Into the Night

Hocus my Pocus

"Is that broad dead or unconscious?"

Lily stood in the doorway with a fireman's jacket over her shoulder.

"I don't know what happened. I had to convince her that the supernatural was real, so I did what you did and gave her slices of those apples-"

"You what?" She yelled.

"I didn't know that this would happen, her eyes glowed, you didn't mention anything about-"

"I gave you the garden of Eden apple slices to prove that you're a monster. Not that the paranormal mythical stuff existed. Humans have a tendency to die when they eat it. The fact that you ate a slice without bursting into flames is what proved you're a monster!"

"How was I supposed to know that if you never explained it to me?"

"I bookmarked it in the encyclopedia, it's not my fault you're illiterate."

She pushed Sella away from Charlotte's body and placed an ear to her chest. Her fireman's jacket slumped off her shoulders, to her ankles.

"She's still alive, but barely..."

She turned to Sella.

"Just so you know, when this is over I'm going to slap the living hell out of you."

She turned back to her.

"Her breathing is shallow, but still there..."

She saw the empty plastic bag next to her.

"Holy matzah balls, did she eat the entire bag?"

"I think so. I told her that I didn't want to eat another because what I learned last time, then she started gulping them down once she realized that it might help her hunt down the creature that killed her brother-"

"She's not human."

She pressed her head to her chest.

"Her heartbeat is coming back and getting stronger. Her breathing is strengthening. Humans have one of three ways of reacting to the apple. They either explode into flames, turning living creatures around them into pillars of salt. Or they enter a coma where their body tries to cope with the sudden insertion of knowledge, via methods humans weren't originally intended to take. Eighty five percent of all of those die in the coma as their bodies begin to shut down. The ones that do survive are never the same or end up becoming homicidal maniacs..."

Memories of a failed business venture came to the top of her befuddled memory.

"I once ran a slightly successful eden apple oil business back in the day. I may or may not have been solely responsible for the Salem witch trials..."

She returned her attention to Charlotte.

"But why didn't I guess it before?" she exclaimed, "her mother was delightful, kooky, told me she was an actual witch, and sold me the best hair care products I've ever had. She died giving birth to her twin children. As I assume her mother did, and her mother before her, and her mother before that, all the way back to their progenitor. One of the first witches..."

With a hurried hand she lifted Charlotte's eyelid. Her pupils were dilated and darting.

"Modern women wish they could be real witches, but they wouldn't if they understood the price their ancestors would have had to pay for them."

She brought her own eye mere inches from Charlotte's.

"There are natural witches, humans who are slightly gifted with magic. Then there are the witches that descend from the truly desperate and the immensely oppressed."