Aura Asunder | Volume One
Chapter One
By Ophelia Everfall
Content Warning: This is adult fiction.
Janet Meadows held the lead. She was faster than her class. She was the best of them all in her mind and would see it proven over again. Buoyed boys would fall to speed misunderstood by how she’d been perceived.
She’d win races. Escape was her specialty.
Nightfall would show a reflection of her seen to all in the light. She was a vandal. She’d been a terror behind the smile. Janet was good at lying.
Her knuckles were bloody and the stain on her shorts a fear she’d regret to leave unacknowledged. Mother dearest would be a prowler. That fiend would steep in her daughter’s business as if it her own. The woman of intellect besmirching herself beside a man most dull would look down upon her daughter’s constant witness of this folly in choice which bore her forth to live, she wouldn’t understand the lying a creation of her own design, how her hovering psychopathy would bear fruits of needed deception.
Janet was a witch.
Chain-link was her home—cash the treasure sought but never found—trinkets collected would be seen as more than they were—holding them brought her to feel power over others, exactly how she knew some right. The cellphone was locked and she’d tossed it in her neighbor’s trashcan.
Failures unseen would catch up with her often. Mother would know and Janet would see them some witch themself but of darkest visage—’the demon queen of hell.’
Night was far from over as her own phone rang.
Squirrel was calling and she’d never let him down. He was in love with Janet and she didn’t care but it was sweet and nobody else liked her so she’d take it. He had trampoline as well.
He was fat and she thought it funny to watch him try and keep up with her. Her choice in accomplice was a failure in ways to them both. She’d force him to take part in her schemes of which he’d have no natural place and he’d ensure they failed.
She’d dragged him from sleep by taps of the window and a whisper-shouted demand.
“Come on, dude.”
His immediate delay had drawn from the posterior, “Hurry up you fat dyke!”
The body and his rump would see her through darkest days by the occlusion of the rest of his form by rawest mind force. She’d want a girl but crave a boy but draw them not and find this one repulsive except for the way his ass might seem like a woman’s if you looked at it just right.
Becca had been her friend once. Something dark happened. She wouldn’t speak of it. Becca was trying not to remember.
Janet lost Squirrel in the center of town. He’d made that grunting sound which she knew meant his heart would be giving out soon and he would try to stop and make her feel bad about it. Squirrel had no right in Janet’s estimation.
Cold air of night was better alone.
Her graveyard was place of worship to herself and god and goddess and her friends. None would join her this eve, but she’d found a place for herself and the favorite spirit of her long-lost cousin. It was only thoughts which carried indecency such at this which roiled notions of excitement for Janet. Something wrong always felt right.
Shouts drew specters. She’d opened herself to more. Janet hadn’t known it. For times to come she’d think herself mad, possessed, become of controlling forces for punishment of only this.
She’d risen to air. Something crackling around and beneath but mostly within.
Tortured visions of pain and suffering through Chesapeake County would bring her eyes to golden hope of justice seeking despite her station—some answer to the why behind her training amongst her brethren by way of shadows—choice made in the moment to deny those floating feathers of wisp she’d see ever forward.
Lightning had become the girl. The woman to be would hold it inside. Time to come would show the way to sling it at evil and all of this place would know her and the sisters she’d raise to formation around her as the witches of justice they were born to be.
Janet Meadows was an evil bitch and a punk and a mopey whiner who didn’t see how cool it was they were themself. The people of Carlton weren’t like those others she’d make to find power themself.
Moonlight told a tale of judgement, and it was heard by plainest understanding in the field around her—Becca would be first.
Leaves in the schoolyard crunched beneath her sneakers tied conspicuously tightly. Janet appeared to have showered as well. Something was afoot.
She’d dreamed of pterodactyls again and knew it meant profound things would be coming in the day to follow. They’d been with her most often through life—she’d believed them her appropriative ‘spirit animal.’
Blackbirds cawed in the schoolground’s treetops as she made her approach. Becca was unaware.
Janet employed Squirrel to run a diversionary tactic of precise action. He’d not relented to accept until Janet wrung it through threats and punches and eyes then ‘nurps.’
Boys would break at the breast.
He’d streaked topless through the courtyard to gain all attention away from that picnic of friends in which she’d have no other conceived means to include herself, preventing Becca from scurrying immediately when they spotted anything remotely her shape in the ever-scoped and surrounding five-hundred yards.
She’d finally done it. Janet touched her again. It was electric. They’d felt it too.
Becca’s scream was proof of something changing within. She was lost to the change which Janet knew would take time but plant seeds of remembrance, drawing them back to that once she’d gotten them drunk.
Janet saw that they were becoming a witch too. She knew it would bring them back together one day.
Police had come to end the scene with an escort home from Janet’s oppressors all. Teddy was sweeter than normal because Becca was involved. He knew the lore well.
She’d see herself in reflection of his cruiser’s rear port-hole pane of hardened plexiglass. She felt her power boiling ever hotter. She knew herself special and one with nature of spirit. She knew them all wrong about something crucial—these sickened people.
“Fuck this place.”
Janet said it much but believed it not. Until this moment where the world of appearance was burning around her and she felt most right. Where everyone would tell her that wrong. When gods and spirits would seem to speak through to her mind and ask for action unplanned. When she’d answer.
She knew it. Even if they wouldn’t show it yet. Even if it would take the witnessing of her own teeth and the shouting of her voice and the terror of her designs wrought; the rising of her sisters known by feeling. Deepest down—everyone loved a witch.
