Wrapped in Black: Thirteen Tales of Witches and the Occult

by Jennifer L. Greene

  Whatever doubt had come over the others vanished at Mother’s call. The four people he once considered his new family rushed toward him and Elliot prayed his mother, his real mother, would be okay.

  Clutching the pack to his chest with his one good arm, Elliot fell backward into the pit. The screams of the coven were drowned in the muffled explosion of two gallons of gasoline and a homemade pipe bomb as Elliot was blissfully consumed by the light.

  ***

  SHE MAKES MY SKIN CRAWL

  by Shenoa Carroll-Bradd

  Jamie checked his watch against the computer clock, then, with a sick stomach lurch, desperately glanced up at the clock on the wall. “No. No, no.” Shit. He wasn’t going to make it home on time. He grabbed his files and briefcase, then dashed for the elevator, tapping his foot as the numbers slowly lit, begging it to move faster. When the doors finally slid open, he entered and breathed a sigh of relief to find it empty. No one was going to slow him down with small talk or ask how he'd been, how things were at home...

  “Wait!” a woman's voice called from nearby. “Please! Hold the elevator.”

  Jamie stuck out his hand to block the automatic doors.

  Hannah, a sweet new hire from Accounting, slid into the elevator and flashed him a smile.

  Cold sweat prickled over his neck. Jamie could smell her, he realized. She was wearing some flowery perfume that sent him into a panic. His hand shot out to block the doors again. “You know, I think I'll take the stairs instead. It's better for me, anyway,” he muttered as he rushed out of the elevator. Jamie was out of earshot before she had a chance to reply, hustling his way down the echoing concrete stairwell.

  On the drive home, he sped whenever he could, trying to earn back the minutes, but at that hour, everyone else had the same plan, and he found himself snarled in a traffic jam that sucked away the time. Jamie kept flashing hateful, frightened looks at the dashboard clock, swearing at it for doing its job so goddamn precisely. Sweat broke out across his skin, even though the AC was on full blast, and no matter what radio station he switched to, nothing could take his mind off the clamoring refrain pounding in his head.

  I'm gonna be late.

  Elena's gonna be furious. She's gonna punish me.

  But it's not my fault! I can just tell her-

  She's not gonna listen. She's gonna make me crawl.

  The car behind him honked, and Jamie rolled forward a few feet, before the fear-song began again:

  I'm gonna be late.

  When he finally arrived at home, Jamie unlocked the door and slipped inside. The lights were off. Elena wasn’t home yet. Jamie let out a long breath that quickly turned into a high-pitched, manic giggle. He staggered to the dining room table and collapsed into a chair, letting his briefcase fall to the floor. As he fought to catch his breath again, Jamie dropped his head into his cupped palms, elbows braced on the tabletop. His body felt light with the flood of relief and adrenaline. Then the bathroom door swung open, and his heart sank.

  Elena emerged, unsmiling beneath her ceremonial makeup. She had painted her face bone-white, stark in contrast to her smooth, tan skin, and a bar of red shadow ran across both eyes, all the way to her temples.

  “I am bruja,” she had told him once, lifetimes ago, demurely holding a sheet over her breasts as they lay in bed. “Taught by mi madre. Does that scare you?”

  He had kissed her, and tugged playfully at the fabric. “You are beautiful. Just like your mother. Nothing you do could ever scare me.”

  Jamie hadn't been listening. He'd been thinking about her long, coffee-colored legs, and what he could do to make her smile. When she'd showed him the circular birthmark on her ass where she swore the devil had bitten her, Jamie had set his teeth along the curve and clamped down until she yelped, determined to leave his own mark. He'd warned her that he could be a little possessive sometimes. She said she found it cute.

  Elena had been honest with him from the start, and he had whistled himself right into the slaughterhouse.

  Jamie fought to keep his jaw from trembling as Elena leveled her gaze at him. He could already feel his muscles locking up. “Sweetheart,” he forced between clenching teeth, “I'm sorry. I had a lot of files to approve. I lost track of time.”

  She lifted her chin, empty eyes narrowed. “Then why didn’t you call?”

  “It was only going to be fifteen minutes, but then traffic-”

  She strode over and seized his lapel, sniffing him up and down like a dog.

  Jamie held still, praying that none of Hannah's perfume had permeated his clothes in the brief second he'd spent in her company.

  At last, she released him with a sigh and pressed her sticky black lips to his temple.

  His shoulders relaxed.

  “Oh, Jamie baby,” she sighed, her breath teasing his ear, “why do you make me do this?”

  He stared up at her, dumbstruck. “But…I didn’t. I didn’t do anything!”

  Her long red nails slid under his jacket, pushing it off his shoulders, shucking his clothes in a parody of sensual undressing. “Not this time, no. But I love you so much it hurts. It would kill me if you cheated.” She brought her darkened lips up to within inches of his, staring eye to eye. “Can't you see I have to make sure you never do?”

  Jamie opened his mouth, slowly shaking his head side to side. He couldn't find anything to say. She knew he was innocent. Nothing could derail the pre-emptive punishment. “Please...” was all he could manage, though it came out a half whisper.

  Elena's empty eyes were wet behind the ceremonial paint, and her black lips turned down. She really did seem sorry, but as Jamie had learned, regret would not get in the way of what she considered right. Her trembling lower lip firmed, and she lowered her gaze from his. “Go on,” she ordered. “Get in the bathtub.”

  Jamie blinked back tears, but he didn’t protest any more. If he didn’t make it to the bathroom before she began, Elena would make him clean up afterward. That mess had only had to happen once before he learned his lesson. He'd used up so many paper towels, and then was incredibly self-conscious when he took the bag of bloody evidence out to the trash cans. Insanely, he feared a neighbor might see and call the cops, thinking he was some kind of wife-beater.

  Elena would not be pleased if the police showed up, asking questions.

  He wore a blank white mask, its interior surfaces smeared with petroleum jelly, and spent hours staring at the water stains on the bathroom ceiling, unable to blink or close his eyes.

  Elena came by every few minutes with eye drops, and to murmur sweet words that verged on apologies, but never made it all the way there.

  The first time she'd punished him, the effect was so small he mistook the sore, loose patch of skin on his shin for a scrape. She didn't tell him what she'd done, so when it went away on its own, Jamie assumed it had healed.

  For months, she'd passive-aggressively punished him for minor offenses: peeling back strips of skin on his elbows and knees when he left the toilet seat up or went out with friends instead of spending time with her. He tried to remember the last time he'd socialized with anyone outside of work, and couldn't. Elena didn't like it, and it just wasn't worth the risk anymore.

  Jamie had gone to a dermatologist about the strange scrapes and peeling, but the doctor said she'd never seen anything like his affliction, and could only offer analgesic creams. When the abrasions eventually cleared up on their own, he wrote the whole thing off as a strange new allergy. That was, until the night he went to a bar without her permission. When Jamie had come home, still slightly buzzed, he'd found Elena sitting up and waiting, wearing her ceremonial paint.

  He had laughed, at first.

  She'd silenced him by making his skin wander through rosebushes all night. It came back in tatters, and he had lain there, helpless, while she stitched his skin back together.

  He'd had to call in sick to work until the most obvious of the cuts healed.

  Lying in the bathtub now, Jamie felt r
ough asphalt beneath his hands and feet. He felt a sickening sense of motion as he lay perfectly still, staring up at the ceiling. Something furry and slick squished beneath his left palm. His right hand moved over to investigate, and he felt thin bones beneath his fingertips, and a naked tail. A possum, perhaps? Roadkill? His hands slid through it like mud, like finger paint.

  He'd often wondered if his skin had enough awareness to avoid being seen, or if it crab-walked through the night like a stray, fighting turf wars with alley cats and scaling picket fences. Elena probably knew the answer, but he could not bear to ask.

  Cool concrete scraped his hands and feet, followed by the rough tickle of grass, and the steps outside their apartment. Jamie let out a little sigh of relief, careful not to move his torso too much. She’d filled the tub with warm water, as always, so his muscles wouldn’t dry out. Jamie heard his empty palm slap the front door, and the creak of the hinge as Elena let his skin inside like a returning pet. He felt her lift him, and then she entered the bathroom and seated herself on the closed toilet lid, his skin draped over her lap.

  Elena hummed to herself as she brought out the baby wipes and began to clean him from the feet up. That song she hummed sometimes haunted his dreams, and he’d wake up, sweating, convinced he’d fallen asleep in the tub while his skin wandered in penance.

  The first time she’d punished him this way, he'd thought he was losing his mind. He spent days convinced he had dreamed it, or that he was simply cracking up. But when her paranoia caught her again, he knew. It was real. She made his skin crawl, and there was no one he could tell. No one who might believe it. Jamie had considered divorcing her, or even just running, but he had no idea how much range her magic had. Could she peel his skin off from a mile away? A city's length? A state? And if he did divorce her, if he managed to get through all the court proceedings intact, what was to stop her from sending his skin walking and never calling it back home?

  The strokes of the baby wipes tingled like sensations in a phantom limb. Her ministrations felt soft and gentle, until she reached his groin. The corresponding places stirred on his denuded frame, and he gasped a little cry of pain as naked nerves rubbed raw muscle.

  Her attention quickly shifted away from the area. She was feeling generous tonight. She had once massaged that disconnected area until he screamed, and Jamie suspected she’d only stopped for fear the neighbors would complain.

  Elena continued upwards until she reached his hairline, brushing away burs and dirt and gravel. When she finished cleaning his skin, Elena reached over and pulled the plug. The bath drained with a gagging laugh, and a chill crept over Jamie’s bare muscles as the water receded.

  Once the tub was empty, she pried the Vaseline-lined mask off his face and laid his skin out over him again-- foot to foot, shoulder to shoulder. It melted and spread over his muscles like a perfect coat of paint, running down the curves of his back and arms, swiftly encasing him again.

  When his eyelids returned, Jamie squeezed them shut until tears dribbled from the corners, so grateful just to have the chance not to see.

  Elena’s long nails grazed his flesh as she grabbed his arms and helped him out of the tub, wrapping him in a soft, fluffy towel. She pressed her body against him as she rubbed him dry. “You know I love you,” she murmured.

  “I know.”

  “I wouldn’t have to do this if you’d just be honest with me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She pressed her forehead to his chest. “Why do you make me do these things? Don’t you love me?”

  “Of course I love you,” he said, eyes still closed tight. “I love you so much.”

  Elena wrapped her arms around him, squeezing the damp towel against his newly returned skin.

  Jamie forgot, sometimes, just how small she was, how delicate. When he lay immobile in the bathtub, her slight frame seemed to loom above him like a giant. He traced a hand up along her spine and curled it over the back of her neck.

  “I’m glad that’s over,” she said. “Please don’t make me do that again.”

  “I won’t.” His fingers tightened on her neck, and it dawned on him that, if he really set his mind to it, he could probably snap her neck. She might struggle, but she wouldn't have time to peel him again, and it would be as easy as crushing a baby bird underfoot. He could break her spine, then just walk away. Free at last.

  Elena froze when his grip tightened, her tiny body pressed against him, face still hidden in his chest. “If anything happens to me,” she said very slowly, carefully pronouncing each word so there could be no confusion, “Marco will come for you.”

  The fingers around her neck loosened and slid up into her hair, tugging her head back so he could kiss her black-painted lips. “I know,” he said, fighting the dread that clutched at his throat.

  Elena had never mentioned if their mother had taught her brother Marco the ways of brujeria as well, but Jamie suspected she had. His eyes were empty, like Elena's, and from their brief interactions, Jamie got the feeling that she was the more stable of the pair.

  “Let's go to bed,” she suggested, wiping at her smeared lipstick with a thumb. “Let me show you you're forgiven.”

  Jamie cleared his throat. “Don't you want to wash that off your face first?”

  Her head snapped up so fast he recoiled, sure she meant to bite.

  “Why? Is my heritage ugly to you?”

  Jamie shook his head. “O-of course not. Don't be silly.”

  He was lost, he knew. There was no escape for him, but once he got past that cold curtain of despair, a fresh terror began to bloom. Before their marriage, he and Elena had talked about how someday, they'd like to have kids.

  Would she teach them to be bruja, like her?

  Or would she forgo spankings and grounding in favor of punishing them the same way she punished him, and for the same imagined infractions?

  What kind of father could he be, if he couldn't protect his children from their own mother? Or from each other, if they followed her path. How could he hope to discipline a child who could flay him?

  Elena took his hand, leading him down the hall to their room. “You're very quiet all of a sudden. Not mad at me, are you?”

  Jamie forced himself to smile, despite how cold and sick his insides felt. He wondered if she could tell when he was lying, not that speaking the truth would be any safer. “Mad at you? Never, baby. You're my queen.”

  She grinned and flicked her long black hair over her shoulder before standing on tip toe to kiss him. “Yes I am, you lucky man. And I'm all yours.”

  ***

  PIGEON

  by Eric Nash

  Sitting on the playground, fingering the amulet which adorned her wrist, Maddie thought that the clockwork conspiracy was genius in the way it dictated her fall.

  If Jack, her ex-boyfriend and ex-boss, hadn’t got that girl pregnant, he would not have left Maddie. If she hadn’t been forced to quit her job because of his unreasonable behaviour then she wouldn’t be working in the Estate Agents doing weekend shifts, and would not have been taking her lunch-break in the park. She would not have been watching a magpie swagger through the grass as she listened to her sister waffle on about how fantastic her holiday was - second already that year and it still only July - while her nephew walked along a balance bar between the swing and the climbing frame. If her sister, who never liked Jack and still frequently informed Maddie of this fact, hadn’t told her about her new job, the pay increase and the flirty fit bloke that had interviewed her, she would not have walked over to her nephew, who then would not have bet her that she couldn’t walk all the way along the bar like he had done twice. Maddie stepped up. She would have reached the end if a motorcycle hadn’t backfired and the magpie hadn’t leapt into flight, but it did and so did the other, and the frantic fluttering of wings came inches from Maddie’s face making her twist and flail and fall left off the narrow beam.

  Even though she hadn’t landed exactly on the left hand path -
the path was some distance away on the other side of the park - she felt that the act of falling to her left counted as the same thing. Now that she had fallen she was, of course, duty-bound to explore her desires and maximise her satisfaction.

  Or maybe, Maddie just needed to give herself permission to repay Jack for the three years of pills caused by his betrayal.

  Whatever the reason, her liberation began with the removal of her amulet. It was a plain silver band, around which she had wrapped a lock of Jack’s hair. Back when he wore it long. Back when he was hers. To secure the hair she had bound it with red silk. It had protected her from harm every day she and Jack had been together. After, it had been very successful in keeping him near.

  Abandoning her nephew to the whims of his self-obsessed mother, Maddie unravelled the silk and let it trail behind her in the dirt, discarding it at the park gates when she turned left to take the Number 9 bus. Knowing what she was about to do had her heart skipping over her hollow belly. The act of allowing herself to do it swept away the many inhibitions that contained her, and made her body tremble with excitement. At the bus stop, she couldn’t help but play hide-and-peek with her reflection, each time lingering a little longer to marvel at the upward curve of her lips and the universe revealed in her eyes.

  All the while, Maddie crushed the hair in her fist.

  For three years, men hadn’t looked at her. They were looking at her now. Maddie surprised herself by smiling at them, at all of them, even the freckle-faced teenager who was with his mother. It wasn’t just the men who were turning their heads. Go on then, girls, she said to herself with delight, take a peek at me, too.