Aura Asunder | Volume One | Chapter One
the first volume of Aura Asunder
Aura Asunder | Volume One
Chapter One
By Ophelia Everfall
Content Warning
Janet Meadows held leads. She was faster than all her class. She’d been the best of them, in her mind, and would see that proven over again.
Buoyed boys would fall to speeds misunderstood. How she had been perceived was less than complete. Girlhood shrouded Janet’s mean streaking. Brutality was her game — just beneath a well cultivated, superfluous layer of cutesiness — people’s general acceptance of the farce would prove her ownership over everyone holistic.
She knew herself made of more. Janet won races. Escape was her specialty.
Nightfall would show reflections that went unwitnessed to all borne of the light. Janet was the vandal — that answer to every riddle. She’d hide terror behind her smile. She was very good at lying.
Knuckles dripped blood, and the stain upon her shorts was a fear she’d regret leaving unacknowledged. Mother Dearest had proven the prowler, always, peering from windows, creeping into her bedroom for intelligence-gathering operations.
Janet wouldn’t have time to worry about that, not when so become-the-bat of night terrors avoided.
Fiendish matriarch — was that woman steeping in her daughter’s business as if their own, intellect besmirching itself beside a man most dull, projecting distrust, chastising her daughter’s constant witness of that very folly-of-choice which bore them forth towards life. Mother wouldn’t understand the lying creation of her own design, how that 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 were seen always as more than they were — holding them grip-tightly brought Janet to feel power over others, exactly how she knew some right. That stolen cellphone was locked, and she’d tossed it in her neighbor’s trashcan.
Failures unseen would catch up with her often. Mother would know things-impossible, and Janet believed them a witch themself, up to no good in the latest hours, ever seeking some blame to cast.
Night was far from over as Janet’s phone rang.
No matter the origin, Squirrel was calling by heart, and she’d never let him down. He was in love with Janet. She didn’t care, but that was sweet, and nobody else liked her, so, she’d take it. He did have a trampoline as well.
Squirrel was a fat one. Janet thought that amusing, saw it funny, to know he wished for keeping up proved that endless-laugh of her teenage years. Choices of accomplice were failures to them both. Janet forced him towards taking part in her schemes, of which he’d no natural place, and Squirrel seemed quite destined towards ensuring their complete failure on the regular.
That tree in his front yard was near-unclimbable to your average citizen, especially other girls, but Janet would prove that their projection of false judgement, in herself, and every time. Fighting those straw-selves in her head would keep Janet striving towards excellence that went unwitnessed by all.
She’d been tapping his window for a time, before slamming the broadside of a fist over-and-over, while blowing her cheeks wide on the windowpane. Squirrel was a heavy sleeper, so Janet eventually opened the window. It led her to releasing those whisper-shouted demands part-heard.
“Come on, dude!”
Squirrel was half asleep, rolling over, moaning.
Immediate delays drew Janet’s rage, “Hurry up—fat dyke!”
That boy and his rump had seen her through darkest days, by raw-will-powered occlusion towards the rest of his form, Janet’s ultimate force of mindful chastity. She’d want a girl but crave a boy to draw them not and find the one she chose repulsive, except that way his ass might seem like a woman’s if you looked 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 been making that grunting sound, which she knew meant his heart would be giving out soon, and he’d try to stop, flailing with paltry attempts-of-wheeze, trying so hard to make her feel bad about it.
Squirrel had no right by Janet’s estimation.
The cold air of night tasted better alone.
Her graveyard was place of worship, to herself, God and Goddess, also her friends. None would join her that eve, but Janet found a place for herself beside the favorite spirit of her long-lost cousin. Only thoughts which carried indecency, and profoundly so, would roil notions of excitement for Janet. Something wrong always felt right.
Shouts drew specters. She’d opened herself to more. Janet hadn’t known it then, but for times to come she’d think herself mad, possessed, become by controlling forces of punishments for only the act performed right then.
She’d risen into air. Something crackling around and beneath, but mostly within. Vibrations were changing Janet, expelling all regard for limitations, to flow with grace of some river-wild.
Tortured visions of pain and suffering through Chesapeake County would bring her eyes towards golden hopes of glory seeking, despite her station, some answer to the why behind her self-led training provided therein, amongst her brethren, and by way of shadows. There was a choice made in the moment to deny those floating feathers-of-wisp she’d see ever forward.
Lightning had become the girl.
That growing woman, her maturity to never quite be, would hold it all inside. Times to come would show the way, slinging her newfound powers at evil, and all of this place would know. Her and the sisters she’d raise into formation surrounding, would become the witches of justice they were born to be.
Janet Meadows was a bitch, the punk, and also a mopey whiner who couldn’t see how cool it was they were more themself than anyone else.
Moonlight told tales of judgement, and that was heard by plainest understanding from the field around her — Becca would be first.
Leaves in the schoolyard crunched beneath Janet’s sneakers, tied conspicuously-tight, appearing to have showered as well. Something was clearly afoot.
She’d dreamed of pterodactyls again, and knew that meant profound things, as always, for those days to follow such connection with the divine-Jurassic. They’d been with her most often through life — Janet believed them her appropriative spirit-dinosaur — right next to the Ankylosaurus.
Blackbirds cawed in the schoolground’s treetops as she made her approach. Becca was unaware.
Janet employed Squirrel for running a diversionary tactic of precise action. He’d not relented towards acceptance until Janet wrung it out by threats, punches, mean-eyes, then one precisely-placed purple nurple.
Boys broke at the breast.
Squirrel streaked topless through the courtyard to gain attention, eyes-all were drawn away within that picnic of friends. The very same which Janet would have no other conceived means for including herself, at least while preventing Becca from scurrying away immediately. She made a habit of ducking-out after spotting anything remotely Janet’s shape in the ever-scoped, surrounding five-hundred yards.
Finally — it happened.
Janet touched Becca again. It was electric. They’d felt it too.
Becca’s scream was proof of something changing within. Janet knew it would take time, but how she’d planted seeds for remembrance felt profound, drawing Becca back towards her no-doubt, and no matter that once she’d gotten them drunk.
Janet could see how 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, proving the world full of Janet’s oppressors-all. Teddy was sweeter than normal because Becca was involved again. He’d known Janet’s personal lore quite well.
Watching herself in reflection of his cruiser’s rear-pane of hardened plexiglass, she felt that power boiling ever hotter. Janet understood herself something special, and one with the nature of her spirit.
She knew them all wrong about something crucial — those wicked people of Carlton.
“Fuck this place.”
Janet said that much but believed it not. Until the moment her world of appearances was burning around, and she felt honorable to fight against her community so out-of-touch with what she’d really needed — when everyone would call her wrong — when gods and spirits would seem to speak through, into her mind, and call for actions unplanned — when she answered.
She’d realized it then. Even if no one showed it yet. Even if it would take the witnessing of her own grit-teeth, that shouting from her loudest voice, and those terrors of her designs being brought to fruition. The people Chesapeake County would recognize how special she was.
They’d get over it.
Deepest down — everyone loved a witch.
