Not This Again [FICTOID]

Not this again, the shaman thought as she heard the grandfather clock strike twelve.

She always made it a point to be out of earshot when a grandfather clock struck twelve or else to stop the clock from striking.

That was the problem with super-specific curses:   They were limited to very specific trigger mechanisms. 

In this case the shaman ticked off an old Romanian witch and the witch laid a curse on her intending it to inflict her every midnight but instead miss calibrated it so it only tied to a grandfather clock striking twelve.  

Normally the shaman can easily dodged the curse but today she was browsing at a second hand store and didn't see the clock or realize it was keeping inaccurate time until it was too late. 

The clock began bonging twelve at exactly 10:47 AM, catching her  by surprise.  The shaman knew she couldn't flee the stop before it finished and so braced herself for the inevitable curse.

Sure enough, at the stroke of twelve the shaman suddenly found herself inhabiting the body of a 15th century Venetian duchess.  As always she had no control over the duchess but had to live out the same dull boring repetitive life for the next fourteen years until the duchess mercifully died of consumption. 

The smell and hygiene was bad enough but the bad sex was even worse. 

The shaman endured the fourteen years as best she could then once she closed her eyes and coughed for the final time as the duchess found herself transported back to the present day in second hand store.

The shaman shook her head wearily.  The old Romanian witch intended to curse her with blindness but as with the grandfather clock somehow the specifics got mixed up and blindness became Venetian blinds and that into forcing the shaman to spend an ungodly amount of time trapped in the court intrigues of old Venice – dull, boring, repetitive old Venice.

Feeling emotionally drained and exhausted, she stepped out of the second hand store and saw a bar to her left and a marijuana dispensary to her right. 

Decisions, decisions, decisions, she thought.

© Buzz Dixon