by Julia Mills
Slapping his hand over his heart, a thick cloud of dust bursting from the faded red polyester and black velvet lapels of his old sports coat as he hung his head, the undead thing sighed, “My friggin’ heart is broken…broken, I’m tellin’ ya. I can’t believe you don’t recognize your dear old dad.”
Chapter Six
“My dad?” I threw my hands in the air. “You have got to be freakin’ kidding me.” I stomped my foot, immediately regretting my action when I heard this awful, yucky squish and something ooey and gooey touched my ankle, but nonetheless, I went on with my tirade and slammed my fists to my hips declaring, “The last damn thing I need in my life is another dead relative.”
“I prefer undead, if you don’t mind, Harmony Jane.”
Furrowing my brow, I stepped forward and pointed my finger at the ‘man’ professing to be my father and asked, “How do I know you’re who you say you are? From all the stories, the dude who knocked up mom was little more than a handsome, smooth-talking sperm donor who disappeared before the little blue plus on mom’s EPT was completely visible.” I stepped a little closer and shoved the tip of my finger towards his nose. “Hell, she didn’t even know his last name. How about you give me some proof, there, tough guy.”
Shaking his head, popping a cigarette into his mouth and lighting the end with a flame he conjured on the tip of his index finger, the dude claiming responsibility for my second X chromosome, blew smoke rings around my head as he sighed, “Do you have a birthmark shaped like bat wings on your left butt cheek?”
“Yes, but…”
“Do you have to have your Dr. Pepper in a bottle and when you drink it, do you drop peanuts in it?”
“Of course, any other way would be gross, but…”
“When you’re making potions that have frog’s feet in them, do you take a little taste just for good measure?”
“Sure, who doesn’t. However…”
“Is your favorite dessert pistachio ice cream covered with baked beans straight from the can, tons of whipped cream, cashews and a cherry?”
“Yes, who doesn’t love that shit? It’s friggin’ awesome. Now, shut up,” I screamed.
Loving that my outburst had stunned him silent, I proceeded to ask, “What exactly does all that crap have to do with proving you’re the lucky sperm donor?” I began to pace, careful to step over the creepy-crawlies squirming all over what passed for a floor in wherever I was. “I mean, mom was a little ‘free’ with her love.” I made air quotes with my fingers. “Even she admitted to Auntie Dot that she wasn’t sure who my father was and didn’t really care to find out.”
I thought about what I’d just said for a minute, wondered if I should be more upset about that than I was, then shrugged and went on. After all, it was a long time ago, and I turned out fine if ya’ ask me.
Surprised ole undead daddy hadn’t uttered a word since I told him to shut up, I turned and asked, “Other than the weirdo things we have in common, what concrete evidence can you give me that you are really my dad?” I crossed my arms and stared before adding, “Oh, and what the hell’s your name?”
With his cigarette hanging from his gray lips and bouncing up and down as he spoke, undead daddio opened his arms wide and bowed, “I am Nathaniel Jackson Darkshade, but you can call me Nate until you’re comfortable enough to call me dad.” Once upright, he took a step forward, looked me dead in the eyes then smiled, “And I know you’re my daughter because you touched my spell and were transported to me.”
Letting what Nate had just said sink in while trying to look into his mind, I finally gave up on the telepathy thing and sighed, “Okay, if that’s true, and I’m not sayin’ I’m buy the shit you’re shovelin’, but if it does in some weird, effed up way end up being the truth, how could you have possibly known Zelda would give me that exact book, and I would see that exact page?”
I started pacing again. “There are millions of grimoires in the world and just as many damn witches.” I spun to face him, cocked my right eyebrow, and sucked my teeth. “And you are no Houdini, so give it up. How did you really get me here?”
“I put that spell in every spell book I could reach before I was beheaded and thrown into this joint.” He shrugged, and that was when I saw the deep, ugly scar on his neck. (He really had been beheaded and that had to suck.) “Figured you’d have to find one of them someday.” He smiled and inched closer to me. “And here you are.”
Looking to my right then left, I snorted, “And exactly where is here?”
“Club CopacaNetherworld.”
“Say what?”
“This place,” he spread his arms wide. “Is called Club CopacaNetherworld.” Popping a lit cigarette into his mouth, Nate snapped his fingers and counted, “A- one, a- two, a-one, two, three, four.”
In the blink of an eye, the dark, dank dungeon and all its creepy, crawly inhabitants disappeared, and were immediately replaced by an opulent, swinging, nineteen-sixty’s Vegas club, complete with the Rat Pack crooning away in the spotlight if the center stage. Stepping up next to me, Nate bumped elbows with me and continued to explain, “This is the second-to-the-last stop for witches and warlocks with, shall we say, less than sparkling track records. It gives us a chance to redeem ourselves before our final judgement.”
Looking around, forcing myself not to tap my toes or move my hips to the catchy rhythm of ‘Volare’ Dean Martin was singing, I finally shook my head and sighed, “So, let me guess.” I turned my body, so I was face-to-face with Nate and while trying not to roll my eyes, went on, “I’m your biggest regret, and you need to make it up to me or ease your conscience or buy me a pony and read me a bedtime story so you can go to the Next Adventure (aka Witch’s Heaven or as my family calls it, Pearly Gates Paradise) instead of Hell?” I went ahead and rolled my eyes, ‘cause I was giving myself a headache trying not to and added, “Did I get it in one? Do I get a cookie?”
Pins and needles, (You know, the kind you get when your foot’s asleep and you try to move it?) raced up my arm, making all my little hairs stand on end as a single drop of cold sweat ran down my spine when dear old dad laid his hand on my arm. Looking as repentant as a gray-skinned, undead dude with enough hair oil in his eight-inch high Pompadour to lube the Pink Lady, can, Nate batted his long eyelashes at me and sighed, “I’ve done a lot of crappy things, but runnin’ out on you and your mom was the worst.”
Now, at this point, several things were bothering me. One…why did Nate’s touch have such an icky effect one me when Sam’s, who was also dead, felt like any other touch. (Get your head out of the gutter. I’m not talking about kissing. YUCK! This retro-Dean Martin lookalike is most likely my dad. You’re just wrong…so wrong. I meant just the way his hand felt on my arm, Perv. Just teasing. Ya’ know I love ya’.)
Two…I wasn’t buying that he was smart enough or powerful enough to put that ancient spell in a bunch of grimoires. I mean, come on, witches are like rabid honey badgers when it comes to guarding their spells and secrets, I mean we compare to the scary armed guards at Area Fifty-One. Witches don’t play around. Grimoires, spells, charms - those the keys to our magic, and we don’t just let any Joe Schmo go monkeying around in the good stuff, ya’ get me?
Lastly…And this was a biggie. Why hadn’t Auntie Dot ever told me about Nate? The Goddess knows the old bird had told me everything else – most times way more than I needed to know if ya’ get my drift. I just couldn’t see why she’d left this vital piece of information out, unless…
And that’s when it happened. Before I even got to finish my thought. A warm breeze mussed the end of my ponytail. A plume of pale-pink started at my feet, climbed my legs, and headed for my head just as kelly-green bubbles filled the air, leaving the scent of fresh-cut grass as they pop-pop-popped all around me.
“It’s time to come here. Kick it in high gear. You belong at home. Not with that gnome. He’s a lying ass. Who’s got no class. We’re your family and miss your… sass.”
Laughing out lou
d at my aunt’s stupid spell as I swirled in the funnel cloud of her magic, I could feel the jagged nails of Nate’s icy fingers grab my ankle, but it was too late to do anything about it. He had hitched a ride, like a damn hobo riding the rails.
Landing with a bone-jarring thump, back on my ass in the middle of my living room, with my denim jacket over my head and the dude who was probably my dad crushing my legs, I barely had time to duck as Auntie Dot bellowed, “NO! NO! NO! Out! Out! Out! Go! Go! Go!” Flinging her hands in front of her as if she was trying to stop a train, chartreuse lightning flew from her fingertips, zapping Nate square in his polyester-covered butt and poofed him to parts unknown.
Uncurling from the fetal position I’d taken when my aunt aimed her vicious magic at me, I leaned into Sam’s warm embrace as I screamed, “What the hell, Dot? Were you trying to kill me?”
“No,” she growled, swooping down from her spot on the mantel and heading straight for me with her face squished up in her Dot’s-raging-bitch look. Stopping with her ghostly nose touching mine, she seethed, “I was trying to kill that lying, cheating, son of a battleax once and for all.”
“So, he really is my dad?” I asked, grimacing at what I was afraid she’d say, but wanting to know the truth. After all the only time my aunt ever got all ‘Wicked Witch of the West’ on me had been when I mentioned my sperm donor, so that had to be it, right?
Turning a truly frightening color of beet red with smoke literally coming out of her ears, Dot growled, “Yes, he’s your father, and he’s here to kill you.”
Chapter Seven
“He’s what?” I screamed, leaning heavier into Sam and glaring at my aunt, flipping like a fish outta water from the overload of freaked-up revelations crashing down on me.
Shaking my head, needing to hear her say it again to be absolutely sure I wasn’t hallucinating, I tried to ask calmly, but sounded more like Manic Mandy McCreedy (A girl from my Advanced Potions class in high school, a story for another day.) as I clenched my fists to keep from sending Dot to the time-out urn. “Don’t you think that knowing my father wanted me dead was something someone should have told me before now.”
Suddenly repentant, the mist surrounding her floating form turning a deep, ocean blue, Aunt Dot hung her head and mumbled, “I didn’t think I would have to.”
“You what?” I was yelling again, ‘cause I kinda needed to know, ya’ know? “You didn’t think you would have to tell me? What the hell does that mean, Dot? Huh? What? Speak!”
I pushed away from Sam stalking towards my aunt as she floated backward away from me while frantically shaking her head, thinking she could out run (or float) me. Quickly catching up to her and poking her in the shoulder with my index finger, I raged, “You thought you wouldn’t have to or didn’t need to tell me that some powerful warlock who was locked in the CopacaNetherworld was my dad and that he was trying to kill me?”
“It wasn’t like that.” Her voice cracked as crocodile tears filled her eyes. “I…I…well, it’s just that…I…”
Tired of her hemming and hawing, I growled through gritted teeth as two fiery balls of seething, rage-filled magic grew bigger by the second on either side of my head where they hung, spinning in mid-air, “Do not get all weepy and girlie on me, dammit. You know that shit doesn’t work on me.” Stepping closer still, the chill of her ghostly spirit making sparks pop and crack as it meshed with the boiling wrath of my blood-red-deep-purple aura.
“Tell me, Dot.” I could feel the evil grin stretching across my face and see the ominous glow of my dark brown eyes shining in the space between us as I shrugged and forced my best ‘it’s all good’ tone into my voice, “What did you do?” I even winked as I snickered, “Just like you always said, we can handle anything as long as we tell the truth and work together.”
Whooshing back to her lofty spot, just out of my reach, in the middle of the mantel, Dot looked everywhere but at me as she bit her bottom lip and wrung her hands. Counting down from a hundred in my head, not even the feel of Sam’s hands on my shoulders could calm me down. I was pissed, and this time, I was gonna get the answers I damned-well deserved.
Opening my mouth to press my aunt further, it suddenly dawned on me that I had no clue where Dot had sent Nate. If the bastard was trying to kill me at least I needed to know which way he was coming from. Changing tactics, I ignored my aunt’s stammering and Sam as he called after me running as fast as I could, (Which isn’t really that fast since I hate exercise of all kinds, but I was giving it a helluva a good shot.) through my office, out the open door and straight to my swing.
Grabbing Zelda’s grimoire, I slammed it shut, threw it on the ground and jumped on its weathered, leather cover with both my size-eight, thick-soled Doc Martens as I ordered, “Close your pages. Shut your cover. Remove Nate’s spell and no other.”
Spinning like a top, throwing me ass over tea kettle into a huge rose bush, the grimoire smoked and sputtered, making noises that quite frankly freaked me the hell out. Flipping onto my tummy and scooching under the swing to avoid getting hit by the fireballs the blasted demonic book was lobbing in every direction, I screamed for Sam and Dot as loudly and as frantically as I could.
Contemplating my aunt’s murder and the subsequent alibi I would need to avoid Witch’s Jail when she sing-songed, “You don’t have to yell, Harmony Jane,” directly into my mind, I wailed, “Yes, I frikkin’ do. This effing book is trying to eat me.”
And it really was.
I watched in horror as the grimoire grew to the size of a full-grown Great Dane, opened its large parchment pages like the jaws of a shark and inhaled the yellow mist of my magic while chomping on the pink bubbles like they were Pop Rocks before roaring so loudly I thought my ears would bleed. Moving back as far as I could go, my ass slamming against the wooden railroad ties that made up one side of the biggest flowerbed in my garden, I tried to think of a spell to stop time as the book raced across the lawn, opening and closing its jaws in such quick succession they were all but a blur…but, of course, I came up with nothing.
Nearly peeing my pants, I watched my life, every single boring second of it, fly through my mind like an old movie when I heard Aunt Dot yell, “Stupid book of a million guidelines, be thee vanquished by my big, green vines.”
It was the stupidest spell I’d ever heard, and also the most beautiful, because in the blink of an eye, long, thick, dark-green vines sprung the earth, wrapped their beautifully durable lengths every which way around that damned book then tied it securely to a huge rock I’d painted daisies on instead of moving. Climbing out from under my swing into Sam’s outstretched arms, I stuck my tongue out at the snapping and snarling grimoire as I let myself be lifted into my ghostly Prince Charming’s arms and carried into the house.
My feet had barely touched the floor when Dot swept into the room and with her finger wagging in my face, shrieked, “What the hell did you go and do that for? That’s where I stuck your father.”
Leaning against Sam for about the hundredth time, I could only shake my head. This shit was getting outta hand. I needed help. Ignoring Dot who was still bitching and moaning, I picked up my cell phone, and dialed Lola’s number. She’d barely gotten ‘Hello’ out of her mouth before I chuckled maniacally, “Tomorrow. Eight AM. Bring Zelda. The shit has officially hit the fan.”
Chapter Eight
I am not afraid to tell you that I slept with all the lights on and Sam by my side. Yes, I was scared… with a side order of shitless and not just because of that bloody book. Oh no! There’s more. Dot finally spilled the beans, the whole damn can and then some. I had to listen to the dear old bird babble on and on, but, thankfully, I was finally able to piece together the whole story, and boy-oh-boy was it a good one.
Seems like my father, now known as Nate the Dick, had sold his soul to the Devil long before he ever met my mom. I don’t know why or what he hoped to gain, just that he was and is dumber than a bag of dicks – but, I digress.
So, here goes.
He, Nate, decided to have a child with some unsuspecting witch, wait until that child had come into her powers, then trade her soul for his with the big guy downstairs. Great father figure, right? Yeah, my gene pool just keeps getting better and better. I have decided never to reproduce, only the Goddess knows the hell that poor child would have to go through…any who…
As luck would have it, Dot just happened to be hanging out with some of her friends in one of the many backwater dive bars near Asscrack and overheard Nate the Dick telling his merry band of dipshits about his plan. After running home and telling my mom, the two of them came up with the plan to banish dear old dad to CopacaNetherworld.
Bingo-Bango, Nate the Dick walks in the front door, Dot and mom cut off his head, throw the whammy on him and Bob’s your uncle. (I’ve never really understood that saying, but it seemed to fit here, so I used it.) My sperm donor was magically thrown into the biggest club in Purgatory and has been there ever since.
The ladies had no idea that during the years after he’d made his pact with Hades and before he met my mom, Nate the Dick had been shoving his wicked little spell into every grimoire he could find, as well as, ‘planting his seed’ anywhere and everywhere.
(I can only imagine how many half-brothers and sisters I have running around the world and I’m gonna tell y’all right now, I’m not going lookin’ for a damn one of them. Nope. No way, no how. Dot says we need to find them and warn them. I’m thinkin’ we need to destroy the spell and call it even. We’ll see who wins that debate later, right now, I want Nate the Dick thrown back into CopacaNetherworld or better yet popped completely out of existence.)