Witch Master

by Noah Layton

  And then there were was the end result of the ritual that they had carried out. A warlock? The powers that came along with being a warlock, too? They hadn’t specified what those powers would be, only that I would know when they showed up.

  I really wish that I had asked them…

  The exhaustion of the day’s events suddenly struck me. Even if I had been out for eight hours after they had carried out the ritual, I was still exhausted.

  Searching for an answer, I instinctively pinned it down to the new powers that I was in possession of, to the change that had evidently come over my body not only in my newfound physicality but in these mysterious abilities that they had spoken of.

  But even if that seemed a valid explanation it was also paradoxically anything but valid. I had seen their telekinetic abilities with my own eyes when that book had floated across the room, and Brianna’s appearance and the effect she had had on me was beyond real… But my head still refused to believe it.

  I sank onto my bed, unable to hold off the welcoming arms of sleep that seemed to swarm up from the bed and wrap me in their hold.

  I opened an eye, checking that the metaphor was just that rather than actual demonic arms, and let sleep take hold of me.

  Chapter Three

  If I was omniscient and could know what was going on on the other side of the coven’s front door after Lois had closed it, I would have heard the three witches making a bet about how soon I would be back.

  Lois bet on me returning between 6am and 12pm the next day. Scarlett, who had been desperate for me to stay and hadn’t been subtle about it, said that I would be back between when I left and 6am. Brianna, who thought she had seen some strength in me, estimated that it would be anytime after 12pm the next day.

  Sorry, ladies, but Scarlett had won this round – but it took more than a little push to get me back to the house.

  Fortunately a push was exactly what I got.

  I had blinked after collapsing onto my mattress, seeing the LED display on my bedside alarm clock read 21:58.

  Post-blink? 2:04.

  I shuffled beneath the covers awkwardly, trying to pull them down and back over me with as little effort as possible, but in the midst of the process-

  Clunk.

  My eyelids darted open, refusing to lower themselves. I sat up, listening in the darkness of my bedroom, my alarm clock still the only source of light thanks to the blackout blinds covering the window.

  I usually liked things dark when I slept, but when things went bump in the night I would prefer that a little light be shed on the situation – literally. I was 21, way too old to be afraid of the dark, but then people are never really afraid of the dark, are they?

  They’re afraid of what’s lurking in the dark.

  I turned on my bedside lamp, looking carefully about the room, thrust straight back into wakefulness by the noise.

  Nothing.

  Clunk.

  And there it was again. It had come from the living area outside of my bedroom. Could Joe still be up this late, stumbling about in the dark?

  I dragged myself out of bed and moved to the door, pressing my ear against it. No sound of the TV, no footsteps, until-

  Crash.

  Joe had a habit of drinking on his own, so he may have resorted to that right after his online marathon of matches.

  Without even thinking I grabbed the door handle, pulling it wide and looking into the living room.

  Netflix had paused long ago, the are you still watching? screen sitting there complacently. But Joe hadn’t been the cause of the noise, because he was stretched out on the sofa, sleeping without even a semblance of a snore. He was a notoriously heavy sleeper, and even the noise hadn’t awoken him.

  He hadn’t been the source of the disturbance. That was over by the trash can in the kitchen.

  I approached the kitchen in the blackened light emitting from the TV. Moving past the back of the sofa carefully, I passed Joe and ducked my head to look into the kitchen.

  The trash can had toppled over completely, and a shape was moving about amongst the strewn garbage that was scattered about the kitchen floor. It was small and thin, but its limbs moved in such a frantic way that there was an element of terror in its appearance that I hadn’t even felt in the attic at the coven.

  It was human and inhuman, all at the same time.

  ‘What the fuck…?’ I muttered to myself. In that instant it’s head perked up, body going rigid like a meerkat at the sound of my voice, and it turned its head to look over at me.

  The creature’s face was blackened and wrinkly, but that was only visible from the light given off by the creature’s eyes, if they could even be called that; two huge, light-emitting white orbs sat on the monster’s face, above a slitted nose and a gormless mouth that gaped back at me with jagged teeth, before-

  ‘AAAAGHHHHHH!!!’

  The creature let out a blood-curdling screech in my direction, so high-pitched and loud that Joe immediately awoke.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?!’

  As a kid I had been left alone in my house more than once while my dad was working late. Whenever a pipe creaked or a wall expanded, sending an unknown sound through the house, I had played a game where I looked for the closest thing I could use as a weapon.

  All of the knives we had were in a drawer on the other side of the kitchen, which just so happened to be blocked by the hideous little monster that now sat before me.

  But the trash can was right there.

  I had seconds to move – leaning forwards and grabbing it, I dashed at the creature and slammed the open side of it down upon the monster. It fought to scramble away, lashing out its spindly army desperately. The thing walked the perfect line between pathetic and terrifying, and I actually felt bad when I caught its fingers on the edge as I pushed the can down.

  It gave out a final yelp before relinquishing inside the upturned can, but it was still putting up a hell of a fight to get out.

  ‘What the fuck happened?’ Joe asked frantically, hitting a nearby light switch.

  ‘Uhh…’ I muttered, sitting atop the can to keep it held down. I couldn’t tell him that there was actually some magical creature trapped underneath me. It had been bad enough when I had learned about it. ‘Raccoon – it got into the trash.’

  ‘A raccoon? Seriously? How did it get in the apartment?’

  ‘Uhh… Probably the window. Listen, don’t worry about it. It’s 2 in the morning, I’ll figure it out.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, man. I’ll get the lid and we’ll take it downstairs and set it free.’

  Another brutal screech exploded from inside the can, and it rattled dangerously beneath me.

  ‘Yeah.’

  No fucking way is he going to agree to this.

  But, for some reason, the powers of the universe decided to side with me for once.

  ‘Okay, bud,’ he said sleepily, yawning, and that was when I realised that, even if there was a threat nearby, my roommate was still half awake, effectively sleeptalking to me.

  Without another look he staggered off towards his room, falling into a wall absently on the way there before disappearing into his bedroom and closing the door behind him – leaving me sat on top of a trash can in the din of our kitchen, which clinked and growled desperately once more.

  I hopped off slowly, keeping a hand pressed flat against the bottom while I leaned over to grab the lid, barely grasping it in my fingertips.

  Turning it upside down, I lifted the can up as slowly and as carefully as I could, pushing the lid into place. The creature fought a little, scrambling against this foreign presence in its tiny prison, but with a little jimmying and shifting I managed to put it in place.

  Half a roll of duct tape later and the can was secured. It was so old that there were plenty of small holes rusted into its surface, giving the being a little air.

  I couldn’t just unleash this thing outside our building – who knew what the hell it could do?


  A few minutes later and I was hurrying through the streets with a trash can in my hands, looking like a complete moron to nobody except for the occasional late-night dog walker. Of the two that looked my way, they only gave me a single glance – as long as I stayed on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street and minded my own business, I was left alone.

  It took ten minutes of hurried, desperate jogging before I reached the coven. Surveying it briefly from across the street, I found all the lights to be off… But I couldn’t just stay out here.

  Knock knock.

  A moment later the reception hall light flicked on, and I saw one of the blinds flit up ever so slightly.

  A second later the door opened carefully, Lois’s head leaning around the door before swinging wide.

  ‘That was a long walk,’ she grinned.

  ‘I just went home to sleep all of this off, and something attacked me.’

  ‘Something?’

  ‘This,’ I said, picking up the trash can.

  Scarlett suddenly appeared next to Lois, her face lathered with some kind of cream and her hair tied up behind her head.

  ‘Tom!’ She smiled loudly, before realising how she looked. ‘Oh… Sorry about… What’s that?’

  ‘Something attacked him,’ Lois replied.

  ‘A garbage can?’

  ‘Hilarious,’ I said. ‘Can I come in?’

  They both stepped aside and I chuntered in, setting the can down as they closed the door.

  ‘Damn it,’ Brianna’s voice suddenly spoke up from the stairs, where she snuck around the edge and looked down upon us. ‘There goes my bet.’

  ‘The bet?’

  ‘We’ll tell you later,’ Lois said, while Scarlett silently fist-pumped the air before quickly regaining her composure.

  ‘So what’s in the can?’ Brianna asked.

  ‘It’s fucking terrifying,’ I said. ‘Is there somewhere we can let it out?’

  A few minutes later and we were ascending the stairs to the attic, which were tucked away in a separate back room. We emerged into the same space that I had fallen into, back when I had fought the previous creature.

  Looking up, I saw the window frame covered with a plastic sheet.

  ‘What is this place?’ I asked, setting the garbage can down and looking about.

  ‘We use it as a holding spot for any creatures that we capture,’ Lois said. ‘Hence the reason that that glurmagon was lurking in here when you fell through the ceiling. We also use it for the storage of a few things that we never need – like those, which you might already be familiar with.’

  I looked over in the direction that she was pointing and saw the staffs lined up against the wall.

  ‘They’re staffs,’ Brianna said. ‘Melee combat and spell-casting all rolled into one. If you’re a warlock, that is.’

  ‘What do you girls use?’

  ‘Wands, of course,’ Scarlett said. ‘But we rarely ever use them unless we’re out in the field.’

  ‘Wands…’ I repeated. ‘Actual magic wands?’

  ‘There’s so much you have to learn,’ Lois smiled. ‘Anyway, let’s do what we came up here to do. Show us this terrifying creature of yours.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘but are you sure you don’t want your wands around for when I open this? It’s pretty scary…’

  ‘Let’s just get a look at it. We’ll get out of here if it turns out to be anything serious.’

  ‘Oh, it is,’ I said seriously, finding the edge of the tape and undoing it from the lid. I looked over my shoulder to see the girls all waiting in anticipation, leaning past me to get a look. ‘Fine,’ I muttered, ‘but don’t blame me if anybody gets hurt.’

  I unrolled the tape, the can continuing to shake lightly, the howls getting louder from within until I pulled the lid free and jumped back.

  The creature exploded from its metal confines immediately, springing up to the rafters of the attic and crawling along the wooden beams before reaching one of the vertical posts and hiding behind it, peaking out from behind in the same way that the girls were from behind me.

  At least I thought they were.

  ‘See?’ I said, pointing at it as its eyes lit up the beams around it. I turned to look at the girls, expecting to see terrified looks on their faces even if I hadn’t heard shrieks of terror from them yet.

  But there were no shrieks of terror and no shocked expressions – just stifled laughter and shaking heads and folded arms.

  ‘Are you serious?’ Scarlett asked. ‘It’s a hobgoblin. A night-breed, maybe, but still a hobgoblin.’

  ‘And…’ I replied slowly, ‘judging by your expressions I’m gonna go ahead and guess that they’re not evil killing machines?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Brianna laughed. ‘You might get a few scratches, maybe, but give it rotten food and it’ll love you for days. That’s the reason it was in your garbage can. Probably why it wasn’t going crazy either. It’ll love the smell.’

  The witch-succubus left and returned a minute later with her own garbage can, one that wasn’t destroyed like my own, and dumped the contents into mine.

  Stepping back, the four of us watched from the door as the hobgoblin examined the can from above. Slowly but surely, it clawed its way down the rafter, jagged nails gripping onto the wood, before leaping lightly into the garbage can head first and disappearing into scraps of rotten food and empty containers.

  ‘That’s it?’ I said, frowning and shaking my head.

  ‘Pretty much,’ Lois replied. ‘Not exactly an explosive start to your warlock powers…’

  ‘My warlock powers?’

  ‘It probably won’t be permanent, but with your powers maturing they’re probably going a little haywire. You probably accidentally summoned it to you… Or attracted it to you.’

  ‘I really hope that’s not permanent.’

  ‘Me too,’ Brianna added, ‘It’s bad enough me having to hide along with keeping this place looking uninteresting to the outside world without more non-sentients turning up at our front door.’

  ‘Non-sentients?’

  ‘Magical beings that aren’t self aware.’

  ‘Gotcha.’

  We exited the attic and returned to the corridor atop the stairs.

  ‘So…’ I said slowly, looking down towards the door.

  ‘It’s your call,’ Lois said. ‘Go home and hope that you’ll wake up from this long-ass dream… Or stay.’

  I looked down at the door before looking back at Lois, Scarlett and Brianna. They were all exhausted from having been woken up so late, but there was still a welcoming look on their faces.

  They wanted me to stay.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘All right, I’ll stay. But I’ve got classes on Monday.’

  Chapter Four

  The girls set me up in the same room that I had previously awoken in. The compounding of everything had left me with the same feeling that I had had when I had gotten back to the apartment; I was exhausted, and the moment that my head hit the pillow I quickly fell into unconsciousness.

  Sleep this time was long and affecting, and by the time I woke up the morning sun was seeping in through the gaps in the blinds. I remained still for a few moments, reminding myself of where I was and exactly what had happened the night before.

  Three hot witches. A hobgoblin in the attic. A mansion in the suburbs.

  What the hell had I gotten myself into?

  Having a minute to reflect, I considered the situation – the girls had invited me into their coven and inducted me as a warlock, but I still had no idea in the slightest what that truly meant.

  But how could I go back to the real world outside of the front door just yet when this world existed in here – and more of it existed in the hidden shadows out there.

  A flurry of footsteps burst past the bedroom door, and I looked over to see that it was standing wide open.

  Who was that? Had I caught the edge of a foot dashing past the frame and out of sight?
If I was totally honest I would say it was more than that – a half-naked figure, in nothing but underwear.

  A giggle sounded out from the direction in which the figure had ran. I pulled the covers back, slipping out from the bed in nothing but my underwear and shaking my head with a smile.

  So this really was like some fantasy sorority house – hot, busty girls scampering about in their underwear.

  The only difference was that a guy was welcome.

  Heading out to the hallway without reluctance and turning right in the direction of the figure, I found myself face to face with Scarlett, but different to any way that I had ever witnessed her so far – she wasn’t even wearing her pink silk robe, her naked body wrapped up in nothing but a lacy pink bra and panties, barely containing her large chest and tight, round ass.

  ‘You always walk around the house like this?’ I asked, looking her up and down, feeling much more confident in my new, muscular body.

  ‘Sometimes…’ She giggled teasingly, leaning into me and whispering into my ear, ‘but mostly just when I’m aiming for a distraction.’

  I had just enough time to frown as she stepped back, asking ‘what do you mean?’ when I felt a sharp jab between my shoulder blades, sending me staggering forward and slamming facedown into the wooden panels of the floor.

  ‘So at least we know where your mind is focused,’ I heard Lois say from behind me, pinning me to the ground with the object she had jabbed me with.

  ‘Euughhh…’ I groaned in pain. ‘Can you really blame me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, leaning over me and talking hard into my ear. ‘First lesson – you can’t get distracted like that. There are a lot of magical forces in this world that exist to do two things; distract you and then murder you.’

  ‘Don’t get distracted, huh?’ I said. ‘You wanna hear a joke?’

  ‘Why not?’

  I quickly spun my arm back, grasping the weapon that she had been using – which I quickly realised to be one of the staffs from the attic – and yanked it to the side. Lois came with it, stumbling over and landing atop me, her light, curvy figure pressing down on me.