Binding

And an introduction

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Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Seething beneath the world you see and feel, there is another. A creeping world, dark and diaphanous, yet insidious, that grips you and holds you close. But don’t ever think, that you can wrap your fleshy fingers around it, that you can hold it back. You can not.

I have stories, so many stories, about those who tried to hold the dark. I’m going to tell you these stories, because I want you to care about the seething world beneath. I want you to learn respect. I want the darkness to have its due.

I live in small cabin in the woods. Doesn’t matter which woods, doesn’t matter which cabin. If you need me, you’ll find me. The dark has its ways. I come to know all of my clients through the dark paths that need lays before them. They come wandering up the hill, knowing that it is the exact wrong way to go. Knowing that every step will lead them to likely destruction, but stepping anyway. Because they have a need. A need so strong, they’ll do anything to fulfill it.

Gloria, the subject of today’s story, needed to be needed. She was old, she’d been a terrible mother. Never home, always out with dates, always chasing men with money. Chasing a better life. She never caught it. And when she stopped running, she found the world had changed. She found that her child had grown without her, grown out of her. No one loved her, so she knocked on my door, a faux designer bag hanging off her shoulder. She wore slacks, her white hair was stiff with hairspray, and her makeup had run in the unexpected heat of an early autumn day. Her perfume filled the mountain air with an unnatural odor.

“I’ve heard that you can change people’s minds,” she said, a little out of breath as she stood on my porch, inching away from the bones hanging off the eaves for protection. She held her hand out at her side, blocking my dogs, who sat politely, listening. They are two black wolf hybrids, found them abandoned on the roadside where their mother had been hit by a car. Geri and Freki, such good boys.

“I can do lots of things. But it’ll cost you.”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she said, looking me up and down. I’m no bog witch, but I don’t exactly have the time for makeup and mani-pedis.

I moved aside, letting her into the cabin. The woman relaxed a little, seeing that my dogs hadn’t so much as twitched to follow her inside. I busied myself in my herb cupboard, leaving her standing just inside the door as it swung shut behind her.

“You get electricity up here?”

I didn’t answer. I don’t, but having a deal with dark has its perks. It’s an electricity of sorts, I guess.

“Not real chatty, are you? I love to talk, you know, you learn so much about a person when you talk to them.”

“You learn when you listen, not when you talk.”

“Well, you have to get people started. I’m a great conversationalist. I just love to get people into a good conversation. I once had a friend named Mary, she was Bud’s daughter. Bud was a friend of my dad’s, he repaired VCRs for my dad’s shop. But she always said nobody could worm a secret out of a person like me. Mary was with me when I went to Vegas for that car show. We had so much fun. I talked to every single man there, I swear. Never had so many margaritas in my life! I bet you’d love Vegas.”

I turned from my rummaging, likely grimacing.

“I’ve been.”

“Not your cuppa?”

“It’s a great place collect bottled tears, the sweat of fighters, the blood of the forsaken.”

Gloria was silent.

I motioned her to a chair at my table. She glanced at the door before moving, her confidence wavering as her surroundings sunk in. My cabin is small, a front room, kitchen, and hearth, a bedroom and a bathroom. There’s a small shed with a cellar out behind it, as well. It’s not exactly modern, but it’s home. The table is a long ash wood table, old and scarred, a candle burned at its edge, an intoxicating scent I mix myself. A silver bowl, a mortar and pestle, and a large knife lay where I sat. The tools of my trade. I saw her reach for my obsidian scrying ball and then pull her hand back suddenly. A wise move. She brushed the chair off before she sat.

“Uh, so what are you going to do to me.”

“We’ll see. But first I need to hear your problem from your own mouth.”

“Well, my kid says that I was a shitty mother. I mean, I don’t think I was that bad. He didn’t have a father and he needed one, so I went looking. Everything I did, I did for him.”

“You left him with your parents to raise.”

“I worked! They lived in a nice school district and they were retired, they needed something to do.”

“You were in a hotel with a lover when your father died.”

“Unlike you seem to, I don’t know everything. He’d been in the hospital for awhile, we didn’t know when he was going to go. What was I supposed to do? Put my life on hold until he died?” She spread her wrinkled hands above the table, rolling her eyes in feigned exasperation. It wasn’t the years that had made her callous.

“Yes. You put your life on hold for a loved one dying.”

“Oh. Well.” She cleared her throat.

“Dying takes a much shorter time than living a life. Your son was there, alone. A child. He needed you.”

“I didn’t know.” She looked away.

“You didn’t?”

“I did. I just couldn’t… The guy had money. Dad left everything to mom and nothing to me.”

“She had to raise your child.”

“Jesus, lady.” Gloria stared off into the kitchen, out the window.

“So now what, your son hates you and you want to make him love you?”

“I want his grandkids to love me. I want to raise them like my mom raised my son.”

“You lost your chance at raising a child, you don’t get another. You wasted your youth, you can’t get it back. I can make your son tolerate you though. You’ll be top spot for babysitter. Have the little ones to spoil. They’ll love your cookies, maybe tell you secrets, assuming you can manage not to abandon them, too. You can’t be mother, but you can be _grand_mother.”

“And I’ll be the best.” Her voice was confident, her demeanor expectant. I deal in the truth, everyone hears it differently. Gloria was hearing the high points. I took a tiny velvet pouch from my pocket and opened it up.

“Give me your hand.”

She held her left hand out. I picked up the knife and saw her eyes widen.

“I only need a drop, don’t worry.” With the point of the knife I pricked a finger, squeezing the blood into the pouch. I tied it up again and handed it to her. Ficus elastica, available at big box hardware stores and grocery stores across America. People would save a lot of money coming to me if they just showed a little ingenuity. Take a leaf of something, put it in your pocket for a day or two and see what happens. Take notes. Just like that, you’re a witch. Good thing for me people are lazy and unimaginative.

But didn’t I say I have a deal with the dark? I did. I do. No quotidian witch will ever be as powerful as I am, but I’ll pay my price. We all do.

“That’s it?” Gloria waved the little pouch at me.

“Put that in your pocket next time you visit, it facilitates bridging and bonding.

But only take it with you one time. It is very powerful. Burn it after the first use, you won’t need it again.”

“One time, then burn it. Are you sure one time will be enough? He really doesn’t like me.” She took the pouch and sniffed it. People do that often, not a terribly bright thing to do.

“One time. That’s it. More than one time and you’ll have complications. You don’t want those.”

She furrowed her brow, but slid the pouch into her purse.

“How much?”

“Two hundred.”

“Geez.” She dug in her bag and pulled out a stack of bills, handing it to me with a grimace.

“It’s cheaper than family therapy,” I said, pocketing the cash.

“Easier, too. I don’t have to get all the awful things I did thrown back at me.”

Easier is a common misconception with magic.

Gloria followed exactly none of my instructions.

She did bring the pouch with on her next visit to her son. He let her in, she cried a little, he hugged her. It was gross, but exactly what she wanted. The little ones hung on her every word and cried when she left. But Gloria, true to her nature, wanted more. She wanted to be a fixture in the house. She didn’t want to have to leave.

So she brought the pouch back a second time. It was a few days before Halloween. The children were too young to carve pumpkins but their mother had paint and brushes laid out on plastic sheets at the dining room table. The children, a boy and a girl, wore little aprons and big grins. Gloria came in with warm cider and cookies from the local coffee shop. She hugged the little girl, holding her tightly until the child squealed.

“Gramma! I can’t breathe!”

Gloria tried to unwrap her arms, finding them stiff and her clothing almost sticky. I could see the panic start to creep into her face just as the child ducked out from her arms and ran off giggling. Gloria watched her in bemusement, rubbing her shoulders.

“You ok, Gloria?” Her daughter-in-law asked, touching her arm.

“Oh, arthritis, you know.”

“I have some ibuprofen in the cupboard. I could get it for you.”

“Oh, no, I’m perfectly fine. Let’s get this cider drunk before it gets cold, huh?” Her daughter-in-law removed her hand, her skin clinging to the fabric of Gloria’s sweater as she walked away. Gloria rubbed the pouch sitting in her pocket before moving to a seat at the table in between the kids.

“So, what are you two painting?”

“I’m painting a scary spider!”

“Oh my-“

“Mom,” her son put a glass of water and two ibuprofen tablets in front of her. “You need to take these. The kids don’t want to see you in pain.”

“Oh,” Gloria looked up at her son, “I’m really fine, though.”

“Nope, we are going to take care of you, Mom. You are important to us. Take the medication.” He looked down at her with a stern expression. Gloria looked to her granddaughter, the child nodded with a furrowed brow.

“Um, well ok, sure.” Gloria took the ibuprofen with a shaking hand. The edge of the glass stuck to her lip, for a split second she felt panic rise in her chest, and then she pulled free.

She stuck to things all night, the dining room table, the cutlery, and her wine glass at dinner, her son’s t-shirt, her grandson’s hair.

The ficus wanted bridges and bindings. Plants are like anything living, they have needs and will do what they can to get them met. That’s why there are rules to using them in magic. At the end of the night Gloria had trouble getting through the door, almost as if she had to walk through a viscous barrier, pulling herself through. But the hugs, the laughter, the adoration, these things made her forget the warning signs.

So she brought the pouch with her a third time.

The children wanted to watch a movie that night, so she settled down on the sofa, they tucked in around her. Their sticky little fingers in hers, their sugary breath mixing with her menthol, it was heaven for Gloria. At first.

She felt it about halfway through the movie, a slight tingle where her body met the sofa. She shifted, telling the kids she was getting a little stiff. The feeling got worse, the tingle started to burn. Gloria tried to move, the kids barely seemed to notice, lying on her as if she were a pillow. The burn deepened, spreading from her buttocks and the backs of her thighs up her back, everywhere she touched the sofa was agony.

“I think I’m having an allergic reaction to this fabric? Have you had it cleaned recently?” Her son and his wife, sitting on the matching loveseat, looked over at her.

“Mom, you look great on that sofa,” her daughter-in-law said dreamily. Gloria frowned. She seemed to be sinking now. She looked down at her legs, they were spreading the way cookie dough does when you put it in the oven, melting.

“Oh, Jesus! Oh, help me! What is happening?” She was panicking now, trying to pull herself off of the sofa. The kids, slightly perturbed, but not knowing why, pulled themselves away from her and moved to opposite ends of the couch.

The little boy mumbled, “It’s ok Gramma, you look nice there.”

No one got up to help her.

“I can’t move! I can’t move!”

In the background the children began to laugh at the movie, their parents smiling along with them.

“Why won’t you listen?” Gloria screamed. Her jeans had become the color of the upholstery. She couldn’t see her legs anymore. Her torso was flattening, she heard her ribs crack.

“Help me,” she croaked as her lungs deflated. Her arms, stretched along the back of the sofa, began to meld with the soft fabric. At last, her neck cracked as her head bent backward, her skull collapsed. The cushions subsumed her. Gloria would be an integral part of the family now, at least until they replaced the sofa.