by Scott Bury
PM.
“No, and I know I cannot hurt you, either. Not that I would ever want to, dear!” Helen stood. “How are you? It’s been such a long time since we’ve seen each other. Why don’t you ever visit?”
“What are you doing here, mother? This is extreme, even for you. You’ve never tried one of your stunts with a government before.”
“Sure I have. You remember the nineties, don’t you? Bob Rae?”
“Okay, never the national government. I’ll give you five minutes to undo what you’ve done and get out of here.”
“I don’t think so, dear. I’ve worked very hard on this project. We all have, haven’t we, girls?”
The coven behind her cheered and laughed.
A man sitting in the chair beside Matt fell face-forward onto the table.
“And it will be so rewarding. You know, I’m just sick about what this government of ours is doing these days. Aren’t you? I know your politics don’t agree with this man’s.”
“Politics have nothing to do with this stunt, mother. You think you can control him now, but it’s going to backfire on you.”
“Oh, son, it wounds me that you have no confidence in your mother.” Helen looked angry now. Her red hair stood up around her head and her eyes glowed yellow. “I can change the direction of history.”
“You can do nothing but cause disasters. I’m shutting this down, now.” Without taking his eyes off his mother, Matt concentrated. His brows came together, his shoulders tensed. He ignored the shaking in his knees and pushed with his mind.
The red glow flickered; outside the windows, the sky became noticeably lighter.
“Matt, stop it! You will love my plans.”
Sweat ran down Matt’s face. The red glow died away and light from the clearing sky came in through the patio doors.
One of Helen’s coven, a short, young woman with long hair like a squirrel’s tail, shrieked and sprang toward Matt. She spat on her hands, rubbed them togther and flung the spittle toward him, screaming a curse. The spit mixed with the sweat on Matt’s face.
“You can’t hurt him, Sarita,” Helen said. “The devil himself knows I’ve tried.”
Sarita cursed and slapped Matt across the face. He flinched, but did not move nor take his eyes from his mother. Behind him, someone groaned and stirred. Outside, wind blew apart the black clouds. Sarita raised her hand again, but Matt caught it without looking at her, then pushed her away gently. Sarita’s eyes widened in shock and fear; she stepped backward, twice, tripped on an aide and fell on her backside.
“Matthew, I can make you rich,” Helen cried.
Matt concentrated harder. He had to lean on the table. “Rich! You’re rich, you hag.” He laughed and the wind blew open one of the patio doors. Clean, fresh air swept the room. More of the entranced people stirred and groaned. “You’ve done nothing to me but impoverish me for years. How many times did you destroy my businesses or jobs?” The other window crashed open. Helen could see blue sky.
“You have just enough time to get out of here for good before all these people wake up,” said Matt. “I’ll let you go if you give me the talisman.” He pointed at the object on a leather strap around his mother’s neck. It bound the magic that powered his mother’s spells today. From a distance, it was a shapeless lump. Up close, he could see some kind of vegetable, in the shape of a shrivelled, twisted inverted y, almost like a man’s shape. “Mandrake. Mom, you’re such a caricature.”
“No! It’s mine.” Behind Helen, the rest of the coven moaned and cried. “Shut up!” she screamed at them. “Please, Matt, this has taken years of planning and effort. We can make the world the way we know it should be.”
Matt snapped the thong, put the root in his mouth and swallowed it whole, grimacing from the pain as it made its way down. Sarita barked a laugh. “That’s death, in that quantity.”
“You know there is a price for taking that,” Helen said, her usual smugness back.
Matt nodded. Suddenly, he heaved and retched. He doubled over, coughing and choking.
Sarita looked at him with glee on her face. “Is he dying?”
“Not yet,” said Helen.
Matt retched again and straightened. He heaved one last time, then reached into his mouth and pulled out what looked like a thin string. It seemed to still be secured inside him. He pulled out a strand as long as his hand. “Is that enough? Is that your price?” His words were slurred around the string.
Helen shook her head. “Two more years of your life,” she said.
Matt pulled another two inches of string out. It was painful, but it had to be. “Knife,” he said hoarsely.
Helen took out a small, wooden blade. She held the edge close to Matt’s lips and snipped the string, but Matt pulled the strand away from her.
“You cannot have it. You’ve taken enough, already.” He pulled out a lighter that he always kept in his pocket just for this situation and lit the string. It vanished into smoke. “You’re finished, mother,” he said. His voice was weak and it was all he could do to keep from collapsing in front of her. “I’ve absorbed your magic. You have about two minutes left to get away. I’ve been very generous.”
“Yes, you have. That really won’t make Teri happy, will it? Five years of your life?” Helen said in her smug voice.
“Don’t say her name again.”
Helen came close and touched his face. He could see, now, the deep lines in her skin, the frayed greyness in her hair. “Oh, Matt. I know you better than anyone else. I knew you would take the talisman. You always thought you were smarter than me. It never occurred to you that I would anticipate your every move.”
“You didn’t know I would come,” said Matt. His voice was hoarse. “You attacked me to draw me out.”
Helen smiled even more smugly. “I knew you would come when you saw the clouds over the city. And I knew you would take the talisman. That’s why I chose mandrake root. It’s poisonous, even to you. But it’s not the source of my power. And now, you’ve cut your life-string shorter, sacrificed years—for nothing.”
Matt slumped and looked up at his mother from under his eyebrows. “Not for nothing. For your knife.” In one movement, he pushed her hands away, pushed her to her knees and grabbed a fistful of her hair in one hand and the wooden blade with the other. He began to hack at her hair until it piled on the floor and writhed like dying worms.
Helen screamed so loudly that the glass in the patio doors shattered. The coven shrieked along with her until the air vibrated against his ears. They gathered around him. Some tried to pull Helen away, but he held onto a handful of hair as he hacked the rest off. Helen’s blood hissed when it hit the ground, but Matt did not care.
Other members of the coven cast spells at him, or tried to push him off their queen. But if Matt did not want a witch to touch him, she did not touch him.
They did distract him, however. Even Matt could not simultaneously concentrate on repelling the coven, hacking off his mother’s store of magical power and dispelling her earlier spells. As he roughly shaved her head and endured Sarita’s weak pounding on his back, the air became still and thick and the clouds darkened. Matt snarled and dug the edge of the blade into his mother’s scalp, peeling it away to the bone, ignoring her writhing and screaming beneath him. He only stopped when a six-inch strip bloody skin and hair ripped off her skull and Helen collapsed, flat, onto the hardwood floor.
Sarita tried to pick her up. Matt ignited the hank of hair in his hands and smeared it onto the carpet, drawing a bloody, sooty circle around himself to keep the witches away. He lit the rest of the dying hair and watched it disappear into smoke.
Helen looked at him, her face bloody and horrible, her head naked without its mane. “Matt, how could you?” Matt ignored her until all her hair had burned and the ashes had blown away in the breeze. The light was steadily getting better as the clouds dissipated.
Helen was actually crying. Those were real tears running down her cheeks, Matt realized.
Matt fell to his knees. “You’re finished. You have about a minute to get out of here before these people wake up. You don’t have to worry—you know as well as I do that they won’t remember any of this.”
The coven helped Helen get up. Two witches held her between them, and her dark blood smeared their naked shoulders. “You’re finished, too. The rest of us can look forward to seeing what Sarita, here, can do.” Blood bubble from her mouth as she laughed, and the coven laughed with her.
The witches holding Helen straddled brooms, brushes pointing forward, and lifted their queen.
The other witches, including Sarita, mounted up as well, and one by one flew out the open window.
“Brooms, mother? Really? Do you always have to be such a caricature?”
The Prime Minister blinked and moved his head. Dizzy and weak, Matt knew he had to get out of there immediately. He staggered to the open door to the garden and looked north. He closed his eyes. His head hurt.
He opened his eyes again. Yes, there was an oak tree, just beyond the balcony. He staggered toward it until he was under one of its branches, and then his vision blurred. The pain in his head and in his stomach was all he could think of for several seconds until he regained control of his body enough to say one word: