THE WAY OF THE WITCH

Anna had been looking away from Greta. She was putout by Greta's intrusion, crowding-in when there was no room, not one-inch of space. She turned her head parallel to Greta's and her eyes then seemed to squirm about to keep a lookout for ease-droppers. Anna was always cautious. She had so many wild thoughts. Getting rid of her brothers -- Oh how often, she'd thought on this! She knew revealing her thoughts to even a close sister could be reckless -- letting her guard down to someone whom she hardly knew was dangerous. This girl, -- she thought she really didn't know at all, but maybe she misunderstood, and the girl was thinking of something else, and her thoughts alone were dark and murderous. Before Greta's intrusion, Anna was relaxing, imagining her three brothers on their backs, floating easily in a river of reddish water. Their bodies were a blaze of red bleeding orange, the dye of their robes, too, changing the color of the river --and the bubbles of white water forming a soapy film around the white-out blues of their eyes were making the river appear to be their personal bloody baths.

But, damn! She didn't hate her brothers and could never hurt them, really. Imagining them bleeding in the river was a way of venting anger. Darn! Her darned brothers were financially bleeding her! And their mom!

Anna hissed at Greta. Greta was tall, a strong-looking girl. Anna was small and serious, and now quite furious. She grabbed Greta's right wrist and held it tightly, left no room for a mistaken notion of intent. She spoke to Greta like she was addressing a fiend. "Are you a psy-cow?"

"What!" Greta looked dumb.

Anna gripped Greta by both arms. "Stop looking dumb!" she shouted, not caring if the bus driver and the other passengers heard.

"Girl! I was just trying to make a proposition! Please, you're hurting me! I'm sorry, if I've bothered you!" Greta tried to twist free of Anna's grasp, but Anna's grip was too strong. Greta had never seen such anger and didn't know what to expect. The bus was nearly empty. It was an ash-storm day, these were optional workdays, and many workers took the day-off. Anna could not afford a day off. She had to help her mom feed three grown boys, all big eaters. The factory paid double-time on ash days, money Anna's household surely needed. The few passengers on the bus had their choice of seats. Anna sat the furthest she'd ever been in the back of the bus, where the air was the warmest on cold days, and the seats had the most padding and were the pleasingest to a person's back. The ride to the factory was a long one. Usually, Anna spent the time calming. Anna scanned Greta's head, saw a fat boy, Greta's brother, in a brand-new, fine, set of bright orange robes, and then saw Greta's empty bank account file, then she felt better and released Greta's wrists.

"Are you crazy!" Greta rubbed her wrists, fearing she would have bruises.

"No! I am not crazy!" Anna answered, loudly, but without anger.

She and Greta argued back and forth until the bus reached the factory. Conflict was frowned upon at the factory, harmony was the thing, and both girls went silent.

That morning -- Anna's eyes opened. The new day was not showing any light or sun. It was morning -- her head told her. She did not need to look to her small window. She heard her mom's feet downstairs stomping around like it was late, in the middle of an afternoon of ash storms, as dark as thick rain in a sky as black as soot. She jumped up and ran to the bathroom. The door was locked. She knocked. She got no answer except the noise of her younger brother sneezing, and when she yelled that she had to get into the bathroom, he sneezed louder and harder, as if this was his way of telling her that she had to wait, and perhaps reminding her, that if she worked harder and made more money, then their mother could afford a house with two bathrooms! She kicked the door and stomped her feet and yelled out her younger brother's name, "Ty!"

Anna's mother came to the bottom of the hall stairs and chastised her for making so much racket.

She defended her actions. "Mom, I have to get to work! Ty knows this. He shouldn't be in the bathroom at this time. He doesn't have a job."

"You should have gotten up earlier," Anna's mother replied.

Anna thought her mother was totally unfair. Her mother always took the boys' side. The boys were always right in any conflict with the girls. The girls had it tough. The girls did all the housework: the cooking, the cleaning, the washing of clothes, and the taking out of the trash. The boys didn't have to do anything, and didn't do anything, except eat, fight and spend money. The girls who were old enough to work brought money home for mom to feed the boys and to give them money. Anna's older sister, Gail, stopped complaining about this unfairness long ago, years before. She married and moved out. Moving-out wasn't an option for Anna. Marrying was out of the question. She didn't want a husband. Living with a husband was as bad as living in a house full of boys. A wife had to take care of the husband "real" well, have babies, take care of them -- if the husband died, or was killed in the droid wars, or was adducted by a trade guild, to serve who knew where, the woman had to stay a widow and raise the kids by herself.

Anna yelled down the steps to her mother, "Mom, what is Ty doing in the bathroom?"

Ty replied, yelling through the closed bathroom door. "What do people do in the bathroom!"

"I need to bathe!" Anna shouted back at him."

"You sleep as long as you can, then you want everybody to get out of your way, " Ty answered back.

"Mom, it is necessary that I get into the bathroom, the bus is going to be by soon."

Ty's and Anna's mom yelled up, "Ty, hurry up, now, will you, honey?"

Ty came out of the bathroom. Anna glared. "Faking!" Ty sneezed.

Anna hissed, "Dying? Got the green bugged-eyed flu, huh? Die someplace else!" She knew she shouldn't have said that, as she heard her mom coming up the steps like a mothering animal bringing hugs for the boy and slaps for the girl. If she felt stronger --she said to herself, if she had more time and could have stayed at the house longer that morning, she might have stood still and snapped back at her mom, as she had thought of doing many times. She swallowed her rage the way her older sister advised a long time ago: She took a deep breath, hurried into the bathroom and closed the door. She started the water running before her mom's feet reached the top of the stairs.

That morning, the bus had come a hour late. The sky was still ugly. There was a brisk wind. During the hour-wait, Anna stood up stiffly to the wind, brushing blowing ash and ground bits of dirt from her long over-coat, and shaking them from her hat. Standing in the ash-storm just about killed her and she couldn't wait to get to the factory to get in a shower before changing and dressing for work.

She left the bus and went straight to the showers, to the stalls, deep within the belly of the massive factory structure. Here, a soothing, cleansing, sanitizing spray washed away ash, dust, and human perspiration. She began to cry as she realized this was the highlight of her day. She enjoyed this shower too much and she enjoyed what always happened next, and it hurt. Next, the implants, the bio-technical thingamajigs in girls bodies, were activated and she morphed, grew twice as large in size, got more steel on her than flesh, got sharper reflects, quicker senses, her electrical, mathematical, physical abilities expanded a hundred fold, and she developed the ability to interface, directly, with any piece of factory machinery.

Just thinking about morphing always caused a tingle that reached down inside her. She upped the speed of the spray to get it to rip away the human perspiration and germs faster, the loose skin cells and the whatever, to clean and to sanitize her enough, so that the machine could quickly slide around what was left of her. The tingle skipped down to her ankles, caused her to do a little shower dance, like she had "hurry-feet". She jumped out of the stall into the joining room, where the morphing was done. She was a completely naked girl -- and suddenly she was more -- more than half machine -- and there was something else, she was more than most girls could imagine. As the instructor of orientation told her when she was first hired at the factory, the morphing process had no side effects on most. Only one in a hundred thousand experienced any side effects: minor discomfort, slight headaches and back pain. One in a million had a serious reaction, severe headaches, back and abdominal pains. She was not told that one in a billion had a permanent cerebral reaction. The morphing process gave them the ability to read minds. She knew -- everybody knew about psy-cows, witches, who could read unsuspecting people's minds, steal their secret thoughts and their innocent souls. These "witches" learned their craft by dealing in dark knowledge, and were hunted and despised. Anna knew the rumors, the underground idle-chatter, the old wives tale that said some girls got a rare "brain-bent" from the morphing process and were taken away to medical centers for treatment. The truth she knew now was that the one-in-a-billion girl was taken from her family and kept from others, because a girl with the ability to read minds was a threat to the harmony of the factory and the community.

One-night three years ago, a week after Anna first began to morph, she discovered she was an one-in-a-billion girl. She jumped out of a half-sleep, shot up in bed, like a resurrected corpse. She was scared witless as if she had just escaped death. She was pale, doe-eyed, trembling, and she looked like she was cornered, but ready to try a run out of the dark room, to keep running until she reached the far, lost daylight. "What's wrong with me!" she screamed. Her head buzzed like a hive of aroused bees, and it hurt, as if the top of her head was torn-off and someone's bare hand was gripping her brain.

Her eldest brother heard and came to her door.

"Sister!"

"James, I'm dying!'

She told him of her fear. He listened a minute and told her to be quiet. "Go to sleep, shut-up. Don't think about it."

"I'm dying!" Anna sobbed. Her brother stood there, hand on his hips, ready to leave. She noticed his new orange sleeping gown, silk. He was particularly conscious of what he wore, especially of what he slept in. When their mom, trying to add a little economizing into his life, suggested that perhaps he shouldn't spend so much on sleepwear, she and the girls wore plain white, big, lumpy-looking flannel sacks, he said, "Mother, my sleepwear may be the last thing I wear!" Anna thought there was no mistaking his attitude, no mystery. He wanted her to shut-up, get her rest, so that she could go to work in the morning and keep bringing money into the house.

"You want to wake everybody?" her brother said, talking very quietly, staring straight above her head. "The family just went to sleep. Don't be selfish. There is no value in that. You know mother hasn't been well since dad was called back into the colonial marines."

"I don't care!"

"Don't care? Do you think that Dad is a rascal because he is away? He was drafted. Do you think he deserves to be there? Can you make a --"

Anna wanted to wail, to kick. Her head had turned a deep reddish color. She felt it was expanding to give birth to new pain. She never imagined anything could hurt this much. She rubbed the skin on her skull and clamped her mouth shut to keep from crying out loud. Her brother seemed uncomfortable, and for a long moment, to be in a silent daze --that was her view, for a moment. After a few minutes, the pain rushing around and around in her head settled down, and she could pry words free, think apart from the pain, and speak without screaming. "Oh, James! Help me, listen, get me help..." she blubbered.

James brushed this aside and spoke as cross as he dared, under his sister's ever-present threat of renewed uncontrolled blubbering. "Do you want to kill mom? No? Then shut-up and live with it."

Anna grabbed and held tight to a bruised blotch that on her right cheek, that was itching now, and she stratched.

Her brother began to mock, "Girls don't want to hurt, don't want to cry. Girls want to live in laughter and good humor, no pain, no sacrifice." He pretended to tear.

"I'm dying!" Anna said. She didn't shout, spoke in a hush tone. The pain was easing.

Her brother's response was, "Sister cries for herself. Mom has cried for the family."

Anna wanted to ignore him. Get help without his help.

"Stop crying. I'll let you have some of my nice orange wine."

"I hate you."

"Those tears are going to hurt your face, make it go puffy-puffy for ever. Those little ornaments which you buy to make yourself look pretty to attract some young knucklehead, perhaps???, won't work."

"I don't need wine. I need a doctor."

"It's loco-joy juice. A sip and your head won't hurt. Damn, you won't even know that you have a head. This is quality illegal contraband, so good that mere possession will get you life."

"James! I hate you!" she hissed at him.

"You're not dying, just having a side effect of your job."

"What do you know?"

"I read, girl. The forbidden news. The underground, radical sources. You're not the first girl with side effects. Quit being a baby."

"Please, help me..."

"Stop, do not be a baby. The doctors are all droids. Droids are machines. They will kill you, and where would be mom?"

Anna allowed her brother to pour the loco juice into her mouth. She went blank-brained for three days. Their mother wasn't told of Anna's job side effect, only of the loco juice that the brother said she drank without him knowing of it. Anna's mom was shamed. A daughter drinking loco juice was unspeakable behavior. Boys had to join the military and no mother knew how long her son would have. Her boys might not survive. Mothers let theirs sons have their time. A daughter sneaking into a brother's supply of loco juice was unthinkable. It was good that Anna kept to her room for three days. Her mother was too ashamed to look at her.

Days later, Anna stood outside her brother's door and scanned inside his room for him.

"Can't you read!" he shouted through the closed door. "The sign on my forehead clearly says, No Trespassing!"

"I'm sorry, just wanted to see if you were awake."

She spoke softly. He could barely hear her. He jumped out of bed and rushed to her.

"You have a problem, Girl!" He yelled as he opened the door.

"Okay. I won't bother you. Excuse me, I'll find someone else to talk to."

"It's not that easy." he snapped back.

James grabbed his sister's left arm, spun her around and twisted the arm.

"You're hurting me!"

"No, I'm hurting me," he replied as he twisted her arm more.

"Stop it, beast!" Anna tried to pull free; he twisted more.

He shouted, "Witch!" then released her.

"You hurt me," she mumbled as she rubbed her arm.

"Did we learn anything from this?" he asked sarcastically looking at the tears in her eyes.

She didn't answer.

"No?" he sneered. "Your big brother is not a good teacher to his little sister."

"You are being mean, " Anna replied.

He grabbed her, returned to twisting her left arm, stopping after every twist to ask if she was learning anything. She was in pain: her arm ached, her head throbbed in pain, her eyes cried. She wanted her brother off her arm; she wanted to punch him.

Their mother appeared from nowhere. She must have heard them.

"James, dear. Don't play so rough!"

James let his sister go.

Anna face was red. It reddened when her brother was twisting her, and now -- "Mother, James and I are not playing! We're not children. We weren't playing!"

"Anna!"

Anna was angry. She lashed out at her mom. "When we were children the younger boy fights, hits me, and I go to you. Say, 'Mom, Ty hit me.' You say, 'Oh, he is just a young one, must bear with him'; when the older boy hits me, mom, you say, well, he is the older'. When we are all grown up and capable of working, the boys don't help--"

"Anna, what's the point?"

"I have to spend all my salary for food."

"So it this why you're fighting, your eldest brother?"

Anna's brother shook his head, "Mom, I'm not fighting my younger sister. I don't fight girls."

"I know it's Anna's fault."

"My fault? How?"

James looked peculiarly stern, the way older brothers know how when dressing down younger sisters. "This is another lesson in survival, girl. Your fault."

The lightless sky ... and home -- and damned the side effects -- Anna looked forward to work She liked the factory work -- being connected to the great machines, directing machines to perform work. She did her job well. She liked the money she earned. She hated having to spend nearly all of it on her brothers. Girls worked in factories until they became wives, and the implants were removed. She didn't want hers removed. Anna knew that only stupid girls longed for husbands, and the so-called freedom of never having to do factory work again.

{END}   (c) Copyright 1999 by Franchot Lewis, All Rights Reserved 

Back To The
DARK STORIES ARCHIVES  

Hosting Provided By HORRORFIND.COM
To find out about advertising on the Horrorfind Network Click Here