Part 3
Don't eat the bad cake!

I came late to work again today. Which I suppose wasn’t totally not my fault. But I blame the trains nonetheless. I cursed them as I left the carriage and cursed them some more as I was walking to my office. Not the type of curse that my wife does, mind you. Just your average silent potty-mouthed complaints over the current state of the New South Wales public transport service. No one will die because of these curses. No trains will explode. No fat conductor will be finding pustules on his arse today.

In fact, I once did ask Astrid if she would put an actual curse on City Rail and she flatly said no and I felt guilty about asking her. Although I still don’t understand how she can kill innocent (well… sort of innocent) men on a regular basis and yet she can’t put a curse on a large faceless organisation that continually takes us to work late. I don’t understand her morals sometimes. But I love her. And she’s hot.

I miss the meeting by about 45 minutes but no one seems to notice. They must have had cake during the meeting because what’s left of it is just sitting there by the bookshelves, and I go and eat some without asking anyone about the occasion. There’s usually an occasion. There’s always an occasion, really.

And it is during the eating of said cake that I actually notice that there is no one in my team who could have noticed me missing from the meeting, or been able to answer me about the occasion question. In fact, I can’t see anyone at all. Strange. My area is completely empty.

I look around the corner and can’t see anyone. Just blocks of empty desks. I then walk a bit further around the level and I finally find one guy. Arthur. What you need to know about him is he’s 35, short, glasses, checker pants and he has an unusually large face. He’s into pots. Not pot. Pots. Not pot plants. Just pots. The ceramic kind, mind you.

‘Hey Artie,’ he likes being called that, ‘where is everyone?’

‘Oh hey man. How are you?’

‘Good Artie. Listen, where is…’

‘You wanna see my new pot?’

‘Um… listen, I’m just wondering…’

Hey, that was good cake.

‘It’s really nice,’ he says with a smile that Winnie the Pooh would be proud of. I don’t really like to talk to him for extended periods of time. Actually I don’t really know anyone who does.

He hands me the pot.

It really is nice.

It’s about the size of his head, which is to say it’s about twice the size of my own head. Short, fat and rectangular on the bottom. Mostly blue. With yellow swirls. If you rotate it, it gives the illusion that it’s moving. Swirling. Like you’re looking into a bottled vortex. It’s nice.

‘I told you it was nice.’

Almonds. Fruits. A little on the heavy side, perhaps. It’s swirling in my stomach.

‘Yeah, it is, Artie. Listen, where is everyone?’

‘Oh yeah, they’re all sick.’

‘All of them called in sick?’

‘No,’ he shakes his head. ‘They came in. Then they went home.’

‘How did they all get sick?’

‘It was the cake. Something bad in it, I think.’

I feel something coming up, all of a sudden, as if on cue. Up from the stomach. And before I know it, I’m emptying my guts into Artie’s pot.

He’s not a bad guy, that Artie. He helps me out the next five minutes or so — or maybe twenty — over a toilet emptying the rest of my guts. It feels terrible. Like having a vacuum cleaner pipe shoved up my throat. I then take some Mylanta and I go home too.

‘Are you sure you’ll be fine?’

‘Yeah. Thanks Artie. Sorry about your pot.’

‘Oh that’s alright. It’s dishwasher-safe.’

I catch a train home and it actually comes on time. This comes to me, in some perverse way, as a disappointment. The ride is also disappointingly comfortable and so I find myself with a pain in my gut but nothing else to whinge about.

By the time I’m about 3/4 of the way home, I’m feeling fine so I get off at Sydenham and catch another train. I haven’t had the chance to leave work this early for a very long time and it’s too good to waste at home.

I’m thinking about my wife, which happens to happen quite often. Usually I would be picturing her as I saw her last — waving goodbye to me in the morning, in her nice suit, before work. But more often then not, it would spiral into a series of dirty fantasies.

This time, it leads me into thinking that I haven’t bought her a present in over a month and being out early, I could come home and surprise her with something nice and make her happy (or something not so nice as is often the case with things that make her happy). So I make a trek to Newtown to the shop with the 400 year-old vampire owner (whom I suspect isn’t a vampire at all, since I’ve seen him in broad daylight and he wasn’t burning up).

It’s a tiny shop in an alleyway behind a bar that sells cocktails for half price during happy hour. It’s called Francis’ Magic ‘n’ Gifts.

Like most legit magic shops (as opposed to those that sell things like fake barf, wigs and whoopee cushions), Francis’ Magic ‘n’ Gifts has an entrance-by-invite spell, which in simple terms means that if no one has told you about it, you won’t be able to see it. It’s not that it turns invisible or anything. It’s still always there. But you’ll miss it somehow. Right there in plain sight, with its monkey heads and peacock plumes on the door. You’ll just walk right past it.

I open the door and the bell rings. Inside, it’s musty like it was the last time. The shop is tiny. Only two shelves line the walls. Everything else you want you have to ask for, and Francis gets it for you from the back room.

‘Who the hell are you?’ Francis barks.

‘Huh?’

‘How did you find this place? You’re not a magic user.’

‘How would you know?’

‘I can’t smell you. So you’re either good enough to hide yourself, which I sincerely doubt by the look of you, or you’re a non-user. Now explain yourself before I set off the traps.’

‘Look, I’ve been here before. My wife, she’s a…’

‘Ahh. The eye of newt. Economy pack.’

‘Yeah. My wife. She’s a…’

‘Next time,’ he says turning his back to me, ‘tell her to come herself for her supplies. You normal people make me nervous.’

I look around the shop. I don’t dare touch any of this stuff. There’s a head of a dwarf on the second shelf smiling at me.

‘I’m looking for a present for her actually. Do you have anything you might recommend?’

‘Hmmm…’ he seems more accommodating all of a sudden. ‘What’s she into?’

‘Um… I’m not sure.’ I’m thinking. ‘She kills a lot.’ Not sure if I should’ve said that. ‘She’s into curses and stuff, I think.’

‘Friendly girl, I take it?’

‘Oh but they’re all bad people.’

‘Yes… well… how about an orb of Orobos?’

‘What’s that?’

‘For flatulence spells.’

‘More sinister.’

‘The Dagger of Orobos?’

‘More flatulence?’

‘Exploding anus.’

‘Oh.’

I look around again on the two shelves that are there. Mostly crap really. A shrunken head, mummified hand candles. That sort of thing. Then I look up on the top shelf and I see it. It’s the pot. The same one that Arthur had today. It shimmers. The swirls almost seeming to move. I’m surprised I didn’t notice it before. Now it’s like it’s the only thing that I can see on the shelf. I can barely take my eyes off it.

‘What’s that?’ I say, pointing to the pot.

‘Ahh, that.’ He walks around the counter and, on tiptoes, grabs the pot off the shelf.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘Well it’s a place to put all the gory bits after a kill. Hearts, livers, you know…’

‘Really?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t see why not.’

‘Is it magic?’

‘Er… of course it is.’

I like it.

‘How much?’

‘Hmmm… for you, $120.’

‘$120? For this? You kidding?’

‘It’s magic.’

I reel back.

‘I can’t afford that. Do you have something else like it? But cheaper. Not magic, perhaps.’

‘OK, let me look.’

Francis takes the blue pot into the back room and I am left alone for a couple of minutes to the entertainment of some sort of mystical muzak which, as well, I never noticed was on before. I am listening to the muzak when the doormat starts talking to me.

‘Does she use her tongue?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I bet she does,’ says the doormat.

I’m about to answer but Francis walks back out with the same blue pot with the yellow swirls.

‘You have a talking doormat?’

‘Of course not,’ snaps Francis. ‘You must be nuts.’

He holds up the pot to me.

‘Here you go.’

‘It’s the same pot!’

‘Certainly not! I de-magicked it!’

‘Oh.’

‘Magic-free now. I’ll give it to you for 60.’

’20.’

’20?!’ He’s acting angry. ‘40’

’25.’

’40.’

’30.’

’40.’

’35.’

‘Look, I’m a 400-year-old vampire. You don’t want to mess with me.’

‘Speaking of which…’

’40.’

‘You’re not really, are you?’

‘Not a what?’

‘I saw you in direct sunlight, loading stuff from a van.’

‘You did not.’

‘I did.’

‘OK, so you caught me. I wasn’t a vampire then. I lied.’

‘OK. So, how about 35?’

‘But I am now. A vampire that is. I got bit last week.’ He lifts his collar to show two marks on his neck.

‘Oh give it up!’

‘Hey, you can’t prove I’m not!’

‘Go ahead and bite me then.’

He starts to move towards me. I step back and hold my hands out motioning him to stay where he is.

’40 it is then.’

‘Deal.’

_____

I walk home with the pot, unwrapped, and it’s getting dark already. Winter’s like that. I suspect she won’t be home yet. She doesn’t normally get home yet but then again, I told her this morning that I’d be working late and yet here I am.

The way from the station to my house is a lazy ten minutes long. I pass the library and the local pub. There’s also this empty carpark that is often empty despite being near a pub and a library. I imagine there must be something magical about it but I’ve never actually checked that theory out. Actually there’s probably nothing magical about it at all.

The reason I mention the carpark is that from here I can already see our house and from here I can see that the light in the bedroom upstairs is on, which is rather alarming, seeing as though my wife isn’t home. So I start running, still pot in hand. When I get to the front door, it’s locked, which means the intruder must have gotten in from the back or climbed up perhaps. My heart is racing. I’m sweating.

I unlock the door and race up the stairs. The door to the bedroom is open and the light streams out of the room like a scene from a horror movie. I can hear a fair amount of commotion in there.

When I finally get there, I see Astrid which comes as both a shock and a relief.

‘Oh.’ I say. And she’s naked and is sitting on the bed. Or kneeling. There’s some man, also naked as usual, under her.

‘You’re home? And how come you’re doing the ritual in hear and not in the basement like…’ I’m talking fast now because I am in some sort of shock or daze, whatever you want to call it.

She turns around and looks at me, startled like I’m some sort of stranger. And she covers her nakedness with the sheets and she gets up and I’m thinking ‘where’s the knife’ and that there’s an alarming lack of blood on the sheets or on her or on anywhere really. And then the guy gets up covering his bits and grabs his underwear from the foot of the bed and I notice that he’s not the least dead. Or even drunken for that matter, and suddenly I get this shiver up my spine and I break into a cold sweat and I struggle to look away. Captivated like I’m under a spell.

It takes me a long second to snap out of it and I’m feeling strangely calm. I place the pot, which I realise I’m still carrying and is now warm and wet with sweat, on the carpet and I turn around and slowly walk down the stairs. I sit on the couch and turn on the TV and watch a show with this guy in a safari suit explaining to me how the bent pyramid of Dashur was built. It’s very interesting. So much so that I don’t flinch when I hear someone skipping down the stairs and walking out the door, taking care not to make too much noise. Apparently the pyramid is bent because halfway up, they realised it was too steep to hold itself up so the engineers lessened the inclined to complete the construction.

My wife comes down the stairs now. And she sits down next to me and places a hand on my knee and calls my name softly. I take the remote and turn the TV off. I stand up and look at her and tell her that I think I might go down to the pub and have a drink and then I walk out the door and I do just that.

Part 2
Boy meets witch

She was twirling in the summer rain, out on the Library lawn. Her arms stretched out. Her head cocked back. Laughing. The sun’s rays broke the clouds and made the air smell like warm dew. As she spins around, she stumbles. Dizzy. From where I was, she looked cute. (This was, of course, quite a while before I ever saw her naked, at which point I reassessed her as more ‘hot’ than ‘cute.)

I remember I walked over to her and offered my umbrella but she just smiled. Wet. She picked up a flower from the grass and offered that to me.

‘I made this,’ she said.

‘The flower?’

‘No, silly. The rain!’

I laughed and she started laughing too, skipping away from me, still twirling. Her eyes, in moments, looked at me, smiled at me, beckoning me to join her.

I just stood there watching. Transfixed. Mesmerised. Bewitched.

I was, then, in my first year at uni. It was by pure chance that I walked past the Library lawn at that very moment. Normally, I would walk behind the library to go down to the lower campus but on that day, the rain had turned that path into a obstacle course of puddles. Chance has a way of smiling upon you when you’re not looking.

It was only much later that I would find out that she actually did make the rain come down that day. It would be even later still before I would find out that she had ritually killed a presumedly harmless and probably cute white rabbit earlier that day for the spell. And it would take her a while longer still to eventually learn that killing the rabbit had been wholly unnecessary.

This was how I met Astrid.

When eventually we got married, it was in my old church, which is actually not very old at all. Barely older than myself, really. I only say ‘old’ because it was the one I grew up with. Next to my school. Whatever I have become, for better or worse, can probably find its roots in this place. It was built in the 70s to be state of the art, which is to say it now looks unmistakeably of poor taste. Tacky is the word I’m looking for.

Both of us having no parents left on this earth, our wedding was small. Just a few friends and random well-wishers. The priest who married us (… married us… I’ve always found that to be an awkward phrasing) was father John Dougall. Father Doogie we used to lovingly call him.

This was the same priest who Baptised me. The same priest who gave me my first Holy Communion and conducted my Confirmation. And it is Father John Dougall who is at the moment looking at me like I just invited him to join me in eating a plate of gold coins.

I am, at this moment, sitting the living room of his house (is there a technical name for a priest’s house?) telling him of my recent frustration that my wife is killing too often for my liking.

‘You mean, she literally kills these men?’ he asks me with equal parts disgust and curiosity.

‘Yes Father. Lots of them.’

‘And you saw her kill each one?’

‘Well I missed one because I had a basketball game on one night, but other than that… yeah.’

He wipes some sweat off his brow and takes a sip of water.

I tell him ‘it does scare me sometimes. I mean, where is she going to draw the line? It’s something like once a month now.’

‘Have you told the police?’ he asks.

‘No. Why would I do that?’ I am surprised by his suggestion. ‘They’d just lock her up. And I can’t let her be locked up. I love my wife, Father.’

‘Well…’ my priest begins, ‘you do know the Church doesn’t condone murder, right?’

‘But it’s her thing. She doesn’t question my taking Communion. Is this any different?’

‘But you always told me she was Catholic.’

‘Me? No Father. You asked me before we were married if she went to church. And I said yes. And she did. And still does. Sure she thinks it’s all crap but she still goes to support me and well… I think I should do the same for her faith, except sometimes, well… it just gets hard.’

‘I… I don’t know what to say. I mean, Astrid always seemed like a very lovely girl, but… but frankly I’m appalled by what you’ve told me.’

‘So what do you think I should do, Father?’

‘If I weren’t a Catholic priest, I’d suggest you divorce her. But since I am… well… frankly I’d still rather you divorce her, even if you have to leave the Church.’

I laugh. That Father Doogie is such a kidder.

‘But I love her, Father. I mean, you should see her…’ I pause, cutting myself off from a potentially embarrassing and inappropriate subject matter to be talking to a priest about.

‘See her what?’

‘Never mind.’

‘Have you told her that killing will get her to Hell?’

‘But she wants to go Hell. Well maybe not really since it’s all hot and fiery and all. And apparently all that brimstone smells like fart gas but…’

‘What are you telling me?’

‘She says she wants to eventually earn some real estate in Hell. Maybe become a mistress of a small house. Serve not too far under one of the big hot shot demons.’

‘And you’re OK with this?’

‘Well you gotta admit, the girl’s got ambition.’

‘And what about when you have children?’

‘We thought we’d cross that bridge when we get to it.’

‘But… but… OK, so haven’t the police been looking for any of these men?’

‘Of course they have. The last guy was all over the papers.’

‘And you’re not afraid of getting caught?’

‘Well that’s the thing, you see, she does this cool cloaking spell to cover up each sacrifice so that no one ever sniffs our way. And any witnesses forget about what they see or hear the second they break contact with us. It’s brilliant! She will never get caught. I just think it’s all too easy and she’s beginning to lose touch with the value of human life.’

‘Of course she’s lost touch with the value of human life. She’s a homicidal maniac for God’s sakes!’

‘Did you just blaspheme, Father?’

‘I can’t handle this anymore. I can’t hear any more of this! What have you become, son? I’ve known you since you were a baby. You were always such a fine soldier of God. And now you’re married to a homicidal Satanist and helping her kill these innocent men…’

‘I don’t think Satan is one of the deities she worships but I’m not sure.’

‘… they probably have families. Wives. Kids…’

‘But I love her, Father. Please try to understand. And let’s face it, I’d say a good eighty percent of them probably came our house looking for adultery.’

‘I can’t. And I must do what’s best for you. I’m going to the police with this whether you like it or not.’

‘But you can’t, Father.’

‘Everything you’re telling me has been outside the church. Strictly speaking, this isn’t really a confession. And I feel it is my moral duty to…’

‘No. You don’t understand. That cloaking spell I told you about… well it affects you too. Anything to do with the rituals I’ve talked to you about today, you’ll forget everything the second I walk out your door.’

‘No it can’t be!’

‘Yes it can. And it is. For example, you think you’re only hearing this all for the first time. But I’ve been coming to you and talking about this every week for the past three months. And every week it’s like the first time to you.’

‘What?!’

‘I’ve been frustrated, Father. In moderation I can live with, but she’s just killing too many. Too often. Sometimes I question if she’s going to burn out too early. Too young… and sometimes I just want to go home and watch TV, you know. So I’ve been coming here every week to vent my frustrations to you. I mean, I love Astrid very much but well…’

He’s starting to cry. I hate this every time. It always ends like this.

‘Sorry Father, I won’t distress you with any more today. It’s alright. The second I leave, you’ll be fine again. I’m hoping one day I’ll tell you about all this and you’ll react… well… differently…’

I sigh. Father Doogie is still crying and he’s shaking. I get up off the armchair and find my own way out the door. He tries to chase me and stop me, crying ‘noooo!’ but he is old and slow and by the time he reaches the door, I’m out near the mailbox. I turn to face him. The pained look on his face slowly turns to confusion and then to a smile as he looks at me. He waves to me and shouts goodbye. I tell him that I’ll see him next week and he nods enthusiastically.

I walk a few metres down the road and I turn around to see his door has already closed. I then walk further down the road to Nick’s fish and chips to buy dinner. This is the shop where Father Doogie once caught me jigging school. But this was a long time ago and I’m sure he’s forgotten.

Part 1
'Honey I'm home'

The rate at which she has been bringing guys home has been alarming. It’s almost once a month now. It’s getting out of hand.

It used to be maybe once per quarter. Around the same time as when the council rates came around, my wife would bring a guy home. Random guys. They wanted anything from a cup of coffee to sex to a simple use of our telephone. But they would all invariably not get whatever it was they came for.

Tonight’s fool is young. Maybe 21 or 23. He’s small, somewhat weaselly. If you asked me for another way to describe him, I would say that he has the look of a guy in a horror movie who talks too much, smiles way too often and dies far too early.

He is shocked to see me come in. Most of them get this way. My wife is holding a glass of champagne in her hand and welcomes me home with open arms. I give her a kiss while leering at the guy. This weasel. This first-to-die-horror-movie guy.

‘Honey’, I tell her, ‘I was hoping we didn’t have to do one tonight. I was hoping to just sit on the couch and watch Desperate Housewives’.

She assures me it’ll be quick tonight.

The weasel asks her who I am. I introduce myself.

I’m the husband, dickwad.

Dickwad. It’s been my favourite phrase (would you call it a phrase?) ever since Arnie used it in Total Recall. He just brings a whole new level of meaning to anything he says.

‘You’re married?!’

‘Oh like you didn’t know’, she says. ‘I didn’t even take off my ring, she says’.

‘But I thought…’ says the weasel.

‘He’ll just watch. Won’t you honey?’

I’m silent and peeling a banana. I don’t like this. Never have. Of course she never pretended to be anything other than what she is. I knew she was a witch when I married her. Knew she was one while we were still just dating. I love her. I really do. With all my heart. I don’t much care for the whole black arts thing. But it could have been worse. She could have been an accountant.

I just want to get on with it tonight. She asks him if he still wants to do this and he says yes. More often then not, they get weirded out and want to leave, so then I’d have to grab the baseball bat and club them over the head. This guy, though, is willing. And he seems groggy. She must have used the elixir of hallucinogenic stupor. That’s a good one.

Orange juice, a sprig of fennel and the bile of a pregnant turtle.

She leads him by the hand down the steps to our basement. He’s mumbling stuff I don’t understand and she keeps telling him yes. Yes. Yes. Sure. Soon. And so on.

I follow them down. She tells him to get on the altar but he’s too far gone to get himself up there. I help him up.

This is the stone altar that I got her for Christmas even though, of course, she doesn’t believe in Christmas. Her old one was wooden and it was starting to wobble a bit. So I got her this stone one. Doesn’t stain, the guy says. One wipe and all bodily fluids are gone. She loved it. Best damn present I ever gave her. Not like the time I got her a giant economy jar of eye of newt. I thought it would be a great present. Witches. Eye of newt. So I went all the way to this magic shop, whose owner was rumoured to be a 400-year-old vampyr (although I did see him in broad daylight unloading a box of six-fingered mummified hand candles off the back of a van, but that’s another story), and he got me a good deal on a three-litre jar. Anyway, when she got it, she gave me this very disappointed look and didn’t talk much to me for three days or so.

What? Is it because it’s an economy jar?!

That wasn’t it. Apparently, getting a witch eye of newt is like giving a serious classical pianist a Richard Clayderman CD.

He’s on his back on the altar and she’s taking off his clothes. I hate this part. Why does it have to involve nudity? My wife, a guy and nudity. He’s even more gone by now and is giggling. I’m just standing there watching. I yawn.

Dear, can you go up and bring me the statue of Baphomet?

Sure thing. And I get up the steps and go the display case. There are seven different statues for seven different deities in here. I’ve asked why she has to have seven deities in her display case. She says it’s because she has no room to fit eight.

I pick up Baphomet. It’s heavier than it looks. Stone, I think. It’s ugly. Kind of like a man-fish thing. As I’m walking, I’m carrying it some distance away in my outstretched arms as if it were a baby that needed a nappy change.

Downstairs, she’s already naked herself and I look at her. She’s hot. And it hits me every time. No matter how often I’ve seen her naked. I remember the first time I saw her naked I was thinking, ‘she’s hot.’ I’m having a brief moment with myself while I’m looking at her right now.

His hands start to grab at her. He’s still giggling. I really hate this part. Even worse than the last part. Every time. Why can’t she just tie their hands up? I’ve brought this up with her before but she would just gives me the ‘How the hell can you get jealous of a guy I’m about to sacrifice to a demon’ argument and I just end up shrugging my shoulders and turning on the TV. She’s right. How can I argue with that?

So now I’m holding up the statue above my head and she’s raised the beautiful gold-hilted and diamond-encrusted ceremonial dagger above her head and the weasel is still grabbing at her breasts. She lifts her head to look at the statue, then lowers the blade, sighs and drops both her shoulders.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘What have you got there?’

‘Baphomet?’

‘No. What does that look like?’

‘Baphomet?’

‘No. What does it look like?’

‘Er… a fish?’

‘Yes. A fish. Now do we remember which one looks like a fish?’

‘Baphomet?’

‘No. Try again?’

‘Um…’

‘It’s Dagon. You’re holding Dagon. I asked for Baphomet. I’m doing a head-pop spell. I need Baphomet.’

‘So which one is it?’

‘Try to remember.’

‘The fat guy with the big head?’

‘No. That’s Baal.’

‘The big guy with the fat head?’

‘No. Oh, for crying out loud!’

‘OK, OK, is it the goat guy with the breast?’

‘Yes, it’s the goat guy with the breasts! Can you at least pretend to take some interest in what’s important to me?’

‘Give me a break! I try, OK?’

‘You try? You mean like the time you got me the newt eyes?’

‘Will you let that go, already? Come on! I said I was sorry!’

‘Just bring me the damn idol!’

‘Hey! Dickwad! Stop touching my wife’s breasts!’

‘He can’t hear you! Now hurry up with the idol. The elixir of hallucinogenic stupor is wearing off. I’ll have to start the blood-letting without the statue.’

‘OK, OK!’

I turn around and march back up. I don’t like it when she uses that tone with me. I go back and put Fish-face back in the display case and get the androgynous goat with the titties. On the way back I am momentarily distracted by the television where Desperate Housewives is playing. Susan has tripped over something or other again like she does in every episode. And the plumber is laughing. I think he’s an FBI agent.

I then hear the screams from the basement. She’s made the first cut. Time to go back down, I guess. I’m not in the mood but I go anyway. All this for just a head-pop spell. I’ve seen this spell before. For her to be doing one must mean someone pissed her off at work today.

But anyone would know that a human sacrifice for a head-pop spell is overkill. So someone must have really really pissed her off at work today.

The spell is elegant in design. What it does is it plants a seed in the head of the target individual that, in time, will cause his or her head to spontaneously explode. The only problem is that the seed has an incubation period of 40 years. The last time she did it was to her boss. And he was 45 years old. So he would have to live to 85 for his head to explode. She has been telling him to eat healthy and exercise often ever since. Suffice to say, the spell was originally intended to be inflicted upon annoying kids and babies who refused to stop crying. The only reason people use it is because it is one of the simplest of the culling spells to do. A more potent, but less stable, and infinitely more complicated hybrid of this spell is called the head-obliterate spell. Here, the seed only has a 22-day incubation period but is unstable in that, if done wrongly, there’s a small (but present) chance that the spellcaster’s head would explode as well.

I’m downstairs again and she’s covered in splashes of blood now. All over her head and chest. I hate this bit too. At least as much as, if not more than, the other bits. The weasel is convulsing and blood is bubbling though his mouth and nose. It’s not a pretty sight. I hold Baphomet up and she starts the spell. It’s in Latin. She repeats the spell over and over until the sacrifice dies.

But he’s not dying yet. Ten minutes later and he still flops around

‘Are you sure you got his heart?’

‘Yes I’m sure.’

‘Well, it’s not that I’m telling you how to do your thing, but… um… well… they don’t usually convulse as much and they die faster than this.’

‘You think?’

‘Maybe you can give him another poke. With the dagger, I mean. Just to be sure.’

So she does. And I was right. The weasel dies a few moments after the extra stab. She stops the chanting and puts the dagger down.

‘Can I put it down now?’ I asked, referring to the idol statue.

‘Sure. Thanks hon. You can go back up now. I’ll just clean up here and I’ll let you know when I’m done.’

I go back up the steps and watch the ending of Desperate Housewives, except that I don’t really understand what’s going on. Mr Solis is arrested. Why is he being arrested?

‘I’m gonna take a shower now’, calls my wife from the echo of the bathroom.

The show is over and I’m still not too sure what happened. I turn the TV off and I go back down to the basement, grab my shovel and the black bag, and drag it out of the house to the backyard.

My neighbour, old Mr Spence, who, on account of our very low fences can see me from his back porch, waves hello. I stop walking, look to him, and smile.

‘Howdy neighbour.’

‘Howdy Mr Spence. Nice evening.’

‘Yes it is. Now is that a big bag of fertiliser you’re dragging there?’

‘Why yes it is, Mr Spence. It’s an economy pack. Just doing a spot of gardening on such a fine evening.’

‘Well happy gardening to you.’

‘And you have a good night Mr Spence.’

‘You too, young lad.’

I remain unmoved. Still smiling.

‘Well perhaps I best be getting in the house now. It’s getting chilly.’

‘Well goodnight Mr Spence.’

And Mr Spence walks into his house, leaving me to do my spot of gardening underneath a bright new moon and a fairly minor stellar alignment on the Pagan calendar.