Dead Witches
Three brothers: a Sheriff, a Butcher, and a pedophile Priest, control a small desert town infested with maniacal witches. Breathtaking Verna, the Butcher's wife, and Sheriff's lover, is slaughtered. Luke, the Butcher, is accused. John, the Sheriff, attempts to prove his brothers innocence and to discover who is filling the town, of Glenrock, with dead witches.
She takes out five black candles and a gold lighter, places the candles at the five points of the star, and then lights each candle, a ritual she has done a thousand time before, in a counter-clock-wise rotation while chanting, “BabaYaga appear. BabaYaga appear. Skeleton Witch appear.”
She has chanted for Luke’s death on about a hundred or more occasions, chanted for Naomi’s death, twice that number, but no luck on either’s demise. But, tonight, she is having the Coven over for “A Night of a Thousand Wishes” party, and the year-long time it took, to make her list, will be more than worth it if the first two wishes are granted by BabaYaga and maybe the number three wish to live forever as a stunning beauty and maybe wish number four; to own the James Bond Aston Martin. Die Luke. Die Naomi. Die horrible deaths, tonight. “I can wait no longer, BabaYaga! I swear I will dismantle the Coven if I don't get some action from you, tonight.”
She strips naked and steps into the center of the witches’ foot. Spinning, she repeats the chant, “BabaYaga appear! Appear to your faithful disciple Verna Dieadad. Appear! Find it in your black soul to devour my sainted husband, Luke Dieadad, tonight. And devour the bitch who stole the Coven from me and Betty Ann. I beseech you; don’t make me wait any longer!”
She had offered half the estate to her long-time lover, Sheriff John, Luke’s brother, for him to murder Luke, but after saying he would do it and getting anal intercourse as a handshake, he chickened-out. Course she had been giving him anal intercourse since she was twenty and arrested for doing Meth. The only one she has straight sex with—missionary style—started out as a Homo. Nicky Scartossi was having sex with Father Paul Dieadad, John’s and Luke’s brother, when he was fourteen. Now, Nicky is still young, gives good heterosexual sex and good gifts, and is her Meth dealer of choice.
Verna spins and admires her naked body in the distant, full-length mirror at the end of the hallway.
She will have to get another full-length mirror and put in the game room somewhere near the witches’ foot. It is the first thing she will buy with the money from her husband’s life insurance policy. The antique mirror, she covets, costs fifty-six thousand dollars. Funny, she forgot to put it on her rather lengthy wish-list.
Outside the ranch house, the sunset is silent: only the night sounds of the desert fade in and out. The ranch house is set against a fire-red mountain backdrop. The desert and the mountain are silent. The night wind stirs tumbleweed, but there is no sound. A resistant sun slides to its death behind the mountain. The house sits alone and lonely on top of a high, desert hill. There is darkness. And silence. A deep silence that is a harbinger. A harbinger of a hideous death. Not engineered by BabaYaga, but executed by a killer whose only motive is revenge. Suddenly the silence is filled with piercing screams.