A STAVE AGAINST THE ILL-WILL OF OTHERS

You are probably not actually that important, but if it comforts you to imagine that you are the center of this story, sure. Make a round medallion of white oak as broad across as your hand, and sand it until it is smooth to the touch. Carve this rune using the boning knife from that set of five Henckels you bought during your gourmet cooking phase—this is the purpose of that knife; you never used it for anything else, did you?—and color it with the black powder from a toner cartridge.
      The fight, the scene, the mingled shame and resentment and anger: if you didn't love the drama of all this, it would evaporate in a week or two, anyway. 

A STAVE AGAINST ROACHES, MICE, AND YOUR MOTHER'S ILL-WILL

Carve this in the alphabet of coffee shops on the handle of a broom purchased from a big-box superstore, in the hours when there are no customers and the aisles are filled with plastic-sheathed pallets of cheap desiderata. Sweep each corner of your house, always toward the center of the room. 
     How many brooms did your mother have? What did her rituals look like? Did they succeed? No, or you would not still be here.

THE SEAL OF WET BOOTS AND SLUSH

February trickles on, bitter and endless and grimy. The rubber floor mats in the car are stained. You wish you had children; if you have them, then you wish you did not. When did this become your world?
     Most credit card companies don't really care what your signature looks like, or even if it is consistent. Instead of your name, you might inscribe this symbol with blue-black ink beside the X of a charge receipt, and it might be for anything: five days at Disneyworld, a Coach bag, the 300SL, the spa day, the Final Four tickets, the grill. But it will still be February, and your front hall will still be rimed with grit and the ghosts of dirty water.

A STAVE TO SAVE YOUR MARRIAGE

Everything operates in failure mode: the business you work for, your lower back, your car. You just didn't notice. Why would you? Noncritical failures can be recovered from, compensated for. They accumulate like October leaves or dead skin and dust mites, then are swept away or ignored. The windshield wiper blade that only smeared the rain was a small annoyance, but it was dealt with: a visit to the auto-parts place instead of lunch, and a dry-cleaning bill from where you leaned across the hood and got dirt on your coat. But when the transmission blows, don't act surprised, as though nothing has ever gone wrong with this car before.
     Your marriage.
     Find a Number 2 pencil. Sharpen it to a point. Break the lead off, and pinch the tiny cone of graphite between your fingernails, to write this stave on the inside of a frying pan with a loose handle. Most likely, there have been too many noncritical failures already, but it's worth a shot.

THE GHOST STAVE

On a Friday night when you cannot reach your best friend, trace this symbol on the back of your left hand in mingled bourbon and blood. You will sleep, at least for a while.

THE SEAL OF WIND

For when he is always talking and he does not listen: after the inconclusive sex, when you tried to tell him what wasn't working but he kept touching you harder as though that would fix it; after the restless night and his arm heavy across you until you threw it off, sweating, and he mumbled your name and cupped one sweaty breast and pulled you closer; after he brushed his teeth, gargled, and spat in the shower; after reading aloud tidbits from his newsfeed as you counted the minutes until he would look at his phone, say, welp, that salt isn't going to mine itself, stand, pull on his coat, and grab his messenger bag and his keys; after the quick kiss on the side of your mouth and see you tonight, baby; after he is gone at last.
     Collect the remainder of the cold coffee from his cup and, mingling the coffee and your own spit, draw this seal on the screen of your computer. There are no words to this spell; why would there be? More words are the last thing this situation needs. 

THE SEAL OF BETRAYAL AND LOSS

By the way? She lied when she left, when she told you it wasn't anyone else. She erroneously thought that this would hurt less. The notion of slipping from one man to the next was not one that she could reconcile with the way she wants you to think of her. Even now, she courts your opinion.
     You are already carving this stave into the insides of your eyelids, though you are not yet aware of it.

A CROSS FOR PET OWNERS

Use salt to write this symbol in the middle of the kitchen floor. Within minutes, it will be scattered; this will in no way alter its effectivemess.
     Don't get comfortable. There is always a built-in expiration date.

GREATER DAY-JOB STAVE

You can be simultaneously burnt to the socket and bored.
     You have dozens of cheap ballpoint pens at your workstation. Their sticky blue ink clots and smears: stains desk drawers, the bottoms of pencil cups, the carpet behind your desk. Break one of these pens open and use the the remaining ink to inscribe this symbol upon a sheet of 20-pound 8 1/2” x 11” paper. Fold the paper tightly and press it into the dirt of the seedy-looking parlor palm in the reception area. It will be found, a week from now or a month from now, by the plant services person your company hires. She will keep your secret: she doesn't like her job, either.

THE STAVE NOT TO FUCK THIS UP TOO

Scratch this symbol upon the enameled curve of a chipped thermos, and color it using blood drawn from your left earlobe.
     Say nothing. You can hide anything behind silence.

A STAVE IN PREPARATION FOR KNEE SURGERY

Using blood from the web between your right index finger and thumb, draw this upon that medal from the track meet in eleventh grade. This is the first real proof that your body is already starting to refuse the hard work of keeping you alive.

 
STAVE TO DEFEND AGAINST UNWANTED MEMORIES

In the night, in the shower, in the car at the stop light on Third, in a Tuesday meeting, when you check your account balance online and their name is still there, when you decide yes or no to the movie, when you see a pocket watch in a thrift store like the ones they used to collect and maybe still do, when you sign up to bring the yams to Thanksgiving, when you put on a scarf, when you buy gin instead of bourbon, when you are kissing your new lover, when you are eating bacon, when you breathe, when you breathe, when you breathe.
     Draw this stave in black Sharpie on your forehead. You might as well. 

LESSER DREAM STAVE

Go back to college? Learn how to restore cars? Sign up on Tinder? Take up a sport? Ask your friends for an idea for a story you might want to write? Try contra dancing? Cut your hair? Grow your hair? Watch pornos? Knit a scarf? Update your LinkedIn? What about Unitarianism? A book club? Shave? Piano lessons. Wines. Home brewing. Quilts, caucuses, tattoos, Crossfit, classic jazz, witty socks. Whatever it takes.
     Paint this symbol on a TV tray from the 1960s. It is best if it is avocado green, with faded decals of mushrooms in garlands, though the paint you use is not important.

GREATER DREAM STAVE

You will perform this spell alone, because, no matter who is in the room, that is how you do everything in your life.
     You are like everyone else. You think you can save yourself. You think you can be happy, but death is inevitable. How do you wake up and move forward in the face of that? What do you expect that will mean to you? Will you at last be able to rest? Heaven and hell both seem exhausting. Maybe death will be like dreaming, or ticking off everything on your to-do list and seeing what the empty page looks like.
           
           

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The Stavebook is part of a set of experimental stories putting medieval literary forms (in this case, Icelandic spellbooks) and prognostics into conversation with modern-day issues. The other two stories are "The Apartment Dweller's Bestiary," at Clarkesworld and "The Apartment Dweller's Alphabetical Dream Book," at Conjunctions Online.  Jason Baltazar created the staves.