The Witch Part 4

Image is AI generated. Story is 100% human.

“Is there a reason why you’re using my mother’s voice? Because I don’t think that’s necessary. Whatever it is you’re trying to do here, why you had to pick me for whatever it is you have in mind, I don’t see any reason why you had to drag my mother into this. She’s been dead for…”

“Nine years, isn’t it? Yes. April 23, 2016. Only 69 years of age when she just seemed to crumple and fold, like a balled up brown paper bag. She was taking a rest on that exquisite brown leather couch, wasn’t she? The one she had just bought the week before.”

Here the witch’s wrecked face took solid form in the midst of the swirl. It was a mocking joke of a sad clown mask that looked…Jesus. It looked like my mother. I wanted to kill her.

“And you. Only 24 years old and just getting a foothold on your new life. Such a shame how that had to happen, how such a beautiful woman like that can seem to give up on life all of the sudden for no reason at all. Because we both know Donatella James was far too young to have left you so soon. But we do adapt to life’s challenges, don’t we? Just look at you!”

Her voice was no longer raping the insides of my skull, but having this thing toy with me using Mom’s voice was far worse. I resisted the urge to lunge at the swirling mass of flesh and fluid that the witch had become because I guessed that’s what she wanted. Also because I could hear the memory of my real mother’s voice warning me against making a decision that could get me killed – or worse. I had never considered the possibility that there could be much of anything worse than death, but as I experienced this surreal scenario taking place during what was supposed to be my lunch break, it occurred to me that death might be far preferable to whatever kind of eternal pain this thing might have the power to inflict.

“Yeah. Just look at me,” I said sarcastically. “Who could ask for anything more than where I am right now?

“You could, Marcellus. That’s who. You could ask for anything you want, dear heart.”

Again I almost made a wrong decision, and again the warmth of my mother’s spirit urged me to take a step back from doing something stupid.

A moment later I smiled, which provoked a corresponding moment of discomfort I sensed coming from the witch, like maybe she was caught off guard. Her form, which had been shifting in and out of shapes like a molten mass, paused its restlessness. Eventually it settled on the more solid appearance of a nightmare creature possessing the large head of a raven (replacing the sad clown mask), but still attached to the body of the pathetic homeless woman I had seen not even an hour ago. Slowly her stockinged legs unfolded from mid-air and lowered themselves to the ground as the raven’s gaze, almost electric in its intensity, remained fixed on me.

“You are amused, I see,” she said.

I shook my head.

“Not a damned thing amusing about any of this, and if you had any idea of what it must feel like to be me right now, then you’d know this wasn’t what I had in mind when I decided to leave my office and go to lunch. All I fucking wanted was lunch, OK?”

Maybe this wasn’t the time to be getting snippy, but it was either taking a chance on the false bravado or falling to the ground and bawling like a little kid. I had no idea whether all those folks walking to and fro past the bubble I shared with the witch could see what was going on and were choosing to ignore it or whether we really were invisible to them. But if they could actually see me? Well. That just wasn’t gonna work because word gets around.

“You are amused,” she said again, taking a step closer. My stolen mother’s voice this time sounded tinny and a bit metallic, like it was being filtered through a can.

I started to say something, but the raven’s head hissed. The black eyes smoldered.

“You asked a question. About your mother. About why I took her voice. But I am surprised you didn’t think to ask how it is that I know the voice of Donatella James at all. Because shouldn’t that be the question you’re asking? How it is that I know so much about your mother? And then you may want to ask the question whether this old witch knows things about your mother that you never did.”

My anger started boiling again.

“I said you need to leave my mother out of this,” I said quietly, which was how I spoke when I felt like I was about to blow.

“And now your fake amusement has given way to the reality of your anger, and that is because you sense that a certain truth is cutting too close.”

“What the hell would a witch know about any kind of truth?”

The head of the raven morphed into the head of a grinning black cat with emerald eyes. One of them winked at me.

“Oh dear heart. The truth is what witches do.”

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK AS THE STORY OF ‘THE WITCH’ CONTINUES…