeared.

“Collins,” I whispered, hoping he could hear me. “You need to come back home.” I said.

I returned to the bedroom, turned to my cloak, and picked a coat. I would have gone out into the street and asked people if they had seen a giant white dog, like a wolf. I would have called my boss to say that I would miss the first resumption date of the year. Instead, I was putting the buttons in place when I looked out of my window, and my boyfriend was heading towards the house, breathing hard like he had been running around all night.

I sighed and sat on the bed. There, I waited for him to come around. But, first, the sound of the entrance door, and some seconds later, he was in the bedroom, standing at my feet and looking into my eyes.

“You scared me,” I said.

He didn’t say what had happened or where he had gone, but he stepped closer, and I leaned lower so his head was on my shoulder. We stayed like that for a few seconds, just listening to each other breathing.

I pulled out of the hug some minutes later and started talking.

“I have to go to work,” I told him.

He wagged his tail in understanding and watched me as I went about getting prepared for work. Cooking, brushing, cooking, bathing, and arranging things in my bag. He left the bedroom when I sat behind the nightstand.

When I came to the living room some minutes later, he was sitting there watching television. I smiled at him, knelt before him, and told him how my day would go. He bowed his head, and I spoke to him with his mind. He wasn’t happy with the idea of me being with that same man I called boss.

“You should get another job… He won’t stop using this job as an opportunity to get to you,” he said.

I shook my head. “Listen. That’s not my priority right now. I want to find a way to get you back to being human, and I will be looking for answers once I close for work. You stay tight. Don’t look for trouble. I will be back.”

He sat back down, and then he lay on his side.

I got up. “Okay, Collins. I promise I will find another job….”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s okay. I understand,” he said.

“Alright. Please turn off the lights when you’re not using them. You will find fried meat in the kitchen if you’re hungry,” I added.

As I made my way out to my car that morning, two things were on my mind: raising money for travel or finding a witch that could help in this country, preferably in California. You really can’t tell what is hiding in the corner of this country until you go searching.

***

I walked into my office building and headed for my desk. Everyone that wanted to see the boss, Eric, would walk through this office. I had thought of how to have a normal day — the episode with Eric last night could make things difficult. The office setting and remembering how often I had to speak to him in a day reminded me of how tough and awkward it would be to look at him. He was sweet when he wanted me, but not when he couldn’t get what he wanted.

I used to share the same office with two guys, programmers. They used one side of the room, and I used the other for my desk. Only one of them had resumed this morning. His name was Mathew. The other one, I knew, was moving to a new job.

“Good morning, Mathew,” I said to the other guy. “How was your holiday.”

“Thank you, Miss. I had a great holiday,” he said. He barely raised his head and only acknowledged it was me with the corner of his eyes.

I sat down, took a deep breath, and resumed my job. There was little I could do until the ‘boss’ arrived, so I waited for him. I surfed the internet, asking random questions about finding witches in California.

When he arrived about thirty minutes later, he invited me to his office. He didn’t look at me more than once. He went straight to business. “This week is for preparation. Let’s all get prepared for serious work from tomorrow,” he said.

Then he gave me files and a list of tasks he had written on paper. I took it from him.

“I want you to prepare those. And if you turn that over, you will find things I need you to work on today and tomorrow.”

I nodded and turned the paper over. It was filled with scribblings and file names. He had forwarded some files, and I needed to sort them out, edit or change the dates. I would need to make some calls and schedule his meetings, too. “Alright, I’ll work on them,” I said, ready to leave.

“Do you really mean what you said last night?” he asked.

I didn’t expect him to bring it up again, so I repeated myself as clearly as possible. “Yes, I mean everything I said last night. I will be glad if we don't talk about it at work, please?"

He didn’t answer. He just stared at my face like something was wrong with me. I stared back at him, letting him know I meant every word I had said. He nodded and looked away. Then I walked out of his office.

I was busy with work, taking calls, and presenting documents in a file for the rest of the day. I had a lot on my plate for a company that had just resumed from the New Year holiday. I didn’t stop checking the message I had dropped on Reddit anonymously during work. Many people thought it was a joke. Some send me links to some landing pages, which I hurriedly check only to find price tags as cheap as thirty dollars for services that could ‘make you more powerful’ or ‘interpret my dreams.’

Before closing hours, I turned around in my seat and looked at my co-worker. I had not seen him with any occultic stuff in the past, but I could imagine him as one. He looked like someone with a lot going on — long coats all the time, no friends in this city, and life as private as a cube of sugar in a black bottle. He could say the same thing about me, and he would be right. We both walked around like we had secret lives. I was not a complete human, after all. I had a secret to keep from anyone else.

“Mathew, do you know any witch in this city?” I asked.

He raised his head and stared long and hard at me as if I had suddenly turned into a clown.

“What?” he asked.

My mistake. I shouldn’t have asked such a question.

“I mean, do you know if there’s a magician around here,” I said, laughing.

He frowned and got back to his work. “I have no idea,” he said.

I turned back to my desk, kept working, and watched the time.

When the time said 5 pm, I started parking my desk, ready to go home. I thought I had escaped my boss’s demands and we would forget all the relationship things ever happened. I thought we would return to being acquaintances, bosses, and subordinates and have normal business relationships. But when I lifted my bag and wanted to leave, he came to stand in front of my desk.

I stared at him, waiting for him to say something.

“Your dog. What breed is that?” he asked.