A-Cup Angst Ch. 12

Jamie explained to Laura and Alessandra that he had taken a solemn oath to never use his magic again as he was aghast at all that he had witnessed during his crusade to end the Syndicate. The Rossi women nodded in understanding and Laura repeatedly offered to cast any magic he'd ever need, all he had to do was ask. Jamie thanked her and asked them to never tell anyone about his oath, either. They promised they wouldn't.

"Why did you call me the Bludgeoner," he asked them.

The Rossi girls looked at each other in surprise and then Alessandra said, "Because you bludgeon evil casters into a pulp. And rescue innocents." She blushed and looked down.

"You have saved many people from the Syndicate, Jamie," Laura said. "Every magician in the world knows that a group of young Americans had ended the Syndicate. All the magical police forces in the world could never have stopped the Syndicate. They had tried and failed, years ago. You did it in one season. And you did it in such a way that you have created a legend for yourself. All the hostages that you had freed," she rubbed her daughter's back, "are carrying your story worldwide. The story of how you found every single one of those bastards, no matter where they hid, and how you tore down all of their defenses and then bludgeoned them to death while they felt every single blow."

"I didn't do all that on my own," Jamie said. "I had accomplices."

"It doesn't matter," Laura said. "You are the one that did the bludgeoning of the most evil and powerful bad guys. Parents are using the story of you to keep their unruly magical children in line. They tell them to behave and not use magic to pull pranks or hurt anyone or the Bludgeoner will find them and beat them into a pulp." Laura smiled a glad smile. "I honestly believe that for as long as the story of the Bludgeoner is making the rounds, there will never be another Syndicate."

Jamie didn't know what to make of all that. Him, a boogieman for little spellcasters? Laura gave him the rundown on some of the many fetishes he had left with her. They had many odd uses and she didn't have the time to focus on figuring them all out, but the ones she did manage to study, so far, allowed for some amazing things to be done, like summoning lesser spirits of intellect, contacting deceased casters in the Great Beyond, or casting intricate illusions. Jamie bid her to keep studying them, even though she expressed her doubts at being able to figure them all out. They were very complicated and neither spirit nor blood magic were her forté.

Jamie's mother occupied herself with exploring the small town they were in. She fell in love with the old houses, the people that lived in them, the rolling hills that surrounded the town. She even liked the wild, marshy forest that was less than a mile north of town and served as the staging ground for the mosquitoes that were determined to annoy every human that strayed out of town.

Within days, she decided that she was staying there. Permanently. Jamie tried to persuade her to stay in a different town, away from the Rossi girls, but she wouldn't hear of it. She had already scouted the local school and gotten informed on the educational opportunities available for Suzie. Laura helped her with everything she needed. She considered Laura her new best friend and thought that Alessandra would be a great positive influence on Suzie. Jamie knew the girl found his baby sister annoying, but gladly endured her to get closer to Jamie. It didn't take Jedi instincts to see that Alessandra had a profound crush on Jamie. It even became a matter of town gossip.

Lori ended her son's attempts at nagging by pointing out that while he had always had few friends and had never been very close with them, that was not how she and Suzie rolled. "I need friends, Jamie," she said, "everyone does. No one is an island. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll stop being so miserable and build a life for yourself. Now, quit this nagging and find us a place to stay! I have a job interview on Friday."

Jamie sighed and nodded. With Laura's help, they found an old, stone house ten miles out of town, surrounded by vineyards. It had been a farmhouse and still had the outbuildings around it, but the lands had long ago been bought up by the neighbors and the house itself was sitting empty. Lori turned her nose up at the small home. She loved the large brick and mortar building next to the house. "This could be our home," she said and pointed out to Jamie how the former farm building could be converted into a two story house with a basement. It already had a large cellar that had been used to store food and huge barrels of wine the former owners used to make on the premises.

Jamie ignored her use of the pronoun "we" and merely nodded as she told herself how the place would look once it had been sanitized, a new ceiling made a second story and so on. She gave it her seal of approval and Jamie bought the place for quite a low price. An architect was hired and she drew up the plans for the new house the farm building was to be converted into. Jamie took the time to get the former farm house ready for them to move in.

The most important modification he made to the small, former farm house, was to make secret compartments in the floor. He hid his enchanted ammo, AKM, Saiga and brace of M1911A1s in there, along with their enchanted holsters. It was such a relief for him to no longer have to worry about someone opening the trunks of the cars. They stayed with the Rossis for a few more days until they got the water turned back on in their new place. Lori had felt that they had imposed on their hosts too much already. Laura and Alessandra kept begging them to stay with them, but Lori moved them out.

On the morning after they had slept in the farm house for the first time, Lori switched on the espresso machine Jamie had bought the other day and asked him how big was the budget for renovations and improvements on the main house. Jamie mulled over her question for a moment. He had millions of dollars but he felt that sharing all of them with his mom would be an unwise move. They had lived a humble life back in the States, not because of humility or frugality, but because they had always been poor. If he gave her carte blanc to make a dream home for herself and Suzie out of the giant, empty farm building, he'd soon find his bank accounts to be blank. He decided to only give her as much money as he had spent buying the place. Lori's eyes nearly popped out of her head at hearing the amount. It was more than she had hoped for. She sat down with Suzie and the two of them spent the days making up plans for their dream home and Jamie shook his head to himself. If he had told her the truth about his money, they'd be making plans for an olympic sized pool, too. There was just about room enough in the yard, too.

The contractors came and went, interviewing for the cushy job and failing to meet with Lori's standards or not showing enough appreciation for her vision. Jamie began the work on the house himself. He used the telekinetic power of his mind to make the frame and the armature for the new floor. He then mixed and poured the concrete. The architect came over and gave her blessing to the adaptation. During the time it took for the concrete to set, Jamie found some more contractors and interior designers for his mother to interview, but she found them all lacking and then declared that the three of them would fix the place up themselves. Jamie grumbled but agreed to it. He strongly suspected the biggest part of the reason his mother turned away all those experienced builders and carpenters was in order to keep him around for as long as she possibly could.

It seemed like the Rossis were in on the conspiracy to keep Jamie local. Every day one of them would either call or show up in person. Laura would either invite them over for dinner or show up in person to deliver a basket of food for them. She made a point of always asking what Jamie liked. And then cooking it next time. Alessandra would either call to see if Jamie was free to go to the local open air cinema, or some concert, or she would show up in person to flirt with him and ask him to go for a drive with her. Fortunately, the work on the house was enough of an excuse for him to keep her at bay. He needed to keep things simple until he figured out what he wanted to do with his life and getting involved with the daughter of his mother's new best friend was a complication waiting to happen.

The work on the house had begun as a group effort, but soon the school year started and Suzie would bike away to attend class for most of the day. Then she'd come home and do homework, or go out again on her bike to meet with her friends. Then Lori found a job at a wine shop in town and Jamie was left to work on the house alone. This actually sped up the process dramatically as it allowed him to freely use his Jedi abilities. He fixed the roof in one day, replacing all the shingles. He then set about making the brick walls that would split up the new floors into rooms. Despite the pride at creating something with his hands, he was still frustrated by his mother making alterations on the fly, constantly piling more things on his to do list, or making him undo the renovations he had already done and redo them to fit in with her new idea.

Jamie realized his mother may well keep him there to work on her new home until the big budget ran out if they kept up their little charade. He was ambivalent about the whole thing. On the one hand, he had no idea where he would go and what he would do after finishing, so he was no longer eager to leave his only remaining family. On the other hand, staying put and playing handyman was not getting him anywhere. He needed to find a path for himself. He had more than enough money to last him for the rest of his natural life, but he felt like there was more to life than just having money and he needed to find out what that was for him. Wracked with indecision on how to proceed, Jamie decided to make the most of his time. He trained and tested his Jedi abilities and bought books on PTSD whenever he went to Pisa to buy something his mother decided she wanted in her house.

By using his telekinesis, he'd accomplish in an hour the work a construction crew would have taken days to do. The rest of his alone time, he'd use to read up on his PTSD and do some mental exercises and meditations with the goal of managing his condition. The construction work was good training for his Jedi powers.

At first, he could not turn screws to tighten or loosen anything and had to resort to using his hands and a screwdriver. He could also not levitate more than two things at a time. Pretty soon, he realized that as long as he felt like it was his mind that was doing all the work, he was very limited in how much he could accomplish. One morning, as he dwelled on his limitations as a Jedi, he decided to test the bounds of his abilities, just to find out exactly where they were. He tested how long he could hold something up and how heavy an object he could lift with his mind. He tried again and again to levitate other things while he was still levitating the one to determine his endurance. The results were unsatisfactory.

The next day, Jamie tried something different. He sat down on a folded up blanket on the floor and cleared his mind. He envisioned that there was an actual Force in the world. He knew for certain, or at least strongly suspected, that he was the only real Jedi on the planet, but he allowed himself to think that there was an actual Unifying Force and a Living Force as well. He told himself that there was a Force in him, running through him and everything around him. It was at once unifying him and all of his surroundings exactly as they were and showing him the possibilities that everything had in itself. It showed him the possibilities that were within him, too.

In Jamie's mind, he stopped focusing on an object and making it do his bidding and began to envision that the Force was already connecting him and the object and then asking the Force to make the object do his bidding. It was such a small change, but it yielded huge results. As long as Jamie imagined the Force levitating things, he could levitate more than two things at a time. The length of time he could keep something in the air increased to hours. The maximum weight of the object he could make hover went up to half a ton. He found that he could sense things at greater distances than he had previously thought. If he concentrated, he could sense a needle in the next room and a person at two hundred yards. He learned the last bit by watching the road and sensing drivers in the passing cars.

His abilities greatly increased just by a change in how he conceived they worked. He shook his head to himself in disbelief that such a small change in his head could grant him such a profound effect on the world around him.

Jamie used the Force to unscrew the lids off of several buckets of paint and make the paint gently spread itself all over the walls, not getting a single speck of it on any of the furniture of window frames. He then stood up and went to work on the rest of the house. He used the Force to levitate dozens of things at once. Tools, lumber, tiles, even screws, fell into place according to Jamie's will. He was even able to use the Force to turn screws and mix cement and plaster. He finished up with the walls, the plumbing and the wiring and then descended into the basement. He let the Force guide him in installing the Jacuzzi and the sauna. Pipes, pumps, sealants and fixtures lifted off the pile on the floor in the correct order and assembled in their intended position. The knowledge on how to do it just flowed into Jamie's mind, guided by the Force telling him how the parts available could fit.

Delighted at his new abilities, Jamie laughed and cackled as he finished all the work on the house in a matter of hours. It left him exhausted, but he slowly recovered. He checked the clock while he was panting and resting. He had an hour before Suzie came back from school. He was tired and he had a meal to make for his mother and baby sister. "Not much of a baby anymore," he thought to himself. Suzie had had a growth spurt during their summer on the run and was now approaching 5'7". She was as skinny as a pole and Jamie decided he'd join in on their mother's recent campaign to get Suzie to eat more.

Jamie was almost finished preparing a veritable feast for dinner, when Suzie came home. She was puzzled at the lack of building materials sitting in clumps in the yard. The whole yard was cleaned up. She tried the door to the small house and called out for Jamie when she found that it had been locked. He called out to her from the kitchen, located on the eastern side of the ground floor of the former farm building. Suzie walked in with an awed expression on her face. She explored their new pad, constantly yelling questions at him that expressed her inability to believe the house was finished. The dinner was all but ready when she came into the kitchen and said, "I can't wait to try out the Jacuzzi and the sauna!"

"The Jacuzzi is ready, but the sauna isn't," he said. "There are still some things that need to set until tomorrow."

Suzie grumbled good-naturedly but then sat down and sampled some of the dinner. "This tastes good," she said.

Jamie grinned. "I'd thank you for the compliment, if it wasn't delivered in such a surprised tone," he said. Suzie stuck her tongue out at him and went to the entertainment room.

Jamie was just about done with dinner when he saw the Subaru pulling in. His mother got out of the car and looked around the yard. He saw the sad look on her face and knew then that his suspicions had been correct. His mother didn't want him to leave. Jamie set the dining room table while she explored the place. He could sense her growing unease as she saw that all the work had been done.

They sat down to dinner. His mother showed him as cold a face as she had been showing ever since he had her taken from her home, yet he could sense the anguish she was hiding deep inside. After a few minutes of enjoying their meal in silence, Lori said, "This house isn't done right. I can smell it."

"Mom," Jamie said, "the house is perfectly fine. The paint hasn't had time to dry properly, that's all. In a day or two, this place is going to be ready for you to move in. How are you enjoying your first meal in your new dining room?" Lori ignored his question and began to list some complaints and make a list of the things that didn't work now that she could see them in their finished form. Jamie took her hand and softly said, "Mom, let's spend a few weeks just living in this big house, as is, and see for certain what works and what doesn't."

He sensed his mother's anguish dissipate. She smiled warmly at him. "Alright," she said. "We can call it a test run." They finished their meal before retiring to the small house for the rest of the evening. The following weekend, they moved their things into the big house, which they called the house from then on, and repurposed the small house as their guest house.

For the next two weeks, Jamie used every moment he had to himself to train his Force abilities or work on his PTSD exercises. During the hours his sister or mother were home, he also thought about where to go and what to do. He tried to come to a decision about the future, but he was drawing a blank. Nothing in his life experience could tell him what he needed to do now. Finally, he started asking himself what the old him, from before this whole magic business, would have liked to do right about now. His only real interests had been computers and robotics. He went into town and staked out the meager supply of electronics shops. There were two places in town that sold cellphones and one that sold computers and computer accessories and one that sold electrical equipment. Jamie sighed. None of those places could provide him with a clue of what he had been looking for.

He decided to go exploring the next day and walked down each and every small street and alley of the town, paying particular attention to the pedestrian-only ones that followed the city walls. In one such street he had come across the shop. The faded sign above the front door simply said A-D Repairs & Restorations. Jamie's attention had been drawn by the strange collection of items in the shop's window. There were all sorts of household appliances from the past fifty years piled up against it. Washing machines made up the lowest row. CRT television sets were on top of those and all sorts of irons, vintage turntables and coffee machines were at eye level.

It was the telephone in the top left corner of the window that finally peaked Jamie's interest in the place. It was one of those old-timey phones that he remembered seeing in black and white movies, the ones that had a microphone on the base and the receiver was made up of just the speaker that a person had to hold up to their ear. Jamie went inside. The elderly shopkeeper was busy working on a rusty-looking washing machine in the back of the store. Jamie could barely see him for all the appliances that were strewn across the shop in varying stages of disassembly. He noted there were some very pretty-looking vintage chairs strewn about the shop, obviously being restored. The walls were covered in dozens of ornate clocks and there were two grandfather clocks flanking the door to another room in the back of the shop.

"Uh, hello," Jamie called, stepping up to the counter.

"Be right there," the shopkeeper mumbled as he finished removing the gasket from the machine he was working on. He stood up and wiped his hands on his apron repeatedly. "I'm not taking in any more repairs unless I am paid in advance," he complained, in a long suffering voice that made Jamie crack a grin. "In full! You hear me? I'm tired of impatient people just dumping their machines here and then running off and buying new stuff while I'm busy fixing their old stuff."