Dear Great Witch Madge,
It was great seeing you at the last Witch & a Steak barbecue. Those kababs you made were insane. Sadly, I am not writing today to ask you for the recipe. I am writing you personally, because I am at my wit’s end as what to do with one of our witches at Coven Edgewood. She has such a bright future in front of her, the most potential of the lot. I am hoping you can help me find an off-the-spell-books kind of solution to this—situation.
It is Witch Lucille—the one who made the s’mores casserole at the last solstice. She seems to have gotten herself into quite the pickle. I don’t know how to get her out of it because she won’t recognize she’s in one. Oh Satin, I know what you’re thinking, GW Madge. How did I let it get this far? I’m a Lead Witch after all. These are grown women. They are accomplished in both their studies at the Coven and their professions in human society. We meet as a coven at least twice a week and almost everyone is in touch or meeting with someone or other daily. We are tight knit, but not over-bearing, is what I suppose I am trying to say. It is impossible, and inappropriate, to keep up with the details of every witch’s romantic life. Yes, I know what you’re thinking—it does if it involves magic—magic enough to be writing a letter like this. Especially the magic that Witch Lucille has been wielding. It is impressive, after it is tragic, kind of despicable, surely romantic, and definitely bonkers.
I’m talking in circles and I haven’t even spelled it out for you. I’ll get right down to it. From what I have gathered, Lucille developed feelings for another professor at the college. He mirrored these feelings, but they kept things professional. Until they didn’t. One day, Lucille told another witch in the coven that she and the professor had had it out in the copier room that day. All that sexual tension exploded. Lucille was ecstatic. She said they went to a diner after and ate breakfast for dinner and talked for hours. Eventually he had to go home. The thing is, he has a wife and two children with obtuse names that I don’t care to remember. Lucille said she didn’t care. She didn’t mind being the other woman. She loved the freedom it afforded her. He kissed her goodbye at the diner, winked, and said he would see her at the staff meeting the next day.
Only, the next day, there was no professor lover at the meeting. Didn’t even call in. Not answering his phone. His TA offered to drive by the professor’s house because he was going to miss his first class soon. Low and behold there was the professor, naked, screaming, crying, and pulling his hair out on his front lawn. His wife was throwing his clothes out of the window. The TA called Lucille, as she had asked him to, and told her what he was able to glean from all the shouting. The professor had told his wife. Flat out told her everything. When he came home, he woke his wife up, told her what he’d done, and vomited hash-browns right there on the floor in front of her. Can you believe that? I still can’t. Oh Satin, take me now. Lucille’s closest buds in the coven kept it quiet, and honestly, I would have done the same. At that point it was more embarrassing than anything else. And despite that guy’s marriage and family imploding, all would have been fine here in Coven Edgewood. If Witch Lucille had kept her fucking wand out of it.
She felt guilty, she said, over the chain of events she had helped set in motion. She wanted to do something. What does she do? She thinks no problem I got this, hauls ass over to the guy’s house and finds the scene still on its messy loop. She can see the children through the living room window watching Bambi and crying their eyes out. She didn’t know if it was because their parents were screaming or if it was the part in the movie where Bambi’s mother dies. These people, I know. I don’t support mixing with their kind, but I can’t denounce it openly. You yourself helped write the guidelines. Lucille was feeling like a wreck, so she thought let me fix this right up and boom she wiped everyone’s memory. Without approval might I add. She even used a spell I taught her. She pushed the groggy TA into the backseat of his car where he promptly fell asleep. Then she guided the dazed and naked professor back inside and laid his naked ass down in a tub. The wife and kids all fell asleep where they were in the house. Easy-peasy. None of them would remember a thing when they woke up in a couple hours. Only she would remember that steamy tryst on the Xerox.
Oh GW Madge, if it could have ended there. But I wouldn’t be writing to you if it had. I mean like, yes, I should have written a record it, but to be honest I would have let it go there. Swept it right under the rug with my own broom. That’s if, it had ended there.
At first, everything went back to normal. The professor was happily married again and back teaching. He gave his apologies for his absence at the last staff meeting. He said he had suffered a migraine that wiped the day away. I hear Lucille was good about it all at first too. She never went out of her way to see or talk to the other professor and kept a friendly but distant air I am told. You can imagine this was confusing for him. According to his memory, they were flirting with increased intensity for weeks. But she kept her icy wall.
Until she didn’t. She made it almost a month until the staff Halloween party. She wore a slutty witch costume, very expensive, (she borrowed it from me). The entire History department got completely out of their minds smashed. She and the professor ended up having sloppy drunk sex in the janitor’s closet. She got industrial strength soap all over the corset of my dress. Didn’t even dry clean it before she gave it back. Anyway, this witch fucks the professor yet again. She’s thinking no way it’s gonna turn out like last time. There’s a good chance he wouldn’t even remember it.
Well.
As Lucille’s hangover was kicking into gear the next day, she got a call from the professor. Only it’s not him. It’s his wife screaming her head off. Lucille can’t understand a word she is saying. The wife turns on FaceTime with the reverse camera. Lucille sees the professor laying on what looked like the front steps of his house. He was still plastered and wearing his giant penguin onesie from the night before. Only he didn’t button back up the flap between his legs that allowed him to pee and do other things. His dick, still in the condom, was hanging out for the world to see.
No, GW Madge, I cannot, I did not, and I could not, make this shit up. This isn’t even the magic related part. This is just white guys for you. In this punk’s state he keeps muttering Lucy, Lucy, yes Lucy, over and over again. Real helpful guy, isn’t he? You know what happens now. Bada-bing-bada-boom, Lucille pops over there and wipes their memories. Kids were still in bed. Fuck if any of the neighbors saw or heard because Lucille was too hungover to go door to door to find out.
I am told there was a lot of talk about bringing me into the loop at this point. Lucille was starting to show a pattern of how-dumb-can-you-be behavior. But twice isn’t three times, they said. It isn’t necessarily a bad pattern of behavior yet. It could stand that the first time was an ill-advised choice with loud repercussions. The second time was—well she was drunk, they said. And it was an unfortunate mistake with unexpectedly shitty consequences. Again. If he could have gotten the condom off it’s possible none of this would have happened. Ugh, human sex is gross.
Back to the story because you know it’s not over yet. The professor and his wife forgot what happened. Lucille and the other witches tried hard to forget what happened. One month passed in peace.
And then, fucking Witch Lucille.
She booked a B&B in the mountains for the weekend. She went to the professor’s office on a Friday afternoon and asked him to come away with her that weekend. One weekend that’s all, she said. After that he could go back to his family and they would act like it never happened.
And the fucker went with her.
After two days of blissful fucking, they pulled up at his car and she used the memory charm on him right then and there. She replaced his memory with a false one of attending a conference with the department head. He was sorry he had forgotten to tell her sooner, but he couldn’t not go—hoping for tenure and all. The professor got into his own car, rolled down his window, and said, “Swell conference, Dr. Burns. See you, Monday.”
She sat in her car for a while after that. It was a swell conference. But it was lonelier than she had expected—holding the memory of their love to herself. As bitter tasting as the pain. I bet she already knew she would do it again.
Soon every other weekend Lucille would take the professor on these lovebird get-away’s. She always found a way each time to seduce him. It was never too hard to my understanding. She promised me that she never used any kind of love potion on him. I only believe because you know that I drugged that witch with truth serum. She said he came with her each time because he truly loved her. But as the sun began to fade on those Sunday afternoons, she would see the guilt, fear, and anxiety creep into his eyes. Each time she purged his memory of their relationship and let him go back home. Each time she created a false memory of where he was. This oddly worked because his wife never seemed to suspect anything. Why would she when her husband also had no suspicions of it either.
It’s clear to anyone with two functioning eyes (or three like Greta and Edith), that this situation was going belly up sooner rather than later. Also, the witches said, it was starting to feel a little creepy? He always thinks he has strayed this one time they said, but she’s been fucking him sideways for four months. Some of the girls had suspicious she also fucked him on campus and erased his memory right after. He’s going on his own volition sure, they said, but each time he’s crossing this big line in his mind. It can’t be good on a mind or soul to cross the same Rubicon over and over again.
I’d say so. Have you ever seen so many memory charms used on the same person? Compounded with the psychological effect of living a first experience dozens of times. I would call a coven meeting, but Lucille is a flight risk—a “puts the guy on her broom and jets” kind of flight risk. I also don’t want to make a scene in front of the coven. I suspect they all know anyway so why make it a public spectacle. That won’t be effective in this case. I’ll have to handle this delicately. After all, this sick cycle began because a woman was in love. There is nothing so tender or so dangerous as woman’s beating heart. Please send advice as soon as you can.
Wish me Satinspeed in this endeavor,
Lead Witch Nyla of Coven Edgewood
***
Great Witch Madge,
I’ll come right out with it. Things have gone tits up. I tried to talk with Lucille one-on-one. I delicately explained that I knew everything, and I was only there to help her. I asked her why she didn’t ask the man to leave his wife. She said she did each time, but he always said it was too soon to be thinking like that and laughed it off. For him it would always feel too soon. The man’s heart was large but made out of glass. She was certain he loved her, more than his wife too, but he was not a man who would leave his family. He was a man who loved first and forever. If only you had met him before her, I said.
I said that. I said that because I’m the dumbest witch to straddle a broom. Sweet Satin on a stick, I am thick.
Witch Lucille decided to dose the professor with a rare kind of memory erasing potion. First love it’s called. You’re familiar with it, theoretically, I’m sure. Damn it, if she wasn’t so good. Crafty witch you have to give her that. Each day she saw him on campus she found a way to get a coupe drops of potion in his water bottle. She also managed to keep her legs around a broom instead of his cock and quick memory erases. No other magic could interfere. It is a tricky process. How could erasing the memories of someone’s first love not be? Day by day, the professor’s memories of meeting and falling in love with his wife all faded away.
Where was I when all this was going on? I was running the rest of the coven, wasn’t I? Look, she wasn’t sleeping with him anymore. I used the truth serum. I asked have you fucked that professor and she said no, and I believed her. And that was true, she hadn’t fucked him. You see, Madge, this shit didn’t happen when I had a real staff here. Maybe you need to talk to the head witches cutting our funding before you start throwing toads at me.
What happened next? I don’t have to tell you about those kinds of potions. You’d think after centuries we would understand that these things never work out how you plan. It’s Mother Nature’s way of saying fuck you for thinking you can plan anything as mercurial and fevered as love. You have to get the right ratio of bases and acids to keep balance between the love to forget and the person to forget. It’s my understanding that that was Lucille’s crucial mistake. The potion was supposed to make the professor forget the love he ever had for his wife. Instead it made him forget her as a person entirely. Every day he knew her less and less. She became more and more this woman who slept in his bed, made his children breakfast, and left for work in the car parked next to his. He stopped recognizing her scent. I don’t know why, but that was the saddest detail to me.
It was Friday, the last day Lucille added the potion to his grape soda during the faculty meeting. Come the morning, she believed, he would have no memory of love for his wife. He would be compelled to leave her then and there. He would still love his children, but he would be ready to open his heart to a new life with Lucille the next morning.
The next morning.
From what we have learned from the news, the professor woke up and heard a stranger in his children’s room. He said he heard a woman’s voice that, with certainty, he did not recognize. They did not keep a gun in the house, but the professor did have a baseball bat in his closet just in case. He took it out and crept down the hall to his children’s bedroom. He pushed open the door and saw a strange woman dressing his children. Kayleigh had a t-shirt tangled around her head and Paisley was still hiding under the bed covers. They wouldn’t see it—the first couple blows at least. This strange woman turned and stated to say, “Morning ho—” when he hit her in the side of head with the bat. He hit her another five times until she was a crumpled mess on the floor. He grabbed the screaming children and ran out of the house. From a neighbor’s house he called to report the attempted kidnapping he had thwarted. It did not take long for the police to identify the bloody mess of hair and nightgown on the children’s bedroom.
They convicted him for the murder of his wife. The children were sent to an undisclosed family member’s house. And Lucille learned about it all on the news that evening. She was at the coven house, she wanted to be with her witch sisters since her man had failed to call like she had expected. She wanted comfort, and advice, on her failed spell. Instead she got to watch it implode on television with her entire coven. There were too many minds and memories involved to erase them this time. She was out of resets.
These are the ashes I am left with, Madge. An innocent woman dead. A somewhat innocent man incarcerated. Two children practically orphaned. Lucille hasn’t said a word since it happened. She has frozen her mind in time—to the exact moment she realized her dream had not played out as she had planned. Her brain had anticipated no other outcome and—what can I say I am not a doctor—it stopped. She’s alive sure but she’s like a zombie. I put her in the attic where no one will bother her, and she will bother no one in return. Maybe she’ll snap out of it and maybe she won’t. What’s another crazy woman in the attic these days?
Oh Madge, what a mess, what a mess. Please tell me what to do with these witches. The coven is shook. All the girls and women are terrified of their own and each other’s powers. Some believe that she cursed the man to kill his wife. Some girls are trying to find Lucille’s notes so they can brew their own concoctions. We’ve got another group who are talking about a movement to wipe out all non-magical people. This is a shit snowball, Madge, and I am about to catch it in the face.
Please send help!
LW Nyla
***
Well shit Great Witch Madge,
That was some kind of batch. I wouldn’t have had cauldrons big enough to pull that off. No one could taste it in the strong-ass gin punch I made for the weekly meeting. Lucille included! By the time the appetizers got passed around no one could remember what was on the agenda for the meeting. I got them all drunk, and we partied till 2am. Damn, fixing problems can be fun as hell as when you’re a witch. I don’t know what was in that potion or what it did to the girls, but it’s been a week and everything, everything, is back to normal. You are a Satinsend, Madge. I was careful and only drank from my own flask so don’t worry. The only trace of our connection to that unfortunate murder are my memory and yours. I know I won’t be talking any time soon. I mean never, of course.
Unfortunately, Witch Lucille isn’t as restored as the rest of the witches. Your potion worked. She forgot about the whole episode. But she still hasn’t snapped out of her stupor. She is here, but she is not present. Her mind and body have lost sync with each other. There is no way she can return to work any time soon, if ever. Her intelligence and rich personality are clear in her eyes. But a strange kind of silence has fallen over her. She reminds me of deer lost in a forest trying to keep quiet for fear of hunters. The coven pitched in to set up her attic apartment with all her furniture and possessions. Too many crystals for my taste. She spends most of her time sitting in the backyard and starring into the forest. She is well taken care of here and I am sure she will recover in time.
Mucho, mucho gracias for all your help again, Great Witch Madge. I don’t know how I will ever repay you.
Coven Witch Nyla
***
Dear Great Witch Madge,
This is Lead Witch Nyla writing from Coven Edgewood. It is hard to believe that I haven’t written you in nearly five months. According to my records here it has been since February 18 that I last submitted a report on the Coven Edgewood. I apologize for my oversight and beg that you forgive me. Perhaps if the funding was increased lapses like this wouldn’t happen. But I am the one in the wrong here and am in no place to ask for anything except forgiveness. Perhaps I forgot to write because nothing of note has happened this spring. Every day like the last and all in its orderly routine. No news is always better than bad news, right? The coven witches are all excited for winter solstice trips in the coming months. We’ve got a team going to Transylvania, the Maluku Islands, a small team to Russia, and the Salem group as always.
Oh, there was one bit of news. I almost forgot. How could I? One of our most talented witches, Lucille, had an unfortunate slip-up with a spell. Somehow, she turned herself into a deer. No one knows exactly how it happened because she was practicing in her attic apartment here at the house. The witches that lived beneath her got tired of all the hoof stomping. They went up to investigate and there was a beautiful but startled deer pacing the room. They led her to the backyard, and she has been there ever since. These things usually wear off with time you know. Plus, she seems happy as a deer I can’t lie. The other witches have come to calling her Bambi. I have my best women on the case. Nothing for you to worry about.
I’ll send all the boring details about the solstice trip down the line with my usual report. I only attached a personal letter to apologize for my silence. It’s not like me at all.
Sincerely,
Lead Witch Nyla of Coven Edgewood