I put a spell on you

Benny and Ethan had been hanging out in Ethan’s room and reflecting on their adventures, recounting them to each other and being surprised at just how much they had faced in their two high school years.

“I mean come on, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, demons, zombies, sirens.” Ethan listed them out, throwing his hands up. “And that’s not even to mention the weirder things that have happened in this town.”

“Mutant tree crossed with WiFi, mutant crocodiles, that mummy guy that almost stole Sarah away to the underworld.” Ethan continued

“That locker search was so unfair!” Benny grumbled, remembering that potion he had to pour down the toilet. “But wait, when you said zombies, which time do you mean?” Benny asked,

“Uh, the one where Tiberius came back from the dead. You know, the one you caused by trying to get with Bella.” Ethan said, frowning at mentioning his turtle but it turned into a teasing tone as he brought up the crush his boyfriend had.

“Hey now, she’s pretty, and I was dealing with shit man.” Benny defended himself, although he knew that Ethan was just playing around.

“I know, I know. It was just another case of you creating a problem by accident instead of you know, using your words instead.”

“Hey it worked in the end you know.” Benny said, gesturing between them.

“Yeah well, you’re lucky I had already realized my own shit out.” Ethan smiled at Benny and got a fond eye roll in return.

“I feel like there’s still a lot we haven't talked about, like that goddess, and wait there was like, three ghost incidents. Right? Not to mention it wasn’t really that much of a werewolf to begin with.”

“Uhm, I still remember the coach ghost who made me win a trophy, but which other ones were there again?”

Ethan purposefully didn’t reply to the bit about the werewolf. David was still friendly to him whenever they saw each other, even offering to get him a spot on the football team after his win of the wrestling competition. It was still awkward, even though he apparently had become a lot calmer since he no longer was a beast every full moon, just, a dog.

“The theater mirror girl was a ghost, right? And was the vampire for your car also a ghost technically?”

“Oh, right yeah, those were ghost encounters we experienced. We really should be writing these things down when they happen.”

And the way that Benny’s eyes kind of lit up in a “yeah duh!” moment made Ethan realize what he had said.

“Oh, yeah we should actually do that!” Ethan said, now actually considering the idea more than it just being said.

“Dude, absolutely!”

And that was how it began, an off handed comment turned into the group of them all getting together to create a journal for all of the supernatural things that they’ve experienced.

But well, then there was some fighting over what should go where, and how the layout for the journal would go. And then trying to remember all of the things that they’ve experienced. And how much detail they should go into. And who would be in charge of writing it all down.

Well Rory and Benny’s hand writings weren’t to be trusted, and even though Erica’s hand writing was still the best of all of theirs she said she “didn’t have time” to work on it.

Thankfully though Sarah had managed to convince her, offering to prewrite the drafts so Erica just had to copy it down. And then she whispered something into Erica’s ear when that wasn’t enough to convince her. And Erica had been convinced by whatever was said to her, probably something to do with them dating, Ethan knew he used that to his advantage with Benny occasionally.

But then even after Erica agreed to be the one to write it down there was still the problem of how the layout of it should be.

Sarah didn’t want this to be a thing that fell upon her and Erica solely. Not wanting to do all of the work in the group project after all.

That was fine and understandable, Ethan hated when he was left to do all the work too.

So then there was a whole discussion about the format and then it was decided to be split up properly like how group projects should be.

Erica would write the descriptions into the journal, after Sarah and Rory worked together on writing the entries.

Rory had offered to help with that part, and Ethan was pretty sure his friend wanted to come up with the names and try and put some jokes or humor into the entries. Or maybe he just wanted to make sure he was involved.

But before even the entries were going to be put in it fell to Ethan to draw an approximation of whatever supernatural thing it was and put it in the journal. After a vote on whatever drawing he made was the best and deserved to be put in.

He was a decent artist, something that in his mind he was really sure had something to do with his seer powers.

Benny actually had the jobs to do with the journal itself. And that was multiple things that he was in charge of. The first was getting a proper journal that wouldn’t get into the wrong hands. Something that couldn’t be read by the uninformed. Meaning he had to ask his grandma about it.

Benny’s grandma had actually been very supportive of it, giving suggestions on the spells he should use to make the journal exactly what he wanted.

Even giving the suggestion, which really they should have also thought about, to make the journal spelled to be not easily destroy-able. In case they got into a fight with a bad guy or something.

While Benny experimented on making sure the journal was prepared for them to start writing in, the others had gotten to work.

Well Erica hadn’t really, she had made suggestions occasionally but mostly she spent the time they had gathered to work together laying around on her phone. Her part was to come later anyways.

Ethan had spent many hours drawing the many things they had faced.

It brought up the need to figure out another problem.

Specifically the one about multiple instances of encounters. Like, is the ghost entry going to have all three examples on one page or would there be multiple ghost entries?

It had come down to a coin flip after two gatherings to work together had devolved into the heated discussion of what to choose.

Eventually Ethan had yelled for everyone to shut up and held out a coin.

“Heads is for a single entry, tails is for multiple entries!”

There was a tense silence as he flipped the coin but there were only minimal complaints at the result, nothing that resulted in more arguments.

Multiple entries it was.

It did make a little more work for him, and it felt a bit less coherent at times, but the coin had spoken. And maybe no one wanted to argue anymore when no one else seemed to really want to argue more.

And the work continued on the journal until finally it was finished!

Benny had finished spelling it to fit the needs of the group, and he only magically exploded one journal before that happened. Rory and Sarah worked together on the different entries, and the entries were coherent and also a little funny. Ethan had finalized the different drawings to go with each entry, his hand hurt from all his drawing. And Erica did her part when it finally came for her to do it, and her hand writing was very pretty and she worked quickly.

In the end they were left with a journal, already mostly full but with room to expand Benny said. Each of them having contributed in their ways to the project.

It had been a lot of fun, even if they hadn’t taken that long to work together to do it, Ethan was glad that they had taken the time. It was nice to just hang out with everyone without it being for fighting something. Although, it was still connected to the supernatural things going on around town.

But well, this was Whitechapel, and they were all supernatural as well.

Ethan hoped that the next time they encountered another supernatural creature they'd remember to work on a new entry for it together.

Maybe they’d eventually put in entries for the five of them, maybe Benny could make those appear at the end of the journal?

Ethan looked to his friends, and his boyfriend, who were all at his house getting ready to watch a movie to celebrate. He considered waiting to bring it up, considering just letting the moment be a celebration.