witchesintheweeds_GEN

by Lila Dubois

  “Oh my hell, Zelda.” She giggled and punched Zelda in the arm. “Now I’ll never get that shit out of my head.”

  “Only a lobotomy can erase that one,” she said proudly, knowing full well it would take at the very least a lobotomy to rid her of the visual.

  “Well, well, well,” a nasally voice cooed from beyond the bars of their cell. “If it isn’t the problem children.”

  Enter one of their jailors. The one and only Baba Yaga.

  She had to be at least three hundred if she was a day, but witches aged slowly—so she really only looked thirty-five-ish. The more powerful you were, the slower you aged.

  And Baba was powerful, beautiful even with a wart on her nose, and had appalling taste in clothes.

  She was dressed right out of the movie Flash Dance, complete with the ripped sweatshirt, leggings, and headband. It was all Winnie could do not to clang a cup against the bars and demand to see the Fashion Police.

  Baba was surrounded by the rest of her spooky posse, an angry bunch clearly not happy to be in attendance.

  “Baba Yaga,” Winnie said respectfully.

  “Your Crouchness,” Zelda muttered and received a quick elbow to the gut from Winnie.

  Baba Yaga leaned against the cell bars, her torn-at-the-shoulder sweatshirt dipping over her creamy skin. “Zelda and Winnifred, you have served your time.”

  Yay!

  “Although, upon your release, you will both have a task to complete with limited magic.”

  Boo.

  Winnie gasped and Zelda paled. WTF? They’d done their time. Tasks? Limited magic? What did that mean?

  Winnie held up a finger. Hold that thought right there. “But…um, Miss Yaga. That’s not exactly fair. “We paid our dues. I did give Chi-Chi Gonzalez all of my Kotex pads.”

  “Quiet!” Baba Yaga hissed, waving a freshly painted nail at them in admonishment. “You two are on probation, and during that probation, you will be strictly forbidden from seeing each other until you have completed your tasks.”

  “Tasks?” Winnie muttered, girding herself.

  Baba Yaga nodded. “Tasks. Selfless tasks. And before you two get all uppity with that ‘I can’t believe you’re being so harsh’ drivel, keep in mind, this is a light sentence. Most of the Council wanted you two imbeciles stripped of your magic permanently.”

  Permanently? What the what? Okay sure, they were selfish witches, and there’d been a mishap or two along the way, especially the one involving Baba Who-Hahs nephew Ben.

  But she’d cleaned it up. All of it—every last drop. No one had been hurt.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Winnie said, staring up into Baba Yaga’s flashing eyes.

  “Oh, I can help with that,” Baba Yaga offered kindly. “You, Zelda—how many pairs of Jimmy Choo shoes do you own?”

  Winnie watched Zelda mentally count in her head. “Um…three?”

  Winnie winced. Total lie. Bald-faced.

  Baba-Yaga frowned, her eyes flashing with anger. “Seventy-five and you paid for none of them! Not to mention your wardrobe and cars and the embarrassingly expensive vacations you’ve taken for free.” Her eyes narrowed dangerously.

  Now probably wouldn’t be the time to tell her Zelda actually had eighty pairs…

  “And you, Winnifred. You’ve used your magic to destroy a man’s livelihood, my nephew’s livelihood, never mind my collection of leg warmers, and have incurred millions in damages from your temper tantrums. You’ve obliterated six buildings to date. Can you not see how I had to fight for you both?” she demanded, her beautiful eyes fiery.

  “Well, when you put it that way…” Winnie mumbled.

  “There is no other way to put it,” she snapped as her mystical lynch mob nodded like the bobble-headed dorks they were. “Zelda, you’ve used your magic for self-serving purposes, and Winnifred, you have a temper that, when combined with your magic, could be deadly. We are White Witches, ladies. We use magic to heal and to make Mother Earth a better place. Not to walk the runway and take down cities.”

  “So what do we have to do?” Winnie asked, a tremble in her tone.

  Baba Yaga winked. “There are two envelopes with your tasks in them. You will not share the contents with each other. If you do, you will render yourselves powerless. Forever. You have till midnight on All Hallows Eve to complete your assignments and then you will come under review again with the Council.”

  “And if we’re unable to fulfill our task?” Winnie asked, wanting to get all the facts up front.

  “You will become mortal.”

  Holy. Shit.

  On that alarming and potentially life-ending note, Baba Yaga and her freaky-deaky entourage disappeared in a cloud of old-lady-crouch smoke.

  “Well, that’s fucking craptastic,” Zelda said as she warily sniffed her envelope—one that appeared out of thin air and landed right between her fingertips.

  Winnie nodded. “You took the words out of my mouth.” She stared down at the thin envelope then set it on the cot, almost afraid to touch it.

  “Can you even believe this shit, Winnie?”

  No. She couldn’t believe it. “So that’s it? We just do whatever the contents of the envelopes tell us to do, but we can’t do it together? Jesus, Z. Okay, so we’re a little self-absorbed, but I don’t just use my magic for selfish reasons. I’ve used it to heal. Remember when you got that paper cut at Office Max? I totally healed it because it was bleeding all over your cute sundress.”

  “I get the feeling that’s not the kind of healing magic Baba Yasshole means,” Zelda answered.

  “You know what? Screw Baba Ghanoush!” Winnie yelped, grabbing the envelope and waving it in the air.

  Zelda sighed, putting her hand on Winnie’s arm to prevent her from doing any damage to their ridiculous task. “Yomamma. It’s Baba Yomamma, Winnie, and seriously. What choice do we have at this point but to do what she says? You don’t want to stay in here, do you? We only have so many Kotex pads between us. So let’s yank up our big girl drawers and get this over with. Deal?”

  Winnie made a face, but she nodded. “Baba Wah-Wha said we couldn’t share the contents of our envelopes. But I know us, and we won’t be able to keep our traps shut if we open these envelopes together…”

  Zelda sucked in her cheeks. “Yeah. She must want this to hurt, because we always share everything.”

  “Well, we can’t share this or we’ll be sharing immortality.”

  Zelda shuddered beneath her orange jumpsuit, fingering her envelope. “Fuck that. Okay, so now what?” she asked.

  Winnie squared her shoulders. “We suck it up, Z. If we can survive teaching Big Sue how to apply makeup and scaling those calluses on her feet with a fork we snuck out of the kitchen, we can survive anything.”

  Zelda grinned, as beautiful as always. “So we walk outta here on three?”

  Winnie hesitated, but only a moment. She hated leaving Zelda. Hated that they weren’t going to go the distance to the end of this nightmare together.

  But losing their immortality? She knew Z almost as well as she knew herself, and she knew losing their magic would be like losing a vital organ.

  Maybe two.

  Magic was who they were and jail really was as bad as Orange is the New Black made it seem.

  So Winnie smiled back at her and held up a fist for her to bump. “Yep.”

  Zelda bumped it and they both took a deep breath before she counted out, “Then one, two, three…”

  The doors of their cell popped open the moment they approached them, clanging and creaking.

  Winnie gave Zelda one last smile before she made a left, heading down the winding concrete path leading out of their cellblock, dimly lit with only torches.

  And Zelda hung a right until she was nothing more than a curvy dot.

  Chapter 2

  Winnie reread the note inside the envelope again, squinting in the dim light of the prison’s hallway to make sure she didn’t screw this up.

  A dr
iver awaits you in the parking lot. Light a fire under your ass or you’ll miss your ride.

  Baba Yaga

  Not Baba Ghanoush

  XOXO

  Winnie’s feet began to move without thought. If there was nothing she wanted less, it was to stay in witch prison and make more Kotex slippers for Chi-Chi Gonzalez.

  Rounding the corner of the last corridor, she hobbled along, cursing the fact that her own feminine-product slippers were sticky side down, impeding her progress.

  She tore ass around the corner, sliding like she was A-Rod skidding into home base, hopping on one foot and almost falling head first into the door to the parking lot.

  Pushing it open with a shove, she spilled out into the lot, taking her first gulp of freedom. Winnie inhaled long, her breath rasping as she rested the heels of her hands on her knees and her chest screamed a fiery revolt.

  A horn blared before the words to I’ll Make Love To You by Boyz II Men sang in her ears.

  Winnie’s head snapped up just as Chi-Chi Gonzalez rolled up next to her in a rusty, orange Datsun pickup with the passenger-side window down.

  She waved, a wide grin on her cherry-red lips. “Hurry the hell up, Winnie. I have to be back before dusk or I’m gonna lose dessert for a week. And you know what Baba Yaga’s like—she’ll snatch that pudding from my tray faster than you can say The Breakfast Club just to torture me.”

  She couldn’t hide her surprise as she gaped at her fellow inmate. Why did Chi-Chi get special privileges? Winnie had never even been allowed to leave the damn prison yard, and she hadn’t done anything as bad as Chi-Chi. And she wasn’t just leaving the suffocating prison cells, she was driving.

  Sure. She’d taken a building or two down in her struggle to manage her anger. But she hadn’t turned the polar ice caps into a seaside resort, complete with wave pool and grass huts. Taking out Benjamin Yaga’s warehouse hardly compared to a global-warming event.

  “You’re my driver?”

  Chi-Chi nodded, glancing at herself in the rearview mirror and checking her lipstick. “Surprise.”

  Winnie’s eyes narrowed and her temperature rose. Despite the chilly air, her cheeks began to warm and her fingers tingled. “Did you get paroled too?”

  Chi-Chi smacked her lips and made a face. “Aw, hell no, Winnie. I have another three years. Baba Yaga’ll never let me forget the stinkin’ wave pool. Every stupid therapy session is about the wave pool. You’d think I whipped up a volcano and dropped virgins into it, for Jesus sake.”

  “You do realize what the polar ice caps do, don’t you?”

  Chi-Chi rolled her eyes. “Are you kidding me? I could build a polar ice cap for all the shit I know about them after Baba Yaga got her hands on me. I know all about how what I did made the Earth too hot and believe me, I know all about the complaints. I get it, Wikipedia.”

  “Complaints? Chi-Chi, you nearly killed everyone in California, it got so hot. The ice caps keep the Earth cool—”

  “I get it, Winnie!” she yelped, hitting the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. “Save the sermon, Miss Blow Up A Building. You’ve got no room to talk.”

  Leaning into the window, she rolled her eyes at Chi-Chi. “It was just one stupid building, and not a soul was in it. How was I supposed to know Ben housed Baba Yaga’s stash of eighties paraphernalia in his warehouse?” she lied.

  Winnie rolled her shoulders and forced herself to remember the technique Baba Yaga had taught her to calm her angry impulses. But it was damn hard where Ben was concerned.

  Because it still hurt. And it had endured nine long months in magic jail, festering, reminding her of just what a fool she’d been.

  “Hey, Firestarter, are we comparing the magnitude of our magical misdeeds here? Sort of like my wand is bigger than yours? Or are we hittin’ the damn open road?”

  “I’m just pointing out that I didn’t set people on fire when the temperatures hit one hundred and twenty in Idaho—in January,” she reminded.

  “Right. You’re just pointing out that I’m a bigger magic abuser than you. Got it. Now get in and hurry up. I’m not missing chocolate pudding for a week because you won’t lay off the preaching.”

  Winnie halted, alarm bells ringing distantly in her head. Wait one second. Think before you act, Foster. “Oh, I get it. This is a test, isn’t it? Like I get into this deathtrap when I know full well you shouldn’t be out running loose and bam—I’m punished for not using my common sense. Common sense tells me Baba Nah-Nah would never let you drive a vehicle or let you out of here without supervision.”

  Take that, Baba Daba Doo. You’re not fooling me—not this time. She wasn’t giving that woman a shred of a reason to slap her back in jail.

  She was feeling pretty proud of herself for being one step ahead of her jailor until Chi-Chi put the Datsun in park, popped the cassette tape out, and held up a Kotex-covered foot wrapped in duct tape.

  A glittering, purple ring surrounded her ankle. “See this? This is my house-arrest anklet. She dipped it in magic. If I get too far away from this dive, it goes off and Baba Yaga comes huntin’. Now get in this truck or I’m going back in there and telling those creepy cohorts of hers you won’t make nice.”

  She shuddered. No more creepy cohorts. Winnie yanked on the door handle, pulling it open to a creaky groan, and hopped in. She folded her hands in her lap and smiled at Chi-Chi. “Okay, so where are we going?”

  “The airport.”

  The airport? “Like airport-airport? Wings and vroom-vroom-in-the-sky airport?”

  “One and the same. Now be quiet and let me listen to my Boyz. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to listen to anything but those dumb, mystical monk chants Baba Yaga claims are supposed to help our abusive urges.” She pushed the cassette tape back into the player and took off.

  * * * *

  Two hours later, they came to a screeching, grinding, death-defying halt—in yet another parking lot.

  Winnie let go of the passenger door handle with stiff fingers, fingers she was convinced had kept her from nailing Chi-Chi with a spell to improve her driving, and scanned their surroundings. “This isn’t drop-offs for departures.”

  Chi-Chi rolled her tongue along the inside of her cheek and yawned. “This is where Baba Yaga said to ditch you, Firestarter. So, this is where I ditch you. Get out.”

  Winnie turned to gaze at Chi-Chi. “I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t either. I don’t want to. I’m just doing what I was told to do. Baba Yaga said parking lot A, here we are. Parking lot A.” She lifted a slender finger to point to the sign. “Now get out. If I’m lucky, and I don’t hit any traffic, I can make it back ten minutes early.”

  Suddenly, Winnie felt very alone. She hated alone. Hated not having Zelda with her to cook up a plan for what to do next. She turned in the seat and opened her arms. “Can I at least get a hug goodbye?” They had been cellblock mates for nine months. That had to mean something…

  Chi-chi crossed her arms over her orange prison sweatshirt and shook her gorgeous head of dark curls. “No. No, you definitely can’t. There isn’t enough therapy in the world that’ll turn me into a hugger. I’ve tried to tell Baba Yaga that, but she refuses to listen. Stuck her damn fingers right in her ears and sang Flock of Seagulls when I tried to explain.”

  Defeated, she reached for the door handle then hesitated, turning back to find Chi-Chi’s eyes flashing with irritation. “I’ll make this quick. I know chocolate pudding’s at stake, but I don’t know what to do next, Chi-Chi. Where do I go from here?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Why are you so mean? I did help you make slippers.”

  “No. Zelda helped me.”

  “But I taught her how to make them. It was my idea.” That had to count for something.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Didn’t you learn anything in Witches Helping Witches group?”

  “The warm, squishy one where I learn how to read your emotions and body language?
”

  “Yeah. That’s the one. Are you reading that I’m a little freaked out right now and I could use some support?”

  “Nope because I skipped it and went to Witches Don’t Whine group instead. I learned a lot there. Like how to spot a whiner when they’re sitting across from you in a Datsun pickup truck that’s older than Baba Yaga.”

  “That’s not even a group, and you know it, Chi-Chi.”

  “Um yeah. And I don’t care. Now get out.”

  Winnie popped the door open and slid to the ground, her Kotex slippers latching onto the loose gravel of the pavement.

  She made her eyes round and sad like the cat in Shrek when she turned back and said over her shoulder, “Well, take care, Chi-Chi. I hope the pudding is worth leaving me here all alone to fend for myself—”

  The rumbling gunning of the Datsun’s engine mixed with the vestiges of Boyz II Men’s End Of The Road rang through the air.

  Excellent. Alone. Again.

  Naturally.

  Stumbling to the curb, Winnie used her hand as a visor and assessed the parking lot with a shiver.

  Now what?

  The wind picked up then, bringing with it the scent of old lady crouch and a vague hint of Love’s Baby Soft perfume.

  “Now I give you the rest of your task,” Baba Yaga said, appearing out of thin air. She put her hands on her slender hips, the row of multi-colored bangle bracelets on her arm sliding down to her wrist. Today must be Pretty in Pink day if the dress made from her office curtains was any indication.

  Winnie breathed a sigh of relief. She’d never admit it, but she was currently happier to see Baba Yaga than she was when she saw the exit sign for the mall. So happy, she almost wet herself. “I’m ready.”

  Baba Yaga tightened her neon-pink scrunchie around the straggly length of her mullet and shook her head. “No, you’re not.”

  This was a test. This was only a test. If she kept reminding herself everything was a test, a means to an end, she’d manage to make it through this with her immortality intact.

  She rolled up the sleeves of the thermal shirt she wore beneath her orange jumpsuit, indicating she was ready to pay for her sins by getting her hands dirty. “But I am. I really am, Baba Yahoo. Where am I going and what do I have to do to prove I’m worthy of using my magic again? Lay it on me.”