Witchcraft

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

My mother greets me by beckoning to the stove and ordering me to flip over the frying meat to ensure it does not burn on the skillet. I do so, as she peels potatoes at inhuman speed. "How was the hunt?" She asks, not even bothering to ask me who won.

"Conrad managed to shoot Sloan."  

My mother said nothing, but a small grunt escaped the back of her throat. She was never fond of the Barlow Hunting Games. I wasn't sure why.

"Did your father see?"

I nod, but realize she wasn't looking at me, so I speak up, "Yeah, they were examining the shot when I left."

"Your brother taking it well?" I knew she meant Tyler, and I sighed.

"As well as you'd expect."

"That boy is gonna do something stupid one day." She says as though it were fact, "Just like your father, he feels he has something to prove." She shakes her head, "I'm going to kill Chris if he doesn't start communicating with his damn son." Chris was fathers name, and my mother, unlike her love for me and Tyler, had bitter prejudices against Conrad and him.

I don't know why Conrad has always treated our mother with the utmost disrespect. He has never been kind to her, nor has he defended her when father gets drunk. When Conrad moved out and got married, my mother was crying tears of joy, not sorrow.

Still, Conrad, Tyler, and I have always been close. I think mother was envious that I got along with everyone, even father. So, Tyler has always been her baby, and only her baby. Even I do not get the privilege of owning her heart. Tyler is her soul, and everything else. Father on the other hand, preferred Conrad. Conrad was strong, smart, and a brilliant hunter. The both of them made each other look good, why wouldn't they get along?

I was an accident, a baby that shouldn't have existed. It's not that my parents have never loved me, they just preferred my brothers.

I pretend it doesn't bother me.

My grandmother adored me, she was the one who showered me with attention when I was a kid. I was her favorite, it was obvious, and really, she was mine. I loved her more than anyone else.

When she died, I felt most of my heart died with her. Things have never been quite the same with her gone. I feel as though I can not love anyone else. I've tried to go on a few dates with men, or make new friends, but I can't. My heart feels like a stone engraved beneath my ribs, and it hardly works anymore.

I walk over and helped my mother finish peeling the potatoes, she wipes the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. The kitchen was boiling hot, with the fireplace lit, the oven on, and the windows were clamped shut for the upcoming winter. I tore off my jacket, and then my sweater underneath it, revealing a thin dark blue, long-sleeve shirt, where I pulled up the sleeves to my elbows.

"I was hoping Conrad didn't get the kill." She admits with no remorse, "Everytime someone in this damn house kills that fucking curse with legs I'm the one that ends up suffering for it." She throws a peeled potato into the sink and runs some water over it, "Now we're going to have the whole fucking town wanting to feast at this house." There was no pride in her tone for her son who managed a difficult feat in killing Judas Sloan before anyone else. It wasn't easy, and he, Tyler and I had to wake up at two this morning just to search for the house.

Sloan Mansion, though it never moves location, always seems to be like a scavenger hunt every year. It is as if our memories are wiped every time we leave the mansion, and the next time we want to come back, we have to search for it all over again. People believe that forgetting the location is part of the curse, that nobody will be able to remember the route to the mansion, promising that no one can befriend Judas without having to search high and low through the Barlow Forest just to visit him.