All stories

Squirming, worming, wriggling. Deep in the murk and the mire. How long had I been here? The pool was too deep for light to enter. Day or night or rain or shine, it was all the same. Why the witch had left me my sentience in this loathsome scaled body, only cruelty and deep, dark hatred could explain.

Even if my eyes could adjust to the environment, I had a horrible feeling the witch had blinded me. But What difference did it make? I’m going no-where. Please god let her have given me an invertebrate bottom feeder lifespan, at least… not that I was sure what that might be…

Lesson learnt though - don’t cross a witch.

It had started so innocently… I just wanted a love potion. But she had gone on and on about how fragile is love and how real love can’t be conjured. Like I don’t know about real love? Every time I see her my heart jumps into my mouth, my stomach turns into a million butterflies, and my member swells to an inconvenient size.

So I took her cat.

I didn’t mean to hurt it, but the bloody thing just scratched and fought and bit like, well, like an angry cat I suppose. In my efforts to restrain it I had broken its neck!

I tried to hide it… I placed the body on the road and watched as a cart ran it down. But she KNEW. How did she know, she was a witch… Not God.

That night, Sophie came to me. Her lips full and red, her eyes dreamy with love and lust, for me! I welcomed her into my arms, kissing her lips and stroking her lustrous hair. Maybe the witch had decided I deserved my love potion after all.

I wrapped myself around her soft body, unable to believe that my dream had finally come true. And she welcomed me into herself. It was all I had ever dreamt of, warm, soft, wet, and welcoming. I thrust once, twice, three times!

Congratulating myself for my performance, I exploded into her, and her face transformed into that of the cackling hag! I pushed her from me and she leapt to her feet, rage emanating from the tips of her pointy boots to the pimpled great wart on the end of her nose. The air thickened,swirling purple clouds of pure vengeance surrounding us both as she summoned the forces of darkness and directed them at my prone, naked, sweat drenched form.

I felt my skin compressing my organs, my limbs shrinking, bones cracking and splintering in agonising slowness, my body depleting to this tiny, useless form. The last thing I saw was her haggard, wrinkly hand reaching towards me.

And now… here I am. For how long? Forever, I guess, whatever forever may be for me.

Five forlorn faces stood on the fence looking down at their ball in the long grass. Barney’s stomach turned with guilt and fear, it was his clod-footed shot that caused this and he could already feel eyes turned on him to fix it.

‘I’m not going!’ he said without turning.

The expectation remained silently in place.

‘I’ll get a new ball tomorrow.’

‘What about the rest of today?’

‘Guys,’ Barney turned now. ‘Don’t make me.’

They all knew why he didn’t want to go in because they wouldn’t either. They couldn’t say it though, they were ten years old. They couldn’t believe in that stuff anymore. Except they did.

This was the Puddle Witch’s house.

The lawn was unmown, the bushes untrimmed, and the windows were broken. The outside of the old fence was ok to climb up, but the thorny bushes inside stopped anyone from going over. The only way in was through the front gates, but that was where the puddle was

The road dipped at the front and created a permanent puddle. Even in the summer, even after weeks of sunshine, it never went away. The story was that it was a trap, a bottomless pool put there by the witch inside the house. Nobody who went in, ever came out.

‘Get the ball, Barney.’

‘No!’

‘Get. The. Ball. Barney.’

He wanted to protest, but there was no point. The rules were clear, you kicked it, you fetched it. He’d have to leave the gang if he didn’t. He’d probably have to change schools. Barney climbed down from the fence.

The walk to where the puddle began was the longest of Barney’s life, which he now had to accept might be coming to its end. As he approached the gate, he had an idea. His heart leapt a little with hope. He didn’t need to stand in the puddle. The edge of the gate wasn’t quite in the water, if he could climb onto it and shuffle his way along he might just be able to swing it open and ride the iron rungs to the safety of the dry land inside.

Barney placed his right foot on the metal and grabbed the top of the gate with both hands. The other boys, still standing on the fence, saw what he was doing and held their breath as he jumped. It worked! Slowly, he edged his way along to the centre where he could undo the clasp and release the gate ready to swing. He was fully over the puddle now. His heart was beating so hard he could hear nothing else. Barney reached for the clasp but missed, a foot slid beneath him and all was lost. In what seemed like slow-motion, four boys watched their friend tumble backwards into the black waters of the witch’s puddle and, with a horrendous splash, he disappeared beneath.

There was a silence that seemed to last an hour.

Then, in a moment, everything changed. A soggy Barney sat up in the puddle and began shaking murky water from himself like a dog.

It took less than half a second for the dots to connect inside the boys’ heads and the laughter to begin. It took the rest of summer for it to end.

Danial’s tummy was roiling inside as he gritted his teeth against the dark and the swarming biting insects and the pitch black going underfoot that threatened to make each step an ankle breaker. All his real friends were tucked up safe and warm inside their computers, and where was he? Climbing some stupid mountain in the dark because the cool kids had asked him.

But this was better, right? Now he was accepted. Now he was no longer gay because he wouldn’t let Ian copy his math homework, and nor was he screaming faggot because he’d gone into the changing rooms at just that precise moment when Duncan was doing his nude strut to the showers.

There were seven of them climbing that dark mountainside with their beers and their cigarettes and their inappropriate footwear. It was crazy – beers and night-time swimming, how could that ever end well? The grouped crested the hill and emerged from the dark of the trees upon the shore of the pool lit by moonlight. Everyone began to whoop and holler. Beers were cracked and spilled and drunk. Teenage boys pranced and threw cans, and through it all Danial could only stare at the pool of water and think of the horror stories he had of idiot teens taking night-time dips in bottomless pools.

Duncan tore off his t-shirt and tossed it aside. ‘It’s swim time. Who’s up for it?’

Everyone began to shed their clothes, but Danial shook his head, and muttered that he didn’t have a costume. Duncan began to laugh. ‘Who needs costumes? It’s all guys together.’

Beer cans were drained then crushed, and then the naked mass of youth began the charge for the water. Danial risked a look up from the ground. Duncan had not run into the water. He posed, full frontal in the moonlight, hands on his hips.

‘Knew I was right about you, poof.’ He began to gyrate his hips languidly. ‘Good enough look yet?’

Danial sat down on the shore and Duncan ran into the water. Danial smiled a tiny bit as he thought of his too late comeback – you’re swimming naked with a bunch of dudes and you’re calling me gay?

He listened to their shouts and hollers, and all their bro calls.

Daniel’s mouth crooked into a smile.

Losers they were, all of them, with their daddy’s cars and their back of the class what the hell do I need to study attitude.

Well. They were finding out, for there was a witch who lurked in the depths of this devil’s pool, but not a witch of crooked finger and evil eyes was she. He wondered if it would come back to them, when they were lying in their hospital beds, that geography lesson when Mrs Richards lectured them long and hard about the limestone that leached into the mountain pools and turned them alkali. Like swimming in bleach, she said.