THE CHALDEAN ORACLE

Freeing Ishtar

Chapter 4

“My mother has gotten into her head to find me a boyfriend before the first snow falls,” I announced grimly and let myself fall on my chair, backpack beside me.

            Florence squealed, jumping up and down on her seat, clapping her hands together.

            If it hadn’t been for the fact that the reason she was screaming was completely ludicrous, I could have pinched her cheeks or something. Flo definitely had the cute factor working for her, you just wanted to squeeze her in your arms when you saw her.

            “You should hook up with one of your brothers, even though you have no blood relation it would totally be white trash fabulous,” Gotzone pitched in, laughing, and sat beside Flo, not without ruffling her hair. He always did that.

            “Yes, embrace your inner trailer park” Flo squealed, after taking Gotzone’s hand off her head. It was cute because she did it softly—taking his hand off—and she was still holding it in her hand.

            And they wondered why people asked if they were dating…

            I pointed at them sternly. “You guys have to stop hanging out and quit the Blue Collar Comedy Tour fan club; you watch it way too much.”

            “You brought this on yourself, you bought him Have Your Loved Ones Spayed and Neutered,” my tiny blond friend giggled.

            “Do you know why it’s so hard to solve a Redneck murder? Cause there’s no dental records and all the DNA is the same.” Gotzone grinned while I sighed and said, “and I’ve regretted every day since.”    

            Gotzone just kept on going. “If you go to the family reunion to meet women you might be a redneck.”

            I shook my head. “Again, regretting every seconds.”

            “Buying a used rental car is kind of like going to a house of ill repute looking for a wife. Anything that’s been driven that hard by that many people, you really don’t want to put your key in it.”

            “Okay, seriously, enough” I groaned and, leaning back, reached my hand behind Flo and towards Gotz and slapped the back of his head.

            The two idiots just kept giggling and quoting redneck jokes.

            I think they did it purposely because I lived in Texas for a while and they liked annoying me about it. Gotzone, Florence and I, in general, lived in the same cities, so we’ve known each other for a while, but while I was in Houston, they had lived in Chicago. Both of their parents were just needed elsewhere. And they liked to remind me about it.

            “Alright fine, let’s get back to the subject of your future boyfriend,” Flo offered, flashing a dazzling smile, slapping her hands together in excitement.

            “Thanks, but no thanks.” I whined, hitting my head on my desk.

            But that wasn’t enough to make her stop. “Any interesting betroth?”

            Couldn’t she let go? Was that too much to ask? To just drop the matter? No redneck jokes and no talking about my none existent future boyfriend. “No, none, nada, niet, nullus, típota, daremo,”

            “Someone studied for her language exams,” Florence stopped me, saying it in a sing song voice   

            “And not well, you screwed up some, didn’t apply for that specific context…” Gotzone informed me, not looking my way, but his eyes fixed in one of his books—Demon’s Lures I think—and then he added, in a high pitch voice, looking up towards me, smirking, “someone’s gonna fail aaaagaaain.”

            Do not resort to violence, do not resort to violence, you can’t even throw a punch… “How many times has it been… so far that I’ve asked you to shut up?”

            The grin got bigger. “Technically you haven’t said it; you just implied it with your eyes.”

            “Oh thank you, thank you very much.”

            Was everyone enjoying my misery? Honestly?

            Flo tapped on her desk, to get our attention. “Diverting again, my Cutie Patooties”

            Gotz whined, “I hate it when you call me like that” at the same time I groaned “Because the subject is pointless to begin with.”

            Couldn’t the teacher come in already so we wouldn’t have to keep talking about this?

            “Gotz, stop whining, Clea, I’m with your mom on this, you need a boyfriend.”

            I narrowed my eyes and snapped back. “You need a boyfriend.”

            “I’m almost one year younger and I’m much less confrontational and full of anger and repress sexual tension then you are.”

            Don’t punch her, she’s cute and defenceless… sort of…ya maybe not…

            I pointed at her, raising my eyebrows. “Don’t think that because you’re all cute and cuddly I can’t smother you to death.”

            She ignored me, of course she did. “How about Jason, in the other group. He’s kind of good looking, tall,”

            “And a complete psychopath,” Gotzone snorted before she could go on. “We’re talking about the same Jason that almost bit my hand off during training, right?”

            She dismissed the matter with a roll of her hand. “He was lost in the moment.”

            “And my hand was almost lost to his teeth”

            “Drama Queen.”

            “Either way, I think he’s dating Cheryl Amnos,” I informed them before they could go on, and either way I was agreeing with Gotz on that one, Jason definitely was sort of a psychopath…

            “Alright, how about Chase Lake?”

            I raised my eyebrows again. “Four feet nine inches short Chase Lake?”

            She sighed. “Johnson Jones.”

            “He’s a prick and you know it.” Stupid Johnson I-Think-I’m-A-Christmas-Decoration-On-A-Dinosaur Jones!

            “Gregory Likos?”

            “He scares the crap outta me!”

            “Spencer White?”

            “Taken,” Gotzone pitched in, hand bended over his book again, before I could come up with a plausible deal breaker.

            “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about Joseph Falco. He’s perfect.” Florence stated, like it was a fact, which well… it kind of was…

            “—ly out of my lead is what you meant to say.”

            “Well I’m out of cute guys then…” she shrugged in defeat, “all the others we know of are already taken.”

            Gotzone’s head snapped up from his book. “How about me?”

            “You don’t count Sweetie,” the short blondie answered, patting him on the cheek.

            “Thanks Smellie,” he patted her—more forcefully than necessary—on the cheek too.

            “Shut up… ouu, how’bout that good looking fellow we saw yesterday during the field trip.”

            The bouncing again…

            I rolled my eyes. “Oh you mean the one behind the two feet thick glass?”

            “That very one.”

            How did she not get the sarcasm behind that answer, I simply couldn’t understand.

            Fine, it would have been lying to not admit that I had been thinking about him, not for stupid reasons like liking him or anything, but because something seemed off about him… that’s what I tried to convinced myself of. I couldn’t help it; the curious part of me was just dying to know who he was, and why he had looked at me that way… Maybe he hadn’t looked at me in a weird way though, maybe I was just making up stuff in my head, maybe he had been looking elsewhere…

            And why was I still thinking about him?

            “Flo, he’s a Fallen Angel, Fallen Angel. Need I repeat? Fal-len An-gel.” I pronounced each syllable separately to be sure she would get it, and to be sure I would get it.

            “I don’t judge the origins of a pretty face.”

            “You’re unbelievable…”

            Luckily, that’s when our teacher for this class, Psychological Assessment And Other Useless Crap, Muriel, walked in and prevented me from having to dwell on more on the subject.

            This was completely useless, talking about a future boyfriend of mine because even if I liked anyone, picked anyone, no one would pick me.

            I wasn’t saying this because I had low self esteem or anything. I wasn’t bad looking, I could actually have the pride to say that in good days I was kind of good looking. I mean, we weren’t in the “before electricity era” red haired girls weren’t considered as the spawn of Satan or something. Okay, because of South Park some dumb-butts said we had no soul, but the boys were more targeted on that matter, girls had it much easier, and I actually liked my red hair.

            I wasn’t too tall or too small, with my five feet six inches, I was in the average. I had a thin waist and curves, like actual boobies and a decent looking butt.

            I knew I wasn’t going to have a boyfriend any time soon because Ishim’s engagements were much stronger and permanent. And Ishims needed to have children, as old school as it could sound—our numbers were quickly decreasing—and those children needed a strong gene pool. And by gene pool I meant both parents needed to have skills.

            For instance, Florence could heal people and Gotzone understood information at an incredibly fast pace, especially anything technologically related.

            Everyone had skills. Some developed during adolescence, but others had them during their early childhood, either way, by the time they had hit my age they had found that special something they could do. Flap, even pricky Johnson Jones could get invisible.

            But I had nothing. Absolutely no special skills. I wasn’t even able to fight properly. I skipped all the training classes, switched them for personal training and there I’d run for maximum two kilometres because I hated it and it was flapping hard and then go on the stationary bikes for forty five minutes. Which consequently made me lazy and useless.

            I knew I should help myself or something, but I had just decided to give up on trying finding that special skill. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted one, I wanted one bad, even something simple like seeing the purity of the soul would make me go in a frenzy, but I didn’t have one, and I wouldn’t have one. I would end up doing paper work in an Ishim institute, and no one would be with me because my gene pool sucked, it had nothing to offer.

            And all that boyfriend talk just brought that deception of a lifetime to the table: I was a sucky Ishim.

             “Children, take your seats” the teacher, an Angel of course, ordered, putting her brief case on the desk. Miss Muriel had the teacher vibe going for her, with the plain skirt, white blouse tucked in it, glasses and her black hair tied in a bun. “Now, today we’ll start by talking about feeling!” Everyone groaned. “Seeing the results of the bonus question in the last exams, I don’t know if you did it to spite me or if you still don’t understand this part, so let’s go through some basics again,” she explained while passing around our corrected exams. Because she was an Angel she had the speed ability and was able to do it in like fifteen seconds, but we were used to it by now.

            I looked at my sheet. C minus. Flapping marvellous!

             “So, let’s go over this quickly. Do Angels feel? Yes Mister?” She pointed towards one of the boy at the back of the class who was obviously on the verge of sleeping. That was fast.

            It took him a minute to take the sheet of paper that had stuck on his cheek off before answering. “No they don’t.”

            “That is correct. If you injured an Angel, let’s say stab him in the stomach he won’t feel the wound. He will need Holy Spirit to heal the wound but he won’t feel the physical pain of it. Now if he doesn’t have enough Holy Spirit in him to heal what happens?”

            She pointed at Joseph sitting in the front. “He goes back to the Khaos and waits until he’s recharged,” he answered.

            Swoon. He was wearing a green shirt that made the golden in his eyes stand out more. Why did he have to be so hot?

            “Correct. Now what about Demons? Do they feel?”

            A petite brunette sitting in the middle of the class raised her hand and answered. “Yes but their circuits are all mixed up. If they hurt they register it like a human would register physical pleasure. And physical pleasure as pain.”

            “In short, they’re masochistic,” I snorted a little too loud, louder than I had intended.

            “Keep those thoughts to yourself Clea, thank you.” Miss Muriel simply said, in a flat tone and went on. “Now, how about humans?”

            “Humans are the models in feelings. The way they feel is the standard and reference. Hurt is hurt, pain is pain,” Joseph answered again.

            “Ishims?”

            “We feel like humans but can learn to control it and we’re also greatly affected by the Holy Spirit around us,” Gotzone spoke up.

            Miss Muriel kept walking around the class. “Fallen Angels?”

            “They only feel great level of pain,” Gregory answered.

            “So you have all being playing with me? Good to know… So today the real subject we’ll go over is control over your own thoughts, but others thoughts too. This will be a much needed skill that you will learn to develop before but also during your Two Month Field Assignment.”

            The Two Month Field Assignment consisted of throwing our cute little butts in human school to learn to deal in situation where you’re in a foreign environment, and you don’t know who is what, because Demon tended to hide there, with all the fresh souls to corrupt. It was one of the few final tests we had to go through to become true Ishim warriors. And I dreaded it. Plus it sounded overly cliché to me—sending a supernatural creature to High School was overdone and stupid.

            And with my luck I would fail it…

            “Now you all have specials skills that have been showing and some off you…”

            I tuned out the rest and shifted uncomfortable in my chair, the toe of my foot instinctively rubbing against the birth mark on my ankle.

            I had no skills, none what so ever…