Size 6.5, narrow
Ygrova had guessed accurately days before.
She knew how the stars would soon spin into formation. “Hmm,” she’d responded, scrying the celestial waltz with her right eye — even as she gazed elsewhere with another. With it she peered even MORE deeply into the Sanyo TV before her on the wobbly kitchen table.
What need had she for a wall-sized “smart” screen with the wisdom of the ages locked up inside her own skull?
She flipped past the Weather Channel and scores of 24-hour ‘news’ feeds, blathering fat bands of nonsense marched across the bottom. She had encountered the only Chyron that mattered once; HE (not “it”) was FAR more impressive.
“Plasma?” the salesman had suggested to her in the electronics showroom, a hundred identical would-be-’American Idols’ behind him, mangling a ditty by Burt Bacharach.
“On Tuesday, I glimpsed a minor supernova,” she responded. “Just below Orion’s belt. It reminded me of the evening our village brewer ruptured his hernia while tapping the first keg of Michaelmas. There was much ‘sturm und drang’ to be sure; ultimately it ended in a whimper.”
The salesman assumed she was nuts.
She supposed he was most likely tough and rather flavorless. Hardly worth the effort to flay him alive.
“Ah me,” she sighed. “The Sanyo table-top it is.”
Finally, she settled on the only channel that really mattered anymore to her these days — The Home Shopping Network.
At 2:30pm sharp, the jingle for ‘Best Foot Forward’ announced the finest 27 minutes of programming to be found anywhere across her expanded Cable TV package (Including HBO Plenipotentiary Planet, Platinum Power Plus).
In three-thousand years of life among these mortals, only their endless capacity for sartorial splendor and occasionally fabulous footwear held sway over her considerable attention and intellect. Another scrawny and vapid blonde nymph glided across the screen, this one in satin-strapped espadrilles. Ygrova yawned wide and knocked back another Milwaukee’s Best, chasing it with the acidic dregs of some homemade bread & butter pickle juice.
She lifted the remote and very nearly advanced the channel in disgust.
But click she did not.
“And now gentle viewers, we bring you a very special limited-run offer indeed! Direct from Arkham & Rage Design House, signed, numbered . . . “
Suddenly she shifted in her chair “Ahoy there, what’s this?”
“. . . and available only to the first 50 callers . . . “
Ygrova snapped her fingers.
A miniscule hourglass appeared in the air above her head and hovered like a tiny, bejeweled dragonfly.
“. . . for the low, LOW price of . . . “
She snapped her fingers again. The miniature timepiece flipped in a somersault, objective time ceased to pass, and the first of several thousand grains of sand began to fall within.
Moments later, as the final grains of sand landed:
“On the back of the card? Oh yes, just a moment.” She yawned again, “Eight-two-seven.”
She had made the numbers up entirely, a deft hand gesture cinching the deal. A Discover Card™ account in her name appeared somewhere in a refrigerated server farm in South Dakota, just in time to validate her purchase. Of course the ACTUAL card would not arrive for 8 to 10 days. Even the most powerful magic in the universe would not rush that alone; certainly not with Delta Air Miles attached.
Secure in the knowledge her dainty and immortal feet (HERS and HERS ALONE!) would soon be clad in the most fashionable couture this side of Andromeda, stilettos in Cosmic Vantablack!
Fifty brushed aluminum shoeboxes would arrive by week’s end. She would relish the hunt to extract the few pairs that fit and incinerate the rest, stirring the ashes into a potion.
There would be plenty of time left to get her evening face “just right.” “Plenty of time indeed,” she chuckled at the thought.
Ygrova was out to slay.
Hearts.
Well one heart in particular — metaphorically speaking.
A cold and still heart, waterlogged and unbeating. A heart which lay dead (and some say dreaming) at the bottom of the sea.
A heart which would soon be hers.
Ah, strange aeon!
