Charlies Lost Cause

Charlies is always mooning after me. Silly boy.

If I hadn't been so stupid, he'd still be here. I guess I should apologize to him. I see him all the time.

You do too. It’s easiest when there’s a full moon. Take a look up that way and you’ll see Charlie’s face. He’s the man in the moon. Let me explain how he got there. I’m a witch. Charlie was my Familiar. To you he was just a black cat.

Charlie is a practical joker. His specialty was Halloween. He was one of the best midnight dynamos I ever saw. It is why I made him my Familiar. Such talent. It is why he ended up being the man in the moon.

I have a little secret. I get bored easy. Being a witch for hundreds of years makes it hard to find something new, interesting, or exciting. I’d been relying on my matchbox for far too long.

To any normal human being my matchbox would be magical. It requires a lot of work keeping it that way.

“It is time to entertain me.”

The matchbox slide itself open. Out crawled six tiny turtles singing “She’d Rather Be With Me’, out of the sixties. They were Halloween midnight dynamos.

I closed my eyes, head weaving to the beat. “May I join you?” A voice whispered in my ear. That’s how I met Charlie.

He moved close, taking me in his arms, “You look bewitching.”

“Nice pun, kind sir.” Halloween is the one time a witch can look normal.

I waved my fingers at my matchbox. It took the silent hint, nudged behind the turtles and they fell back inside as the box snapped shut. It opened again, displaying a full miniature dance band from the 30’s and 40’s filling the open air with Glen Miller’s “In The Mood”.

I know it sounds strange, me accepting a complete stranger so suddenly like that. I was lonely. Some of the magic that is Halloween may have tainted my mind. It seemed harmless enough. “Dance with me.”

“How did you do that trick?”

I’d won Charlie over onto the dark side without even trying.

“I’d love to learn everything about you,” he purred (more about that later). People do it, sometimes making time feel like forever. We did it that Halloween night. Night was just fading into day when I twitched my fingers, cast my spell, and turned him into my Familiar, a black cat.



“Naughty cat. All you really want to do is bad practical jokes every chance you get.” Things from the start went from bad to worse. Charlie’s prankster side couldn’t be controlled. I was so embarrassed for letting that happen. A witch of my standing should be able to better control their Familiar.

“Next time you twist your tail, tickling my coven’s head witch up where you shouldn’t I won’t save you.” The other witches had tittered nervous laughter. The head witch had to deal with that instead of with Charlie. He was lucky.

The next thing I knew, I caught Charlie batting my black magic book around like it was a mouse toy. It had been teaching him my spells to make him stop using his claws.

As I hurried over to stop this mess, my book uttered the fateful spell that changed Charlie back into his human form. He hissed at me. The look in his eyes told me he was going to try out one of the black magic book spells on me with his own tongue.

“Be Gone,” I cried, twitching my fingers to point at him, and then to the blinking eye of the moon half hiding behind clouds.

A moonbeam shot down from the heavens, doing my command. It engulfed him, sucking him helplessly skyward, transforming him into the moonlit image he is today.

And Charlie will stay there until I say so. I’ve begun feeling a little more bored than I was with him around. Perhaps my matchbox would like hosting a magician’s magical act. He'll never be the same as in that magical night when we first met. Even witches can't turn time backwards.

Charlie could stop mooning for me each night. I know he cared for me when we first met. In his own way, did he still? He’d have to sign a witches blood contract. If Charlie agreed, his matchbox act might become an entertaining open and shut case.