Witch {Book One} [UNEDITED]

I: Lucy

There were stories they told us as kids. Stories about Black Magic and voodoo and witches who roamed the streets. Stories of people who bled glitter and nebulas instead of blood. Stories of ladies with eyes red as roses and lips as black as oil. Stories of men with golden canes and teeth made of stone. Stories of witches who danced naked under full moons. Stories of She whom the Goddess sees Through. Stories of black cat Familiars who slept on Ouija boards and would float through the sky. Stories of people with animal heads who would lurk in the darkest of all the dark shadows. Stories of churches whose priests were demons themselves. Stories of a woman who dressed in black lace and dwelled in the woods. We called her Ada. And oh, were there stories of Ada.

There was a story that particularly stood out.

Once upon a time, there was a witch named Ada. She dwelt in the darkest corner of the woods in a house made of stone. They say she was originally from Salem, a witch who escaped the Trials of 1692 and made up her life in New Orleans. Late at night her soul would drift from her body and dance with the Devil until the moon set and the sun rose. Then, Ada would awake and she wouldn't remember a thing that happened. Every other nine months Ada would birth the child of Lucifer and she would abandon the child to be fed to the crows. After four years of birthing and abandoning children, Ada went crazy and killed herself. She took a knife carved from bone and stabbed her brain through her eyes.

This was in the year 1883.

In 1922, Ada came back. She would roam the streets of New Orleans, crying for her children. Of course by then, her children were grown up and had children of their own.

The massacre happened on the night of April the third, 1923. Ada slaughtered all her children that were still in New Orleans as well as the children of her offspring.

Ada was never seen again.

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We called her Lucy. She had hair as yellow as the sun and eyes that were grey. She had gages in her ears and the lobe beneath her left gage was pierced twice. She also had many more earrings than those. Her nose was pierced twice and she had a Medusa piercing above her lip. Her tongue was pierced; everyone knew that. She had a tattoo above her collarbone reading "Hail Satan," with the T like an upside down cross. She always wore a necklace with the word "Whore" in fancy script, though everybody knew that she was a virgin. Her nails were painted black, but in the light they gleamed red. Her lips were full and she painted them black as tar. She wore a too-big shirt with a pentacle on it and red plaid tights as well as ratty black Doc Martens. She was the scariest person in New Orleans by far.

Lucy was the kind of person who would stare a person in the eyes until they gave her what she wanted. When she got a new teacher or there was a substitute and they would do attendance, she would scare them enough that they would disappear for weeks, months, even years. They would start by saying "Luc--" and they would hesitate, feeling Lucy's death stare on them. They all smacked their hands to their neck and continued saying "Cy . . ." Lucy would then smile sweetly and call out "Here!" There were some people who believed that "Lucy" was short for Lucille and she was some sort of fallen angel. Others, however, thought that it was short for Lucifer and she was the Devil himself.

Then Alice came along and Lucy had competition.

Alice had purple hair and three lip piercings as well as a Medusa and Dahlia piercings. She had a combination of industrial, lobe, transverse like, upper lobe, helix, forward helix and daith piercings on her ears (which roughly translated into: she had a shitton of metal in her ears). She wore several necklaces and had six tattoos: the Pagan symbols for air and water on her right shoulder as well as the symbols for earth and air on her left. She also had the simple word of Velns under her left breast and a flaming cross on her thigh. Nobody knew a thing about Alice. She just one day appeared in New Orleans, lurking in the cemetery. She had skin like the snow but her lips were blood red. She had the voice of an angel.

The day Alice appeared in New Orleans, Lucy did something very unusual for the Devil. She walked right into one of the voodoo homes downtown and met up with a Wiccan named Samantha. Sammy there talked with Lucy for hours upon hours until Lucy left her home and walked straight to her own without making eye contact or teasing or being plain rude and scary with any living soul.

My daddy also was a witch doctor. He worked with voodoo and hoodoo, helping and cursing folks as Sammy did. My momma was the kindest soul in all of New Orleans. That was until I turned five. Then she became a prostitute. I didn't understand why. Momma was the nicest and purest person I knew. But she just woke up one day and left to be a stripper. She was murdered on the job when I was fifteen. At her funeral, I got up and simply said, "I ain't gonna miss her sorry soul. I hope she goes to Hell where she can sleep with the Devil himself each night." I was kicked out of my own mother's funeral.

I met Alice that day, wandering around the cemetery like a lost, sad soul. I said that she had purple hair and she said I was a freak. We became close friends after that. I told Alice about Lucy and Alice told me that Lucy and her lived close to each other and that Alice and Lucy scared each other. She left out Samantha.

I had one other friend besides Alice. His name was Flynn and he was the only semi-normal person for having a family that worships voodoo and hoodoo. He swore that he didn't have a drop of magic in his veins although his momma and daddy both did. Flynn died four years ago when he was eighteen years old. There wasn't a body to bury and both his momma and daddy refused to give the bloody fool a funeral.

Every soul in New Orleans knew who had killed Flynn.

Every soul in New Orleans, except for Lucy that is.

She stopped going to Sammy's house the day after Flynn was proclaimed dead.