You ever heard that phrase, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live? I guess I have to kill a witch then. I got one living next door to me. This is a full-on, black dress, pointy hat, green skin, hook-nose-with-a-wart witch. We’re talking cauldrons, cats, the whole bit. And I have to kill her.<\/p>\n
Not that I believe in that Jesus stuff. Not that I even own a bible. But a rule’s a rule, I guess. Not sure how I’m supposed to do it though. Do you just shoot them? Hang ’em? Drown ’em? Does it work like The Wizard of Oz, I just got to throw a bucket of water on her or something?<\/p>\n
Thing is, it’s my own fault. I bought the place, and the real estate agent told me and everything. “Just so you know, the lady next door, Agnes, in that scary hut looking thing, she’s a witch, an actual poison-the-neighbor’s-cow type witch. She eats children. Just so you know. Sign here, here, and here.” So I only got my self to blame. Sweet deal on fourteen hundred square feet though, let me tell you.<\/p>\n
Maybe I thought the agent was joking, but, I don’t think I can even use that as an excuse. I mean, when I moved in, I didn’t think about how there was a pasture nearby, even though I finally noticed it last week and it wasn’t even a surprise. And there was plenty of cows in it, but there’s fewer these days. And children too, running up and down the street, until one day they just stopped, like something happened.<\/p>\n
Now it’s up to me I guess. I mean, you would think the guy who owns those cows would do it, or the parents of them kids. Get together a regular mob with the torches and the pitchforks. But they don’t. They just go about their business, shifty glances up the hill where the witch’s hut is, next to my house. And like with the pasture, I guess I knew I was buying a place sort of removed from the main thrust of things. As long as I had access to the highway. But the other day I was talking to Gena in Accounting and telling her about the place and had to admit its more or less like we live in a little village, me and the other folks ’round here.<\/p>\n
I was looking at the shotgun I keep propped up next to the front door, just mulling over nothing, and I thought I’d maybe go for a walk, clear my head. It was one of those cold autumn nights, big fat sliver of a moon in the sky. I walked down to the village, along the dirt road and passed the usual shoppes, like the butchers and the farriers and the apothecaries. Everything lit up by candlelight, iron-bound doors shut tight. And there goes Agnes, hobbling along like she does, cackling under her breath.<\/p>\n
And I’m thinking, what year is this? What century? Have shot guns even been invented yet? I looked at my watch, which glows in the dark and has one of them batteries that recharges itself whenever you move. It was nearly midnight. And I’m thinking, what if the crops don’t come in? Or did the crops already come in? Are we going to have rats in the grain silos? Are we going to make it through the winter?<\/p>\n
I went back home and turned on the TV. Typical, three hundred channels, nothing to watch, so I switched it off. Sat there in the dark. A wolf howled somewhere off on the moors. A chill set in. The fire was out, just a few coals left\u2014 don’t recall having started one earlier, but I must have. Never really occured to me that I was buying a house with a fireplace in it, me, a city boy my whole life. I looked down at my plain clothes, hand-stitched, my woven shirt and rough pants. The smell of earth coming off my thick beard from spending all day in the mines. I mean at the job where I’m the assistant tech support manager. I mean the mines.<\/p>\n
Why do witches even do it? Why do that cast spells and spoil crops and eat children? What’s their end game? Is it like, I dunno, Nintendo for them or something? Are they just mean people?<\/p>\n
I’m looking over at my shotgun, which is basically a scythe at this point, a huge thing, looming in the corner. The clouds outside shift, the moonlight catches the edge of the scythe blade, and I guess I got some work to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You ever heard that phrase, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live? I guess I have to kill a witch then. I got one living next door to me. This is a full-on, black dress, pointy hat, green skin, hook-nose-with-a-wart witch. We’re talking cauldrons, cats, the whole bit. And I have to kill her. … <\/p>\n