“If you put your clothes on inside out and walk backwards, look up at the sky and you’ll see a witch,” my Mom recited it like a proverb.
“Does she have panties on?”
I’m just joking y’all. I didn’t say that.
I would never have the confidence to make a joke like that. I’m always afraid. I don’t know why. I wish I knew.
I just never get to joke anymore. I never get to do anything anymore.
“You’re disgusting,” she bit from across the kitchen.
I stumbled back into the fallout of my sense of humor. Oh yeah, I never had to say perverted garbage at that point. Mom connected the dots.
I must have a problem.
Only spices from our favorite season hang between us. Her lips were pursed in disgust before I even met her eye line. She saw the bag in my hand and rolled her eyes. Mom went back to her holiday baking.
I hoisted the bag of carnage from tonight’s dinner and some pumpkin guts over my shoulder.
“I’ll take out the trash and stare at the ground,” I teased.
“Shoes.” She barked it this time. I kissed her on the top of her head. She’s short. It wasn’t that hard at the time.
I shuffled past the gang of observers crouching behind each other’s view of the killer on TV. I remember smelling the pumpkin cheesecake sweating into my mind before I realized the socks in my hand were rolled into a ball.
The socks were inside out.
I snorted. The story was so silly.
This is my first chance to think about it, but I can almost picture it now.
My mom’s face was deathly serious. Unlike her warning, the silliness became contagious. I remember grinning while I rolled the seasonal socks onto my feet. I deciphered the stitches on my ankle from a slasher film I never saw. I can’t even remember the title
I decided to take the long way around a path where the apartment units had a street view. I always love a good walk.
My stomach flipped when a monster layered in folds of flesh soaked in greasy black velvet barked at me. I’ll never forget what she looked like. Her fangs were a glorious terror crowned by two brown eyes that never left mine the whole time she charged me.
“Boo.”
The voice was so beautiful. A clear and quiet whisper stole my breath before I could catch it.
I recovered my fumbling legs, and postured toward a small figure behind the beast. Her body was immaculate. The moonlight soaked into the smooth arms restraining the howling dog. I remember I couldn’t bear to look up. My face was twisted with embarrassment from my near fall. Now here I was, in front of the most beautiful person I’d ever seen.
“Don’t be scared,” she said. Her voice was like music, so sweet I could taste it. I remember smelling cinnamon.
“Hi.”
I know, I couldn’t believe it either. So original.
The silence almost rattled in my ears, but the drones of her hound bounced across the street.
I was petrified.
And then, the voices in my ear began to chant my name. It was something I have never felt before. Warmth poured into my chest, and it swelled with what I thought was my own conviction.
I was going to ask this woman out. Today is Halloween, and stranger things have happened. She is going to accept, the voices chanted. I had so much hope before. In a way, that was the bravest thing I ever did.
I looked up into her eyes, and she was gone.
It didn’t feel like she had vanished. More like I had stood in the street a long time. Alone. Staring at a massive dog from hell.
I found her pleading eyes swimming in the mounds of darkness. My eyes could barely make out the form before me. And then I noticed she was no longer howling at me.
She was staring at the sky above me.
Before I looked up, I remembered the test. I remembered the spook. I remember the stumble. I remember the swell, and I remember already looking up.
The witch snapped my neck cleanly in two directions: one she dug with her claws and the other she pried out of the concrete. She cackled for an uncomfortable amount of time before stocking her squatty legs around my frozen limbs. She pried open my jaw with one hand, and buried her arm down my throat. I remember the joy on her face. She was almost in tears from smiling so hard. She yanked the exact same spot that lurched in my gut when I was spooked. The witch stuffed my whole body through my own jaw from the inside out.
I can’t believe this is happening.
Now I can finally hear the witch’s voice, and it makes my ears bleed.
All they see is a beast, they don’t know it’s me.
My insides are now outside and my coat is dark red like mud.
I always know fear, she puts chills in my blood.
She made me her pet and won’t change me back.
I lost my soul in a witch attack.