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The train shudders and warm chardonnay bounces from the can onto my A-line skirt. Inches from my head a canopy of swinging branch arms are sweaty with Wednesday evening dejection and I try to be as small as possible so as not to bother bulging backpacks and other commuter detritus that oozes into my personal space.
With my elbows pointed downward, parallel to my chest, and hands trapped close to my chin, I cannot move enough to wipe the drops away. They soak fast into the sausage roll pastry shed from my harried train dinner to create damp greased sludge that will harden to cement before I reach my stop. God I hate my life, I’ve hated all my lives.
Reincarnation is a bitch for a witch.
I envy the people around me, the way they can’t remember all their pain or embarrassment from one or two generations ago. Everything is new and fresh to them while I have to watch the re-casted reruns, over and over and over again. The same issues explored generation after generation. Who to befriend, who to fight and who to blame.
It's bloody boring.
I look around the carriage and know most of these people, the gossip now chattering in seat 22 who has been throwing her neighbours under the figurative bus since 1690 and the perma-tanned man with the too-white teeth who always tries to catch my eye to smile at me with flirtatious intent. He was orange then too, but from the glow of his burning stick rather than a bottle.
They don’t know me now, I’m not reviled for my past misdemeanours, my infamy extinguished by each death and birth. I’m invisible.
It was fun to be a witch once, back in the days when you could turn someone into a a wart-crusted toad, or push them to their deaths from a limestone cliff with impunity. Now cameras are everywhere, and everyone documents their every move on Facebook or the like. I can still cast spells, of course, but with the development of technology and my required subtlety, the satisfaction in being a witch has diminished.
If I give someone a pox, they don’t eye me in fear. Instead they will blame an allergy or intolerance and preach to their followers with evangelical verve about the dangers of wheat or dairy or the chemicals spewing around them from industry. 5G and vaccines are the bad guys, not the lady in flat 33b who is angry that you make too much noise at night when casualty is on.
Unfortunately a witch cannot use a spell for wealth, for I think that would make life more tolerable. I imagine myself as an eccentric billionaire, all my nefarious whimsy facilitated by obsequious staff. Instead witches have to join the mortal rabble every day. We have to work, take the train and expose ourselves to the never-ending torture of human interaction.
As my stop approaches I smile at my seat mate, apologising for the fact that I have to climb over their ignorant splayed legs. Some of the passengers shuffle backwards, eyes dipped to inane videos of amateur dancers and make up artists, in bodily awareness of my need to get past but without the need to actually see me as something other than transient livestock.
On the platform I join the quick-footed swarm out into the street where I can finally breath air unfettered by the tang of life.
I return to the beautiful house that has been my home for most of my lives. Now it is sectioned into uniform blocks of modern convenience. All mod cons and clean lines behind beautiful gothic brickwork, valuable features beneath cheap plywood and linoleum. It’s sad but at least in this flat I am alone.
The myth is that witches are spinsters as a rule, but the truth is we know the frailties of the human being and they are just not attractive. It’s like seeing your date on the toilet before you actually meet, there is no mystery.
So, instead I pour myself wine from a bottle and switch on the TV, where humans display their weak disposition within the safe confines of a box and I can curse them without being seen.
Marie-Louise McGuinness comes from a wonderfully neurodiverse household in rural Northern Ireland. She has work published in numerous publications including Bending Genres, Splonk, Intrepidus Ink, The Metaworker, JAKE, Chamber Magazine and The Airgonaut amongst others. She enjoys writing from a sensory perspective.
Image credit: Felix Mittermeier