Ever had a day so bad, you just wish you’d never gotten out of bed?

Cost: one significant charge per target.

You will need:

Two or more movies or TV show episodes that end with the main character waking up and realizing that at least one major plot twist was a dream or otherwise never happened. Count up the number of named characters who cross the delusion/reality border; it must exactly equal the number of people you wish to affect with the ritual.

A corresponding number of televisions, with DVD, VHS, or other video players, as appropriate.

A functioning mechanical typewriter, with paper.

Lots of coffee, or other stimulants.

A metal trash can.

Fire.

First of all, compile as much information as you can about the relevant events, that is, whatever happened to you and yours since you woke up this morning. Take notes if necessary, but only in pencil or other erasable medium. Flawed or incomplete sources are acceptable, albeit self-defeating (see below), but any deliberate attempt on the caster’s part to falsify or distort the facts will cause the ritual to fail.

Set up the televisions in a quiet, isolated space, arranged so all screens are clearly visible to the person working at the typewriter. Work out the timing so that all the videos will hit their “big reveal” moment simultaneously (there’s some slack here; as long as they all come witin the three minutes thirty-three seconds, it’s good enough) but don’t press play just yet.

Sit down at the typewriter. You can get up to prepare and drink coffee, urinate, or pace back and forth, but any other activity (including speaking more than a sentence or two per hour) disrupts the ritual. Type out a everything you’ve experienced since you last lost consciousness, formatted like a screenplay. Typically this will include any dreams you remember from last night, and more than a few horrific and/or unnatural events (revisiting which might be grounds for stress checks). When you get to the part where you sat down at the typewriter and began the ritual, stand up, stretch, spend your mojo, and start the videos. You have until the end of that three-and-a-half-minute simul-climax window to write a satisfactory ending, then tear the whole manuscript into confetti (bare-handed!), drop it in the wastebasket, and set it ablaze.

If it worked, at this point any stay-awake drugs will suddenly wear off, and you will black out and faceplant the typewriter keyboard. Reality will reset to the point at which you woke up, You and everyone else targeted will remember how things happened “in the first draft,” and, accordingly, may be able to act differently this time.

Limitations and drawbacks: Can’t go back further than the last time you slept. If you fall asleep while writing, there’s no second try.

Everyone targeted remembers everything you included in the ‘script,’ but that’s all. You can’t pick and choose who knows what.

The script itself vanishes into the collective unconscious, and, accordingly, fragments of it will surface in improbable places. Plagiarized knock-offs of your darkest nightmares will be posted on YouTube.