A Witch's Revenge

The sun was setting and Beth stared at the orange skyline from her porch. She hated high school, she decided at that instant. Despite all her efforts, she had failed to make friends. It didn't bother her so much as puzzled her. She was beautiful, she knew, and she was friendly. Maybe beauty and nice weren't such a great combination.

Beth heaved a sigh and rolled her eyes when she heard the phone ring. It could only be her mom calling from California. Like Beth cared which snob movie star her mother was rubbing noses with tonight. Ever, in fact.

The television was showing one of Beth's movies, the one where she was killed in the first five minutes. Beth didn't even bother to buy it. She could hear herself screaming through the open front door. Then she could hear herself dying. Her five minutes were up.

Beth listened to the phone ring before she remembered that she hadn't set the answering machine up again. Groaning, Beth stood up from the porch swing and entered the house, letting the screen door slam behind her.

She stared down at the plain looking phone and snarled. She didn't care if her mother waited forever for her to answer the phone. Beth hadn't seen her mother for the last eight months, except for the commercials.

Beth's next movie was scheduled to begin filming in August and this time she was the lead role. That meant she actually lived and her lines were spoken, mostly, not screamed.

"Hello," she said in the phone without realizing she had actually picked it up.

"Hey!" came a stranger's voice across the buzzing line. "What are you doing?"

"Talking to you, obviously," Beth snapped. "Who, by the way, I don't know and so I don't want to continue wasting my time."

"It's me, silly! Neil!" the voice said with a forced jovility.

"Of course, how could I not have known?" Beth rolled her eyes. Neil was the push off of the cool crowd, the people she had tried so hard to get to like her but had ignored her too easily for her tastes. Neil was the one they sent to fetch things; people, papers, coffee, whatever tickled the fancy of the crowd. "What do you want?" Beth hissed.

"The party! Remember?" Neil said.

"What party?" Beth asked.

"The one you're throwing at your parentless house tonight."

"I'm not throwing a party at my house. Not tonight and not anytime in the future. Have you dipped into the blood punch early this evening." Beth asked.

"Look, don't you remember Allen talking about it. The shindig, the big one, the party to top all Salem parties. You remember...right?"

"I'm hanging up now," Beth said.

"We'll be there in twenty...Allen's bringing a keg." Neil said and the phoneline went dead. Beth shook her head. They figured that she would just allow them to enter her house and throw a party. They thought she was just some tool they could use once a year then toss into the shed until next big one.

A small smile touched Beth's lips. "Yes...a party at my house. What a wonderful way to ring in Halloween. Yes..."

A WITCH'S REVENGE

Beth sat on the porch as the loud music poured out of her house. She let them party there, let them drink their beer as she watched the trick-or-treaters avoid her house like the plague. She had candy and everything, had planned on sitting on the porch and smiling sweetly while handing out teeth rottening things.

Now, she sat on the porch listening to sex rock pour out of her expensive sound system and imagined what was happening in the bedrooms upstairs. She decided that she didn't want to know and so she focused on a ghost dancing up the sidewalk.