THE MAGICIAN
CHAPTER TWO
Damian is a struggling magician who has a deep and dark family secret...
The sky hung low, bruised with rain and despair. A cold drizzle had passed through earlier, flooding the streets of L.A. with trash, oil, and old regrets. Puddles reflected the city's broken neon like smeared makeup on a tired face. The sun hadn’t set yet—but the day was already steeped in shadow. A bad omen, Damian thought.
His mother had flown in from Georgia, their old home. The home of broken memories. The home of his father. And of Clara.
He hadn’t spoken to Clara in years. She had vanished into the wind, slipping through the cracks of their fractured family like sand through fingers. She was always the rebel—defiant, fiery, unwilling to play the role assigned to her in their cursed bloodline.
He remembered her clearly, that last time they spoke. She was thirteen, her voice full of hope and rage.
"Let's go—we can leave this all behind. Dad’s drinking, Mom’s cheating, the yelling... it can be you and me against the world," she had whispered beneath the flicker of a dying hallway bulb.
"Who's going to take care of Dad?" Damian had asked, more out of guilt than love.
He smiled faintly now, bitterly. The memories came back like ghosts—sneaking out to midnight showings of R-rated movies, racing back home before dawn to avoid their parents' wrath. They used to play with BB guns in the yard, swim on weekends when their father was sober enough to drive.
But those good days drowned quickly.
The beatings came harder. His father’s drinking more violent. One night, the old man had spiraled into madness and beat their mother so viciously, she spent three weeks in the ICU. When she finally healed, she left without a word, abandoning them to the very man who almost killed her. Clara was taken into foster care. Damian never saw her again.
And now… he missed her. The bond. Her wild curls, her freckles, her laugh that could cut through the darkest of nights.
The motel room was dimly lit, the buzzing light above flickering like a bad omen. Damian froze as he opened the door—his mother sat on the edge of the bed, still and silent. Her once-blonde hair was now silver, her proud posture wilted. The glamorous, confident woman he remembered was long gone. What remained was a ghost: exhausted, aged, weighed down by regret.
Two worn suitcases stood by her side like silent witnesses.
“Damian… we need to talk,” she said softly.
“About what, Loise?” he replied coldly.
“About what happened. About your father. About Clara.”
“You left us,” Damian snapped, his voice raw. “You left us when we needed you most. Dad was a monster, Clara disappeared, and you were gone! You're dead to me, do you hear that?! Dead!” His voice cracked as tears brimmed and spilled down his cheeks.
Loise didn’t flinch. “Come. Sit with me,” she said, calm yet broken.
Damian hesitated, but eventually sat beside her. She smelled of burnt wood and ash, a strange, lingering scent that made the air feel heavy.
“I loved all of you,” she began. “But life isn’t black and white. Sometimes adults make impossible choices, ones they regret for the rest of their lives. I left to survive. And for that… I am sorry.”
“I loved you, Mom…” Damian choked, his voice breaking into sobs. Loise pulled him into a gentle, trembling embrace.
“I’m here now, my son.”
The Next Morning
Sunlight streamed through the motel curtains, cutting gold bars across the dusty room. Loise sat at the small kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee. Damian shuffled in, bleary-eyed and barefoot.
“Morning,” she greeted.
“Morning,” he replied, taking the seat across from her.
“I made you breakfast—avocado toast, sunny side up eggs, bacon. Just the way you like it.”
Damian stared at the plate. “So we’re just gonna pretend you weren’t gone for twenty years and play house? I’m not five, Mom.”
“I know, Damian…” she said, her voice strained.
“I’m here for a reason,” she continued. “Something bigger than apologies. Something you need to hear.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Your father… wasn’t just a magician.”
Damian scoffed. “Yeah, I know. He was a drunk with a cheap top hat and an ego the size of Texas.”
“No. I mean real magic. Your father and I—we were part of something ancient. A secret society called The Magic Order. We’re protectors of humanity, warriors against the darkness. True magicians with ties to the underworld. And I fear... that darkness is rising again.”
Damian blinked, then laughed. “Wow. What a load of absolute—”
He stopped mid-sentence.
Loise stood up abruptly, her eyes narrowing. “Wait,” she said. “There’s something here.”
She slipped a wand from her sleeve, her voice rising into a chant.
“Erastrius von Namos!”
Suddenly, a dark figure materialized in the room. Cloaked in black, featureless—its very presence sucked the warmth from the air. Its shape wavered like smoke but loomed tall and menacing.
“What do you want?” Loise demanded.
The creature’s voice was hollow, distant. “All will be revealed...” it whispered, before vanishing into a plume of shadow.
Damian stood frozen, wide-eyed.
“What the hell was that?!” he shouted.
Loise looked at him with a calm intensity. “Do you believe me now?”
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