Hex Life

by Rachel Deering

  Audrey’d shouted to the heavens above that it should have been the worm flingers inside, denied sunshine and freedom, but there were many of them and only one Tuck, so the school’d done some bullpucky “kindness counselling” thing and kept Tuck under lock and key. Which they continued to do into junior high school, when the worms were replaced by horrible notes left in Tuck’s locker, spit in his food, and him being tripped so often, she replaced his glasses four times in one year.

  He survived it intact, but barely. And now it was high school, where the kids were smarter and more grown-up. They hunted her short, scrawny queer kid like pack animals, weeding him out from the safety of the herd and pouncing. Week after week, he came home with bruises and cuts he was too scared to explain, with ripped clothing she had to mend because they were too broke to replace it. Salt cut through bloodstains real well, she’d come to find out.

  Audrey begged, pleaded with him to tell her who was at him, but no amount of mama cajoling would crack her terrorized child. He just shrank and shrank, leaving the house as little as he could. Even getting him to see Alex became a struggle and a half, Tuck preferring the safety of his room and the peace of the internet to the threat of going outside. She was fairly sure Alex wasn’t going to ditch him for going through a rough patch, but it wasn’t doing a whole lot for her nerves, neither.

  Isolating a gay kid in a red county… she knew how that went. He’d end up broken, running off, or dead.

  And I ain’t losing my boy.

  Chocolate chips, then butterscotch chips, spread over the crust before the pecan layer. She hadn’t realized she was crying ’til the tears splashed down, but that was fine, as fine as the sweat had been, and just as fine as the blood when she cut her thumb on the sharp edge of the condensed milk can after she opened it. Two fat, red droplets, right into the mix, as she poured the milk all over. As she poured her anger, helplessness, and fear all over, too.

  Witching wasn’t a good resort, it was a last one. She’d offered to do pick-ups from school every day, but Tuck wouldn’t let her. Said he was too afraid she’d get in trouble with her job for sneaking out. She then told him he could homeschool, but he insisted it was just a little while more, he could make it ’til then. Colleges preferred the “real” transcript, he said, and he wanted to get into an art school up north if he could, or maybe out in Miami.

  She hated everything about the situation, but she abided, right up until he came home with a black eye and a lip twice as big as it ought to be. Still, he wouldn’t talk. Everything was escalating, had been since he was seven, so she did what she always did in these situations, which was climb into her car and drive up to the school to demand to know what they were doing to protect her son.

  The principal, a balding man with bird bones and a skinny tie, blinked at her over the rims of his glasses. “Without evidence, there’s not much I can do,” he’d said. “If Tuck won’t tell us what happened…” His hands spread, palms pointed up at the ceiling.

  “Why would he? Y’ain’t done diddly-squat to keep him safe! Y’all keep acting like him getting beat happens like rain happens—’cause God said so. But this ain’t God. This is Colton Washington and we both know it.”

  She’d stared at the principal, he’d stared back. His lip flattened in a mutinous line. As per usual, he was as useful as titties on a bull. Audrey was all sorts of done. If he couldn’t find a way to keep Tucker from getting killed, she’d plead her case to the PTO—implore the local parents for action. Surely, someone had to understand what it was like to fear losing your baby. They couldn’t all be peckerweasels, could they?

  Clad in her prettiest dress, notes in hand, she’d marched right on in to the bi-weekly PTO meeting the next week. And promptly shat a brick on the library floor. The PTO president was Pammy Fucking Washington in her stupid black Stetson, bottle-job blond hair, and pink t-shirt stretched taut over boobies her husband Ron bought for her fortieth. Normally, Audrey had better things to do than to judge other women for their looks, but Pammy brought out the petty in her something fierce, and Audrey’s petty said Pammy looked like Aging Texas Barbie.

  No big surprise she birthed an asshole kid.

  Tuck used to flat out say it was Colton harassing him. Through junior high school, Colton’s name came up over and over again. It’d landed Audrey and Tuck in mediation meetings with Pammy and Colton and school counsellors three times. Pammy was always polite, but she always made excuses, even going so far as to suggest “both” boys needed to examine their actions so it didn’t happen again. Audrey’d lost her temper on that one, asking how Colton shoving Tuck’s head in a toilet and flushing it was a “both boy” scenario. Pammy had offered that wan, pink-painted smile of hers.

  “Well, that was rude, wasn’t it?” she’d said before prompting Colton to apologize. Which he did, but he never saw even a single day of detention for it. Not then, and not into high school, mostly ’cause as Tuck stayed little, Colton got big, and Tuck got too afraid to out him, figuring the here and there beatings were better than whatever would happen if Colton saw an actual consequence.

  But Audrey knew who was responsible. Sure as shit, she knew, and despite Pammy being on the PTO, she figured the other parents were still her best bet, so she kept going back, week after week, waiting for her time to talk. Without fail, Pammy would pull her into every conversation except the one Audrey wanted to have.

  “The agenda is too full today, but let’s talk about what we can do to challenge some new titles in the school library.”

  “Would maybe next week work, Audrey? Oh, and what did you think about the mandatory prayer at the flag post?”

  “We covered the bullying policy right before you started coming out. We’ll circle back, promise, but we need to look at raising funds to replace the baseball team’s jerseys. The girls’ softball team can wait another year.”

  And, finally:

  “I promise we’ll get there, doll. In the meanwhile, it’s your turn on snack rotation, and I was wondering if you’d bring your seven-layer bars? If you don’t, Janice Motts will and that girl shouldn’t go near a kitchen. Can’t say that—she’s got too many cobwebs in the attic, if you know what I mean—but if I tell her you’re doing the bars, I can maybe get her to do something simpler. Like cookies from a tube. It’s more her speed, the poor thing.”

  Pammy wanted bars? Fine. Pammy would get bars—an Audrey special she’d never forget. Audrey sprinkled the shredded coconut all over the dessert and shoved it into the oven. Three hundred and fifty for twenty-three minutes exact would give her just enough time to rinse her sweaty body and change.

  And then?

  Well.

  Then it was time to get heard.

  * * *

  She’s not even a real Texan.

  There it was, Audrey’s pettiness being as pleasant as a chainsaw enema again. Her hands clamped on the steering wheel, knuckles white, the seven-layer bars piping hot on the passenger seat beside her. She, herself, wasn’t Texas born, but petty didn’t care about that. All petty cared about was shitting on a Kentucky transplant who presented like a caricature of any real Texan Audrey’d ever known.

  Or been, really. Yeah, she was Texan. Thirty-four years of living in the state said she could call herself that. Mama’d relocated them from the Louisiana bayou to drier Texas air after doctors told her temperate weather would be better on her lungs. Audrey’d been six then, and she’d never been back to where she’d come from. Never had a reason to, neither; Mama said she had no family she’d want near her kid. Audrey’d been her one and only and stayed that way right up until the day asthma took her home to Jesus eighteen years later.

  It was strange to think about Mama as she pulled into the library parking lot at quarter ’til seven. Or, maybe it wasn’t. Mama was the one who told Audrey a long time ago no one should cook mad, but especially not Winslow women because Winslow women had a shine about them. Anyone could catch the evil eye if their cook was riled enough, but from a Winsl
ow woman? You could catch dead, especially if she knew what she was doing.

  That’s where all those talks about responsibility had come in.

  “Texas ain’t known for its tolerance, darlin’. They figure out what we can do, we’ll be run off, and that’s the best-case scenario. Your great-granny got run into the swamp and et by alligators cause she swamp witched too hard. If you use that shine of yours, make sure you’re ready for it.”

  Fine, Mama, I’m ready. Pammy and Colton probably aren’t, but I sure am.

  She patted her hair into place, snatched the bars, and walked toward the library, her kitten heels clicking on pavement that’d go soft with much more sun. The skirt of her sundress whipped around her knees. Her hair danced inside its clip. She hadn’t bothered with much makeup, but there was a smear of red on her lips—a dash of confidence in a tube so some outside part of her matched the rage lava burning in the pit of her belly.

  Through the front doors, past the desk and children’s section, down by the periodicals to the media room in the back. She could hear Pammy’s voice from thirty feet away, greeting every newcomer like she hadn’t seen them in sixty years.

  “Sarah! Darlin’, you are glowing. Baby due in June?”

  “Daaaaaale. Gimme a high five, Sugar. Atta boy!”

  It went on. And on. And on.

  She was holding court at the back of the room, near the podium. The hair was big, the hat was on, the cowboy boots were new with their turquoise stone studs. She walked down a line of parents, shaking their hands like she wasn’t the president of the PTO but the president of the damned world. Audrey took her place, holding her squares and hoping her hands didn’t tremble. When Pammy finally stood in front of her, all beaming watt-capped smile, her eyes sparkling, Audrey tried to return it.

  She probably looked like she had gas, but what the hell else was she supposed to do? Biting her on the face was a felony.

  “Oh, look at this red-lipped siren right here!” Pammy leaned in to air kiss next to Audrey’s cheek, her perfume stench ripped straight from a French whorehouse. Audrey’s insides roiled. A hundred and fifty some-odd pounds of condensed evil had just invaded her personal space, but she didn’t flinch, not when Pammy put her hands on her shoulders, not when she gave her a saucy li’l wink.

  “You brought your squares, too! Dang. Too bad I’m doing the keto. Gotta get ridda some of my rump.” She dropped her voice to a conspirator’s whisper. “Though the husband like a little jiggle to my wiggle, if you know what I mean.”

  Keto? No!

  The notion of brewing up a curse only to have it go uneaten was far more upsetting than Pammy’s tended—or unattended—ass parts. Audrey notched up her not-smile, even going so far as to show a line of straight, white teeth.

  “You got horns holding up that halo,” she managed. “But a bite can’t hurt, right? You did ask me to make them special for you.” Audrey pulled back the foil on the pan to reveal the pre-cut squares with their gooey chocolate, coconut layers, and little bit extra. Pammy peered at them a moment, her tongue tip resting on her lower lip as she mulled.

  “Alright, alright. A little piece, but that’s it.” Again she whispered, “Mostly ’cause they ain’t Janice’s. She bought a cake from the grocer, poor thing.”

  Yes, poor thing. Whatever. Eat the square, Pammy.

  Audrey’s satisfaction at seeing Pammy’s acrylic talons reach in to pluck a square, turn it this way and that, before nibbling on the corner in such a way as not to disturb her lip gloss was practically orgasmic. When Pammy took a second bite, declaring the first “near-on godly” Audrey’s knees quaked. Pammy nodded at her with another wink and headed on down the line to greet her subjects, not just giving the square a sample, but devouring it whole.

  So much for keto, bitchbag.

  Audrey brought the pan over to the table. Flies buzzed ’round Janice’s pity cake, tiny vultures waiting to dive on a confectionary kill. One swooped in toward the squares almost immediately. Audrey swiped at it and, upon catching it in her palm, crushed it before peeling the rest of the foil away from the pan. Bug bits plummeted to join the layered treats, the melted chocolate swallowing a wing, some torso, a few legs. She paid no mind. The curse would only hurt Pammy ’cause that’s how the evil eye worked, but for the rest of ’em? Well, what was a little extra protein when she’d already thrown so much of her own in there?

  She wiped her hands on a paper napkin before walking around to the back of the room. She sat at the end of her row, crossing her legs and waiting. The other parents settled, as did the PTO board at the folding tables along the front. Pammy slipped in behind the podium, a queen ascended to her throne.

  She cleared her throat. It was about to begin.

  All that rot in Audrey’s guts turned to anticipation as her magic swelled. She couldn’t sit still. Her foot tapped. Her nipples went hard. Mama never said witching felt so good, but damn if Audrey didn’t feel like she could tapdance on the moon itself if she put her mind to it. Her pulse raced. Her fingers rubbed the thin cotton fabric of her dress between them until they hissed. Pammy blathered on through her agenda, but Audrey didn’t hear a word of it. She was too busy squirming like a worm on a hotplate because her witch was awake and Lord, it was hungry.

  Twenty minutes later it was the question and answer portion of the evening. Audrey practically vibrated as she raised her hand. The magic inside her was so swollen, she felt like an overfilled balloon, like her skin wasn’t big enough to contain the mammoth surging inside her. It was eager. It demanded release, and she would let ’er loose if Pammy didn’t give Audrey her due.

  Which she didn’t, of course, because she knew Audrey’s question and didn’t want to deal with it. She pointedly picked every other raised hand in the room, and after taking a vote on whether or not girls should actually be allowed on the football team, declared them past time. She even swung a little gavel down on her podium like that slam meant jackall at a PTO meeting.

  Polite clapping.

  Rustling as people stood from their seats.

  “Pammy,” Audrey called out over the noise.

  Pammy pretended she couldn’t hear.

  Audrey pulled on that thing frenzying inside of her, that swamp witch presence, calling out Pammy’s name so sharply, the room chatter quieted, every head turned. Dozens of eyes fell upon her, questioning, waiting, and Audrey rose from her seat, her fingers clasping onto the back of the chair in the row before her, nails biting into fake leather.

  “Yes, Audrey?” Pammy asked, voice dulcet, smile cemented in place, but something undermined the facade. The twitch below her eye. The too-swift flutter of her false lashes against her cheeks. The set of her jaw, maybe.

  “I’d like to talk about Tuck tonight. It’s early yet, and you did promise we’d get to it this week.”

  Audrey waited for an answer that wasn’t forthcoming. Pammy turned her face to go right on back to conversing with Donna Charlotte, the secretary of the PTO, like she hadn’t heard a word. Audrey’s monster didn’t like that, screeching and washing Audrey’s body hot in spite of the frigid air conditioning.

  Alright. Go on, then. Start slow.

  Pammy’s cheek twitched again. Then again. The first time, it was irritation. The second and third time? Well, it was hard to say what was what. The one disadvantage to being in the back row of the PTO Shitfest was Audrey couldn’t see the tiny shapes running along the inside of Pammy’s skin. She just saw Pammy swat at her face, and Donna Charlotte’s eyes grow big.

  “Girl, you got something… yeah, right there.” Donna Charlotte pointed.

  “What in Red Hell? Why’m I so itchy? Something bite me?” Pammy lifted her fingers, rubbing them furiously over her face, the tips of her nails scouring over the surface to leave pink tracks in their wake.

  Donna Charlotte’s head whipped back and forth, her limp, red hair whacking her cheeks. “It’s like you got something—maybe a worm? It’s runnin’ along under your skin—like. That’s… yo
u need a doctor, Pamela. That ain’t right.”

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN I GOT A WORM?”

  There went the smile, finally, right as the first fly flew out from her left nostril. Pammy honked like an irate goose and tried to crush it with the gavel in her hand.

  Is this how it’s presenting itself? Flies, like what’s in the rest of the pan?

  Alright.

  Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

  “Pammy,” Audrey called out. “I’d like to talk about Tucker. Most specifically what Colton’s been doing to him. He’s beating him raw, you know. Sending him home bloody. That’s why I need you to listen. Ain’t letting your son kill mine anytime this life.”

  Pammy whipped her head around to stare at her.

  “Not the time, Audrey! Not the damned time, alright?”

  “It’s moving all over.” Donna Charlotte pointed at another shape wriggling under Pammy’s skin. “Like, you got another one up by your temple. Oh, Lord. You’re a mess.” One of the men on the committee looked like he’d step in to help, but Donna Charlotte herded him away, a squat border collie with too-rouged cheeks and a green dress. “I think we best all take a step back? She’s got something going on. Might be contagious. I’m going to call the nine eleven. Hold on, Pamela. Just hold on, okay? I’m right here. Well, no, I’m not. I’m moving back, but I’m still in the room, alright?”

  Donna Charlotte frenzy-dialed.

  Audrey’s smile remained placid.

  “Pammy. I think it’s time we talked about Colton and Tucker.”

  Pammy wailed, her lips parting before she broke out into a dry cough that ended on a second insect erupting from her mouth to buzz around her head. Worst part was how tenacious the little buggers were, the flies swirling around like Pammy was a big, peach-colored pile of dog shit.