The late morning of meeting, she had set out on the dining room table the dishes, glasses and silverware for the potluck. She was in the kitchen putting together her casserole when she caught some motion out of the corner of her eye in the adjoining dining room. She was concentrating on her cooking and mentally, she wrote it off as movement of light from the windows as the day was a mix of sun and clouds. It wasn't Bob as he had left a half hour ago to hang out with his buds to drink beer and watch football. She had just put the casserole into the oven and turning, was shocked to see her new glasses flying around the dining room. She took a couple of steps towards the table to get a better look. All 12 glasses were in motion or hovering, none of which seemed to mind or even notice her presence. One moseyed into the living room and set down on the coffee table. Another was circling around the ceiling fan. Amy decided to call her best friend Gail, who was attending the book club meeting. She explained the situation and no, she hadn't nipped into the wine early. She took a short vid of the glasses on her Iphone and sent it to Gail who advised her to stay out of the room until she could drive over. Meanwhile, Amy watched the glasses. There seemed to be nothing menacing or threatening going on and suddenly a crazy idea came into her head: the glasses were acting like the dragonflies etched onto their surface. Crazy, but it was the only reasonable explanation. A shudder went through her: is there some kind of spell on these glasses? Her mind began to accelerate and spin like Linda Blair as panic began to set in. She had to steady herself by leaning on the couch: Dear God! There are devils in my house!!! Luckily for her, in the middle of a very serious downward spin of emotion and rationality, Gail arrived and without knocking walked into the house. She was confronted with two sights: her best friend looking white as a ghost with a stunned expression and a room filled with flying drinking glasses. "Jesus Christ, who the hell do we call? The cops? A priest? Or Ghostbusters?" Gail exclaimed as she moved over to Amy. "All of the above replied Amy. We gotta get outta here. NOW!" Without taking their eyes off the glasses, they made their way to the door and ran to the Gail's car where they indeed, placed three calls.
Not surprisingly, the cops were the least helpful. Supernatural happenings were far beyond their training and they quickly deferred to the priest. He was young and absolutely gobsmacked by what he was witnessing. He called up some pals from college who were into investigating paranormal events and they arrived with an array of cameras, sensors and recording devices. By now, it was getting late in the afternoon. Gail had gone home as Amy had postponed the book club fete and called her husband who, having drunk some quantities of beer and jagermeister shots, could only utter WTF upon his arrival and headed to the bedroom for a nap. Meanwhile, as it grew dark, the glasses began to set down and stop moving. One of the para people googled dragonfly behavior and sure enough, when it gets dark, the insects settle down for the night. Another wondered about the glasses origin. Amy dug up the blurb that came with them and found that they were made in Turkey. The priest called his superiors to report the incident and asked if similar events had happened. They would get back to him he was assured. He was going to head back to the seminary to do some research. The paranormal folk gained permission to stay the night and man the equipment. With the hubby already conked out and snoring and the house full of strangers, Amy grabbed a bottle of wine out of the frig and retreated to her study. It had been one helluva day.
In the end, with the cops finally helping out by contacting Amazon and Interpol and the Church reaching out to their counterparts in Turkey, the mystery was solved. The cause of the flying glasses was the result of a spell placed on them by a jinn. Jinn are supernatural beings beneath devils and angels. One characteristic of jinn is that they delight in punishing humans that have done them harm, intentionally or unintentionally. In this instance, the jinn had been quite upset that the owner of the business that specialized in etching glass, had chopped down the jinn's favorite tree in the family's courtyard. The jinn decided to take revenge on the owner and put a spell on his glasses but only the dragonfly ones. Having these glasses fly around like the insect depicted on their surface appealed to the jinn's sense of humor. And then the jinn sat back to watch the troubles begin. The owner lost his glass etching contract with an Amazon subsidiary because of all the returns and was hard pressed to feed his family. He also had to endure a rash of stern criticism from the local Imam who was quite conservative and had no tolerance for members of his flock indulging in ancient and pagan beliefs. His wife stopped speaking to him because of all the embarrassment he had caused. Village children mocked him openly in the street by flapping their arms like wings. He secretly began to drink, supplied by sympathetic Christian friends he had in the village.
The moral of our story is a familiar one:
-you don't tug on superman's cape
-you don't spit into the wind
-you don't pull the mask off that old lone ranger
And you don't mess around with Jinn!
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