15 To Go

Kidneys kidneys everywhere and not one for mum.

Mum, don't make me an orphan. Don't die for want of an organ. I suppose if you did my name would fit, Little Orphan Annie. Except I wasn't so little, and I was 40 and grey as a Wizard. I watched mum breathing shallowly, her skin greenish, she'd need dialysis soon . I watched people walking around the hospital, watched their backs. Kidneys kidneys everywhere, but not a spare for mum. Not only that, there were fifteen wastes of space before her, don't tell me how I know they were wastes of space, I just know, I have intuition, I have powers. They would have burned me for a witch back in the day, and I would have deserved it.

Mum got her dialysis and we went home, she'd be okay for a day or two, before the green started coming back, It should be me that was green, a natural hue though, witch green. I'd be proud of mums deepest lime, if I could get that colour I'd file my teeth to points, just to complete the look. When we got home we drank tea and talked about nicer times. She was sweet my mother, she saw the little things in life, the budding trees, the droning bees. She saw the clouds fleet in wonder, and I couldn't understand. To me it was all a whoosh and the spinning world, spinning like my head, dark corners and cobwebs and fear and hate. Why had this fair lady given birth to a witch like me? She didn't deserve it, she deserved a loving son, or a version of her. A daughter that could sit still with her and sip tea and marvel at the little things.

When I got home, I went straight to my books. Black books, bound in leather. Gothic and smelling of night. Death spells, I wanted death spells. I needed 15, or at least 12. Throughout the night I gathered the information I needed, and in the morning I went into the countryside to find ingredients. I needed mandrake and juniper berries, hawthorne and hazel. The hedgerows provided for me, as they did my ancient sisters. Passer bys smiled and nodded, curious, respectful because they thought I was foraging for food, which was more than acceptable these days. It seemed it was okay to peel a rabbit off the road for dinner, something to do with cooking shows. I did scrape up a hedgehog, but not to eat. I nipped of sprigs of comfrey, I plucked white Bella Donna, into a jar I placed deep red yew berries. I got three types of mosses, six types of fungi and at dusk, I found the last thing I needed, the blood of a child. It is easy to trick a child, and when the little boy came to look at the squashed hedgehog I held out at him, I pierced the back of his hand with a quill, I didn't need much, just a drop and his suddenly watery eyes brightened when I told him it was the luckiest thing in the world to be spiked by a hedgehog.

I got back to my apartment and lay out the ingredients, all looked good, all looked evil, as a collection. In corners shadows scuttled and the lights flickered. From the deepest shadow my familiar padded, Mr Ruth, who slinked up to purr darkly. I quote scripture to my familiar :

" Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat [them] small, and shalt make the hills as chaff."

I laughed hysterically, raising my arms and stretching out my fingers like two solid branches ending in curved twigs. Mr Ruth recoiled slightly and I gleamed for a moment before saying "Come on cat, I've got work to do."

I laid out a dozen death spells, all missing the DNA of the target. Correction, I knew one of the targets, but he would not be my first choice, being family. Uncle Bert had a crap kidney but it was all his own fault. He admitted it with a toot and shake of the head, "the bottle dear, I always loved the bottle." Well die then, I always thought.

Uncle Bert it was. I easily got hold of his essence, for I cut his hair every other week.

"How's it going love? what's the news? Oh for a drop. How I wish I rationed out the drop. I could have got it just right, matching my last swig with the moment of death. Instead I have bludgeoned my kidneys."

"Oh Uncle Burt you will grow new Kidneys!"

"Not kidneys love, liver yes, but not my fucking kidneys. I'm on the list, just like your Ma." I shrugged hoping it looked sympathetic, then slipped a lock of his greying hair into my pocket. That night I made the first death spell. I did have a moment of fear for as the ingredients merged through hammer and salve, the shadows shuddered in their corners and Mr Ruth yowled, the front door banged open but I smiled, I knew whatever worked the door was going out, not in.

I had worked three other death spells before my mother asked me about Uncle Burt. "Poor Burt, he fell down dead. I saw it, it was like the door burst open and fingers reached in to snap his heart between thumb and forefinger. It was horrible."

"Heart attacks are Mum, poor Uncle Burt."

"No I mean, the door really did bang open." I looked at Mum, she knew I was odd and her expression was questioning. I had to shrug in that way I do, dismiss her as if she were a child and then say something.

"Up to number 11 in the list of kidneys mum! Wont it be great when you don't have to come in to hospital to have your blood cleaned!" She looked at me, looked at her hands, then looked back and said:

"Just as long as it's clean dear." I hated those words, they chided me.

"Kidney soon mum, kidney soon."

Number nine was a battle. Unbeknownst to me, she was also a witch. When I scratched her, pretending to be a clumsy nurse, her eyes flicked onto mine like magnets of green.

"What are you up to cunt?" Her teeth were showing as she breathed heavily. Her eyes, so green, flamed and her nostrils flared. "Do I know you?" I gave my shrug and she screamed in understanding. Real nurses bustled in and I backed out, feeling her skin under an index finger's nail. Shadows in corners cheered and recoiled in unison. I had to work quickly. The dying witch woman would want to cast spells too. I had to send her a powerful execution. I smeared a mixture of Yew Berry and Boys blood across a splinter of flint, then drove it under my thumb nail. The pain was terribly exquisite. My own blood and pain joined the concoction, and from my thumb burst a dark genie, he looked back at me with supreme confidence then smoked under the door and to my dark sister, kidney number nine.

With disregard to safety, I wanted to see the occurrence. I muttered a phrase, and a sparrow came. Within its soul I boarded, and we sped to the hospital on clever brown wings. The witch was gnashing her teeth, her hand clutching her side. She looked from left to right, she made shapes with her hands. She knew. The door did not bang open, under it came the spirit. He made smoke solid in the form of a Neanderthal, a kindly one that smiled as he closed her mouth with massive hands. He sat on her, and waited, a jowly grin that seemed to say he was doing her a favour. When she stilled, he fell apart, but not before he looked at the sparrow, suddenly frowning. Had I done something wrong? Was the frown a warning or was it displeasure at me for watching, was I being narcissistic? Who cared, I was down to just 8. Pleasure coursed through me at the prospect of more death spells, that was only slightly dented when I learned the next morning that number 1 on the list had got his donor kidney, someone had died in a car accident.

It is very taxing creating spells that dish out murder. The work the inner spirit must perform is immense, and at that coal face primeval couplings bat at each other like sea and land, forest and field. One swings one way, to be taken back by the next, to swing again like a pendulum of existence. I was laid up for many weeks and could perform no spells. Some darkness was being fought, perhaps the spirit of kidney number 9. When I felt the battle over, and my spirit bright again, I went straight to work but to my horror the spell were barren. I collected new ingredients and ruthlessly took the blood of a child by pushing one over and dabbing at the scraped knee . Nothing, no power in the spell. The ability had been robbed of me, and I was reminded of the genies displeasure at my voyeurism.

I was fucking furious. I had no time for my mother for which this was all about and with dreadful realisation I knew it was really all about me and my penchant for witchcraft. I had justified my murders by saying I was the champion of Mum. So what, I thought, I lied to myself, so what. Darkly, I went to the books. If Death Spells would not do, then there was something else, something much more awful, ancient and calamitous that I could call on, even if it ruined me. Shape Shifter.

The ingredients were laughingly banal and available in most refrigerators. It was like buttering bread, literally. With just one unusual topping. The animal I must become, would have to sniff it, reject it, then piss on it. But how? I bought a camera trap and placed the buttered bread on the back lawn. The bread was always eaten by a fox. I would love to become the fox, but, as I say, it always ate the bread. A hedgehog gave it a few bites but didn't urinate on it, and the rabbits had a nibble. Eventually, the animal I was to become slinked up through darkness, sniffed it, then sprayed a fine mist of piss all over the offered bread and butter. Of course, it was the cat.

That night, with the list of the last 8 on a table in front of me, I gobbled down the bread and butter cat piss sandwich and with disgust and nausea awaited developments. I looked at number 8. Catherine Tigerlilly, nice name, a woman in her twenties, poor minx, genetically bad kidneys. She lived in Purfleet, how appropriate I thought as the table suddenly towered over me. There was no pain in the transformation, just a sudden sense of danger. I wasn't a human sized cat, I was a cat! How on earth could a cat commit 8 murders., it would surely take all 9 lives.

By Andy Parker