Midwich cuckoos

There was a city called Salem.
In the time long past where witches were hunted down, Salem became a poster child. There were no witches in Salem, however many women were hung for their completely fictional crimes. Salem became an example for the McCarthy era, it became a play and a movie called The Crucible. It became a Stephen King novel about vampires called Salem's Lot.
Not a lot of people know that Salem was a crux. It was a focal point.
Not too far from this world, there is a world of witches.
It is a world of magic. It is a world of witches.
There are men but they don't matter.
The men are mortal, the women live for centuries.
In the families, the daughters (always daughters, the men are seduced from other places. Sailors and explorers.) come in threes.
Three girls. Like the fates, like the norns, like the witches.
There is the eldritch, the oldest.
There is the undwitch, the youngest.
And there is the midwich, the middle witch. She is the mediator. She is jealous of the authority of the eldest and jealous of the attention shown to the youngest. She inhabits a life that is neither shared nor hers alone.
She is the midwich.
Jenny is the midwich.
She lives on 1133 Crow lane underneath constant grey clouds.
There are suburbs here where the witches wear white.
This is not here.
There are suburbs where the witches have no familiars and practice the art of healing.
This is not there.
The witches here observe the old rules. They observe power.
All witches agree on the power of the female.


toe

Her: Spring? Him: Spring. They spring.

I feel like I’m speaking music when I’m speaking to you. I feel like the combination of looking directly into your eyes, speaking plainly, seeing you get the subtext, and begging you with my pheromones to lean closer and kiss me is like playing chords on a grand piano.
Most conversations I have are one-note simple tunes with no depth or genius.
Some are melodies that are pleasing to listen to, easily played with one hand. Light and airy, fun to play. The catchy ones are repeated. They get in your head. Weather’s a popular theme. They’re like commercial jingles.
Talking to you, though.
These conversations I have with you are so rich that I walk away feeling like I’ve just had a meal. It’s an outwardly normal conversation that appears to be a fairly pleasant and normal exchange to witness but is a glorious timeless gut wrenching thrill ride to be a part of. And it’s mutual. We drown in each other.
We walk away exhausted, knowing that if just talking is this amazing, the sex is going to be ridiculous.

I pull at your sweater. My belt buckle puts a dent in the wall when you throw my pants away from us. You hotly breathe syllables into my ear that are not quite words. We scramble out of our clothes and clasp each other on the bare cold floor. We heat it up. I feel what it is to attack someone in a loving way. There is an urgency in this clutching scratching defiance of the inevitable. The jut of the hard parts, the swell of the soft parts. The two of us making one biological machine. The mindlessness of our actions having but one purpose. The emptiness of our minds swimming in a tantric nirvana.

The neighbours bang on their walls. The upstairs neighbours bang on their floor. The downstairs neighbours bang on their ceiling.

We’re screaming now. Our eyes are glowing orange. The place catches fire.

I feel lucky to know you.
I feel lucky to know you.
I feel lucky to know you.






electronic

The time of my life

The ice in the drink she throws at me clatters on my glasses a millisecond before her entire gin and tonic slooshes across my face and down my shirt. The lime gives me a parting rub of a kiss on the cheek and skitters off behind me into the darkness. Her straw spears wetly past my ear, missing me by inches. The drink that I bought her soaks into my clothes and drips off of my earlobes and the tip of my nose. I'm standing there, stunned enough to be amused, when she lands the first punch.
I'm expecting a slap but the lights in the club are flashing and the music is loud. The gin is starting to sting my eyes so I don't see it coming. It's got a wide arc and manages to connect very, very well with the side of my jaw. I have a chance to be happy that she didn't hit my glasses just as I see the glasses in question fly away from my face and bounce away across the ancient tortured carpet and out under the heels and boots of the dance floor. I'm off balance and trying not to spill the drink I have in my hand when the second hit catches me right in the nuts.
I'm not a dirty fighter and I am surprised at her actions.
My nuts do the other thing they're good at. The five second pause it takes to know that the train is coming is just enough for me to look blurrily up at her with half a smile on my face. It's a smile that refuses to really guess that the main attraction is over we're watching the credits. The pain from the first punch is starting to cut through the numbness. The idea that I've already lost this fight and that I'm getting beat up in public by a girl is still fifteen seconds away. My nuts are not generating the real wave yet. They're just giving me this feeling like I've just had a shot of strong rum and my stomach's all warm.
I guess I must have stayed still like that for a few seconds because that's when she broke my nose.
I could feel her ring connect with the surprisingly delicate bridge of my long aquiline snout.
My head snaps back and I can feel my knees buckle a bit.
I can taste blood which is novel because there's a lot of it. I can't smell a damn thing. The front of my face has suddenly been to the dentist.
I dimly hear someone gasp as the people around us finally start to see what's going on.
Great. I'm gonna be famous.
The shot to the nuts starts to rev the engines and the excruciating sick-making swells start in the pit of my tightening stomach and do nice tap dance up my back to my brain. The Ache starts. The pain from the first punch cavorts in as well at this point. My gushing nose is really starting to clamour for attention. The full horror of what is happening starts to get in there with the 'more pain than I've ever felt in my life' party that has become my face.
Now, normally I'm not much of a cryer.
My memory gets a little spotty after that point.
I remember a lot of laughter, none of it mine.
I remember amusing the patrons with my impresson of the locomotion of a sidewinding desert snake.
I remember doing incredibly accurate whalesong through my gritted teeth.
I remember doing a few circles on the carpet that would have made Curly from the three stooges proud.
I remember having absolutely no idea what emergency to tend to first and opting for waiting for one of them to be first in line. They couldn't decide.
I remember the taste of the carpet made me throw up.
A bouncer helped me to me feet. He was still chuckling. I think he ended up sleeping with her that night.
Later, in the ambulance, the paramedics also thought it was pretty funny. I think they ended up sleeping with her as well.




toe