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Rated: 13+ · Short Story · Occult · #2344119

Kadi & Eve love the same man. Can Kadi's magic solve the problem?

Evelyn Evans could not resist a sneer toward the young woman who opened the door for her. She noticed Kadina start to smile at Allan, then break into a pout as she saw Eve standing beside him. Eve and Kadi had once been close friends. They had met at secretarial school, then had started work together at a local newspaper, the Glen Hartwell Reporter, as PC operators. But in recent years, they had become sworn enemies, torn apart by their rivalry for the affections of Allan Banks. Eve guessed Kadi hadn’t known that Allan had invited her to the party, which was to celebrate the sixty-fifth birthday of Kadina's mother, Miriam Holbrook.

“Here’s Allan and Evelyn,” Lesley Thorne said as they entered the lounge room.

Eve looked around at the guests, mainly females, seated in a semi-circle in front of the television set. She was fascinated, as she always was, by the odd collection of redheads who made up the women in Kadi’s family. Kadina herself had strawberry-blonde hair, as had had her mother, Miriam, before it had faded to snowy white. Miriam’s older sister, Lesley Thorne, had auburn hair, as did her seventeen-year-old daughter, Jayne. Miriam’s younger sister, Gwendolyn Tarram, had carroty red hair, while her two daughters, Elle and Susie, both had deep Titian hair. Yet the oddest thing about the Tarram-Holbrook-Thorne women was the fact that they all had dark green eyes, a colour that Eve had always regarded as rare until meeting Kadi’s family.


Throughout the evening as Eve snuggled up to Allan, she stole glances at Kadi. Kadi was sitting by herself in a corner of the room, glaring toward the young couple. Each time Eve looked around, Kadi would pretend to be watching the television, and Eve would snuggle closer to Allan on the sofa.


After supper, most of the guests stayed in the kitchen to drink and talk, or else had gone outside to dance to Beyonce Knowles or Kanye West's music blaring from Kadi’s hi-fi.

By 11:00 PM, most of the guests had left. So, bored by the repetitive soap operas on TV, Allan and Eve went to say their goodbyes. In the hallway, between the lounge room and the kitchen, they stopped for a moment to look at some of Kadi’s books. Kadi had collected six large bookcases full of books on mainly occult and esoteric subjects, with titles such as The Necronomicon, Malleus Maleficarum (The Witches’ Hammer), The Methuselah Scriptures, and so on.

Eve picked up the greying copy of The Witches’ Hammer. She saw Kadi sitting in the lounge room, stealing odd glances at them, and thought, “She fancies herself as a sort of Elizabeth Montgomery-style trendy young witch!” Although her clothes were of modern cut, Kadi had a penchant for wearing jet black, which contrasted oddly with her strawberry-blonde hair. Her skin was so pale pink that it always looked as though she had just stepped out of a steaming hot bath.

Standing, Kadi headed toward the back yard to talk to Elle and Susie Tarram. They were dancing together in the back yard, since the other young people had all left. Eve whispered to Allan, “If you ask me, there has to be something wrong with anyone who spends every cent she earns on books like these.”

“Oh come on,” pooh-poohed Allan, well aware of the rivalry between the two women. “That’s silly.”

“You think so?” asked Eve. She opened the Malleus Maleficarum, penned by Jakob Sprenger and Heinrick Kramer. “Then take a look at this!” She leafed through the decaying old tome for a minute or so before locating the passage she was looking for:

Although most of the people who were executed as witches at Salem, in the 1690s, were the victims of paranoia, or else were feeble-minded old crones who deluded themselves into believing in their lies, there were a few genuine witches in Salem. The most notorious being Rebecca Farris, Beverly Goodwin, Christina Corey, and Agnetha Chambers. The latter being considered by many scholars to have been the most evil witch in the history of Europe and North America!

“So what?” Allan asked, after reading the passage to himself.

“Don’t you see?” asked Eve. “Agnetha Chambers is Kadi’s maternal grandmother!”

“Oh come on, that was more than three hundred years ago. Surely you don’t think it’s the same woman still alive after three centuries?”

“Why not?” demanded Eve. Then seeing the odd way that Allan was looking at her, she started skimming through the ancient tome again, until she came to a second passage. She read aloud at a whisper:

“Some people claimed that all of the Chambers women since time immemorial have been witches who used their powers to wither their neighbours’ crops and help their own husbands’ crops to flourish. The Chambers were admired (and feared!) across the length and breadth of America for the size and variation of the crops which they seemed to be able to produce even in the most harsh and barren regions ....”

Allan laughed for a moment, then said, “Conjure Wife all over again!”

Offended by Allan’s laughter, she insisted, “Quite the opposite. If anything, this is probably where Fritz Leiber got the idea for Conjure Wife. This book was originally written in 1486 by two Spanish inquisitors, and this edition was revised in the USA in 1707 by Cotton Mather himself!”

“Still, that’s hardly a mark in its favour, is it?” said Allan. “Considering how paranoid Mather was about witchcraft! He was the 1690s equivalent of Joe McCarthy, seeing witches everywhere, instead of commies! I mean let’s be serious, Eve. There are no real witches, only poor deluded old women, lonely for excitement, who get a kick out of romping around starkers beneath the full moon.”

So saying, he turned and started toward the back door to say goodbye to Kadi. Although not convinced by the explanation, Eve allowed herself to be led outside to say goodbye to Kadi.


After the last of the guests had departed, Miriam Holbrook went looking for Kadi. She found her standing by herself, looking through the bookcases in the hallway, obviously deeply upset.

“What’s the matter, pet?” asked Miriam (a withered old crone, who looked at least twenty-five years more than her age of sixty-five), placing a claw-like hand on her daughter’s left shoulder.

“It’s ... it’s Evelyn and Allan,” Kadi stammered.

“You’re stuck on him, aren’t you?” Miriam asked.

“Yes,” Kadi said. She collapsed into her mother’s arms to sob, “But it doesn’t look as though I’ll ever win him away from her.”

“Then forget him, pet,” Miriam advised, running a withered hand through her daughter’s long red hair. “No man is worth all of the heartache you’re going through.”

She paused for a moment, then said, “You know how you suffered at the hands of your father!”

“But I love him, mother,” Kadi protested. “I can’t live without him!”

Miriam continued to stroke Kadi’s hair in silence for a moment, before saying, “Then, use your powers to take him away from her.”

Kadi looked up from where her head had been cradled against her mother’s chest. She asked in amazement, “Use my magic to take him away from her?”

“Why not? If you can’t live without him.”

“But ... but wouldn't that be cheating!” said Kadi, shocked, yet at the same time thrilled by the prospect of using her magical powers to get the man she loved.

“All’s fair in love and war,” quoted Miriam.

She gave Kadi a peck on the cheek before heading off toward her bedroom at the other end of the hallway.


Excited by this new hope, Kadi spent hours poring through her books of spells and potions, the oldest of which she had been given to her by her mother, or her Granny Agnetha. But her elation started to wane when she found that most of the love philtres asked for exotic ingredients such as belladonna, Devil’s excrement, a Hand of Glory, dragon’s eggs, or black snowflakes (once common in England, along with black rain, in the days of the lethal pea-soup fogs), all of which were impossible to obtain in Australia in the 21st Century.

Kadi was still there, propping herself up against one of the bookcases, flicking through a book with one hand, while yawning into the other, when Miriam came down for breakfast the next morning.

“Oh, pet, you’re not still at it?” her mother asked, flicking off the light.

“You’ll ruin your eyes reading out here at night.”

“That’s why witches always have green eyes,” said Kadi, returning a book to the bookcase and taking out another, “so we can see in the dark like cats.”

“Well, how has it gone? Surely you’ve found a plethora of love philtres by now?” Miriam asked. She took a book called Keltic Love Philtres and Charms from one of the bookcases.

“Sure, zillions of them,” Kadi agreed. “I’m just about to pop down to the Glen Hartwell Mall to stock up on some Keltic moon dust, faery saliva and a half a dozen 5000 gram dragon eggs.”

“All right, so some of the more archaic formulae do ask for slightly exotic ingredients,” Miriam agreed with a laugh. “So why don’t you settle for a nice chant or spell? All you need to do then is chant the right words.” She took out a book called Chants, Charms, Spells, and Magical Formulae, which she tried to flick through with one hand, still holding Keltic Love Philtres and Charms in her other hand.

“Oh mother,” protested Kadi, “I don’t believe in that kind of thing. I mean magic potions are one thing, because they’re just another form of unorthodox chemistry. But how can mere words possibly have magical powers?”

“I don’t know how they work,” Miriam admitted, trying to read both books at once. “But they must, because witches throughout Europe and Britain have been using chants and mantras for thousands of years ... Which they wouldn’t still be doing, if the mantras didn’t at least occasionally work?”

“Oh, mother,” Kadi said. Yet despite her scepticism, she picked out Spells, Conjurings, Charms, and Magicks! and started leafing through it. “The only reason that ever started was because in the classic witchcraft days, ninety-nine Percent of the world’s population were illiterate. The other one Percent had all the wealth and power since you can’t be a leader without being able to write decrees, and you can’t get rich without being able to read your business contracts, and so on. So naturally to the illiterate majority it seemed as though words had magical powers bringing fame, power and wealth.”

“Maybe,” said Miriam noncommittally, “but if they never work, why have our people continued to use mantras and spells for so many hundreds of years?”

“I don’t know,” conceded Kadi, nose down, skimming through the book she held. She had almost reached the end of the book of charms when she stopped to reread a mantra to herself.

Miriam placed both of her books back into the bookcase and started to take out another. She noticed Kadi reading intently, mouthing the words to a spell.

“Have you found something, pet?” she asked.

“I’m not quite sure,” Kadi said. She handed the book to Miriam, who read the charm through to herself for a moment before reading it aloud:

“Ancient Charms, and Magic Runes,

Evil Fortunes, Glamours and Glooms;

Empty Welcomes and Empty Cheers,

Send XXX forward, For YYY years!”

“Whatever do you think it means?” asked Kadi.

“Why it’s a transformation spell to send someone into the future,” Miriam explained. “Sort of like a one-way time-machine, but without the machine.”

“And you slip the person’s name into the last line, instead of XXX?”

“That’s right,” agreed Miriam, “and presumably ....” She started to read the fine print of the footnote for a moment, then said, “Yes, here it is. ‘The YYY in the last line is to indicate the number of years. However, the time interval can also be months, weeks, days, hours, or seconds, in which case you change the second last line to ensure it still rhymes as follows: for seconds it becomes ... “and Empty Reckons ....”’”

“Empty Reckons?” Kadina asked. “What in the world does that mean?”

“Reckonings, I suppose,” Miriam guessed, reading on. “‘For hours, “ ... and Mystick Powers,” and for days, “ ... and Evil Ways!”’”

“They don’t have a rhyme for minutes?” Kadi asked.

Miriam scanned the lengthy footnote again, then answered, “No, there doesn’t seem to be, I guess they couldn’t think of one. I suppose you just have to use multiples of seconds, or fractions of an hour.”

“Send XXX forward for 360 seconds, when you mean six minutes,” Kadi suggested.

“Yes, that’s the idea,” Miriam agreed with a laugh.


The next day Kadi stood tentatively in the doorway of Allan Banks’ bedroom, watching while he lay on his bed reading a slim book.

When Kadi had first been ushered into the room two years earlier, she had been amazed by the clutter of bookcases, hi-fi unit, stereo-television and cupboards that filled almost every inch of the room.

After a while, Allan tossed the small book onto the foot of the bed. He lay back and tucked his hands under his head and started to laugh. “My lord!” he said. “How could anyone believe in gobbledegook like that? ‘Evil Fortunes, Glamours and Glooms.’ What kind of magic could that possibly work?”

Kadi walked the three paces to the foot of the bed, picked up the book and held it tightly to her chest. Her cheeks were flushed red from embarrassment at Allan’s laughter. As he continued to laugh, she said, “It’s not that funny!”

“Oh come on, Kadi,” said Allan, “I know you’re into all this occult mumbo jumbo in a big way, but surely you can’t take this kind of doggerel seriously? Magic potions are one thing, since in ancient times witches often had a great knowledge of herbal medicines, far exceeding the knowledge of orthodox doctors. But how could this kind of crap possibly do anything at all?”

Although at heart she agreed with him, Kadi was livid at Allan for throwing her own logic up into her face. She said:

“All right then, suppose we try it and see?”

“Sure, go ahead,” said Allan with a shrug of his shoulders. He thought: Eve is right, Kadi must be a bit strange!

So Kadi read the mantra aloud, ending it: “And Evil Ways, Send Allan Banks Forward, For a Single Day!”

As she finished the charm, Allan opened his mouth to laugh ....

And disappeared without a sound.

Shrieking, Kadi dropped the book of charms and raced over to the bed.

Although she had seen him vanish before her eyes, logic told Kadi that it was impossible. She dropped to her knees to look under the bed, hoping against hope that he had rolled off the edge to hide, as a cruel practical joke. But there was no sign of him under the bed.

She spent ten minutes looking behind the video and sound equipment and through the clothes in his wardrobes, before finally conceding that, as impossible as it seemed, the spell had worked.

Kadi spent nearly two hours reading the book of charms from cover to cover, before thinking of trying to use the same spell to bring Allan back. After taking a few deep breaths to calm herself down, she read out the spell again, ending it, “Bring Allan Banks Back, From a Single Day!”

Nothing happened.

Kadi tried variations on the same ending for nearly an hour, growing increasingly distraught, until she was crying so hard that she could no longer recite the mantra.

She threw the book down onto the bed in rage and ran out into the corridor, down the stairs and across to the front door. She didn’t even notice Irene Banks, Allan’s mother, as she ran straight past her.

“Kadi, is everything ... ?” Irene began. Only to be cut off in mid-sentence by the slamming of the front door as the young redhead ran out into the street.

“Now what can be ... ?” wondered Irene. She went across to the door and opened it to watch Kadi running down the road for a moment. Finally, she closed the door and walked across to the foot of the stairs. “Allan?” she called. “Did you and Kadi have a fight or something?”

She waited for a moment, then repeated the question. Receiving no reply, she hurried up the staircase. She tapped on the door to her son’s bedroom for a few seconds, before opening the door to ask, “Allan, did Kadina ... ?”

She stopped short, surprised to find the room empty. She had seen Kadi and Allan go up to the room together, and although that had been a few hours ago, she should have heard if he had left the house at any time. Not that he would be likely to go out first, leaving Kadi behind. Could Kadi have been running after Allan? Irene thought. She instinctively followed Kadi’s example of searching round the bedroom. But he would have had to pass me at the bottom of the steps!


“Don’t panic, love. He’s just gone forward a single day,” pointed out Miriam Holbrook, holding her weeping daughter. “Nothing bad has happened to him, pet. He’ll pop back onto his bed in twenty-four hours, without even knowing what has happened to him.”

“Are ... are you sure?” asked Kadi, looking up at her mother pleadingly.

“Of course I’m sure, pet. Nothing has happened to him.”

The telephone began to ring in the kitchen and Miriam realised that it would be Irene Banks demanding to know what had happened to her son.


“She’s not answering. No, neither of them,” Irene said over the telephone to Evelyn Evans half an hour later.

Although it was late evening, Eve rushed over to the Banks’ home. She did a search of Allan’s room, managing to find the book of spells. Irene had seen the book but had not taken any notice of it in her haste to find Allan. She had assumed that it was one of the hundreds of science fiction novels which filled her son’s bookcases.

“Kadi’s done something to him,” said Eve, showing the book to Irene.

“But how ... ?” Irene began. She stopped as she read the title of the book and realised what Eve meant. “But that’s ridiculous. I know Kadina has a fascination for witchcraft and such, but that sort of thing doesn’t work!”

“Doesn’t it?” demanded Eve. “Then where is Allan? I tried to warn him not to see Kadi anymore, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“You don’t think ... don’t think she’s killed him or something?” Irene asked, making Eve pale. Her hatred for Kadi was temporarily overshadowed by her concern for the man whom she loved.

“Perhaps ... perhaps we’d better call the police?” suggested Eve.


Because the two women didn’t know for certain that anything had happened to Allan, it took five hours, until 4:00 the next morning, before the police responded to the phone call.

The two officers searched the house from top to bottom for four hours, before finally following Eve’s advice to go to talk to Kadi -- with Eve and Irene both in tow, despite a suggestion by the senior officer that at least one of the women should stay behind in case Allan returned while they were out.

Although Kadi was still distraught by the disappearance of Allan, she did her best to appear casual as Miriam fended off most of the policemen’s questions.

Kadi had been carefully coached by her mother:

“All I know,” she said, “is that Allan said he had to leave the house and would return to his room in twenty-four hours.”

“That was around a quarter past ten last night?” asked one of the two officers, a Goth chick with orange-and-black striped hair, recording Kali with her mobile phone.

“That’s right,” agreed Kadi.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that he didn’t tell his mother before going away for twenty-four hours?” the senior officer, a tall ash blonde, asked.

“Why yes, naturally I assumed that he had told her.”

The questioning continued for nearly two hours, followed by a cursory search of the Holbrooks’ house -- with the permission of Miriam and Kadi, since the officers didn’t have a warrant -- then the police left. Not satisfied, they promised to return if Allan didn’t come home that evening.

“Well, that’s that,” Miriam said with a sigh after the others had departed. “Barring something going wrong with the spell, Allan will return this evening and everything will be all right.”

“I hope so,” said Kadi, not as confident as her mother.


Allan returned at 7:12 that evening laughing at the spell that Kadi had read out to him (to the surprise of Eve and Irene, who, not knowing that Kadi had spent hours trying to bring him back before bursting out of the house the night before, had not expected him for another three hours). He stopped laughing, however, astonished when he found himself alone in the room: Kadi having vanished into thin air.

Hearing Allan’s laughter from downstairs, Irene raced up the stairs, followed by Eve -- who had come over after dinner to await Allan’s promised return.

The two women stopped by the bedroom door, staring in at Allan in amazement.

“How ... how did you get up here?” asked Irene. She had been listening by the front door, and knew that he couldn’t have entered through the doorway.

“I came up straight after dinner,” explained Allan, “but where is Kadi?”

“That witch!” hissed Eve. “She caused this, didn’t she?”

“Caused what?” Allan asked, surprised by Eve’s anger.

“Your disappearance,” explained Irene.

“My disappearance?” Allan asked, sitting up on his bed.

“That’s right,” agreed his mother. “Last night I saw Kadina go racing out of the house, and when I came up here to check with you, you were missing.”

“Last night? But Kadi wasn’t here last night; she had dinner with us tonight.”

“No, that was last night,” explained Irene. “Before your disappearance.”

“We searched your room and found nothing but this,” said Eve. She held up the book, Spells, Conjurings, Charms, and Magicks!

“Well, that part is right anyway,” Allan said, taking the book from Eve. “Kadi was reading out a spell from it.”

“And the spell made you vanish?” asked Eve.

“No!” asserted Allan. He wanted to believe Irene and Eve were playing some weird joke on him, but saw how distressed they both were. “I didn’t go anywhere!”

“Yes, you did!” Irene insisted.

The debate continued for over an hour and was still in progress when the two police officers arrived at 8:45. To Allan’s amazement, the two officers assured him that he had indeed been missing for twenty-four hours. They questioned him for an hour and a half, then, to Allan’s mounting confusion, warned all three of them that it was a criminal offence to waste police time and money with false reports.


Over the next few months, Allan began to avoid Kadi. Although he didn’t believe that she had worked magic on him, he knew that she had done something (perhaps had drugged and kidnapped him) and started to wonder about her sanity. For the first time, he took seriously Eve’s remarks about Kadi’s strange taste in clothes and literature.


“See what you made me do,” Kadi complained to her mother a month or so after Allan’s disappearance. During this time, she had been refused admittance into the house by Irene and hadn’t been able to get Allan to talk to her on the telephone. “Instead of winning him from Eve, my magic has driven him into her arms!”

“Never mind, pet,” said Miriam, accepting the criticism, although it wasn’t entirely fair. “That isn’t the only spell in your reach. There must be dozens of other mantras you could use to win him back from her.”

“Oh no!” said Kadi, shaking her head emphatically. “Things are bad enough now. No matter what happens, I’ll never use magic again to try to get him away from her!”


Eve was employed as a PC operator-cum-girl Friday at the Glen Hartwell Reporter in Boothy Street. She occasionally had to spend hours in the records department in the basement, hunting through mouldy old newspaper clippings, and microfiche. She was researching background for a story about Melbourne men who abused their wives and children, when she found the clippings that she took home to show Allan Banks that evening.

The clippings were more than a dozen years old and were about Kadina Holbrook; specifically about the inquest into the death of her father, Jason. Whom Kadi had killed, bashing his head in with a cast-iron skillet.

“See! I told you she was weird!” insisted Eve.

Although Allan was shocked by the clipping, he was a little less biased against Kadi than Eve was. He pointed out, “It says here that she killed him in self-defence after he tried to molest her, three months after the death of her mother, Miriam.”

“That’s right, three months after the death of her mother, Miriam!”

“What ... but ... ?” stammered Allan. “It must be a misprint.”

“No, no, I checked,” insisted Eve. “From what other papers said, Miriam Holbrook died when Kadi was fifteen. Three months later, Jason, her father, tried to molest Kadi and got his head bashed in for his trouble. But in hospital, Kadi claimed that it was her mother, back from the dead, who had killed him!”


A month later, Eve went around to see Kadi to return the book Spells, Conjurings, Charms, and Magicks!, which Kadi had left in Allan’s bedroom.

“And there is something that I want you to see,” Eve said. She held up her left hand to show Kadi the small diamond ring on her ring finger and said, “From Allan. We’re engaged to be married next month.”

“Engaged ... how?” asked Kadi, having to sit down as her head began to swim.

“Thanks to you!” gloated Eve. “You and your book of charms. I don’t know what you did to Allan to make him vanish like that, but you drove him straight to me!”

Eve was still gloating, laughing at Kadi, when, without even realising what she was doing, the young witch began to recite the sending charm.

“Don’t try your black magic on me!” shrieked Eve. Turning, she started to run.

She got as far as the bedroom door as Kadi reached: “And Evil Ways, Send Evelyn Evans Forward, For a Hundred Days!”

Eve’s right hand reached the front door and started to turn the knob as the charm was completed.

Then, without a sound, Eve vanished into thin air.


This time the police were faster to respond. They got to Eve’s flat within an hour of her being reported missing by her flatmate, Heather. But despite the connection between Allan and Kadi, there was nothing to tie Eve’s disappearance to that of Allan's. And since no one had seen her enter the Holbrooks’ house, the police had no reason to doubt Kadi’s claim that she hadn’t seen Eve in months.

Kadi was distraught with guilt at what she had done. She was able to convince the police of her innocence, as she did Allan, when she went to see him a few days later.

Despite his initial reluctance to see Kadi, they soon began to meet regularly, as they had done until a few months ago. A month after Eve’s disappearance, they announced their engagement, and five weeks after that, they were married in Saint Margaret's Cathedral in Blackland Street, Glen Hartwell, in a full white wedding. Which went off without a hitch, apart from Kadi’s inability to recite the Lord’s Prayer without getting a few words wrong.

After the ceremony, they flew to Crown Palladium Casino in Sydney for a three-week honeymoon.

It was nine days after their return to Glen Hartwell that Eve reappeared at the doorway of Kadi’s room at the Holbrooks’ house. At first she didn’t realise what had happened and raced around to Irene Banks’ house. She expected to be comforted by Allan. Instead, to her dismay, Irene told her, “But Allan moved out when he married Kadi a few months back!”

“Married Kadi! But he’s engaged to me!”

“He was, but when you disappeared ....”

It took nearly twenty minutes of arguing with Irene Banks before it finally sank in to Eve what had happened. When Irene refused to give her Allan and Kadi’s new address, Eve raced round to her own apartment and got the information from Heather.

Twenty-five minutes later, she confronted Kadi at her front door.

“You shrew, you used your black magic to steal Allan from me!” Eve accused. She pushed her way past Kadi into the corridor.

“That ... that’s not true,” lied Kadi. She backed away in fear from Eve, whose electric blue eyes shone with manic rage.

Eve lunged at Kadi, who raced down the hallway toward the bedroom of the four-room apartment, with Eve in hot pursuit.

Kadi managed to slam the door shut and lock it, despite Eve’s best efforts to push the door open.

“Let me in, you witch!” Eve shrieked over and over again. She hammered her fists upon the thin plyboard door, which rattled alarmingly beneath her assault.

Eve pounded on the door for more than five minutes before finally collapsing, sobbing onto the corridor floor.

Kadi listened to the sobbing and felt heartsick. She knew that Eve was right; she had cheated by using her magic to take Allan away from her. Kadi had one hand on the doorknob, to go out to comfort Eve, when she heard the other woman walk away.

At first Kadi thought that Eve had left the apartment, but after a moment she heard the clanking of cutlery and knew that she was rattling around in the kitchen.

Kadi still had an ear against the door, listening, when Eve returned from the kitchen.

“You witch! I’m going to kill you!” Eve shrieked, and Kadi heard a hard thud against the bedroom door.

As the thud-thud-thudding continued, Kadi slowly backed away until she was against the cupboard at the opposite wall. She listened to the furious rattling-thumping at the door, wondering what Eve was trying to do.

It was only as a long metal blade finally broke through the double layer of plyboard, that Kadi realised what Eve was up to. She was using two carving knives from the kitchen to try to get through the door to her.

“I’m going to kill you! Going to kill you! Going to kill you!” shrieked Eve. Each thud-thud of the lethal blades seemed to add to her anger, making her increasingly hysterical as the blades began to cut through the door at last.

“Eve, it wasn’t my fault,” shouted Kadi, desperately trying to reason with the other woman. “You know how I feel about Allan. If you hadn’t gloated so much when you showed me your engagement ring, I wouldn't have done it ....”

“Liar! Liar! Liar!” shrieked Eve, still hacking at the door. She broke the blade off one of the knives, but continued with the other until she had cut a hole large enough to get one hand through to grope around for the key in the lock.

Shrieking with fear, Kadi raced across to barricade herself against the door. Only to scream and tumble to the floor bleeding, as Eve slashed her back with the one remaining knife.

It was only when Eve opened the door and began to enter the bedroom, still wielding the carving knife, that Kadi frantically began to recite:

“Ancient Charms and Magick Runes,

Evil Fortunes, Glamours and Glooms;

Empty Welcomes and Empty Cheers.”

Eve was standing over Kadi, who was still sprawled on the bedroom carpet.

Eve lifted the knife blade back over her head with both hands, as Kadi hurriedly finished, “Send Evelyn Evans Forward, For a Thousand Years!”

As the knife blade began to descend, Eve disappeared into the distant future.

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
© Copyright 2025 Mayron57 (philroberts at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Writing.Com, its affiliates and syndicates have been granted non-exclusive rights to display this work.
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