She’s a Witch!

Deborah Myirfend was a witch. She wasn’t just some fat couch potato with a book on spells she got at the mall and a cat she insisted was her familiar, she was the real thing. Over the years of her life, she had been in covens and witches’ circles. She was a true practitioner of witchcraft. She had worked on the white side of magic and on the black. Deborah brought harm to no one, but was ostracized by her neighbors for her beliefs. She was a patient woman, but everyone has their limits. She lived in a pretty red house on a quiet street in a small Rhode Island town. For thirty years, she lived there quietly. She didn’t mind that the neighbors avoided her. She was a witch; she had friends like everyone else, but needed no one.

A couple of neighborhood twenty-something year old punks named Buster and Danny started to harass and bully her. She tried to talk to the parents of both of them, but they would only talk to her through closed doors, and then they seemed uncaring. She simply wanted peace.

She had no choice: the local cops were indifferent, they had no use for witches either, and ignored her requests for help. The parents were uncaring, if not supportive of the two, hoping she would move away. She wasn’t going anywhere, this was her house, and no one would scare her away. She was forced to use magic to stop them, black magic. Turning people into toads and such was pure fiction, but a witch can affect someone’s luck. These two twenty-something delinquents were about to get some very bad luck. They had made the mistake of pissing off a witch.

They all lived on a street that led directly to the ocean, and like clockwork every Friday night the boys would bring their girlfriends and have a bonfire by the beach. Deborah simply bided her time. The next morning, after their party was over and the punks were gone, she rummaged through the sand and trash and found what she wanted: their spent condoms. Legend has it a witch needs blood to perform a hex, but that’s not necessarily true. Any form of genetic material would work, and these spent condoms had all the material she needed.

The next day, as the two returned to their near daily fun of hurling taunts at her from the street or rocks at her house, Deborah simply prepared for the spell she would cast that night and the chant she must turn into a song she could hum. That night by the light of a black candle and a full moon, she performed the required ceremony and offered up the collected material as a sacrifice to the proper entities.

As the abuse began the next day, Deborah came out, sat on her porch holding her cat, and stared at the two, humming a strange tune. Buster decided to embarrass her by exposing himself to her. She simply sat and rocked in her chair, stroking her cat and humming her tune. Buster never saw the drunk driver that was speeding down the street. He was struck and killed instantly. As the neighborhood came out of their homes to see what happened and gather around him, Deborah simply smiled and went inside.

Two days later after the neighbors came home from the thug’s funeral, Danny, still in his suit, stood outside her home crying and yelling, “She’s a witch!” at her house.

Deborah simply came out holding and stroking her cat and humming her tune. From behind one of the houses came a strange-looking dog foaming at the mouth. It bit Danny on the leg, leaving an ugly wound. He lay on the ground writhing in pain as the dog ran away. One of the neighbors watched it all from her window and called the paramedics. Deborah simply smiled and went back inside as the ambulance took him away. Later that night she saw a news report on television of how a local youth was bitten by a rabid dog and died of a heart attack on the way to the hospital. She didn’t really want to do that, but they wouldn’t leave her alone. Like most witches, she simply wanted to be left alone and go about her business in peace.

No one bothered her after that. Few neighbors spoke with her before, now none of them would. She would see them point and whisper as she walked past but it didn’t bother her.

She was a witch and needed no one.

Ray Prew was originally from Rhode Island, but now lives in Florida. He is a graduate of the New England Institute of Technology. Ray has been a blue-collar worker all his life, and started writing as a hobby. He spent 9 enjoyable years as a phone psychic. Ray’s work has been published in Spinetinglers magazine. One of the stories was used in a trivia quiz. Two Spinetinglers stories are on You Tube, one story called Some Monsters Are Real is narrated by someone, and the other was made into a short video called 'Let Me Out by Ray Prew'. He has been published in Blood Moon Rising, Aphelion, and several other magazines. He has an anthology book of published and unpublished stories available on Amazon called Delightful Nightmares. His work has also appeared in the anthology Vicious Circle Season One put out by sinister grin, and one poem in an anthology of vampire poetry called Vampoetry.

Find more by Ray Prew in the Author Index.

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