key word: limbo, title: just be yourself in "the next big thing" flash fiction

“If she knows God-honest magic, though, why doesn’t she just make herself television-pretty?” I asked, “If that’s the only thing holding back her dream.” “For her, it’s not that easy,” Frank said, “that’s not how magic works.” “Then why not plastic surgery, like half this town anyway? Pay it off when the big check comes.” Frank shook his head. “…that’s not how her magic works.” But how could it not work like that? I could buy if Mitzi’s not powerful enough or if her craft didn’t work on herself but why not just a bog-standard nip-and-tuck?

“How can I…” Frank paused, “Mike, what’s your faith?” “Agnostic,” I said, “I don’t have any.” “What’s your family’s faith tradition?” “Culturally Catholic,” I admitted, “ethnically Catholic. Recovering Catholic. I’ve Catholicism-in-remission. Catholic as your namesake Saint Francis.”

“Every religion has rules, every magic too,” the bigfoot explained as if I were a child, “different Catholic sins send you to hell, to purgatory, to limbo, wherever. Different actions with different results, depending on tradition, Baptist, Sunni, whatever. Mitzi’s magic is Kabbala, her family’s Jewish.”

“Tattoos.” I realized where he was going with this. “Ritual purity’s the vital in orthodox Mosaic constructions,” he continued, “get tattooed, you can’t be buried in the strict cemeteries. You’re impure, you’re unclean, you’re…” “Cut off.” I finished for him. “If not completely from God,” he clarified, “certainly from ritual tradition. Magic, my peoples’ magic, her people, druids or the damn snake-handlers, magic doesn’t come from divinity, not directly, anyway. Magics are power from things vague and unbelievably distant, channeled through ritual tradition. Without that, yes, there are vast impossible engines out there somewhere, but all we’d ever know without it would be the dim pin-pricks of faraway stars.”

As the yeti explained it, she could’ve magically changed herself, could’ve gotten a nose job and lipo to create marketable beauty that would elevate her from cult stage-magic into a mainstream fame, sure. But once the deed was done, it would’ve broken off the ritual covenant. It would’ve severed the chain connecting her with her ritual lineage and, indirectly, her connection with the Hebrew God. The price for that new conventionality would be closing off the source of sorcery that made her an Amazing Mitzi, leaving her just Maggie Nussbaum, another pretty face in the Salton Sea of pretty faces, one who just happened to know a few dozen card tricks.

“But,” I tried to conclude, “if she knew she couldn’t make it and keep her soul at the same time, why’s she even in Los Angeles?” “Why were you here, Mike?” “Because I was the sort of idiot who thought I could make it and keep my soul at the same time,” I admitted.

“Nearly everyone wants to believe they’re the exception to the rule.” Frank chuckled a little, leading me to ask: “Well, how did you end up here, then?” “Because, even though I didn’t ask for it, that’s what I actually am. The last exception to some inexplicable rule.”