My dog, Toto, just shifted into a man. A gorgeous, chiseled beast of a man. That was about thirty seconds before the storm hit and he clutched me against his naked body while wild winds raged all around us.
Yeah, we're seriously not in fucking Kansas anymore.
There are male witches with toothy smiles, a man with a tin arm, and some wizards. Some very, very bad wizards--and they're all interested in me. Romantically. How ... interesting.
Oh, and then there's Dorothy, the girl who's claiming that she's the good guy, and I'm the bad one, all because the power to control storms sleeps in my fingertips.
My name is Ozora, Oz for short, and I'm a girl from nowhere, destined for somewhere.
Table of Contents Table of Contents
Front Matter Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Signup for my Newsletter
Introduction
Chapter 1 – The Magical Fucking Cyclone
Chapter 2 – The Council with the Munchkins and a Douchebag Witch
Chapter 3 – Taavi Toto Kills a Kelpie
Chapter 4 – How Ozora Saved a Sexy Scarecrow Named Stryker
Chapter 5 – The Creepy Road Through the Even Creepier Forest
Chapter 6 – The Ruthlessness of the Tin Gunman
Chapter 7 – The Not-So-Wonderful City of Oz
Chapter 8 – In Which Bain, the Good Witch of the North, Visits–Obviously
Chapter 9 – The Ruby Trials, Because Emeralds Are Not the Color of Blood
Chapter 10 – The Wicked Witch of the West
Back Matter Allison's Adventures In Underland Cover
Spirited Cover
The Family Spells Cover
Filthy Rich Boys Cover
Filthy Rich Boys Chapter 1
Keep Up With The Fun
More Books By C.M. Stunich
About the Author
Very Bad Wizards
Very Bad Wizards © C.M. Stunich 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
The For information address Sarian Royal Indie Publishing, 89365 Old Mohawk Rd, Springfield, OR 97478.
www.cmstunich.com
Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll and Sarian Royal
The The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.
this book is dedicated to Kash Taven
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“… the story of ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.”
-L. Frank Baum
Chicago, April, 1900
“Oh, Frank.
I’m sorry, but the heartaches and nightmares have made their way back. And this story, about some very bad wizards, was most certainly written for adults. Sure, the wonderment and the joy are retained, but this time, the modern version of your fairy-tale is fucked. Apologies in advance.”
-C.M. Stunich
Oregon, March, 2020
The Magical Fucking Cyclone
The cyclone cellar is the only place in this damn house I can sit and have a smoke without Auntie Em calling the cops on me.
“There's no ventilation in here,” my friend, Yori, says, taking a drag on the joint and passing it over to her boyfriend. I can't remember his name for the life of me, but it doesn't really matter. Yori jumps between boys the way my Aunt Emily hops political causes. She's joined three new activist groups just this week, all of them for causes I'm not a fan of. One of them is pro-GMO, you know, Genetically Modified Organisms. Who the hell is pro-GMO?
“Of course there's no ventilation,” I say, taking the joint from this no-name guy's tattooed fingers. “It's a storm cellar. The whole point is to keep air out, not let it in.”
“We're going to hotbox your poor dog,” she says, tucking long dark hair behind one shoulder and gesturing at the black and brown German shepherd at my feet with ringed fingers. I drop my gaze to his silky ebon fur, chest rising and falling in a deep sort of sleep, and then I get up and climb the steps to the cellar door.
“If I let him out, he barks nonstop,” I say, using one of the boxes of canned food to prop the door open. Outside, there's nothing to look at but gray. Gray grass, gray ground, gray house, gray sky. Everything in Kansas is gray; I hate it here. Maybe there are pretty parts, but all I've ever seen of it is this dump. Sometimes there's corn. Other times, it's just flat and empty and desolate.
I lived in Washington before this, and even though pot was legal, I never smoked it.
I smoke it a lot here; I need it here.
“Hopefully this doesn't draw the witch’s attention,” I say, turning and slumping down to the step before taking a drag on my joint. My dog, Toto, is sitting there and staring at me with warm brown eyes, the level of intelligence in his gaze almost unnerving. It’s like he can see straight through my bullshit and into the dark, damaged depths of my soul.
Or maybe that's just the joint talking?
“Why do you call your mom the witch?” Yori's boyfriend asks, his hair slicked back and frozen solid with too much gel. I'm sort of glad I can't remember his name because clearly, he thinks he's the shit. My lips crease into a frown as he stands up and takes the joint back from me.
“Emily is not my mom,” I say, leaning back and putting my palms on the rough wooden step. Some people in town—like Yori's family—have these fancy shelters in their garages, underneath their epoxied floors with fancy logos and comfy couches, electricity, and mini-fridges full of Coca-Cola.
Not us.
We have this half-assed hole dug in the ground with a rickety wooden door, a rusty handle, an old sofa, and a recliner with the yellow stuffing leaking out of it. If this place is supposed to protect us from a massive cyclone, we're all screwed. Personally, if a cyclone does show up, I might just lie down in the field and watch it consume the world.
“Ozora!” A shrill voice cracks the eerie silence of the prairie and draws a growl from Toto's lips. In the year since I moved in here, I don't think I've seen the woman smile. Based on those old black and white photos from her wedding, I think my Aunt Emily used to be a happy girl. She was pretty and young and naive, but when she moved out here with Uncle Henry, things changed. It's cringe-worthy, looking through all those pictures and seeing what she looks like now. Broken, sad, desperate. “Ozora!”
I ignore her. She's so superstitious, she won't go near the cellar unless she has to. She's got it in her mind that this dumpy hole in the ground can summon tornadoes. That'd be nice, wouldn't it? To have the power to summon tornadoes?
That's such a high-person thought, isn't it?
“Em is Oz's aunt,” Yori says, waving the joint around and leaving a trail of white smoke that sits so freakishly still it looks painted in the air. Oz is the only name I answer to. If Auntie Em wants me for something, she knows how to get my attention. “Her parents got, like, killed while they were on vacation or whatever.”
I narrow my eyes and reach down for Toto, curling my fingers in the long fur of his ruff for comfort. Yeah, my family did die on vacation. Everyone I knew and loved in the world, save t
his dog, is gone.
And now I'm stuck in a place I hate, with an aunt who's too weak to stand up to her abusive husband, and an uncle that I'm lucky is only an alcoholic and not a pedophile or rapist. He beats my aunt, but at least he doesn't invade my bed at night. Considering all I have is a curtain for a doorway, it wouldn't be all that hard.
“How did they die?” the nameless boyfriend asks me, but I'm done sitting here and talking. The last thing I want to do is explain my life history to some guy who's wearing a shirt that says Two Hawt Fer Werdz. Gross.
“When you're done, shut the cellar door. Fuck each other down here if you want, but don't leave the door open.” Yori flips me off, but I just tweak a small smile, stand up, and head outside. My jean shorts are too short, riding up my ass, and I've got no bra under my white tank, but I don't particularly care. My aunt is so prudish, it makes me want to rebel; I can't help myself.
“Ozora,” she says, giving me a severe once-over that would be scary if it weren't for her black eye. All I feel is sorry for her now as she glares at me. I almost feel bad about calling her the witch, but she's so damn skinny, and her nose is hooked, and she just looks downright mean. Henry beats her pretty regularly, so I suppose she doesn't have a lot to smile about, but when I look at her, I just feel angry. I've been angry since I moved in here last year.
Enraged.
“It's Oz,” I say, and Aunt Em scoffs, shaking her head and drying her hands on her apron. Yeah, she still wears aprons. Who does that in this day and age? She turns with a click of her tongue and heads inside the one-room house we call home. Fortunately, my room is upstairs in the attic or else I'd have no sanity left. I might not have a door, but when I pull that curtain closed and slip my headphones on, the rest falls away.
“Oz is a boy's name,” she says as I roll my eyes and follow after her inside the warmly lit room. The table is set, the smell of fresh bread teasing the air with a hint of yeast. At least the food is good here. That's about the only nice thing I can say about this place. “Your name is Ozora.”
Gritting my teeth, I sit down at the table while Toto curls up on the floor near my bare feet. My toes are tainted with gray dust, but there's so little stimulation out here, I need to feel something beneath my feet to remember that I'm still alive, that this is not my whole world, and that I can escape this place as soon as I graduate. Not sure where I'll go or what I'll do, but there's no place like home, right? I think I'll head back to Washington and the city I grew up in.
“Ozora is a proud, strong Hebrew name,” Aunt Em continues, lifting the lid off a pot and stirring the contents inside. “It means the strength of the Lord. Be proud of it.”
“Oz is a Hebrew name, too,” I say snarkily, leaning back in the chair and balancing on the two rear legs. “It means strong, courageous, and powerful. What's wrong with that?”
“It's a boy's name,” Em repeats, but I'm not about to give a woman who lives in a one-room shack with an alcoholic husband a lecture on gender politics. “Besides, your mother chose the name Ozora for you. Give the dead some respect.” I narrow my eyes and purse my lips. There's no point in arguing with Aunt Em. She’s my dad’s much older sister, almost a mother since they were twenty years apart. She's from a completely different generation than me, a completely different mindset.
“Why am I in here?” I ask as she shuffles around the small corner kitchen. It's not much, barely more functional than the camper kitchen on my parents' RV, but damn, she knows how to use it.
“You have chores to finish up,” she tells me as I curl my fingers into a fist. Back home, my chores were simple shit like cleaning my room or putting dishes away. Here, it's crap like chopping firewood or waxing the wood floors. And then Uncle Henry storms in and shakes his dirty boots off all over it … “I want you to bleach the bathtub and pull the shower curtain down to handwash it. Get it out to dry before this storm rolls in.”
Auntie Em puts put her hand on her lower back and grumbles something about her sciatica pain flaring up. Every time a storm rolls in, she starts bitching about it. Anyway, we read about changes in air pressure affecting old injuries in my anatomy class, so I guess she might be telling the truth.
“Sounds like a fun way to spend a Friday evening,” I quip, grabbing a slice of bread from the wooden cutting board in the center of the old table. I tear out the middle, toss the crust down for Toto, and stand up.
I'm not one for taking orders, but also, I need to ride out these last few months before graduation without getting booted from the house. Once I'm done with school, I'm done with Kansas.
I head into the bathroom, grab a jug of bleach from under the sink, and unscrew the cap.
“Did you know if you mix certain household chemicals, they can form a toxic cloud in an enclosed space and kill you? Or at least cause brain damage?” Toto stares up at me with his bit of bread hanging from his mouth and cocks his head to one side, ears standing upright. I sniff the bleach, wrinkle my nose, and then pour a bunch of it in the tub. “I feel like the pesticide-ridden dust has already messed with my head, don't you?”
I kneel down and start to scrub, but it's not really that hard of a task. Auntie Em makes me do the tub three times a week. It doesn't even have time to get dirty before I clean it again. But if Uncle Henry comes home and he doesn't smell bleach? We're both getting our asses kicked.
The pot's made me slow, but meticulous, so even though I tell myself I'm going to half-ass this job out of principle, I end up scrubbing until my shoulder hurts and the white porcelain basin of the old clawfoot tub is shining. Running my arm across my sweaty forehead, I stand up and glance over my shoulder at Toto.
He's sleeping on the rug in front of the closed bathroom door, but there's a strange shadow in the mirror behind him, a shadow of a man.
Blinking rapidly, I turn away and blame it on the weed. It has to be the weed.
I look back at the mirror and find nothing but my own melancholy self staring back at me. Even getting high doesn’t change the expression on my face; there’s pain and loss etched into every single line. And really, I’m seventeen, so I shouldn’t have lines yet, right?
Yet there they are, on either side of my chapped lips. When I lived in Washington, I loved my mouth, even though my upper lip is much fuller than my bottom. I had a shiny, pink mouth. Here in Kansas, everything is dry and lifeless. Even the corn that grows half the year doesn’t feel real, just some pesticide-laden, GMO Frankenstein monster made to feed factory-farmed pigs.
Tugging on my brunette braids, I sigh and lean my head back against the frosted glass of the window. My hair used to be the same emerald green as my eyes, but Aunt Em made me dye it when I moved here. Back home, I lived in Emerald City, aka Seattle, so it seemed appropriate. Now that I’m out here, and everything’s as gray as Auntie Em’s hair, the brown works a little better anyway.
I close my eyes for a moment, waiting until I hear the front door open. Uncle Henry’s back. Great. And Aunt Em’s worried about a tornado? Seriously, there’s no worse cyclone than her husband. He’s a monstrous force of hate and pain and rage. Thank fuck he has a bum knee or else I’d never get a moment of peace, not even up the steep attic stairs to my bedroom.
When I don’t hear screaming, crying, or broken dishes, I figure it’s okay to head back out into the kitchen/living room/my aunt and uncle’s bedroom area. Yeah, living in a one-room house blows. When I lived in Seattle, my siblings and I all had our own rooms. We had a game room, too, and a guest bedroom, a home office for my mother’s construction business, and a finished basement with gym equipment.
This life … is nothing like that one.
“Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes,” Aunt Em tells me, facing the stove and stirring the pot carefully. Last time she splashed chili on the stove, Uncle Henry gave her a black eye for the effort. “Why don’t you send your friends home?”
I nod and glance over at Uncle Henry, sitting on the couch in front of the TV. He doe
sn’t even say hi to me, so I flip him off while he’s not looking and head back out into the gray prairie with Toto trotting along behind me like a shadow. The wind’s picking up, swirling dust across the cracked earth, and the sky’s a sickly splatter of black and gray. Personally, I hope it rains. Then it won’t be so dry, and maybe I can finally get my lips to stop cracking and bleeding?
Toto watches the sky, ears pricked with alertness, as I pop the door to the cellar and find Yori and her boyfriend halfway to third base. Gross. I wrinkle my nose.
“Hey.” My voice snaps the two of them out of their hormonal bliss and draws their attention my way. “The witch wants you out. Dinner’s in fifteen.” I shrug my shoulders in a loose apology, and Yori groans dramatically. Must be tough to go home to your three sisters and two loving parents. I’d do anything to have my siblings … parents … and grandparents back.
But they’re all dead.
Everyone I knew and loved, gone. Every living family member on my dad’s side of the family (mom never had any herself) gone in an instant. The only person I have left on this earth that’s blood-related to me is Aunt Em. That’s it. And there’s no love lost between us.
“Can’t we hang out for a little longer?” Yori whines, tossing her raven-black hair over one shoulder. As if in response to her question, tiny pieces of hail begin to come down in icy sheets. Uh-oh. “Never mind,” she amends, grabbing the tattooed guy by the hand and dragging him toward the latch. “Might be a cyclone coming, and I am not getting stuck in here. No Wi-Fi.” Yori pulls him up the steps and past me, waving a quick goodbye before climbing in her green VW Beetle and taking off down the winding road toward the highway.
I whistle to grab Toto’s attention and head back toward the house, wiping mud off my feet at the front door.
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