by Abby Knox
Today was October 29, and she spent her Saturday helping her Sisters prepare for the upcoming city-wide Samhain festival. Because of the expected lunar eclipse on Halloween, city leaders were cashing in on the city’s history. They had tapped the Sisters and their mysterious little group to help bring some historical significance to the festivities. What the city leaders didn’t know—or pretended not to know—was that the Sisters who occupied this colony and provided a living history museum for school tours from time to time were not just artists, historians and practitioners of modern-day Wicca. The Sisters were actual, spell-casting, evil-binding, element-summoning, supernatural witches.
Alas, there would be no spells or other real magic performed at the festival, lest they completely terrify the local community and draw unwanted attention to their peaceful existence. Today, Morgan’s job included gathering fallen timber and kindling for Monday’s bonfire, as well as assembling torches for all the interested citizens to share the ceremonial fire. Morgan had also made dozens of seasonal wreaths with gourds and foliage to hang on the backs of the chairs for the open-air feast in the meadow. It was the perfect setting for a twilight farm-to-table dinner, surrounded by the livestock barn and the actual living quarters on one end, and the vegetable garden, ceremonial fire pit, and replica buildings on the other side. She gathered materials for some harmless divination games, for demonstrations only. Finally, she had pulled together an enormous stack of curly willow that she planned to use to fashion some kind of overhead decoration for the feast. She realized this was only two days away, but she was sure she could make it come together.
That evening, Morgan gazed at her perfectly color-coded wall calendar on the whiteboard of her exquisitely tidy kitchen, and frowned. The blank space of Saturday night gazed back at her. It was blank because her therapist had advised her to leave space for relaxation with friends, spontaneity, and maybe even a date with a man once in a while.
She was starting to think her therapist was cracked. There was nothing wrong with a little structure. She liked a full calendar and she loved her colored dry-erase markers. She had drawers full of unopened packages of them. Each color had a function.
The silver ones she used to schedule her early-morning ritual of greeting the moon.
Gold was for coffee. Obviously.
Monday through Friday, she did her work, whether that be crafting healing potions, gardening, building, baking, or spell practicing. These were marked in red.
Next came the clean-up—burning some sage and ceremonially sweeping all surfaces to repel any spirits that might have wandered in while she casually breached the gap between heaven and earth in her morning rituals. These were marked in black.
And finally, purple marker was used to slot in her long walk in the woods at twilight. This walk also served as a way to shore up their buffers to the outside world. Morgan maintained an invisible barricade that deterred outsiders from finding her little cottage in the woods, until there was a scheduled visit.
With aching muscles, Morgan was not at all up for a twilight walk. Yoga pants, Ugg boots and ice cream time. And maybe a little fun with some of her special toys she kept in the She Shed.
If Morgan had had a smartphone, she might have also considered using this time to laze on the couch to creep on social media to see what her neighboring witches were up to. Morgan had briefly owned one of these devices, but found that it had taken control of her mind in an unsettling way. The photos of her fellow witches at the beach, on camping trips, at witch conventions, all gave her a panicky and sad feeling. She later learned from the search engine on her phone that this feeling was called FOMO, or “Fear Of Missing Out.”
Well, she was having none of it. So she wiped her phone of her personal information, pawned it, and gave the money to the local battered women’s shelter. Then she’d burned some sage. She was always burning sage whenever a negative energy creeped in.
A distant scratching sound distracted her from staring at her sad wall calendar. It was the cats. Thank goddess, something to do.
Morgan padded over to her kitchen door and creaked it open to allow Grumpy and Apricot—a female calico and a male orange tabby—to come inside for a meal.
As she opened some cans of tuna and set them out for the cats, she realized what she’d become: Lonely Cat Lady.
She watched the cats eat, and spoke to her furry captive audience. “It’s not like I’m unattractive. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Maybe my standards are too high. Do you think my standards are too high?”
The diminutive woman guzzled a cup of dandelion tea, washed the hand-painted butterfly china teacup in the snow-white, apron-front farmhouse sink, dried the pretty little cup with her flour sack tea towel embroidered with the words “Basic Bitch,” and placed it upside down on the custom fallen-wood slab shelf above her slate counter top.
She continued talking to the cats. “What do you think, Apricot? From a boy’s perspective, do you think I’m that off-putting? Have I shut people out?”
With no forthcoming answer from Apricot, she looked around her place.
Everything was spotless. She could never imagine a man bringing his love of sports, beer and an ugly reclining chair into her house. Morgan suspected that reclining chairs, with their vaguely potato-like shape, were the reincarnation of root vegetables that had been evil in a former life, and were cursed to be sat upon by large butts in the next life. Or if not a sports lover, what then? Just the idea of anyone else’s food, furniture, clothes mussing up everything gave her hives. Not to mention the future potential of a bunch of children tracking mud across her extremely expensive hand-braided rug.
“You’re right, Apricot. I’ve shut out the world with all this perfection, haven’t I? From a woman’s perspective, what do you think, Grumpy?”
Grumpy and Apricot continued nibbling on the canned tuna, ignoring the witch.
“Well, I hardly think I’m a bore. That’s uncalled for, missy. You have Apricot in your life and he’s quite a handsome thing, so it’s not like you have ever walked a mile in my Uggs. Or anybody’s shoes. Because, you know, you’re a cat.”
It wasn’t as if she lacked the opportunities to have fun. She just liked different kinds of fun than her Sisters. For example, she didn’t go to the naked witch dance parties in the woods. It’s not that she was embarrassed. She just wasn’t as interested in the female shape, and found the rituals to be boring once things escalated into…what organically took place out there in the woods among a group of naked, beautiful women with extraordinary powers and curious minds and not a whit of puritanism.
There was nothing wrong with any of that. It just didn’t feel fun for Morgan. She liked men. She didn’t want any of their shit in her house, but she liked having sex with them. Problem was, there were very few of those available around here. Most were married with children. The handful of single men she’d met online and tried dating ended up being more intrigued with the idea of the colony than with her. And she couldn’t blame them. The Sisters were pretty weird.
“Are you two staying or going? Because mama needs to go to the She Shed.”
Finished with their meals, Grumpy and Apricot looked up at Morgan and mewed, pleading for attention. Of course, the witch could not resist petting her cats.
They were not actually her own cats, per se. Does anybody actually own another living thing? she wondered as she scratched behind their ears. They purred and wrapped themselves around her legs. Part of Morgan really wanted to just plop down on her sectional sofa and watch Steel Magnolias with the cats on her lap—for the second Saturday night in a row—but something else entirely was calling to her.
She opened the arched front door, and the cats slinked out into the twilight. Morgan locked the house and admired her recently-renovated front porch, with its shake shingle siding and gingerbread detailing. She had just recently finished a photo shoot of her newly renovated porch, and rewarded her hard work with a very expensive new set of patio furniture. T
he still, small voice inside her head reminded her that nobody ever visited, so who was she imagining would sit on this porch with her and while away the hours in the crisp autumn air?
As she made her way down the steps and out to the She Shed, she relished the sight of all the blooming things that lined the brick path. Everything that grew here was fed by her own kitchen compost and the natural fertilizer from her own chickens and other creatures that scampered across her property. All growing things she touched were full of her magic. Her power spilled out of her breath and sometimes leaked from her fingertips when she worked in the garden. She had the most glorious purple asters and yellow black-eyed Susans in all of New England in the fall. She was the fucking Martha Stewart of witches. But nobody would ever see this except her, her fellow witches, and a few cats.
Morgan creaked open the She Shed door and peered inside.
With a flick of her hand, she lit all of the candles that encircled a space on the floor arrayed with bohemian-style floor pillows. Around the circle stood various different colored candles on tall silver pillars. Against the wall was a small work table and built-in shelves and drawers.
Morgan removed her sandals, walked to the work table and picked up a permanent marker and a slip of paper. On the paper, she wrote, “I wish to fulfill my deepest fantasies.” She folded the paper, picked up a pocketknife from the table, then placed the note on the floor inside the square. Then, she picked up the red candle out of its holder and used the pocketknife to carve a single word—“eros”—into the side of the candle.
She sat on her favorite cozy floor pillow and crisscrossed her legs, lit the candle, closed her eyes, and said the words she was supposed to say to enter a trance state. It was supposed to have been a simple conjuring. As the spell books tell it, a simple male spirit, or some kind of being with at least one foot in the spirit realm, would be called to come to her in a vision and serve her needs. Like a blow-up doll that she didn’t have to store anywhere. That was what Morgan had intended with this spell.
And boom. It worked. She could not have created a more perfect man out of thin air or potions. Devilish brown eyes, a thick mop of wavy, dark hair with the slightest showing of silver at the temples. Deep crow’s feet. Nice, full eyebrows. Kissable lips. Overall, insanely fuckable. She had no idea her deepest fantasies could conjure up such a sexy demon. They came together in lotus position. She and her dream partner just sort of…felt right together.
It also felt a little too real. Personal. They fit together not just physically but spiritually. It made no sense. That’s not what she was after. She just wanted some fun, not necessarily connection.
Not bothering to lock up the shed after that remarkable bit of fun, Morgan floated back to the house. She lay in bed, unable to stop smiling. Her brain alternated between freaking out over what she may have done wrong in her spell, and feeling like a giddy school girl who’d been kissed for the first time.
Morgan was so caught up in wondering about this man who came to her that she sleepily realized she had completely forgotten to burn sage, nor had she swept the premises afterward.
“I’ll clean up in the morning,” she mumbled into the pillow to no one as she drifted off to sleep. “I’m sure it’s fine.”
This day had started out as a typical Saturday for Morgan. The way it ended was…messy.
Messy was not a thing this witch had room for in her life.
3
Adam
The detective was anything but fine the next morning. His hangover was only a small part of his unease as he squinted in the morning light, still a little drunk.
He sat up and closed his eyes. All he saw behind his eyelids was her. The woman.
What the hell happened?
One explanation was that some strange woman had come into his house and taken advantage of him in his drunken state.
That’s not the only explanation, and you know it, said his still, small voice.
He looked at his phone. Sunday. He was off duty until tonight. He could spend some time investigating what had happened to him.
And where do you start? Mug shots? Dust your room for fingerprints? Call your mother and ask if dream invasions are a thing?
He didn’t know. But first, water, pain relievers and food.
The detective dragged his sorry ass over to Kava, the coffee place on Main Street, for some caffeine and carbohydrates. He sat with his back to the door, a very un-cop-like move. But he really couldn’t handle the glare of the sun through those east-facing windows at the moment.
He stared into his steaming cup of black coffee and wondered. Was she a neighbor? A homeless person who wandered into his apartment last night? An old booty call who decided to show up? An old girlfriend?
The answer to all of these questions was, of course, no.
Was his dream girl someone he had met before? He didn’t think so. She looked nothing like his most recent breakup, Megan, or any of his old girlfriends. Not that there had been many.
How could he find her? Did he want to find her?
Well, he could always go into the office today and look at the camera feeds from all over downtown. If she was real, she would show up in Birchdale somewhere at some point.
But what if she wasn’t real? Did he kind of want her to come back? Yes. And this fact scared the shit out of him. Maybe his solitary life was starting to mess with his head.
Hey, if you don’t find her, at least you’ll never need a condom, he thought. This idea did nothing to put him at ease, though.
In the midst of all this thinking, he heard a customer starting to slightly raise his voice at the barista. He glanced over his shoulder, and fuck if it wasn’t Hank Snow. What was he carrying, campaign posters? Who knows. But he seemed to be getting more and more belligerent the more that the barista was calmly trying to explain something to him.
Welp, the detective thought, I guess I’m on duty after all.
4
Morgan
She awoke on Sunday morning bright eyed and bushy tailed, refreshed and excited at the possibilities of an entirely blank day on her calendar. Today she was going to help with whatever final arrangements were needed for the festival and pull together the curly willow chandelier. How does one hang a chandelier over an outdoor table, anyway? Meh, she thought. She’d figure it out. Figuring out how to make things pretty was her thing. Normally, a blank day would set her on edge. But as she was still unable to stop smiling from the night before, she was surprisingly chill.
As she showered and let the hot water drench her skin, she closed her eyes and speculated. Had it been a ghost? A demon? An angel? A poltergeist? A male witch from the Woodlawn colony who just happened to be meditating at the time? A hallucination? A straight-up manifestation of her fantasies?
Whatever it was, the sensations and his presence were ten times better and more overwhelming than the best hallucinogenic drugs.
She opened her eyes and reached for her handmade pumpkin spice-scented soap and loofah. As she exfoliated, she was aware that this creature’s scent was still on her. Still inside her, in fact.
Morgan briefly felt a little unsettled at this thought. Something had definitely crossed over. But whatever it was, she liked it. She was having an adventure. She was being spontaneous, just like her therapist had told her to do.
And so what if she did feel something? She was fond of this dream man. This relationship could work. Morgan could go about her usual business, living her own life without the usual “normal” woman’s troubles with men, knowing that she would always have gorgeous male, ready and waiting, every night. Even if it was partially a spirit. It had felt real, and in fact had felt better than any real-life sexual encounter Morgan had had up until last night. If she got attached, well, there were more spells and charms to address that.
Then she looked down, and shit got even more real. A shot of panic rose up her spine as her eyes fell to her breasts. There, on the left one, was a very large and very dark hickey.
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br /> She dropped her soap and her loofah and covered her mouth. Forced herself to breathe slowly, in and out, through her mouth.
Morgan turned off the water, grabbed the towel, and tried to gather her thoughts. This was not good. What had she done?
Breathe, Morgan, breathe. You did everything exactly as you were supposed to do. You didn’t do any of the spell wrong. This was a trickster of the spirit world, fucking with you.
As she dried off and got dressed, she calmed down by controlling her breath. How could it be she had let in something evil when it felt so damn good? She could still feel his lips on her breasts, his mouth, his tongue, on her skin. She could still see his eyes, feel his hair through her fingers. Not to mention, she had felt his shaft all the way deep inside her, filling her up and reaching every erogenous zone, exploding her into an other-worldly orgasm, the likes of which she had never felt before. In fact, just thinking of how good it was for her last night had her starting to feel a little bit randy all over again.
She told herself this was all OK. A little mystery never hurt. She was simply more powerful than she realized, and her connection with the spirit realm was deeper than she knew before. Last night was so intense, it was entirely possibly she had injured her breast with her own hands.
There were two things she needed right away that could set her head back in the proper place before she got to work on festival prep: coffee and shopping.
Morgan meandered down the lane that veered across the flowered meadow outside of her property, and down the hill and back into more woods, through the main witch colony.
The cluster of pastel-painted cabins along the lane in the wood was a welcoming sight this fine autumn morning. Although it was late, there was still dew on Fern Applebottom’s rhododendrons. Fern stood knitting in the yard, her body covered in nothing but a scarf that snaked around her neck several times, one end of it trailing on the grass and the other end being the working end she was still knitting.