31/31 - DAY 7 - CHRIS van MEER, BOMB OWNER

"Yeah, I'm listening. I'm just kind of uh... here, give me a second, I have to turn the blender on. Alright, what were you saying? Let's walk and talk, I need to go light those two candles. Here, hold these screws, we'll need them in about forty seconds. Yes, I'm telling you, if I don't do this right now it's not going to work. This is literally a life or death situation." 

Christopher van Meer is an aging man with lean features, a sharply wrinkled forehead, and messy gray hair. He is NERVOUS, DELIBERATE, and usually OCCUPIED WITH RITUALS. Chris practices a kind of magic called Nudging, a school of magic based around gaining an advantage by gently pushing the universe to act in your favor. With Nudging, certain results can be achieved by following specific practices and avoiding others, often appearing like strange superstitions to those unfamiliar with it. Another notable thing about Chris is that his basement is full of bombs that could detonate at any minute. 

After his arrest for possession of methamphetamine, Chris kicked the habit and got sober. Upon his release, he came home to find several hundred pounds of Vietnam-era artillery shells, grenades, and bombs in his basement. At some point while he was strung-out, he must have found a way to get these down here, but he has no recollection of why or where he got them from. He’s been too nervous to ask his old Army friends - after all, who just tells someone they have enough explosives to level an entire block? - but he’s pretty sure they wouldn’t know where it all came from, either. 

In any case, he’s stuck with them for now. It’s hard to get rid of them without the proper documentation, and if someone caught him dumping unexploded ordnance in the lake, he’d probably go back to jail. Now and then, Chris has close calls. Recently, he was moving a box of decorations upstairs from his basement and accidentally dropped a live grenade. For any normal person, this probably would have been the end, however Chris’s proficiency with magic allowed him to put off the explosion for several minutes, enough time for him to race into the backyard shouting “Hot Potato! Hot Potato!” at the universe and drop the grenade into a deep, narrow hole full of sand he constructed in his backyard. 

Chris spends plenty of time performing Nudging rituals, which include a lot of small things like whispering into certain cabinets and flicking the light a few times before moving to a different room in his house. He is very meticulous with these tasks, completing several each day. For some reason, these small rituals add up to a desirable outcome - in this case, keeping his house from blowing up. He wants to get rid of the ordnance as soon as he can - there’s always the possibility that one of the artillery shells or grenades or bombs has already been triggered, meaning that a fiery explosion may be just around the corner.