Don't Be Such a Witch
© Copyright 2010 by Ali Mac
© Copyright 2010 by Ali Mac
Ash Maverick is a total witch! Literally. She just doesn’t know it yet. In her town, where you’re either a Trashy or a Preppy, things couldn’t seem to get worse, until she starts noticing things that aren’t normal...and it all starts after her seventeenth birthday.
ONE
“Ash!” my mom’s voice screeched. “Ash, get your ass out here!”
I was trying to block out the sound of her wail, so I turned up the volume on my iPod. The heavy guitar ballad was great for muting her annoying voice.
I went back to sketching a skull on my wall. I saw everything as my drawing palette. I’d already filled up two of the walls in my room with my sketches. They were how I expressed all the crap I was going through.
The one with the heart on fire was from when I got my first boyfriend. And the one with the heart cracked down the middle was from when I found out he cheated on me.
My bedroom door burst open. “Hey! I’m talkin’ to you!” my mom yelled. She stood there for a moment waiting for me to respond and her stringy blond hair fell into her face. I just kept drawing.
She stormed over and yanked the pen from my hand, causing my skull to have a funny squiggle over the left eye.
“Hey!” I hollered back.
She stood over me yelling something. Thankfully, the power ballad was playing in my song, so I didn’t have to hear it. I just observed how funny she looked as she yelled.
Finally, she caught on that I wasn’t listening, and ripped the earbuds out of my ears. As she did, the stench of cigarettes permeated my nose, followed by the reek of beer. She and Bob had obviously been partying last night.
“Go on!” she yelled. “You heard what I said. Get your ass to school! I’m not gonna have you become messed up like me.” Her words slurred together. She must have been drinking a lot.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said starkly. “Your concern touches me.”
Since when did she give a damn whether I went to school? As long as I kept my job so I could pay for groceries, she didn’t care what I did.
She grabbed my shoulder in a tight grip and said, “You better watch your attitude.” She started to wobble a little, but used me to steady herself.
I shoved her hand off and walked around her. “Yeah, or what? You’ll spank me?”
“You think you’re hot shit, Honey,” she said in grumpy slur. “But let me tell you somethin’. You’re nothin’. There’s a whole world out there, and nobody’s gonna care about you.”
“You’re rambling again.” I rolled my eyes.
When my mom would get really drunk, she would go into these long winded speeches about how hard the world was, and how everybody was out to get her, blah, blah, blah.
Grabbing my bag, I left her in my room. On my way out, I saw Bob, my mom’s loser boyfriend, passed out on the couch with a bottle of whiskey under one arm. He looked like he hadn’t bathed in weeks. Smelled like it to.
The air in the living room was foggy from all the freak’n cigarettes that he and my mom had gone through. I held my breath as I passed through the worst of it, and took a huge breath when I got outside our dilapidated trailer. I hated the way the smoke made my hair and clothes smell.
It was already ten o’clock, and school had been going for two hours. I didn’t really care. School was almost as shitty as my home-life. Thanks to the new zoning laws, I had been transferred to Westminster High, the school where all the pompous preppies went.
Unfortunately, my trailer court butted up against the back of the preppies’ new development lands, and they were slowly moving closer. Several of our neighbors had said that the preps were offering to buy their land from them.
I was sure that if the preps had it their way, they would buy all the land from the trailer owners just so we would move away. There was a distinct class clash in this town. The problem being that there was no middle class. It was just the super rich living next to the super poor. And sadly, they had the money and power to make our lives suck.
They’d already gotten Mason High, home of the trailer class, torn down so they could put up a mega-plex.
So now, all the trashies, that’s what the preppies called us, were being shipped to the upper crust high school, and being picked off one by one by the inbred spawn of the wealthy.
After Mason closed, I stopped going to school. There was no point. As soon as I turned eighteen, I was getting the hell out of this town, and going far away. I didn’t care if I had to hitch-hike the entire way.
I decided to head up the street to Iggy’s, a small hole in the wall café that served to my kind of people. It was the only place where my life sucked a little less.
I was almost there when I heard the siren coming from a police car right behind me. “Aw, crap,” I said under my breath. I stopped walking and turned around to face the car, putting my hands on my hips. “Hey, Charlie.”
Charlie was one of three police officers that Sunnyview had to offer. He wasn’t bad or anything. I’d even babysat for him once. But he had a serious problem with truancy.
He pulled up so that he could look out his window at me. “Ash,” he shook his head, “Do I even have to ask?”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t,” I replied, doing my best not to take out my life’s frustrations on him. It wasn’t his fault my life sucked dirt.
“Get in. I’ll give you a ride to school,” he said. “I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt, and say that you were on your way to school, and had no intentions of skipping. Because if you did, I would have to take you down to the station and fill out a report, and then call your mom…you get my point?”
“Yeah, I got it, Charlie.” I walked around and got in. “But I was skipping.”
He winced. “I didn’t hear that.”
I let out a laugh, and rested my forehead against the cool window. So much for not going to school. I’d just have to wait till Charlie was gone, and then sneak back out.
Snarling as the car pulled up to the curb in front of Westminster High, I got out and started trudging my way to the entrance. I was a little surprised when I heard Charlie walking up behind me.
Turning around, I said, “You don’t have to walk me. I’m a big girl.”
“I know,” he replied. “I also know that you’re gonna ditch as soon as I pull away.”
I let out scoff. “Damn, you’re good.”
“Come on,” he said, and led the way to the office. This wasn’t the first time he’d escorted me to the school office, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
Dragging my heels behind him, I pulled my iPod out of my pocket. If I was gonna have to sit through one of Principal Wrecker’s lectures on tardiness, I didn’t want to have to actually listen to it.
“Charlie,” the office assistant greeted when he approached the counter. She had one of those big flirty smiles on. “What brings you here?” Noticing me, she added in a gloomy voice, “Oh. Miss Maverick. What a surprise. I’ll just go and let the Principal know you’re here.”
“I think she likes you,” I said to Charlie after she was gone.
He shook his head disapprovingly at me.
The smell of Hai Karate aftershave hit me before I could actually see Principal Wrecker. It was normally a dead giveaway of his impending presence. All of the students knew to run like hell if they smelled Hai Karate coming down the hallway.
“Ah,” his nasally voice said. “Miss Maverick, you finally decided to join us. What is this, your third attendance this year? I think you’ve hit an all-time high for yourself.”
“Damn.” I snapped my fingers dramatically. “I was trying to get keep it at two so that next year I would have something to celebrate.”
“Hm,” he scoffed. The bright fluorescent lights of the office shined off his bald head. “Marge?” he said to the office assistant, “Will you please escort Miss Maverick to her class?”
Marge’s shoulders slumped. “Of course, Harvey.” She skulked around the front desk and over her shoulder she said, “Come on!”
I assumed she was barking at me.
“If it’s any consolation,” I said as I followed her down the quiet school hallway. “I didn’t want you to escort me either.”
I heard her let out a little grunt at my barb, but otherwise, she didn’t acknowledge me.
After what seemed like miles of hallway later, she stopped outside a door that was labeled English, and said, “Go.”
“Sure thing, Marge.” With my iPod out in front of her, I put in my earbuds, and proceeded by cranking up the volume to a dull roar. Giving her a big fake-assed smile, I opened the door to class with more enthusiasm then necessary.
She rolled her eyes and started lumbering back to the office. She, as well as every other teacher, knew it wasn’t even worth trying to take the MP3 player from me, because they would have to physically wrestle it from my cold dead corpse. And they all knew that I wanted them to kick me out, so the only thing they could do was roll their eyes and ignore me.
Inside the class room, everyone was staring at me, most with dropped jaws. I wasn’t sure if it was because I had on a black mini skirt with fishnets and shiny, hot pink Doc Martens, or if it was because they never thought I would actually come to class.
Grabbing the only empty seat on the back row, I hunkered down low. I could still feel eyes watching me, and wished my iPod had a cure for that. Too bad I hadn’t worn my hoodie.
I decided not to pretend that I was paying attention to the teacher’s bogus lesson, and pulled out my sketch pad. My fingers were itching to draw something.
I made a funny sketch of Principal Wrecker with a super-sized, bald head. He was wearing a ninja suit and attempting to chop through a stack of flaming English books with his bare hand. In the background I made huge letters spelling out, “Totally High Karate.”
I was just about to add a background to the sketch when a crumpled piece of paper landed on my desk. Looking around, I didn’t see anyone looking at me. I knew I was going to regret it, but I unbunched the paper anyway and wasn’t surprised to see scribbled in messy writing:
Go back to the trailor park, Skank!
“Cute,” I said out loud. “But the genius who wrote this needs to learn how to spell. Trailer has an E, Moron!” I crumpled it back up and tossed it in the general direction of the trash can, not really caring if it went in or not.
The teacher was looking rather peeved at my interruption, but the only thing she could do was try and ignore me.
In the corner of the classroom, Malcolm Werner was trying to get his goony cohorts to shut up because they were elbowing him and laughing. He must have been the brilliant note writer.
Jerk.
Fortunately for my sanity, the bell rang. I scooped up my sketch book and joined the hoi polloi of preps exiting the class. Many of which tried to stay as far away from me as possible.
Now, I thought, would be as good a time as any to ditch. It was actually a good thing that I was at school, because I had left one of my favorite sketch books in my locker.
I tuned out the sneers and oh-so-ugly-faces of the preps I passed, and made my way to my butter-colored locker. Using the famous punch-and-pull method, I was able to open the locker without actually touching the lock.
I smiled at seeing my prized sketch book waiting for me. The cover of which was completely filled with random sketches. “Hello, baby,” I said to the book. “Did you miss me?”
I had started to look through the sketch-covered pages when Malcolm’s annoying voice disrupted me. Fortunately, it wasn’t directed at me.
Shutting my locker door, I leaned back against it to watch the spectacle he was making of himself. He and his goons were roughing up another preppy boy. His name was Steven Spikafalaus. Great last name, right? Everyone had taken to calling him Spike.
I only knew who he was, because he was the only preppy that didn’t seem to fit in with the other preppies. He was short and scrawny, and I don’t think I’d ever heard him mutter a single word.
Watching the goon squad mess with him almost made me feel bad.......Fine. It did make me feel bad.
“You know, Mal,” I said, taking intentional steps in Malcolm’s direction. “It’s such a turn on when a guy picks on somebody who’s half his size and not nearly so twisted.” I placed my hand confidently on Spike’s shoulder. He flinched a little, but held still.
“What would you know,” Malcolm sneered back. “You’re just a piece of trash.”
“Is that the best you’ve got,” I replied in my best droll voice. Throwing in a few large words to throw him off, I continued, “Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. I mean, you are inept at spelling, and you can’t even go to the bathroom without your boys. I’m beginning to wonder if you even have a brain. PS: That’s one ugly shirt. Your mom must still be dressing you.” The traditional ‘oooh’s coming from the onlookers at the burn amped up the energy in the hallway. Anger flared up in Malcolm’s face and he took a menacing step towards me.
“Hey!” Marge the office attendant yelled. “What’s going on here?”
I casually shrugged. “Oh nothing. Just a big jerk making a big ass of himself.”
Malcolm snarled.
“Miss Maverick!” Marge squealed, her eyebrows practically disappearing into her hairline. “Watch your language!”
“Will do, Marge,” I pledged, and started to walk away.
“Miss Maverick?” Marge’s increasingly annoying voice called.
Stopping, I replied, “Yes, Marge?”
“Where do you think you are you going?”
Damn.
When I didn’t answer, she said, “This way, Miss Maverick.”
Turning around and heading back towards the office aid, she led me to yet another painfully boring class. The rest of the day was much of the same. A boring class followed by an escort from Marge. Lather, rinse, and repeat. By the time Marge finally said I was done, I had listened to every song on my iPod twice…and that was saying something.
Like a prisoner being set free, I made fast tracks out of the oppressive school until it was just a distant nightmare fading out of sight. My pace slowed down to a trudge as each step led me towards the other oppressive place in my life. Home, or rather, the place where I lived. Home was where you felt safe and loved, and I definitely didn’t.
The smoke clouds were thick as ever when I opened the door to the trailer. I stood in the doorway for a moment, contemplating running away.
“Shut the damn door!” Bob yelled from his place on the couch.
“Love to,” I said under my breath. “In your face.”
“What’s that?” he bellowed.
“Nothing.” I closed the door behind me and made a beeline to my bedroom. Noticing the lack of banshee-like yelling, I asked, “Where’s my mom?”
“Out getting smokes.” He took a puff of the cigarette he was currently working on and gave me black-toothed smile. “Wanna come over here and keep me company?”
Blecch. I’d rather eat cow poop.
Without verbally answering his creepy question, I went in my room and locked the door. And just for good measure, I pushed my desk in front of it. Even if it wouldn’t keep him out, it would make a hella noise if he tried to come in.
Taking off my now reeking coat, I tossed it into the hamper of clothes that weren’t dirty, but stunk too much to be worn without washing.
I went over to my desk and pulled out a small calendar. In today’s box were the letters B.D. I had written them in a year ago today.
“Happy freak’n birthday to me,” I said glumly to myself. With a thick permanent marker, I crossed a big X over the box. “One more to go till I’m free.”
I put the calendar back, and went over to lie down on my bed. As was habit, I put in my earbuds and let the music of my playlist blast into my ears, drowning out all the depressing thoughts I wanted to ignore.
Too bad it didn’t work very well.
Unwanted thoughts about my dad started to drift through my mind. Who was he? Why did he leave? Well, with a wife like my mom, it wasn’t that hard to guess why he left.
My thoughts swirled around my brain until they suffocated me, and finally things started to dim as my eyelids closed.
---
Twigs snapped under my boots as I walked through a forest. The branches of the glittery black trees reached out, almost as if to grab me. Above me, the sky was pitch black with no stars in sight. The only thing illuminating the gothic scene was the eerie full moon.
The wind made an unnatural sort of music that surrounded and confused me as I forced myself to keep moving through the black forest, unsure of where I was going.
“Ash….” an ethereal voice called to me, almost seeming to put me into a sort of trance.
I wanted to follow the voice. I felt its pull, and followed it as it led me through the black forest that seemed to fade farther away as I walked.
In the ground, large white stones started to appear in the black forest floor. I started stepping from stone to stone until the forest floor ended, and a cliff emerged. But somehow, the stones were floating in the air, forming a bridge away from the cliff.
“Ash, come to me,” the voice called again.
Without hesitating, I stepped onto the first floating stone. My weight caused it to sink slightly, but it held. I stepped onto the next stone, and the next after that, till I was far enough out that I could see something forming in the distance. I continued and finally reached the last stone which took me into a white forest.
My boot made a soft thudding sound as I landed on the white forest ground. The trees here were white too. It was like the opposite of the forest I had just come from.
I felt the pull to go forward, and moved through the leafless trees that opened out into a small clearing.
I heard the voice say my name again, this time it sounded less ethereal and more physical.
Trancelike, I watched as a bright white figure moved towards me from the opposite side of the clearing. The light emanating from it was almost too bright to look at, and I wasn’t able to make out who, or what, it was.
“Ash,” it said to me.
I reached out my hand towards it, impatient for it to reach me.
---
“Ash!”Boom! Boom! Boom!
“Ash! Open the damn door!” a very familiar voice yelled.
“What do you want!?’ I yelled back, rolling from my sleepy position on the bed.
“Get out here!” Bob screeched in reply.
I blinked through my groggy stupor and saw that the time on my alarm clock was 2:02 a.m.
After getting out of bed, I chaotically shoved the desk out of the way, and wrenched the door open, “What?”
“We ordered a pizza.” He gestured towards the front door. “So go and pay the man.”
“Did the thought ever cross you mind that I don’t go to work to pay for your pizza,” I responded in a grumpy tone.
“Did you ever consider that I wasn’t asking?” He leaned threateningly close to the door, which I put my foot behind, just in case.
“Will you hurry up!” my mom said, coming over to the doorway. “Look, Ash, I’ll pay you back.”
Grabbing my wallet from the desk, I took a deep breath to calm myself, and pushed through them so I could walk to the front door. “No you won’t.”
The delivery boy was impatiently bouncing up and down on the door step, but perked up when he saw me coming. I recognized him as one of the trashies I used to go to Mason with.
“How much?” I asked.
“Ten.”
I handed him the money and took the pizza. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, no prob. See ya around, Ash,” he said. He gave me a smile before he left, and I nearly dropped the pizza when his eyes seemed to turn completely black.
“Hey!” Bob yelled, snatching the pizza before it could fall from my hands. He gave me a hostile look, but I was too busy trying to figure out what the hell I just saw.
He, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have noticed anything weird. But then again, he was probably too boozed up to see anything clearly.
My mom held out a slice for me, but I pushed passed her and went back to my room. Putting my security measures back in place, I got back in bed, and chalked up the pizza boy hallucination to a sleep overdose. I had already been asleep for ten hours, but somehow, I was still exhausted.
Several hours later, I rolled over feeling a little more rested. I pulled myself out of bed and took a shower before my mom or Bob had a chance to wake up and harass me.
Although, they probably just passed out and hour ago, and would stay that way for the rest of the day. Nuclear bombs couldn’t even wake them when they got that wasted.
Good.
I knew if I got an early start, Charlie wouldn’t be able to bust me. Or drag me to that awful place called ‘school.’
With my bag packed with all of my sketching supplies, I grabbed a slice of left over pizza on my way out the door.
Iggy’s would still be closed, so I decided to head over to the tracks. It was exactly what I needed right now, quiet, as well as Mom-and-Bob free.
The dreary daylight made the deserted trains littering the desolate tracks look almost eerie. I found my favorite graffiti-covered train and climbed in. The backseat of a car had been abandoned in the old train, leaving me with a semi-comfortable, but stale place to sit.
I curled up into my favorite position for sketching and cranked up my iPod. Letting the music carry me away, I started to sketch. At first, it was just a bunch of random squiggles and streaks, but slowly the picture started to come together.
A gothic princess stood on a balcony, overlooking her gothic kingdom. But something was wrong, her face was sad. The heavy chains around her ankles disappeared off the page, holding her captive.
I had been so into my drawing that I hadn’t noticed when my iPod had stopped playing.
In the silence I heard a voice yell, “What the hell are you doing here?!”
With the crap sufficiently scared out of me, I jumped up.
Still, defiant to the end, I yelled back, “That depends! Who the hell are you?! Henry the freaking King of England!” I still couldn’t see where the voice came from.
“Nothing quite that grand,” the voice said again. This time it was at a much more pleasant decibel.
“Yeah, well, last time I checked, America was free country, dude. I have just as much right to be here as you do.”
“That is true.” A boy, a little older than me by the looks of it, was standing at the other end of the train car. He was flipping through a book…and not just any book.
“Hey!” I yelled. “That’s private!” I crossed the car and snatched my sketchbook back. I had no idea how he managed to snag it without me seeing, but I was less worried about that and more worried about what he might have done to it. After insuring that it was still intact, I looked up at the rude stranger. It was so dark in the car that all I could make out was dark hair, and dark eyes on an attractively pale complexion.
I cleared my throat after realizing that I was staring.
“I like your drawings,” the boy said. “They’re dark, like me…and you apparently.” Something about the way he was looking at me made me think that the darkness of the rail car didn’t obstruct his vision.
“Hmm,” I said skeptically, and turned around to collect my things.
“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said. “I thought you were one of those annoying townies.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not,” I retorted. “And you didn’t scare me.”
He smiled. “Sure.”
“You didn’t,” I defended. “Your incredible rudeness caught me off guard. That’s all.”
He leaned back against the wall of the train car. “In that case, tell me your name so I can apologize properly.”
With my bag packed I eyed him distrustfully. “Yours first.”
Not seeming surprised by my demand, he answered, “Drake,” and moved closer. The name seemed to suit him.
“I’m Ash,” I replied, still unsure of the eerily attractive stranger.
He nodded, as if to say he liked it, and said, “I’m sorry, Ash, if my incredible rudeness bothered you.”
I looked at him a little longer, trying to discern the color of his eyes. But given how dark it was, it was impossible.
I started to leave, and he said, “You don’t have to leave.”
“Actually, I do. I find that creepy stalker dudes are a bit of drawing buzz-kill.”
“I’m not a creepy stalker dude,” he replied.
“Oh?” I cocked my head to the side, “Then why are you skulking around abandoned train cars.”
He gave me another amused smile and said, “First of all, I don’t skulk. It’s more of a prowl. And secondly, may I remind you that you’re also in an abandoned train car.”
“Po-tay-to—Po-tah-to,” I retorted. “And I came here to draw, not lurk.”
“We’re at an impasse then.” He leapt from the train car, landing deftly on the loose rocks below, and then held out his hand to help me.
Rolling my eyes, I ignored his hand and jumped down like I always did. But this was the one time that my foot had to land on a wonky rock, and I started to tumble to the side.
His reaction to catch me was fast, and before I knew it, his arms had wrapped around me to keep me from careening head first into the dull, but unfriendly rocks.
Unfortunately, my knee had caught on the side of the train car during my fall, and I had skinned my knee. After his arms released me, I bent down to assess the damage.
It was a small cut, but it was bleeding as if I’d severed an artery.
“Damn,” I cursed, and stood back up. “HOLY CRAP!”
Drake’s face had become distorted and unnatural. His eyes were wild and dangerous, and…fangs were extending from under his upper lip. A ferocious snarl ripped out of his throat, and I took it as my queue to get the hell out of there.
Digging my feet in hard as I ran, bits of gravel kicked up with each step. I didn’t look back, and I didn’t stop until I was bursting through the door of the trailer. When I was through, I slammed the door behind me and locked all three locks.
My heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest as I slid to the ground, trying to catch my breath. “What the hell was that?” I asked out loud, hoping that maybe it would help.
“What was what?” Bob asked, rousing from his coma on the couch.
Collecting myself, I stood up. “Nothing.”
Before locking myself in my room, I quickly grabbed a wet wash cloth, some antiseptic, and Band-Aids. I sat down at my desk, and while tending my wound I contemplated what had just happened. After sticking on the last Band-Aid, my fingers hungrily searched for my drawing tin. I picked the best charcoal I had, and began to sketch. It was the only way I knew of to deal with what just happened.
I framed out the face, then the eyes, and then the full, almost decadently so, lips. The stylishly shaggy hair was next, followed by the shading. When I was done, it looked like a snapshot of the way I remembered seeing Drake’s face before I jumped out of the train car.
After staring at it for a while, I hastily flipped the page. I needed to draw while the image was still fresh in my mind.
The second sketch started out a lot like the first, but when it came to the mouth and eyes, it was different. A lot different. His pupils were huge, almost taking up the whole iris and making them appear pitch black. His teeth were pointier and definitely dangerous, and his canines were terrifyingly long and sharp. The shading in the second picture made him look paler. Combined together, the changes made him look almost…wicked.
I tore out the first drawing so that I could compare the two. And for over an hour, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sketches. I kept looking at his eyes in the normal picture and then the eyes in the not-normal picture. And then the teeth.
Without thinking about it too much, I wrote a title in the not-normal sketch.
It said, “Drake the Vampire.”
I didn’t really believe it, but it was the only thing I could think of to explain the fangs.
It started to make more and more sense the longer I thought about it. I had been bleeding right before he went all psycho on me. Not to mention the fact that he was skulking around. Vampires did that right, skulk?
But if he was a vampire, why did he let me get away? Weren’t they supposed to be evil, bloodthirsty monsters?
Look at me! I’m acting like vampires are actually real.
This all had to be a big understanding. Or a joke. Maybe Drake was a friend of the preppies, and together, they were messing with me.
Although…those fangs were pretty convincing—so was that snarl.
