#there was so much to get mad about but in hindsight it's so delightfully stupid.

[courtiers]

2016 GAVE they were like "yeah captain america is and has always been a nazi. we're retconning his backstory. this is the plot twist of the century" and it was a lie..... like that categorically was not true.... they just straight up lied about it...... 2015-2017 comics you are so beloved to me you are so evil you are so stupid.......

[witchbydavidcain]

Witch

Witch a nanowrimo novel by Lord Malinov

Art is accusation, expression, passion. Art is black charcoal crushing white paper.

— 

Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum 

 1. Prologue

I’m writing this book because I believe my wife is a witch, that she has magical powers. Looking back with twenty/twenty hindsight, I thought she was a witch from the beginning, since the very first time we met. In a way, she showed me who she was right away, revealed her true form, so to speak. I realize now that she never does that with anyone else. From the start, I was different. I like that.

But my mind wasn’t there. I never dreamed that she was really a witch. I wasn’t open to the idea. I dismissed the connections, the visions and coincidences, just assumed the strange things that had happened were the result of an overactive imagination, fueled by the usual assortment of recreational intoxicants and being under-fed and over-tired. I thought maybe I was a bit mad, long before I thought seriously about her being a witch. It just made more sense to me.

I guess her having powers doesn’t necessarily make her a witch, but you know what I mean. She’s clearly a human being; she spends her days doing ordinary human things, so I don’t think she’s an alien or some other kind of supernatural being. I don’t think she shows any signs of possession. I haven’t seen her shape-shifting or anything dramatic like that. Sorceress, wizard, high priestess in some dark occult religion, perhaps. I’m just going to call her a witch. It suits her. I can wrap my head around that.

The thing is, the reason I’m writing all this down, is that lots of strange stuff has happened since I met her and I want to make a record of it, just in case. Sometimes it scares me senseless. I don’t know what I mean. If something should happen to me, I was going to say, but I don’t think anything is going to happen. In case some one needs to understand what has been going on with her. I’ve been a front-line witness to years of witchy behavior. I just think I should write it all down.

At the very least, it’s an interesting story. Maybe that’s why I want to write it down, because I don’t have anyone I can tell it to. I can’t even imagine who I’d seriously discuss this with. They’d think I was crazy or seriously laugh at me. Married to a witch. I’m dying to tell someone about it but I’m going to keep my mouth shut. This will have to do.

Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not calling her out, not accusing her, not trying to bring her to justice or salvation or whatever I would be doing if I made her witchiness public. So I haven’t called any church elders; I haven’t been in contact with a witch hunter. Nor have I forbidden her from cleaning the house using magic. I’m quite happy, being married to a witch. It’s very nice.

I joked about the house cleaning but from what I’ve gathered witchcraft doesn’t work that way, cast a quick spell and the house is clean or transformed into a castle. That would be a good trick, of course, but that would be more of a Jeannie sort of thing. Witches are more subtle than that. They don’t make things happen as much as they smooth the path that leads wherever they want to go. They can help or hinder.

I’ve seen a few weird things but you never know with undocumented visual evidence. Maybe I was seeing things. It’s not a big part of my case, anyway. But I have seen some weirdnesses.

Although I live with her, I can’t claim to know everything she does magically. All I can attest to is what I’ve witnessed, what I’ve seen, heard and felt.

I’ve never seen anything float, blink into or out of existence, talk or transform.  Just to be clear, there haven’t been any parlor tricks, no stage-type magic, no bright balls of light and big bangs. Nor does she ever wave a wand. I don’t even think she has one.

What I have seen, let’s say, that proves she is a witch, has been her success. It seems like luck is always on her side. She can do things that I’m not sure she should be able to do, things I know I couldn’t do. She can foresee the future, too often for it to be mere coincidence; she always seems to make lucky guesses, always has the right cards, so to speak. She knows things, things she shouldn’t be able to know, like who’s going to win or what exactly I’m thinking. She talks to animals and plants and clay and food. I think they listen to her. And I’ve never heard any voices but I suspect they respond. Stuff goes on that I really don’t get.

Going back to the beginning of our relationship, I think being a witch made my wife an incredible photography model, the best I’ve ever worked with. I still get inquiries about some of the photos we took and we didn’t take that many. Weirdest session I have ever had, both of them, but the pictures worked out in a way that only a witch can arrange. That’s my theory, anyway.

Being a witch certainly made her a superb business manager. Compared to me, no question. When we met, I was pretty much floundering, trying to get enough work to get enough cash to get my business started. I barely made rent, sometimes.

Back then, I would bug guys for weeks trying to get work. They’d usually tell me they’d find something for me but not now, later and later rarely came. Sadly, that’s how I got most of my work, bugging friends and friends of friends and people I met at the bar until someone gave me a job, taking pictures, doing design work, arrangements, junk like that.

Pushing so hard, my popularity, never my strongest suit, started really crumbling. Friends didn’t answer calls, stopped answering my emails, started to avoid me altogether because they knew I’d have to say what I had to say, that I’d ask them for work and they’d have to say no.

Even so, I did all right, most of the time, but I wasn’t getting ahead. I started having doubts about my career choice, considered getting a suit job somewhere. I might have given up. I was getting desperate. Then I met a witch.

When she was in charge, she’d call some guy up and hand me three jobs. Then she’d call another guy and I’d have five more. In the first week, she arranged more work than I had found in six months. There was hardly enough time to do it all. She kept me on track. I started to get ahead.

Then she started dropping names and talking about pie-in-the-sky business hook-ups, million-dollar accounts and late-night deals where all we’d have to do is cash the checks. I thought she was getting happy and just dreaming out loud until she started bringing in the accounts, the deals, the checks. She knows her witchy business.

After a while, the grind of production started wearing me thin, so I told her that I wanted to change our direction, take me out of the trenches and start letting me provide the visions. Two weeks later, I had a new office and a whole new game plan. It was like she snapped her fingers and made it all happen. I didn’t even struggle with the transition. She told me what I needed to know, where to be and what to do. I paid close attention, did as I was told and the inevitable victory was won.

With a witch, success is just business as usual. When obstacles arose, she took care of them. I can’t swear there was magic involved but the way our troubles vanished was clearly incredible. Our deliveries were on time and our competition invariably failed. Her grasp of the details was nearly perfect. I don’t remember her ever missing a trick. Unbelievable, really. Fantastic. Supernatural.

As a wife, as a friend, as a lover, a witch is where it’s at. She knows me and knows my needs and desires. She knows what to say. She knows how close I want her to be. She guides me through life casually, sweetly, delightfully. Every day is a pleasure.

Am I spell-bound? Am I under her control, voodoo hexed and enslaved? Am I happy because she has cast a spell that makes me happy? Am I her minion, her human familiar? Do I have any free will at all?

I’m sure I’ll never know. But I don’t mind.

Having said all of that, I feel a bit stupid, saying my wife has magic powers. I’m not a child, reading wizard novels about fairy tales and fantastical elf-lore. I don’t even like that stuff, really. Some of it, maybe, I mean, I’ve watched the movies but I don’t take it seriously. I keep my feet on the ground.

I don’t know if I’ve seen ghosts but I have felt some creepy paranormal stuff, energy and cold and unexplained noises while hanging out with friends in abandoned buildings when we were younger. A few times, we did the whole nine yards, dressed in robes and summoning spirits, waiting in the dark for EVPs and someone getting scratched. We’ve all had supernatural experiences. It’s not that weird. The world is full of dark energies.

And witches, apparently.

I know what most people know about paranormal stuff, the occult, hauntings, vampires, wizards, all that stuff. I watch the shows, see the movies. Some of it seems cool but most of it’s just for fun. I’d never really given it any thought. I never really thought it would impact my life.

When I think about it, though, apart from your basic Halloween witch decorations, I didn’t know that much about witches when this started. It wasn’t even a question I thought to ask, no more than I’d ask about mummies. Werewolves are cool. I wonder about them.

So, when I was still taking the pictures, I used to work with this young woman sometimes. She was like my assistant on big jobs. I didn’t really know her that well but after a few jobs together, she told me that she was a real live modern day witch. I made some stupid jokes which I could tell annoyed her but then she told me lots of stuff I never knew about witches.

Actually, she said my wife was a witch. She was the first to say so and the only person since. She didn’t help me when I took the witch pictures but I’m pretty sure she’d seen them. The first time she met my wife, after my wife left, she told me that my wife was a really a witch too. I asked her how she knew and she told me.

Witches are people of the old religion. They come in every shape and size and nationality and walk of life. They are connected to nature in ways that the rest of us aren’t. They can do things, they know things, they can see things and foresee things. You may never know when a witch is right next to you, even though you see them every day.

What you will see, if you watch carefully, is an inner peace, a connectedness, a serenity that controls the world rushing in chaos around her. The energies she commands glides her though life, like a melody, like a summer breeze, like a rainbow on the wing. She may whisper and mumble, she may wave her hands and unfocus her eyes while you are talking to her, but she’ll know exactly what you mean and precisely what is really going on. Witch life is a style, a power, a production.

On those wings, we keep soaring higher.

After that talk with my assistant, I watched more movies, shows, stuff like that, too, to learn about witches.  They have an interesting culture.

My wife owns an assortment of things any witch would have; there is no disputing that. But other women I have known have had the same kind of witchy things in their homes and I don’t think they were witches at all. Crystals and Celtic designs and Tarot cards and spirit bowls and incense and candles. What woman doesn’t have candles? I don’t think we can conclude anything from objects alone.

She has most of those things on a shelf. I call it her witch shelf. She never responds when I say things like that, like it isn’t worth responding to. Because it’s true or because it’s ridiculous, I’ll probably never know. I’ve tried to talk to her about being a witch but she either walks away, changes the subject or makes a joke out of it. I don’t know what that means but I am convinced that she will not talk about it.

There are other things she has on her witch shelf that are more damning, like the witch books. They aren’t very good reads, lots of circles and affirmations and goddess talk that goes round and round in, well, circles. She said they are research but I don’t know what she’s doing research for. Having them on the shelf is not conclusive that she is a witch but it is evidence. Church ladies don’t have witch stuff on display.

Lots of popular culture shows witches hanging out in groups, stirring cauldrons and dancing in the moonlight. I don’t think my wife goes in for that kind of witchery. I mean, I don’t think she really spends any time hanging out with other witches.

Not that I’m aware of, anyway. I suppose she might be turning into a rabbit and hopping off for a coven meeting after I go to sleep. They say witches sometimes transform into animals so that they can do mischief without the limitations of human form. Or they fly on brooms. Lots of witch stuff is supposed to happen at night. I wouldn’t think I would miss her going out but I do sleep pretty soundly. And she may be casting sleep spells on me. Who knows?

But, seriously, she doesn’t have any friends like that, wearing witchy symbols or talking witch talk. She’s more of a loner. I’m pretty sure they have loner witches. That’s probably a thing.

So it’s not the company she keeps that makes me think she is a witch. It’s the way she behaves, some of the weird stuff I’ve witnessed and our continuing successes that make me believe in her witchness. I guess I don’t really have any proof. Maybe she isn’t a witch. But it sure seems like she is.

Of course, its not all about the good stuff that has happened since we got together. There have been times when it frightens me. I don’t mean that she has caused me fear but thinking about her being a witch has scared me. I don’t know. I suppose she scares me. In a good way.

She’s always been good to me but I’ve been careful to stay on her good side. Her goodwill has always been important to me, because, if I’m being honest, I’ve always been a bit afraid of her. I sort of did that instinctively, from the beginning. I knew from the very start that I did not want her mad at me. It wasn’t anything she said or did. There wasn’t any violence in her behavior or even in her language. She was always kind of sweet when I was around anyway. But I glimpsed her power, I guess. I felt the force of her psychic energy. I could feel the cold push of her intense will. After an hour, I’d seen enough to keep me subdued and obedient. I fear her lovingly.

But I’ve also done business with her, watched her deal with people who did not please her. She can be very forceful when she needs to get her way and some people are foolish enough to stand in her way. There are usually two phases of her anger, when this happens. First I suspect that she causes them pain in ways that never quite come back on her. Then she foretells a terrible future for them.  And it happens. I’m not kidding. People are ruined, broken, disgraced, ostracized. They get sick and die. I mean, I don’t know if she cast a spell and made them die but she did predict their demise. She tells me when deals are going to fall apart, when companies are going to collapse, when partnerships are doomed and she’s always right. It’s spooky. And scary.

Actually, to be safe, I long ago adopted the attitude that she’s always right. It seems like the best approach to life with a witch. Do what I’m told and enjoy the benefits. And it’s worked, so I’m sticking with it. I’m doing too well to jeopardize this gravy train of happiness. Besides, she is always right.

I haven’t mentioned writing this book to her. I hope she doesn’t mind.