witches

Beatrice sniffs the air uneasily, unsure of herself in a way that she once vowed she would never be. Something has changed, something has shifted within her home's generous confines, and she hasn't the slightest idea what. An absence in the air; a lack of smell and noise.

"Cinnamon," she calls, "I need your eyes."

"I heard that there's a new dollmaker moving into town."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, they're setting up at the old mushroom farm. Everyone in the market was buzzing about it."

"Who?"

"One of the big corporate ones, I think—"

With the click of a button the room fills with the mournful sounds of a funerary dirge, a piano's mournful notes weaving through droning prayers and grief-filled tears. The music drips down the cold stone walls and across the marble slab—

"Ugh, it's so cold in here ..."

The body on the slab shifts just enough to stare at its companion. She's shivering in a lacy black dress and mourning veil, nipples hard and skin goosebumped.

"It's a crypt. Of course it's cold."

Pain attends her even in her dreams, a writhing tapestry thrown all across her dreamscape—buried in scraps of imagery, hidden in the shattered rooms of her failing dreams, and nestled all about her not-body. Stranger than in her waking hours, both more and less urgent—

But when dreams end the pain remains.

She groans as she wakes, feeling the knots curling through her back and the bundles of unoiled needles flexing in her joints; her elbows burn and her knees scream and hungry-mouthed snakes curl in her thighs and all through her belly—

As she stumbles to her feet she wishes once again that the pain would remain in her bed, like it did for so many years. If only the hint of motion was enough to scare it off, to ward it away—but all motion does is coax out the painful needles of her slowly waking extremities.

"Are you sure this is okay, Miss?"

"Of course it is. Get that lock open."

Doll's fingers, long and fine as needles, dip inside the keyhole once again. She fancies that she can hear the house shudder as she massages its pins, and it's hardly a moment before the door clicks open. Behind her she feels her witch's smile: a vast gash cut into the night's fabric, teeth dripping with the moon's pale blood. Its empty eyes gaze hungrily past her from the sleepy suburban street's every shadow, and Doll thanks her lucky stars that no one's awake to see it.

"Call me Ishmael" the doll said, though its path had never led it to the ocean and it had little regard for water. It thought that it was clever even so, and Ishmael was a better name than the one its witch had given it when he stitched its wings.

Ish (which was what the other dolls called it, and which it held was because they had no flare for the dramatic) was a aeronaut aboard the great ⸢Remembrance of Her Unwilling Blessing⸥. A sky-ship one hundred and sixteen meters from bow to stern, with a wingspan thrice that! The culmination of a witch's craft, powered by banks of witchwork hearts driving it forward and pumping reality away with their every bone-shuddering beat! Vast and powerful, held together only through the unceasing effort of a dozen lobotomized witch-houses ...

The ground is warm beneath Doll's back as she lies in the fire's ruins, its erstwhile host's half-frozen blood splattered all around her. Her skin is pristine; her witch's wrath was careful when that pitiful storyteller finally turned its teeth on her.

She enjoys the warmth with the same sad hunger as she might regard her last meal before execution, were she a thing which could die. There's precious little of it left in the world, and the false-sun's baleful eye leeches more away with each passing day.

It's finally quiet.

Doll stumbles as she rushes home, one fine little foot caught in the cracked sidewalk, stone-teeth gnawing at protective leather. Her bag's too heavy today, rattling and clanking against her bruised hip; each step brings a fresh gasp of pain to her tightly sealed lips. Oh, if only she didn't have to hurry, if only she could take her time—!

But the sun's grasping rim is already teasing against the horizon, so far off across the sea that Doll's eyes can barely see the superheated steam which always veils those nightly indulgences; the sea is reaching up towards it and every clock in the city is about to chime out out the 19th hour's song and there's no time held in wait for her belated need.

When doll slips from the confines of her bed-box and stumbles downstairs, there's an odd rectangle waiting at the table: a folded sheet of thick, creamy paper. It's for her, obviously—why else would her miss have put it there, next to her oatmeal and tea?

But doll isn't sure.

"Miss, what's this?"

⌈Cartɘr & Abɘl—ruining witchɘs' days sincɘ 629⌋

It's a cute sign. Done in marker on cardboard, sure, rather than paint on wood, but there's something almost charming about that to Arlene's weary eyes.

Pity that building it's affixed to is such a disaster.