The Witch's Candelabra

Chapter 1 - Ghosts of Shared Fears

Braids:

The boys pursued the dusky dog, ruffling its fur with sticks as they sped past on swift bikes. Their wheels ground and slid, alternating between the pebbled path and the grass beside it. Seated on a picnic blanket, I observed the scene: boys tormenting the poor creature. People truly do suck. Perhaps they ought to experience a taste of their own medicine. Delving into my pocket, I retrieved some magic dust—or rather, cinnamon. Plucking a leaf from the nearby oak tree, I crushed it finely into the cinnamon with a lit alight hand.

The tree, with its sinewy whip-like branches, curled and extended. One thick branch reached out, entangling itself in the bike wheel of one of the circling boys. This caused his tires to skid to a halt, catapulting him onto the ground. His companions, caught in a domino effect, crashed their bikes amidst trampling and shouting. Their entangled bikes twisted into scraps of metal as their bodies were hurled through the air. Amidst this chaos, the dog seized its chance to escape. I beckoned it over with a wave of dried meat, which it gratefully devoured, slobbering my hands with sticky, warm saliva. I tenderly stroked its head with my free hand, and it responded with a happy wag of its tail.

The tree was not yet finished. It wrapped a branch around the ankles of two boys, hoisting them into the air. They were plugged into a hole of its gnarled trunk, their bottoms slapped by wiry sapling branches.

My picnic concluded, I closed my book and traversed the damp grass, its fresh scent filling the air, towards the street beyond.

Here, the houses stood decorated and ancient, a testament to times long past. Men donned suits while women sported frills and wonderful hats. Yet beneath this beautiful attire, the people were hollow. They wandered through their lives devoid of passion. It seemed as if not a single soul in town harbored an imaginative thought. Their outlook on life was disheartening; devoid of aspirations or fanciful dreams. Should anyone dare to harbor such a desire or passion, it would likely go unrecognized in this lackluster world.

I made my way to the local pub, a place where I was a familiar face. Turning a corner, I stepped inside. It was still late afternoon, far too early for the happy hour crowd of non-regulars.

***

The room was as dreary as ever, filled with the same sad regulars. But who was I to judge? I walked up to the bar, where the bartender, a man with a ginger mustache, turned to greet me. Just for the record, I'm of legal drinking age.

"Steam engine," I requested, a concoction of unsavory saffron rose.

"Right away, Miss Braids," he replied with a nod.

As I waited, a man's shout cut through the room. "Hey you, pretty love!" He moved closer to me, his intentions clear. I reached deep into my pocket, feeling for the soft dust between my fingers. With a swift motion, a puff of blue, thick smoke burst in his face. When it cleared, he had transformed – a grotesque pig-nosed monster.

"What the!??" he started, staggering back in shock and anger.

That'll show him.

I took a swig from my shot glass and tossed some coins to the bartender. Suddenly, a surge of greenness coursed through my body. I needed to leave... fast. Staggering into the bathroom, clutching my chest, I tried to lock the door, but it burst open. The pig-nosed man was right in my face.

"Hey, missy, you aren't getting away so easy. I don't care what I look like..." He tried to wrestle me against the wall, but as he held my wrists, they began to fade, turning transparent and ghostly. I couldn't help but give him a smug look, the nausea fading from my face.

A sizzling sound filled the air, and smoke burst forth from where our skin made contact. Green flames on my hand ignited into a larger blue flame, casting the room in shadowy blue light. I could still see the other people in the room, but they appeared dark, faint, and wobbly.

Easily pulling away like a ghost, I slammed him with a spell. He crashed, shocked and confused, unconscious on the floor or maybe right into the toilet. The room spun around him... until it seemed upside down. No, I was the one on the ceiling, my complexion a transparent green.

I glided out of the bathroom and into the bar room, where all the regular patrons were now on the ceiling. The upside-down room was dark and dreary, filled with brown crossbeams. Blue, shadowy figures sat upon these beams – demons, perhaps? But I wasn't afraid. Stepping forward on the ceiling, I approached the figures, clearing a spider web off a dusty old crossbeam before taking a seat.

I floated into the rafters, where ghosts glowed dimly. They played poker, sitting on the wooden beams, using a ghost table or chandelier as their table.

As I floated closer, the ghosts turned to look at me. There was a drawn-out, eerie silence, thick with suspense. I could feel their ghostly eyes, or in some cases, the empty sockets where eyes should have been, fixating on me. "Boys, deal me in," I said, my voice echoing slightly in the spectral air.

They continued to stare, their appearances grotesque and ghastly. Their pale, blue forms shimmered faintly in the dim light. One ghost, his head missing, seemed to gaze at me with an invisible stare. Another, lacking a shoe, floated slightly lopsided, his foot a mere wisp of mist.

After a moment that stretched like eternity, one of them spoke. His voice was like the rustling of dry leaves, a whisper from beyond. "You're brave to join us, Miss Braids," he said, the gap where his head should have been somehow not hindering his speech. "But are you ready to play with the likes of us?"

I couldn't help but smile, a chill of excitement running down my spine. This was exactly the kind of distraction I needed. "I've played with worse," I replied confidently, taking my seat on a crossbeam beside them. "What's the game?"

The black-haired ghost chuckled, a sound like wind whistling through a hollow cavern. "It's a game of fate and chance, much like life itself. But be warned, the stakes are higher when you're playing with the departed."

I nodded, ready for whatever challenge lay ahead. As the cards were dealt, the ghostly figures around me seemed to grow more solid, their ethereal forms gaining substance in the flickering blue light. I was about to engage in a game that was more than just cards and wagers; it was a dance with the echoes of the past, a flirtation with the unknown.

As the game progressed, the atmosphere thickened with unspoken words and glances that lingered a second too long. I felt a strange kinship with these spectral beings, yet a gulf of unbridgeable experiences separated us.

"You know, I've always been afraid of people," I confessed, my voice barely more than a whisper. "Afraid to act, to face the darkness within and around me." My fingers fiddled with the cards, a nervous habit I couldn't shake.

The ghosts nodded, their movements slow and deliberate. "We lived like that in life," murmured the ghost with the missing shoe, his voice tinged with regret. "Always in fear, never daring to change our fate."

I sighed, a sense of camaraderie building in the gloom. "That's exactly why I find solace in your company. You're the closest to understanding me. People... they just suck. They're too caught up in their own lives to see what's really happening around them."

The black-haired ghost chimed in, his voice echoing as if from a distant place. "That's true. In life, we were too cowardly to make a difference, too scared to step out of our comfort zones. Now, in death, we're just echoes of those fears, unable to change the world or ourselves."

I leaned back, absorbing their words. It was a bittersweet realization that these ghosts, stuck in their eternal limbo, were my closest confidants. They couldn't affect the living world, and they never did in their own lifetimes. In a way, they were as powerless as I felt among the living.

"This is why I can only trust and confide in you," I said to the group, a hint of melancholy in my voice. "You understand the paralysis of fear, the inability to act. You're as close to understanding me as anyone ever could."

They looked at me, compassion in their eyes, and the game continued, but my thoughts wandered. I was amongst friends who were bound by their past fears, just as I was constrained by my own. In this dim, upside-down world, amidst these spectral figures, I found an odd sense of belonging. Yet, it was also a stark reminder of the isolating power of fear and the comfort of shared understanding in the unlikeliest of places.