Witches Brew

Witches Brew

         The old crone sat in her dilapidated rocking chair on the porch of her equally dilapidated house. She rocked back and forth lightly, the wind pushing her emaciated body. Her face was thin, and appeared even more so by the frizzy puff of long grey hair surrounding it. She watched the road beyond her dead yard carefully, waiting. She knew he would come.
         After what may have been seconds or eons, it doesn’t much matter to one as old as her, a small boy raced down the street from the east, with brown hair mushroom-topping his small frame. He abruptly halted before the decrepit crab grass lawn, his hair stopping with a bounce a moment after. He looked at the old hag nervously with his brown eyes, and hid something he carried behind his back.
         The boy shifted from foot to foot, looking at the lady. She rocked unceasingly, staring the child down. He tried to look back; he tried to be brave, but eventually he broke and looked down at his feet. Finally the child spoke, “I brought what you asked for, you gonna give me back my Spot now?”
         The elder continued to stare at him, not speaking. The boy did not know what to do. He stood there stupidly looking at his feet for a few more intimidated minutes, waiting for an answer that would never come. Perhaps even more stupidly, he came to the conclusion that his only option was to approach the hag.
         He began creeping forward, still without looking up. He toed his way up the dead ground, picking up his pace with each step. The boy came to the stairs that led up onto the porch. He halted and looked up at the old woman again. She was still staring at him, one eye going off in completely the wrong direction, with a weird sheen to it. “Missus?” A drop of rain hit the boys face, a tear staining his cheeck.
         Her silence continued. With a creak the boy put his foot upon the wooden stair to get out of the coming autumn rain. He looked down at the noise, and looked back up, to find her staring into her house and not at him. With a bit more confidence now that he wasn’t being watched, the boy climbed the rest of the stairs, coming to be in front of the hag. She was especially horrid now that he was close to her; her dress was long grey and tattered; her hair was in knots and her left eye was definitely wooden.
         “Missus, I brought you the drink you asked for.” The child pulled out a flask from behind his back. He’d pilfered it from his Daddy in hopes of using it as a bargaining tool with the old witch. He proffered it to her, and she finally brought her one real eye back to look at him.
         All of a sudden, she leaned over and took the flask with one hand, and the boys opposite shoulder with the other. Her hand was imbued with an unnatural strength that was unbreakable. Her mouth creaked open in to a hideous, decayed grin of depraved delight.
         “Excellent. Now I have dinner and drink, don’t I!”