The cast-iron cauldron was as black as the mold on the moustache of the corpse, the man who double-crossed the double-dealing witch, the two-faced whore he had called her. She did his tarot reading, and he didn’t like the look of the Death card—well, it turned out to be accurate. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy when he kicked the witch’s cat, a tom who was not black, but fluffy and beige. The cat flew out the closed cottage window, glass shards and mullion splinters pincushioning its creamy hide. Decorum flew out the window, landing in the mud. The kick proved to be the death of the cat. It was the death of the man, too, when the witch bound his wrists to the bedposts with human hair, force-feeding him tarantula fritters and belladonna pie. The runes she carved in his belly welled up in the white dough of his flesh; his navel flooded with blood.
The second card drawn from the deck revealed the Nine of Cups. And why not? There was one cup, but it was filled nine times with rich Moldovan wine. Drained and savored, numbing adequately. She buried her cat, the tom who was named Tom, and seeded the earth with black magic hollyhock. In time, the flowers would grow to the height of a man. They would be tall, dark, and handsome.
The third card was the Three of Wands, but the witch was too drunk to decipher its meaning. The words and pictures became blurred, but she knew the deck by heart and determined which one she had drawn. She recalled the handsome magician she had watched perform as a child—his tapered wand and the rabbit he had pulled out of his deep purple hat with yellow stars. The rabbit had Mars-red eyes, white as an albino in a snowstorm. Held by its ears, it opened its mouth as if to scream, but like a fish out of water, its distress was silent. The magician took his wand and neatly cut the rabbit into three. There was no blood, no mess on the floor, only three perfect portions of rabbit. After the show, the magician led the young witch by the hand. He promised to show her some real magic. He did more than show her—he let her be his magician’s assistant. He waved his magic wand. The witch did not split into three as the rabbit had, but she felt like she had. As the magician got dressed, the witch picked up his wand and speared him in the spleen. His eyes went as wide as fried eggs, black as a Magic 8 Ball. She cut him into three perfect pieces—nice and neat—not a drop of red blood on the white carpet in the green room. She rolled up the strips of his body like delicate vellum scrolls, tied them with a single long hair growing from a black mole on her chin, and dropped them into the chasm of his purple hat, where, one by one, they were lost to the void.
-- James Callan has published stories in Five on the Fifth, X-R-A-Y, Hobart, trampset, Reckon Review, and elsewhere. He lives and writes in Aotearoa New Zealand.
