In The Air & Candy Gore

Each slash of the knife, each thrust of the blade, sends great gouts of sweet red goo splattering across the floor, pouring down to fill the punch bowl below; celebrants clamber up on unsteady chairs, dirty shoes tearing at the paper tablecloth, to reach inside–

Eager hands press inside deeper than seems possible, tear at tender tissue, come out sticky-red and full of treats–individually wrapped candies and plastic toys, squishy organs making such silly noises as they deflate on the ground, the spurting mass of a sugary heart–

Read on … ( ~1 Min.)

Smoke's Witch

Incense, Red Veil, Plants

The willows’ leaves hang heavy and low, a cascade of crimson tears soaking up the lake’s polluted water, planted by some long-ago witch to decorate a pathway through her estate; but she is long gone now, and her gardens have dwindled to be nothing more than a park.

It is a good park, mind, sometimes called one of the city’s shining jewels (though only by poets and brochures); on most days it’s full of picnickers and joggers, stray students playing games on the lawns and witchlings praying for luck at the tomb hidden on the north bank.

Read on … ( ~3 Min.)

Ghost, Empty Shoes, Living Curiosities

This week the witch is living in a half-destroyed warehouse right on the edge of one of the impact craters, close enough that your phone won’t stop interrupting your conversation with alerts about impending exposure. She says it’s fine, though, so you just swipe them away.

The city is always a bit too aggressive about geofencing their alerts, so it’s not like you’re unused to being told to ignore them by people who really should know.

Read on … ( ~4 Min.)

Smoke's Witch

Potion & The Other Self

The thing behind the mirror beats against it as you prepare your salvation, strangely colored liquids bubbling through twisted glass and gases shimmering with heat’s haze condensing down through concentric silver rings. It took so long to prepare, so many failures!

But now it’s ready.

You know it can’t make any noise, not here, not from behind the mirror, yet as its face contorts in fear and rage you can hear it screaming. It echoes through your mind, wordless and thought-devouring, making thought all but impossible—

Read on … ( ~2 Min.)

Smoke's Witch

Conjuring & Candlesmoke

The doll kneels, moonlight glimmering across her waxy body, glinting off the many winding wires inlaid just below her skin. For a moment all is quiet and serene, the only noise the gentle padding of her witch’s feet on the cool tile floor.

Then, the click of a lighter.

The doll does not see her witch approach, her closed eyes buried far too deep beneath waxy godblood to even begin to open, but she hears—the hissing static of the flame, her feet on the ground, the strange little gap as the flame touches her wick, as she begins to burn—

Read on … ( ~3 Min.)

Smoke's Witch

Lost, Outer Space, Hat

She drifts, unseeing and unfeeling, a speck of strangely dense matter wandering through her prescribed path—an arc countless centuries long, guided by the slow pulls of celestial bodies and solar fire’s angry wind.

An interruption is neither appropriate or expected, and yet—

She comes to ground in a storm of displaced momentum, energy ripped away from her and scattered to the eight corners, lensed into more manageable forms—explosions of light and color, bubbles of compressed time sending trees hurting far into their own future deaths.

Read on … ( ~3 Min.)

Elusive Creature

Stones slipped just beneath the skin, smooth surfaces pressing against dermis, soaking up subcutaneous warmth; opals and moonstones and quartz, agate and topaz and jade all shining in the body’s light, chunky beads filling skin with texture beneath your touch.

Once you asked why she went to so much effort, all those tiny cuts and carefully treated scars, all those beautiful things hidden away for no one to see. She always healed so quickly, but she still felt pain, and it always seemed like one or another of her gems was infected.

Read on … ( ~1 Min.)