Lizzi Bizzi and the Red Witch

by Stefano Pastor

  He mumbled something, maybe a name, but I couldn’t understand it.

  «What are you going to do now?».

  «What?».

  «I mean now that you’re done with work. The show’s over, isn’t it? What are you up to? You’ll go have fun?».

  I didn’t give much thought to the fact that it was well past midnight. I imagined they had different kinds of schedules.

  «What do you want?», he straight up asked me.

  I shrugged. «I imagine you’re new around here. Maybe you don’t know anybody. I could show you the city».

  I was proud of that nice speech, it sounded irreproachable to me. Again, he mumbled something gibberish.

  «What? Speak louder, I can’t hear you!».

  «Is this a joke? Are you mocking me?».

  «Huh? Why does it have to be a joke? What are you saying?».

  «You truly would like to be seen hanging out with me?».

  No, I didn’t want that. The thought that someone could see me hanging out with that shrimp was unbearable to me. I just wanted to fuck and get it over with!

  «Of course! What’s the matter with that? You never hung out with a girl before?».

  «Not with a girl like you».

  I suspected he wasn’t referencing to my beauty and maybe I should have felt insulted, but I was still drunk with my boldness and I felt like a genius.

  «Do they let you go out?».

  That was a misstep. I treated him like a kid. It wasn’t easy to forget about his looks.

  He simply sighed. «Where do you want to go?».

  I was impressed by the fact that it went so smoothly, no prey ever fell in my net with such ingenuity before.

  «There’s a club near here. It’s not bad, we could drink something. They play good music, too».

  I couldn’t keep a straight face. The thought of dancing with him was the most absurd thing I could ever imagine.

  «You already had way too much to drink», said the little man.

  Still I took no offence. It was, after all, the truth.

  «Where are your friends?».

  I shrugged.

  He came to a conclusion. «I’m taking you home. You don’t look like you can manage to go by yourself».

  Nonetheless, I took that as a victory.

  «Yes, go on, take me home!».

  So that was it. I had to wait a bit for him to finish his work and speak with his father, and after a few minutes he came to me. His father glanced at us from the window – and he didn’t look very pleased.

  By then I felt quite tired and did nothing but giggle, sitting on a crate.

  The little one took my hand in his. «Come on, let’s go», he said, and the fact that he treated me like a child only made me laugh even harder.

  Surprisingly I was still able to stand on my feet and then, still holding hands, we exited the amusement park. I was reliving that scene in my mind as if I could pull myself away from my body and look at it from above… and it was so incredibly funny.

  He was very patient, maybe even too much.

  «Do you have a girlfriend?», I asked him. «Do you have… do you have sex?».

  He didn’t answer.

  «There’s nothing wrong with talking about it, you can tell me».

  The amusement park was in a field in the suburbs, so to get to the city you had to walk almost half a mile.

  «Do you remember where you live?», the little man asked.

  I swallowed a snarky comeback and kept piling on. «What’s your girlfriend like? Is she like you? Have you ever had sex with normal girls?».

  Finally, he understood. «You want to fuck? You want me to fuck you?».

  He didn’t look very surprised.

  «What? No, why would you say something like that? I’m just curious!».

  He tugged at me. «Come on, hurry up».

  «Didn’t you want to stop by the club? It’s right there».

  «What club? You need to go to sleep!».

  I kept on giggling like an idiot.

  As soon as the first houses started to appear on the road, the catastrophe struck: a car stopped abruptly right in front of us.

  I was aware of the trouble I was in even before they got out of the car, and there was nothing in the world I wouldn’t give to not be there. The thought of being seen hanging out with the little man horrified me and I promptly let go of his hand.

  «Chiara! What are you doing on the street at such an hour? What happened?».

  Shit, shit, shit! It was that fucker Tony, and he wasn’t alone. His two jerk friends were with him, grinning like idiots.

  They were all checking me out, but above all they were glancing at the little man beside me, who should have been looking like a child to them.

  «What is it, Chiara?».

  I was trying not to look at him, trying to hide. Tony, that asshole, had been my boyfriend – for almost two months – before discovering that faithfulness wasn’t his thing and ending our relationship very badly with insults and threats.

  «Who is this kid? Your brother?».

  My brother was fourteen years old and much bigger than the little one. He was almost as tall as me. Except Tony never met my brother, so I decided to let him believe that.

  «No, he isn’t!», one of Tony’s friends whose name I never could recall interrupted. «He works at the amusement park, I’ve seen him. He’s a dwarf!».

  I wanted to crawl into a hole. By contrast, the little one didn’t look worried. «What do you guys want?», he confronted them.

  Tony was unbelieving. «A dwarf? You hang out with a dwarf? In the middle of the night?».

  The little man grabbed me by the arm, pulling me. «Come, let’s go away».

  How could he not realize the shitty situation I had got myself into?

  «Let her go!». Tony stepped in. «She’s coming with us!».

  «Not at all!», rebutted the little man.

  He didn’t understand. He was feeling responsible for me, drunk as I was, and he wasn’t going to let me go with those thugs. At a different time, I would have found it flattering, but at that moment all I wanted was for him to disappear, for all of them to disappear.

  Tony came forward and his friends came swiftly to back him up. «Who the fuck are you? What do you want? What are you doing here? Go back from wherever you came from!».

  Before anyone could step in, Tony grabbed the little man by the waist and lifted him up like some toy. Suddenly, I was free.

  «Did you hear me?», Tony shouted in his face.

  Then he stared at me – a disgusted look that felt like a whip. «Look what you’ve become! You should be ashamed of what you’re doing!».

  I was ashamed, I was so ashamed. I was also too drunk to see things in the right perspective. I backed off.

  «Go home!», Tony shouted. «Get lost!».

  It sounded like an insult, and I didn’t wait for him to repeat that. I started running. I took off and I didn’t look back. Not even once.

  The morning after, the headache was unbearable. On top of that, I sadly remembered every detail of what occurred the night before. My awful behaviour and Tony’s assault.

  I was so angry at myself for how I let him boss me around and interfere with my life, and I lost all sense of proportions once again. I even insulted my brother, who didn’t do anything wrong but was simply guilty of being a male.

  Then came the inevitable guilt over how I acted towards the little man. I hoped that Tony hadn’t tormented him too much, and then I concluded that I was supposed to apologize to him.

  So that day I skipped school, I hid my backpack and books and I went back to the amusement park.

  That early in the morning the park was still closed, but I hoped the little man would be up already. I plucked up my courage and knocked on the bandwagon.

  The door opened immediately and a little fellow towered over me from above the stairs. It was his father, and he looked pretty mad. He didn’t let me say a word.
>
  «Where the hell is my son? What have you done to him?».

  It wasn’t what I expected to hear and that question left me gaping at him.

  «He left with you!», he was screaming. «I saw you! Where is he now?».

  Like an idiot I asked him: «He didn’t come back?».

  «No, he didn’t!».

  What could Tony have done to him? I knew quite well what an asshole he was, but I didn’t think him capable of hurting someone. But did I truly know him that well?

  I lied. «He just took me home. I came to thank him».

  That calmed him down just a bit.

  «He didn’t come back here. I have no idea where he might be».

  Then he went back inside the bandwagon and I ran away.

  So, the search began. I could have walked away from it, pretend to have nothing to do with that, but, how could I? I was the one who put the poor guy in trouble, so now I couldn’t turn a blind eye to all of this.

  I went back to the place where we met Tony. I could’ve called him to ask what he did to him, but I didn’t want to give Tony that satisfaction. So, I started looking around the place. I couldn’t see any signs of violence, and there was no blood. I was sure that Tony hadn’t beat him up, it just couldn’t be… or could it?

  At some point I started calling him, and since I didn’t know his name, I had to make do. «Little man? Where are you, little man?».

  I scoured every inch of the area hoping that they hadn’t forced him to get in the car and brought him who knows where.

  Eventually I made my way down to the river. There was a big sewer tunnel which came out from the bank and entered the water stream. It was a cylinder – almost six feet tall – and I guessed someone like Tony could have found the idea of dumping him there quite funny.

  So, I steeled myself and entered the tunnel. It was a smelly place, and at its centre flowed a putrid water trickle. «Little man?», I shouted.

  I kept moving on until the visibility was so low I had to use a lighter to be able to see.

  «Little man?».

  Suddenly, I heard his voice: «Stop calling me that!».

  I almost yelled with joy. «Where are you?».

  «Down here».

  Following the sound of his voice I found a vent. By the measly glow of the lighter, he was invisible.

  «They locked me in here, I can’t get out».

  There weren’t any locks on the vent, but a stake blocked it in place. It was impossible to get to it from the inside. I easily removed the stake. «Come on, get out. It’s over».

  The underground cubicle should have been very tiny, but on the other hand he didn’t take up a lot of space. He climbed up the steel ladder in the wall. He was smelly, dirty, and on top of that completely naked.

  «So, what?», he promptly attacked. «They took them from me! Your friends! Did you see my clothes anywhere around here?».

  I shook my head. They probably had tossed them in some bin. I couldn’t keep my eyes off his penis and the dark bush that surrounded it. Even if it was at rest, it certainly didn’t look like a kid’s.

  «Are you having a good time?», he asked, noticing my gaze.

  It was an odd feeling. He wasn’t a child, he was a miniaturised young man. Everything about him was proportioned, and in that moment, I thought that it was just and natural.

  He got up and tried to reach the exit. «I’ve had enough of this place! You could have shown up a little early, don’t you think? I was left rotting in here!».

  I chased him. «I had nothing to do with it!».

  But that wasn’t true, the fault was entirely mine. I ran away, I went back home and forgot about him. That night I slept peacefully in my bed and not in the sewers like him.

  We were a few feet from freedom when he stopped. He looked down his naked, soiled body and snarled. «I can’t leave like this!».

  That was certain. I thought about calling his dad, but there would have been too many explanations to be made.

  «Wait», I said, and tried taking off my sweater. «This should do it».

  It would have been big enough for him to cover him up to his knees. If someone were to see him like that it would still have been a funny sight, but it was still better than being completely naked.

  While removing my sweater, my shirt came up out of the skirt and almost uncovered my breasts. Underneath my shirt I wore nothing, for I didn’t have the need for support. I felt naked before his eyes.

  The situation was unbelievable. To me he looked like a child, but… I noticed a slight movement between his legs. Then, instead of giving him my sweater, I let it fall on the ground and started to unbutton my shirt.

  «What the fuck are you doing?», he asked, and I could almost sense some fear in his voice.

  «You know what», I answered while letting my shirt fall to uncover my breasts.

  «You want to do it in here? Are you crazy? I’m freezing!».

  «We can warm each other up».

  He shook his head. «You don’t give a fuck about me. This is all a game to you».

  I shrugged. «So, what? You don’t want to do it?».

  I wondered again if he were a virgin, if he ever had done it before, and these thoughts had the strangest effect on me.

  «You are laughing! I can see that!», he yelled.

  I lay down on the ground, trying to avoid the streamlet. «Come here».

  «But it’s smelly! We can’t breathe!».

  «You smell too».

  «You are crazy, totally crazy!».

  Still he bent over me and helped me as I started taking my skirt off.

  «Are you a perv? Do you like to do it with kids?».

  I wondered about that, but then he got an erection and I sighed. «Stop talking!».

  «This is nuts! Totally nuts».

  Yet he lay down beside me and reached out, unsure whether to touch me or not.

  «So, have you ever done it? With someone like me? You didn’t answer».

  «With a bitch? No, I never did it with a bitch».

  I grabbed his hands and took them to my breasts. «Then shall we begin?».

  I felt his caresses and closed my eyes. He stopped abruptly.

  «What’s wrong?».

  «I saw you, ok? You closed your eyes! You don’t want to look at me, you want this but you are thinking about someone else».

  «That’s nonsense!».

  «You truly are a bitch!».

  «Look! I’ll keep my eyes wide open. I’m looking at you. Now, do you want to do it?».

  I felt him on top of me and he was light, too light. Still, his hands were soft and the contact between our bodies was pleasant. I waited.

  «You don’t want to touch me, don’t you? It grosses you out. I’m too small».

  «What nonsense are you talking about?».

  «Then why aren’t you touching me?».

  So, I did it. I hugged him, and the feeling was unimaginable. He was right. He was small, small, too small. I was under the impression of doing something obscene, something plain wrong.

  «See, I was right, you can’t do it».

  I was fed up with earing him speak. I shut him up with a kiss and held him tight. He tried to break free, but I had no intention of letting him go. Yes, it felt strange, utterly so, but I was determined to see this through.

  When I felt him get inside me, the feeling of oddness increased even more.

  «You are a bitch», he said as he began entering me.

  «Who is he?», asked my brother Davide.

  I wasn’t answering, so he added: «There’s a naked kid in our bathroom! Where did you found him?».

  I was in my brother’s room, raiding his closet.

  «Does mom know you are here? Shouldn’t you be at school?».

  My brother was also supposed to be at school. I brought the little man home because it was supposed to be empty.

  «What are you doing? Stop it. That’s my stuff!».

  «You haven’t worn
these in years», I said, puffing. «They don’t fit you anymore».

  «You mean to give those to… him? Hasn’t he got his own clothes?». Then he came to his senses. «How did he get here naked like that?».

  In that moment, the little man made his entrance covered only by a towel wrapped around his waist. It reached down to his feet.

  «The water was freezing cold», he complained.

  Davide looked at him with suspicion and slowly started to notice that there was something wrong about him. «Who is he?».

  He wasn’t a kid. He wasn’t acting like one.

  I tossed the clothes at him. «Try these on».

  The little man shamelessly got rid of the towel, so my brother could realize what was truly going on. He pointed at him. «But… but…».

  «You saw nothing», I said to Davide. It was an order.

  «But who is he? What is he doing here?».

  «He’s my friend».

  «I never saw him before. Where does he come from?».

  I did not answer. My brother couldn’t keep his eyes off the little man who was busy dressing up. Even though Davide hadn’t wear those clothes in years, they were still too big for him.

  Davide developed an absurd thought and bursted out laughing before speaking it out loud. «Is he your boyfriend?».

  We – the little man and I – answered in sync, almost disgusted. «No!».

  Davide kept on laughing like an idiot. «You look good together!».

  I bit my tongue to keep me from snapping back at him.

  «It wasn’t that good, wasn’t it? Is it too small?».

  I recoiled and looked at him in disbelief. I was taking him back to the amusement park. He looked funny dressed as a kid. He wore flip-flops on his naked feet, they were the only shoes we could find that would fit him.

  «What’s the matter with you?».

  «You didn’t like it».

  «No… I…».

  «You didn’t like it».

  Did I like doing it? To be fair, I had no idea. The situation had been too odd. The sewer tunnel was smelly, he was in that state, and me…

  «We should try again», I muttered.

  «What?».

  «The first time doesn’t count. We should give it another go, I’m serious».

  «You didn’t like it», he sentenced.

  I didn’t really know what to do.

  «It’s too small, isn’t it?».