by Darrin Mason
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THE WITCH’S BREW
DARRIN MASON
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Copyright © 2014 Darrin Mason
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by copyright law.
Published worldwide by Philanthrium Press.
www.amazon.com/author/darrinjmason
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST: MUNCHKIN KILLER
THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST RIDES AGAIN
THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST: THE TORNADO RETURNS
THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST: BACK OVER THE RAINBOW
THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST: STAR TREKKING, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST AND THE ST VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE
INTRODUCTION
From a cloud of orange smoke, the Wicked Witch of the West made her grand entrance into the most classic of classic movies. To this day, I find her one-of-a-kind mix of dark and mysterious more attractive than anything the screen sirens of the day (indeed, most days) could ever hope to conjure. There is something about a woman in black with an attitude to match that I find irresistible, even if that woman does have green skin. In fact, it would be fair to say the green skin adds to the attraction rather than subtracting anything from it (it would take much, much more than that to put any kind of dent in my adoration of this lovely woman). So, when I sat down to write a story (my inspiration to even do that in that moment came from hearing of a movie titled Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters), it came as no real surprise that the first character that came to mind was the Wicked Witch of the West. Being of a comedic mind, I knew my little story would hardly be horrific or suspenseful or any other big, bad genre. But with this short, dark, and beautiful witch as its central character, it had no right at all being light or fluffy either. Thank God, then, for my pitch black sense of humor, the same one that saw one of my earliest newspaper cartoons savaged by some poor, ignorant soul somewhere in the middle of Australia whose sense of humor had obviously gone walkabout (and probably never came back). I turned on some heavy metal music, threw everything I could think of into the mix (including a very liberal dose of corn and cheese), and a week later my little short story starring the Wicked Witch of the West was staring back at me. I tweaked and turned it several times, dropped it on its head to see if it held up, and it did, and reasonably well. It sold quite a few copies online, which made me believe I was on the right track, so I delved a little deeper and wrote another story starring the Wicked Witch. This one sold even more copies. Well, twelve months later, there are six stories, each of which have made it onto the Amazon.com best-sellers list for their genre, each of which have garnered plenty of reviews, both glowing and scathing, and each of which have a special place in my absolute love of writing (comedy, in particular). That said, the time has come to marry them all together in one volume. That means, in my mind, that their single days are over. As a result, these stories are no longer available as single stories, only as a collection. Will there be more Wicked Witch stories in the future? Probably, but not for a while. She will, however, be playing her own special part in a new direction in my creative life. Suffice to say that the Great and Powerful Ozzie Was Born has spoken to me, and it is time for the greater population to find out what he said.
My wonderful friends, both real and imagined, I am eternally yours.
Darrin Mason.
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THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST
MUNCHKIN KILLER
CHAPTER ONE
Son of a BANG! Son of a BOOM!
One by one they fell, their tiny bodies riddled with bullets. Dorothy leaped over them and ran behind the house. Screw the yellow brick road, she thought.
The Wicked Witch of the West looked down from her broom. “I’ll get you yet, Dorothy,” she said, waving her automatic rifle through the air.
Dorothy could not believe the mess she had found herself in. All she had done was drop her house on top of the Wicked Witch of the East. She didn’t mean to. It’s not like she drove the thing there. The wind picked it up and … ka-POW! That was the end of that. Done. And now the Wicked Witch of the West was taking pot shots at her?
She looked out from behind the house. Seven little munchkins lay dead on the ground. Four more were critically injured. The mayor of Munchkinland was one of those injured. He raised his head and looked at her. “Get … Glinda.” Coughing, he gasped for breath. Blood began to run from the corner of his mouth. Tears welled in Dorothy’s eyes. The mayor’s head dropped to the ground. His eyes closed and he stopped breathing. Dorothy’s heart missed a beat. She began to cry. She didn’t want to. She wanted to be at home with her friends playing Playstation and sharing photos on Facebook. But she wasn’t with her friends. She was in a strange land surrounded by strange people. Again, she didn’t want to cry. But she did. Like a baby. She was just a little girl from Kansas, after all. Aunty Em, Aunty Em. Yeah, Aunty Em who closed the trapdoor before Dorothy got there. Aunty Em, indeed.
The Wicked Witch fired a shot at Dorothy who jumped up and ran, skipping this way and that as one bullet after another whizzed by. Soon, she was in a field of corn. She stopped and looked around. There were cobs of corn as far as the eye could see. A bullet whizzed by so close she could feel the heat of it against her skin. She ran again as fast as she could. Soon she could see a man standing in the distance. She ran toward him, calling out to him for help. He didn’t hear her. Another bullet whizzed by. She kept running and kept yelling. Still the man didn’t hear her.
“What’s wrong with you?” she screamed. “Are you deaf or something?” A bullet scraped her arm. Blood trickled from the wound. Her arm felt like it was on fire. She kept running and she reached the man at last. She grabbed his arm to turn him around. But it wasn’t a man. It was a scarecrow. It looked at her with sad eyes.
“If I only had a brain,” it said, “I would know how to get the fuck off this stake so I can run with you.” A bullet slammed into its neck, tearing a hole in it. Straw dropped to the ground. The scarecrow looked at Dorothy. “Run like the wind little girl.” Its eyes closed, and it was dead.
Dorothy looked up. There she was, the Wicked Witch of the West, on her broomstick, with her finger on the trigger and a smile on her face. The Wicked Witch was wearing a pair of rugby slippers. She had taken them from her sister’s cold, dead feet. The Wicked Witch of the East had been a great player in her time, playing more than fifty Tests for the Land of Oz until a house fell on her and ended not only her life but a great career. The Wicked Witch of the West pulled the trigger. Click, click, fucking click. Run like the wind little girl, indeed.
Dorothy ran, deep into a forest. Things went bump, things went boo. A lion leaped out in front of her. GROWWWWWWWL. Dorothy wet her pants. The lion fell back on the ground, laughing. Dorothy stepped back. The lion saw her move and jumped to its feet. It bared its teeth which were sharp and shone like knife blades. Dorothy took another step back. The lion stepped forward. “Please don’t hurt me,” Dorothy said.
“Please don’t hurt me!” a woman cackled. “Hahahahahahaha!”
Dorothy looked up. There she was. Again. The Wicked Witch of the West. And this time she had a friend. A munchkin. The munchkin had a noose aro
und its neck. The other end of the rope was tied to the Witch’s broomstick. The Witch pushed the munchkin and it fell forward toward the ground. The rope reached its full length and the noose tightened around the munchkin’s neck, breaking it and almost taking off its head. The lion took Dorothy in its arms and bounded away, leaving a dead munchkin hanging from the end of a rope tied to a broomstick on which sat a woman whose sole intention was to get revenge on the girl who killed her sister.
CHAPTER TWO
Dorothy held the lion tight, not because she felt safe with it but because she was scared to death of being dropped to the ground. The lion entered a cave. It was dark and moist. Dorothy heard voices toward the back of it. The lion went there and it took Dorothy with it. Several spider webs clung to her face like glue as the lion wandered this way and that, trying to find its way in the dark.
“Halt. Who goes there?” It was a man’s voice. Very plain. No feeling in it whatsoever.
The lion leaned forward and lay Dorothy on the ground. The ground was moist and so too was Dorothy’s dress. Maybe it was from the moisture on the ground or maybe it was from when she wet her pants. Whichever.
“It’s me, the lion.”
A light came on in the cave. It was from a candle that had been lit. The man to whom the voice belonged was holding the candle. He stepped forward. His joints creaked. “Oh for fuck’s sake.” He reached for the oil can and squirted some oil into each of his joints. He stretched his arm. The joint didn’t creak. He stretched his other arm. It also didn’t creak. But some oil fell onto the flame leaping from the candle and the oil exploded in a ball of fire, devouring the oil can – ka-BOOM!!! – and then the Tin Man. His body temperature rose to more than five hundred degrees and the tin started to glow a fiery red. He screamed for help. Dorothy and the lion looked at each other and screamed. They turned and ran back to the entrance of the cave, followed closely by the Tin Man trailing a flame like a bride trailed the train of her wedding dress.
Son of a BANG! Son of a BOOM! The Wicked Witch of the West had reloaded her gun and was pulling the trigger. Son of a HOLY SHIT THERE GOES A PIECE OF THE LION’S LEFT EAR!
Dorothy tore the ribbon from her hair and pressed it to the lion’s ear, or what was left of it, which wasn’t much because a bullet had tore a hole in it and now it looked like mince meat. Then they ran behind a large rock. The lion looked at Dorothy and began to cry. A bullet whizzed past them. The lion ducked its head between its legs, sobbing like a baby.
“Why,” Dorothy said, “you’re nothing but a coward.”
The lion raised its head. Tears streamed down its face. “I’d like to see you do better. Arrogant little shit.” He sniffed a trail of snot back up his nostril.
Dorothy sighed. The lion had given her a challenge and she had no hope of rising to it. Then she remembered what the mayor of Munchkinland had said. Get … Glinda. Glinda. Who the fuck was Glinda?
A white orb floated down from the sky and it landed in front of Dorothy. The orb vanished and in its place stood a woman dressed all in white who wore a crown on her head. In one hand she held a wand. In the other, a bottle of bourbon. She puffed on the cigarette dangling from her mouth. Her eyes were bloodshot and thin red lines laced the surface of her nose, a sure sign of alcoholism. She looked at Dorothy. “The mayor said you’d be looking for me.” Her voice was raspy, like she had been gargling razor blades and the razor blades had sliced and diced her vocal chords like one of those chopping and dicing this and that machines you see on the Home Shopping Network. She leaned forward, her face close enough to Dorothy’s that Dorothy could smell the bourbon on her breath. Dorothy turned her head away from Glinda in disgust. “Yuck,” she said. “You smell like my Uncle Henry.” Her Uncle Henry liked to drink. Yes, sir. Like a fish, he did. And it caused more fights between him and Em than Dorothy cared to remember.
Glinda turned Dorothy to her with the tip of her wand. She looked into her eyes. “You’re a feisty one, alright.” She took a long swig of bourbon from the bottle in her hand. She wiped her mouth and smiled. “I’ll help you. But only because the mayor was a friend of mine.”
“How can you help me?” Dorothy asked.
“You think I can’t?” Glinda barked.
“I didn’t –”
Another bullet whizzed by. This one smashed into Glinda’s bottle of bourbon. Shards of glass flew everywhere. Bourbon too. Seething with anger that had brewed inside her like diarrhoea caused by a hot Indian curry, Glinda looked up at the Wicked Witch of the West. She pointed her wand at her and a bolt of lightning flew from the end of it. The lightning missed the Wicked Witch and disappeared into the darkening sky.
The Wicked Witch smiled. “It seems the alcohol has affected your aim, Glinda.”
Glinda frowned. “And I’m guessing your green skin is really the snot your monkeys sneezed all over you.”
The Wicked Witch’s eyes glazed over like a Thanksgiving turkey. She raised her hand and called out, “Magic monkeys, flap your wings. Fly my pretties, while the Devil yodels.”
Glinda smiled and shook her head.
The Wicked Witch wondered what had struck Glinda so funny. Then it hit her. “Awww, shit.” She smacked her palm against her forehead. “Wendy, you idiot.”
Glinda raised her wand again. “The Wicked Witch of the East is dead, my friend, and soon you will also be. Dorothy Gale of Kansas State is the one who holds the key. She will hurt you, Wendy, and make you cry. She will burn your house, and you will die. Nee-ner nee-ner nee-ner.”
The Wicked Witch was aghast. Her house was going to burn down? She was going to die? When it comes to dogs, who the holy crap is a good boy?
Her whole reason for wanting to kill Dorothy was because the young girl had dropped a house on her sister. It was a matter of revenge. Now it was more than that. It had become a matter of survival. And there was only one thing to do about it.
CHAPTER THREE
The Wicked Witch followed the woman into the gymnasium. Beautiful bodies pumped plenty of iron. The smell of sweat and ligament cream filled the air. She looked at herself in the mirror. A short, skinny, middle-aged, green-skinned woman looked back at her. She didn’t fit in here. Not yet. But soon enough she would. And soon enough she would be big enough and strong enough and bad enough to take on an entire army.
The woman introduced the Wicked Witch to a young man whose muscles rippled and whose body shone like a diamond in the light from the sun shining through the windows. Her legs turned to jelly and she began to feel faint. She reached for something to hold onto lest she fell. The woman grabbed her arm and helped her to a seat. The Wicked Witch sat down. She fanned her hand in front of her face and took several deep, quick breaths.
“Are you okay, Ma’am?” the young man asked.
The Wicked Witch took another deep breath and looked at him. Holy crap he’s hot, she thought. The tunnel of love between her legs ignited and spat red-hot flames across the gymnasium. She was ready for him, and she wanted him bad. She wanted his naked body so she could rub oil all over it, all over his throbbing man muscle that she would slide inside her hot, wet–
“Ma’am?”
“Yes, sonny?”
“I asked if you were okay.”
She looked around the gymnasium. Boys became men in this place. They went from zeroes to heroes. The Wicked Witch was not only okay. She was ready, willing and able to do whatever it took to not only beat Dorothy Gale but anyone else who wanted a piece of her. She looked at the young man and smiled. “Let’s do it.”
The young man pressed the play button on his stereo and smiled at her. The speakers came to life as Eye of the Tiger began to play, Do—do-do-do—do-do-doooooo – Raise you up, on to my bed, Do you twice, come both ti-imes, Go the distance, then I'm back on my feet, Just a witch who had wonderful seh-ex.
The Wicked Witch breathed hard as the muscles in her arm strained against the weight she was lifting. Eye of the Tiger raced around the gymnasium and the Wicked Witch kept lift
ing, pumping the weight time and again. The young man added more weight to the barbell and the Wicked Witch kept on lifting. She was on a roll and she was gonna rock Dorothy’s world. Sweat poured from her brow as she lifted the weight high above her head. She screamed in triumph as she straightened her arms above her head. One hundred and fifty pounds. Shit yeah, baby. She dropped the weight and it bounced on the floor. She leaped in the air, punching it with both fists.
Sirens rang out and a police car pulled up out front of the gymnasium. Two officers and a dwarf dressed in funny clothes leaped out and ran inside.
“That’s her,” the dwarf said, pointing at the Wicked Witch. It was the brother of one of the munchkins she had killed when Dorothy dropped the house on her sister. The police came running toward her. The Wicked Witch bounded across the gymnasium and leaped upon an exercise bike. She began pedalling, her muscled legs pumping up and down with all their might. “You’ll never catch me,” she screamed. Her legs were pumping so hard and fast they could barely be seen by the naked eye. Smoke was pouring from the back of the bike. All of a sudden, the bike gained traction and rocketed away from its stand. It passed the police officers and the dwarf and took off out the door. The Wicked Witch held on for dear life. The police officers came running out after her. They climbed into the police car and gave chase. Their car was fast but the Wicked Witch had trained long and hard. She was fit and she was strong. She was every bit as fast as those who gave chase and she was on a roll. She took a hard left and headed along the dirt road that led up the hill, at the top of which was a rainbow. She had one shot and she was going to give it everything she had. She had to. After all, how else was she going to get Dorothy?