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Witch and Warlock – A Short Story’s Final Installment

Photo by Peter Clayton

You can read the previous installments here, here, and here.

WITCH AND WARLOCK (CONCLUDED)

Ruffies. It had ended there. The store at the opposite end of the mall, the other-side-of-the-tracks end of the mall. The bastard child to Morechant’s prodigal son. Everything was cheaper and uglier at Ruffies. But that wasn’t why they’d preyed there; Peter was hoping as much as he was certain of it. It couldn’t have been classist he’d been raised by a single mother. It’d been maybe more depressing than that. Witch. Right, Witch had access to a janitor’s closet on Ruffies’ basement level. She’d been there before; many times, Peter feared. He couldn’t—well somehow she’d been given or had gotten a key, and that was where they’d fled after Warlock snipped some hairs from a baby in a stroller while Witch distracted its mom. Food processors. God the stupid details he’d hung onto! Not whether the baby had cried or how its stolen hairs felt in his hand. Not how the janitor’s closet smelled. Just that they’d made it there without getting caught and Witch’s dumb questions about a Cuisinart.

There’d been a ritual. That wasn’t a stupid detail, although Peter remembered fighting the almost automatic snickering teenage response to how ceremonial and mannered Witch was in laying the food tray on the floor just so, and then the laminated directory on the tray, and then the compact on top of the directory. How solemnly she’d asked Warlock to sprinkle the hairs on—an entire line popped into his head: on this unholy table set for the dark ones to feast, the seasoning, an innocent’s follicle sacrifice. He wasn’t sure if she’d said exactly that. It was something similar, though, and she’d been mad at him, that he did remember. The look on her face. Or disappointed. Right. That her warlock had come this far only to show her he was just a typical thirteen-year-old goof. But Warlock hadn’t laughed; Peter wasn’t too drunk to call this criticism unfair. God damn it he’d sprinkled the hairs on that unholy table. God damn it with the proper fervency demanded of—he reached for another roll and touched nothing but moist cloth.

Oh god damn it.

Peter was reminded he had a heart. It was in a race with his mind and they both crossed the finish line at him opening his hand in the janitor’s closet and realizing that somewhere along the way he’d lost the baby hairs. Witch was trying to keep it together, her first curse, there were bound to be hiccups, but she’d said they couldn’t go back out there, mall security was probably looking for them, and she was looking at Warlock like suddenly silver lining to his being a total failure he’ll make a nice feast for the dark forces. Peter was already clutching the spot on his head before he saw it in his mind’s eye, Witch snatching at his hair and in response to his emasculated “Hey!” telling him what did he expect she wasn’t the innocent she was a witch for antichrist’s sake. In retrospect his pinched hairs did a terrible thing: separating and falling singly, slow motion, as if he were watching individual salt granules season a piece of meat. In this ritual he’d been the flavor for an unholy meal, over which she had chanted and waved and beseeched that an eternity of misery and despair be brought down upon Flagfield Mall and its ugly, prejudiced tenants.

Peter came out of his mind and back to the restaurant again, fighting the almost automatic middle age response. What was that anymore? Resignation? Her dark forces had gorged, but the mall had thrived. Morechant’s was still in business and he’d been in Ruffies just the other day returning a humidifier for his mother. Witch had used his hair. An innocent mistake. He was grinning. Somehow she’d cursed him instead. He was the miserable one; the despairing.

“You probably thought I’d forgotten you.”

Peter nearly screamed. She was back too; she was back too. He’d never seen her coming. He forced himself to stay calm. It helped that she moved tentatively in sitting down at the table. As if she were sneaking into somebody else’s seat, he thought.

“I can’t, I can’t believe it,” he said. “After all this time.”

“I know, my bad,” she said. “Not how I wanted things to go, believe me. Thanks for not bailing I was so oh my god you ended up with all my crap.”

She laughed self-consciously and scooped up her purse and her compact, and for a moment was confused about what to do before laying it all at the foot of her chair. Warlock wondered if Witch hadn’t also cursed herself that day. He was happy she hadn’t lost her heart-shaped face.

“Gabby,” he said.

He sounded more relieved than happy. Yeah. This was his automatic response. Relief. She’d absolutely cursed him.

“It’s Allie,” she said.

“Oh. Sorry.” He must have heard her wrong in Morechant’s. Or misremembered. Well, Jesus, how many details was he supposed to remember from thirty years ago?

“No, don’t,” she said. “You’re the good guy, Peter, I’m the one who messed up. I’m the jerk.”

“Oh,” he said.

It came out like a quiet moan. Something was clenching at him from the inside. A misgiving like a raptor digging for purchase, a firmer grip. Baring down to assess a threat. He’d wondered what she was really doing here.

“I have to make things right,” she said.

Peter heard his heart and he didn’t like his odds. He’d had too much wine, too much bread. He was vulnerable. It’s what she wanted. She’d been watching him the whole time again. And now she was back. Back to lift the curse. She’d set the very course of his life she couldn’t just show up and reverse its direction, take everything away from him. He wasn’t thirteen anymore. No more because she asked him to. This was a relief. His whole life since then had been a huge god damn relief. He wasn’t even out of the restaurant when his mother answered on the first ring.

Witch and Warlock – A Short Story’s Third Installment

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Photo by Famartin

To read the first and second installments, click here and here.

WITCH AND WARLOCK (CONTINUED)

It was fucking funny, he thought. She’d seen him watching her after negotiations had broken down at the Estee Lauder counter. Cornered him near the watches and that’s when they’d officially met and he’d learned she was walking the mall trying to get a job for the summer because she needed money to “pay off a loan” and that no one would hire her because she wasn’t sixteen. So she wanted to buy some blush to help her pass for older, but she couldn’t afford it and the saleswoman wouldn’t give her a break. He remembered he’d offered immediately to ask his mother for the money and would lie to her about what it was for, he was Peter of the Engorged Loins after all. The girl, Gabby, Witch, she’d said that it was too late she’d already decided to put a curse on Morechant’s, the food court, the entire fricking mall, and once a witch had declared her intentions she couldn’t go back on them lest she wanted to be cast out of her witch’s organization. Which by the way was the Wretched Order of Flagfield Witches. Of which she was the founding member, its sole member actually, so technically she could have flouted the rules without fear of expulsion, but what a terrible example to set for future members of the order, right? Its CEO incapable of following through on one of the most basic principles of witchcraft? So she was moving forward and the first step was stealing the blush—all of the ritual implements would have to be stolen for the curse to work properly. The thing was, this being her first curse, she could really use a warlock’s help. Would he be her warlock?

The specificity of the memory startled him out of it. He felt flush and a little disoriented and half-expected everyone in the restaurant to be staring at him. To his mild disappointment the restaurant was oblivious, carrying on just fine without him. Peter took another roll, disavowed the narcissism he’d inherited from his mother, and wondered where in his mind that girl had been hiding the last three decades. Maybe he’d reflected on her in the immediate days and months and even a few years afterward, but she hadn’t become his friend let alone his girlfriend, they hadn’t seen each other again. She’d been buried under by the layers of his subsequent life and like the videotapes he used thirty years ago to record soap operas on top of soap operas the resolution of the image suffered badly. He wasn’t surprised now that she was reappearing for him that she’d never completely faded. She’d made her mark, beyond the pantsuit and the physical details Peter back in his head was bringing into sharper focus: her heart-shaped face and freckles and braided bun and determined eyes—he realized she’d essentially asked him out on a date. His first ever real date. Aiding and abetting a self-proclaimed witch in putting a curse on the Flagfield Mall. Of course he’d said yes. Because she was different and serious and confident and his mother would have hated her, and, if he was being completely honest, because she was a girl and she’d asked him. Peter reflexively sipped some wine through the bemused opening in his mouth. He would have called her Witch and answered to Warlock as long as she wanted.

He’d had only a fuzzy notion of what a warlock actually was. He figured she must have been counting on that, that “hot witch’s henchman” would sound too appealing to a thirteen-year-old dork he wouldn’t question it. She was a girl and she’d asked me to. The “Pink Kiss” to represent Morechant’s Department Store. The food tray the food court. The info booth’s laminated store directory for the mall entire. Yes, the implements. For the “cursing ritual.” It was all just so ridiculous and yet Peter couldn’t help but marvel at the balls he’d had back then. He quickly caught himself. Really, he was proud of that? Had it been so hard to steal those things? He felt old suddenly, and vicarious. Another case of misplaced pride. Another trait he’d inherited from his—no, there was an implement missing; he was forgetting something big. He wasn’t so arrogant that he—

“Blood of an innocent,” he said. That was it. He almost pumped his fist in his air.

Witch had said that. Jesus, was he really going to call her Witch? Fuck it, he was having fun with this. Witch had said they needed the blood of an innocent to appease the dark forces or whatever, the term she’d used eluded him—they were the International Olympic Committee of Curses that needed its collective palm greased before they’d allow the curse to be cast. Peter—Warlock—he could hear his younger self asking her and sounding so cringingly wide-eyed, like you mean a baby’s blood? And like all of its blood? They hadn’t, had they? Draining a baby of its blood was not something Warlock—Peter—would have forgotten, no matter all the intervening years and bad dates and chicken salad sandwiches with his mother. No they’d had to compromise and he wanted to believe it was because of the logistical nightmare draining a baby’s blood at the Flagfield Mall presented. More likely Witch had sized him up, the limitations of his warlockian capabilities, and immediately downgraded blood-draining to plucking a few innocent hairs. The wine was getting to him again. Warlock could get very self-critical when he was drunk. Another black hole to suck a relationship into. He pushed himself to stay with the right memory. Ruffies. It had ended there. The store at the opposite end of the mall, the other-side-of-the-tracks end of the mall. The bastard child to Morechant’s prodigal son. Everything was cheaper and uglier at Ruffies. But that wasn’t why they’d preyed there; Peter was hoping as much as he was certain of it. It couldn’t have been classist he’d been raised by a single mother. It’d been maybe more depressing than that. Witch. Right, Witch had access to a janitor’s closet on Ruffies’ basement level. She’d been there before; many times, Peter feared.

Witch and Warlock – A Short Story’s Second Installment

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Photo by Bryan Hilson

To read the first installment, click here.

WITCH AND WARLOCK (CONTINUED)

A gold case, Allison Downer’s compact, he’d forgotten the maître d had left it on the table next to her purse. Peter thought he should put it away. He didn’t want Allison thinking he’d dug it out of her purse and ending the date because of that. She’d assumed for him the role of guardian, and he was this far in he might as well play it. He took the compact into his hands and was struck by how elegant the logo was: “Estee Lauder” etched in black cursive script across gold plating. It was the wine. Why he gave the logo a second look and why he was curious enough to read the label stickered on the back.

“Pink Kiss,” he said. He said it again.

He wasn’t sure it was the alcohol’s effects why “Pink Kiss” resonated with him, why it seemed to hang in suspended animation in his mind when normally, effortlessly, a million other things would have replaced the cheeky name of a color of a blush of a women’s line of makeup. But here he was, his languid brain suddenly buzzing at attention, straining for context to the exclusion of everything else, like he and the compact case were alone on a stage under a spotlight. The clarity of the object made nothing more concrete than a physical feeling; a spasm in his lower back that settled and split into dual, duller creeping presences, as if emotions were two thieves come to rob him, infiltrating his body and army-crawling around the kidneys into his stomach. He could name them. Shame. Embarrassment. Mild cases, Peter assured himself, considering the “Pink Kiss” details that emerged: cold, brilliant cosmetic counters, Morechant’s Department Store, Flagfield Mall, the risk, the girl. Of course a girl. Always a girl. More and more, he felt, his memory was being reduced to a catalogue of all the stupid shit he’d done to impress the opposite sex.

This time he couldn’t have been older than thirteen, though, and it was a universal truth there was nothing a thirteen-year-old male did that wasn’t stupid. What did it mean that thirty years later he was still—whatever, Peter wanted to stay in the past. He was thirteen, roaming Morechant’s alone. Why? His mother. God damn it. She was paranoid about public dressing rooms so her aggravating shopping habit was to buy all the clothes she thought she might like, try them on at home, and then make a massive return of everything she wasn’t keeping. Somehow Peter could never get out of it, what became an eye-gouging eternity in the Morechant’s returns department in the basement of the store. He must have finally convinced his mother to let him wander. That was right, Peter thought, he’d taken the escalator up to the first floor and that’s where the cosmetic counters were and that’s where he saw her. The girl. She’d stood out to him. Of course she had, she was girl. No, he knew there’d been something else, she hadn’t been obvious. Cute and developed and around his age, yes, all major pluses, but it was coming back to him he’d been more excited about what she was wearing. A pantsuit, like she was some kind of businesswoman, and he thought it might have been a little big on her, and that made her even sexier. She was engaged in a conversation with a saleswoman. She was talking to an adult as if they were both adults. No, it was a negotiation. The girl was driving hard for a discount, he remembered. The “Pink Kiss” blush. The saleswoman had been frowning but she’d also been bending, bending, but no she never broke and the girl’s sullen, sulky departure, although it betrayed her real age, must have set something off in young Peter’s loins, which were just starting to exert their dominance over his brain.

He wasn’t the only one the girl had left hot and flustered. The case holding the “Pink Kiss” was still unlocked when the saleswoman abandoned her post to help customers at a different counter. It was a blur to him now but Peter knew he’d done it; he’d reached over and grabbed the blush right out of the case. And when he turned to look for her—hadn’t she been watching him the whole time? Yeah, the girl had been watching him the whole time from the women’s accessories department. Peter smiled at the thought of that. He’d no longer needed his brain. Fuck shame and embarrassment. It was funny. He was thirteen. She motioned him over and he was on automatic. Of course she did all the talking. What had she even said to him? Peter strained again to dig something up. Maybe a thanks but no thanks you crazy idiot you better put it back, or maybe a what’s your name you dashing scoundrel, here’s my number, call me sometime. Maybe all of those things, but he also felt like it was none of those things. No, there was something else she’d said, he was pretty sure of it. And it was something odd. Gabby. Okay, she’d told him her name, but that wasn’t what was weird.

Peter realized he was gripping hard on his blind date’s compact and he relaxed and returned it to the table and bumped into a basket of bread. The muscles in his gripping hand were sore so he grabbed a roll with the other. He sunk into warm sourdough. Somebody at some point had topped off his wine glass. They were taking pity on him. Don’t call me Gabby. Yes. That was part of what she said; the girl didn’t want Peter to call her by her real name. She didn’t want to know Peter’s real name. That was weird. But what else did she say to him? He drank some wine. Call me Witch. His heart thumped hard against his chest. He remembered thinking, But you’re wearing an oversized pantsuit. Warlock, can I count on you? This made his forehead heat up. In a good way, he thought. He was enjoying the memory. She’d said to call her Witch and that she would call him Warlock. It was funny. Flirty, sort of. It was silly teenage stuff. Will you obtain the “Pink Kiss” for me, Warlock? He took another drink. Did he have it wrong? Wasn’t it his impulsive idea to steal the blush? Had she asked him to do it? Be stupid for her sake? She’d had a plan; Peter was putting together the pieces as fast as they returned to him.