The slim woman swirled ticklishly around her large room and faced the mirror for the sixth time this evening. She was over the moon. She turned her lips up. Stretched her mouth again with teeth showing. But weirdly, it was only her upper teeth that showed. Was that the right way to grin? Opened her mouth wider as she stretched, her thirty-two on display, and dimmed her eyes. It looked like she was in a zoo, on the other side of the cage. She tried it over and over until it had been ingested by her brain.
Wearing a green floor-length chiffon dress with transparent full sleeves that hugged her body well, she challenged the thought of going gothic in her makeup. People already looked at her with apprehension, they would run for the hills if she entertained them more. The innocent look will work today, after all, she will be going to Seaside Lounge. A long-awaited date.
Jovic hasn't been out on dates in a while. And it wasn't for her lack of trying or she was not beautiful. Call it arrogance or self-awareness, she knew, she was god-damned beautiful. The rumors did her no justice. People looked at her in dread and murmured as she walked by. It was just baseless rumors that half the city was privileged to know.
Rumors that made grown men walk eyes straight ahead, made hips change routes faster than one can blink. Some of those rumors were that she served the night, seduced men with her beauty; that she was a witch. When those rumors found their way to her, she was filled with rage and said aloud, "Who could do something like this? It is all gone, everything."
In all her rage and destructive tendencies, excitement slithered its way through her body. It was more electrifying than her rage. Her friends may crawl back to their igloo, the world may turn its back and all may be raging. Nothing will beat that excitement.
Everyone wants to feel that excitement and it has nothing to do with being a sadist. The excitement that courses through one's body and one is high on life. The excitement of being feared.
Jovic at first felt that excitement as she studied those nameless faces sweeping past her, the scrunching of their faces, the weariness of their eyes, the fast movement of their mouths to whisper open secrets to their companion, the accompanied horrified gasps. Wings began sprouting. Wings that can't be clipped. It doesn't bring smiles and rainbows and chocolates, but neither does anything. The tingles made up for it in more ways.
Those tingles that zap through the whole body, holding it bound to an explosive feel and leave it shattering. The excitement often evaporates when she stays long in the confines of her mansion. In its wake, loneliness rears its pretty head, coiling around her body and squeezing. Like a chameleon, it comes in different shades, destroying the hedges. In times like this, she screams and thrashes her surroundings, it echoes as she's all alone.
Jovic has found an adequate way to deal with such severe loneliness. It has become a popular trend witches have hopped on. Kind of like bathing in children's blood to look younger but less sinister. Enchantment.
To enchant is to govern the body, and the mind to do your binding. Powerful magic that a low-class witch does not dare trifle with as it will backfire painfully. Jovic though is not some low-class scum of a witch. Her magic has never been low-class. Her ancestry being fourth generational power and being born a prodigy.
Powers birthright to her, she wields such with wicked glee, commands absolute respect from the top hierarchy to backward alleys in the witches community.
So to exercise her strength, toys are made. Toys are made in the form of human beings. It soothes the soul to hear some form of noise around the house or to see faces that agree with you. Prolonged silence calms. It gives its own peace of mind but it also forms a craze. The kind where only your thoughts bang heavily across the skull creating its rhythm, unaware of the pain it's inflicting. The physical pain, the pulling of the hair, scraping the hands through the scalp in the ugliest way. It's bearable. The emotional isn't.
Jovic has reasons to lash out. The scars that marred her mind, her pain are more than absolute reasons–like the rotation of the earth. Lash out at anyone.
Today though, she agreed with her inner beast: no lashing out. This week was good, today will be memorable.
William called a few days back, speaking to her in an eager voice. He was the first of her friends to flee when the whole witch rumors began to circulate. Three years passed and suddenly, he calls. Evading the past completely in his talks about carrying a torch on her behalf. Ending his long proclamations of lies and love on the phone, he asked her out.
“He has finally crawled out from his igloo." She will give him a second chance, maybe he will beg and all will be forgiven but never forgotten.
She began prepping her dry light brown skin with a high-quality moisturizer. Squeezing a small amount of primer into her makeup brush, applying in the center of her face and slowly working it out towards her cheeks, forehead and chin. She used her fingers to lightly apply her foundation liquid before using her concealer to reduce the appearance of dark under-eye circles. Jovic applied her foundation powder, a little blush before going bold in her eye-shadow and lip gloss. Going to her closet she pulled out the first pair of shoes that matched her outfit–a pair of transparent peep-toe ankle booties with a dark black zipper at the front. Looking at the mirror, her locs sitting on her head in perfect array, completing the whole look. Positively sure that she was set, she walked out of her room and down the stairs.
The assigned driver pulled the car to the side door. He got out and held the rear door for her. Elvish. Her very first toy.
Human touch, feelings, laughter, smiles, long talks, joy, friendship, love and family. When all these flee to faraway lands and the only things left are bottomless pit of toe-curling sadness that eats one alive, one is forced to be cuddled in by other things. Elvish for one gives her some form of comfort. The kind you find when there is a blackout, but a single candle burns by a corner, just for you not to trip and fall.
He was her first success. After four embarrassing attempts, he was the fifth. The fifth trial was the charm in her case. Two years ago came about her first human enchantment.
****
Two years ago, at an almost dilapidated clubhouse, she saw him. As she sat nursing a glass of vodka in an elusive corner, her eyes roamed, searching for anything and nothing. Another victim to participate in her failed enchantments. It was the perfect place to prey without the consequences of a bark or the bite.
An uncontestable fact that this establishment's clients were chronic drunks and abusers. If they disappear, the world wouldn't blink. When they're gone, no protest, no world war. After a few months, they're forgotten.
There he was, Elvish. Brutish. Fat. Bald. Red-faced. Gulping down glass after glass of the hard stuff like a camel getting ready for desert travel. Jovic grimaced, her throat bobbled at his actions.
She had decided. Another trial will be on him, she thought secondly. Constant failure was no motivator either.
Jovic reluctantly got to work, retrieving a chalk from her Hermes, she drew an upside-down cross on the service table, she bit down on her thumb hard, drawing blood, which was used to draw a circle around the cross. Staring at his back from her corner, she exhaled, taking in as much air that will allow her to fight the fear and nervousness screaming at her to quit while she was ahead. To accept her failures. She fought her cramped muscles and came out to be the bigger person. She began to whisper, ''Astute arisam quickim." Jovic's surroundings crackled as she felt a hand on her shoulder.
"Eje Igwulube Okodu nne mulu m'...ega buru ikem tata, oge adie!"
Her eyes bloated, head thumbed hard and she held herself to avoid blacking out. "To this, I claim, to you, my soul you are bound!"
Suddenly there was a blackout. The lights came on in a minute and there he was, Elvish, brutish big Elvish, staring at her intensely from across the bar.
He smiled at her with his goofy browning teeth and as that calmed a plethora of nerves that rose and fell within her during the days, she returned it with a smirk.
