Chuck and the Bad Prank

by Rajah Dodger {rdodger@hotmail.com} (c) 2010

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License (by-nc-sa). In
jurisdictions where the Creative Commons license is not recognized, United
States copyright and Berne Convention provisions apply; all rights reserved to
Rajah Dodger except that electronic not-for-profit reproduction rights are
explicitly granted with the stipulation that this authorship and permission
note must remain attached.

Abstract: A Halloween prankster makes a bad choice for his target

"What do you have against the old widow anyway?"

The gang was at happy hour across from the college campus, and Chuck had just
announced his intention to toss eggs and stink bombs at the home of the local
psychic. The woman was 70 if she was a day, and nobody knew why Chuck would
care other than wanting to do something for Halloween.

"She's old, she's ugly, she's got that really weird overgrown organic stuff in
her yard - I don't know why the city lets her when we've got to mow our lawns
and trim our bushes. So I figured it's Halloween, what's one more prank in the
city? It'll get blamed on high school kids or gang members."

The next round of drinks arrived, and talk turned to other things. But the
night before Halloween found Chuck dressed in camouflage and set up with motor
oil, eggs, firecrackers and dog poop. It was an overcast night, slightly humid,
and the widow's garden patch gave off smells that made Chuck's stomach turn. He
figured it would be best to start around back, and stepped carefully up the
rickety wooden stairs to the rear porch. Setting his pack down, he brought out
the plastic bags of doggy doo and started squeezing them over the threshold of
the back door.

The motor oil made a heavy base on the bottoms of the window frames, and he
started laying out the firecrackers. The smell from the back door was hanging
close because of the humid air, and the motor oil didn't help matters any. He
peered through the shaded screen of the back window, wondering whether the
inside of the house was as ratty and run-down as the outside.

Lightning flashed suddenly, and right in front of his eyes a horrid visage
barely human leered at him, discolored sharp teeth snapping, Chuck screamed,
threw out his hands for protection, and stumbled backward. His heel caught on a
broken slat and he fell backward, breaking through the railing of the porch and
hitting his head on a rock in the ground.

When he managed to swim up to consciousness, past the killer headache that made
opening his eyes a painful effort, all he could see were two withered ankles
over house slippers that even his grandmother would have thought outdated.
Great, he thought, caught by the widow.

It wasn't until he tried to lift his head and found he coudn't look up that
Chuck started to worry.

Not only couldn't he move his head, he couldn't move his arms or legs - and if
his head was at the widow's ankles, then the rest of him had to be down in the
ground. He was still trying to work out what that meant when the widow started
talking. Her voice was not at all what he expected - it was low, silky,
hypnotic, almost - the thought repulsed him - sexy.

"Ah, good - you're awake. Didn't your parents ever teach you not to go around
defacing people's property? Honestly, kids today have no manners. Well, you'll
get a lesson that should last you a lifetime." She laughed, for no reason that
Chuck could figure out. He tried to answer, but his throat wasn't working right
- all that came out was a hoarse animal-like whimper. Some experimenting had
established that he couldn't move anything other than his eyes and mouth, and
his entire body felt like it was clasped in a rough, scratchy blanket. Oh,
gross - the old woman had taken his clothes off!

"I'm more than a psychic, you know. I used to be a teacher, but mostly I'm a
witch!"

The woman squatted down in front of Chuck's face, her knees spreading and
opening the tattered robe she wore. He closed his eyes, not wanting to see what
a 70-year-old woman looked like down there. She kept on talking.

"Do you know how witches work? We serve Mother Earth - that's why I have my
garden. And Mother - well, she needs to be fed."

The woman wasn't making any sense, but that wasn't what Chuck was focused on.
The very ground around his body was shifting, getting warmer, creeping and
scraping against his flesh, enfolding his limbs, separating them, compressing
them in rolling waves.

From human hands, the effect between his legs would have been enjoyable. Under
the scattered moonlight with the widow's shadowed thighs drawing closer to his
face, his arousal only added to his rising fear and revulsion. The widow
examined his face, nodded, and smiled. With a low sensual purr she whispered
into his ear, "Mother's hungry!"

Chuck's eyes were wide and bulging, his face swollen and dark red, the sounds
from his throat pure animal. The heat suffusing his groin was growing, aching,
pulsing, and something was working its way up inside his bottom. The widow was
still talking, but Chuck couldn't make sense of the words, his brain scrambled
by the way his body was swirling out of control, his hips thrusting against the
enclosing earth. With a silent scream of pure terror Chuck began to convulse,
fertilizing the ground around his straining limbs, his mouth stretched wide.

The next night, all the neighborhood kids agreed that the great big scary
jack-o-lantern in the widow's garden was the best Halloween pumpkin they'd ever
seen.

/END/

Endnote: Workshopped at the Fish Tank (http://www.desdmona.com).