A hiss began with a point of light in front of Lulu and the still-oblivious Reggie. It grew and grew until it became the Wicked Witch of West Texas. Her hair was changed again, this time to spider webs, replete with spiders spinning away. She wore a shiny turqoise-blue kimono with gold dragons embroidered on it over a short black dress. The dragons appeared to shoot bits of blue flame. Actual flame, not embroidery. As Lulu’s eye took in the witch's latest getup, her vision snagged on the witch's right knee. Or rather, the face on her right knee. It was a mean-looking face with big blue eyes and it wore red lipstick.
“What's got your tongue? Speak, brat.”
Lulu was entranced by the knee face.
“It's just a zombie knee. Don't they teach you anything? It has super powers.”
“I, uh. Kubla. He gave me this key.” Lulu handed the witch the gold key and the knee winked at her.
“Very good, my nasty niece,” she declared. “You’ve succeeded in your quest. And just in time, too, it appears. You even managed to get him to go after your Snipe for you.” She took Lulu’s wrist in her cold hand and looked at the watch, smiling a tight, mean smile.
“He said to tell you he’ll be back to participate in evil conspiracies next week.”
“Perfect. He really is quite a lot of fun when he’s not gorging himself on Honeydew and Milk of Paradise.:
“You have to put us back now.” Lulu reminded her awful aunt.
“Do I?” the witch enquired.
“We got rid of your nemesis.”
“Oh, that. He's not really a nemesis. Not really. He cancelled lunch last week, saying he had a headache and I found out these shenanigans he’d been up to. He'll be back as soon he finds the Snipe.”
“I was under the impression that there’s no such thing.”
“Well, now that we’ve all imagined it, there certainly is.”
“We’re finished here. We kept our end of the agreement.”
Lulu reached into the Expedition Kit and retrieved the contract.
“You did promise,” Lulu said, “but luckily I didn’t trust you.” Lulu held the contract up for the witch to see.
“I suppose I do have to send you back.”
“What happened to him?” the witch said, scrutinizing Reggie. “He looks oblivious and by his appearance, he would seem to have had a run-in with the Nightmare Hag.[91]” The witch grabbed his glittery hand with her gloved hand and looked at his finger and then looked back at Lulu, arching one eyebrow.
“How did this happen?” the witch asked. She was looking at Lulu with a curious expression.
“He wasn’t going to go with me, and if he didn’t I wasn’t going to be able to carry out our task,” Lulu explained. “Plus, he keeps having these fits.” As Lulu said it, he fell to the ground convulsing.
“Hmm. One of my pets seems to have taken up residence in him. That’s easily fixed.” She waved her wand and his body stopped shaking. He went slack, as if asleep.
“What about the rest of it?”
Lulu related the events involving the horse-faced thing.
“I was going to transform that nasty bling-obsessed thing into a hagfish and deposit it at the bottom of the Pacific until the Nightmare idea occurred to me. It used to be an old crone that lived in a shack in the incense forest, attacking anyone who possessed something shiny. It was quite obsessed with getting a man, so my design was to release it in the immediate vicinity of that Marginal moron so that he might get the Nightmare glitter plague. I assumed that he'd failed his mission. When you informed me that you had the bling ring, things changed. Believe me when I tell you that if Reggie were not now obliviated, he’d be experiencing a waking nightmare too horrible to be believed, having been attacked by that creature. As it is, I don’t think he’s feeling much more than revulsion.”
“That thing was awful.”
“Truly. Maybe I should dispatch the old nag.[92]” The witch waved her wand and as the black bubbles appeared, so did the glitter-slimer, it’s horrible equine face twisted with rage and she began to wail. The witch waved her wand again and the thing began to screech and writhe before it started to swell. It swelled and swelled and Lulu took several steps back. It got as big as an elephant. Then, the howling horse-faced thing finally burst.[93]A shimmering gaseous cloud was all it left in its absence. That quickly dissipated.
“Now, you still haven’t stated how he became obliviated.”
“I couldn’t finish without his help and I found the vial of black liquid.”
“Am I correct that you obliviated him on purpose? Meaning you tricked him and then forced him to do your bidding?”
“Well, I had a good reason,” Lulu explained. She didn’t at all like the look of approval the wicked witch now wore.
“Don’t we all,” the witch replied. Lulu said nothing. “This is a very interesting and unexpected turn. You have completely exceeded my wildest expectations for you. Not that my expectations were very wild, since they basically didn't even extend to your survival. Why, I don't believe that even I had such a nasty nature at so young an age. Of course I didn't have any serenity water back then, either.”
“I was hoping you’d put him back to normal again when you send us home.”
“I can’t un-obliviate him since this time he was obliviated here, rather than in the Black Mansion. Oblivion carried out in an alternate universe is quite un-undoable, at least not without undertaking extreme measures.” The webs that made up her large hairdo wiggled and churned with black spider bodies. “The spiders wish me to state, for the record, that it's not impossible, just convoluted, and I can't be sure I'm very motivated to undertake it.”
Lulu’s stomach had that terrible feeling again. She could never go back to her parents now. Not if they knew she had done this to Reggie. She started to cry.
“Now, now,” the witch said almost soothingly, which, coming from her had the opposite effect. “This changes things. You’ve shown potential here. You obviously have talents that make you suitable for things much better than taco slavery. I pretty much expected to be baking cookies out of you two, or using you as sleeves for my new Jackalope fur coat, but you clearly have more potential than any kid since Cybil.”
Lulu dried her eyes, but just stared at the witch. She had no idea what to say.
“Of course, there’s only one way that he’ll be back like he was before and that’s if everything is back like it was before.”
“That’s all I want.”
“And, you did complete the quest.”
“We never did find a Snipe like you said.” Lulu pointed out.
“Oh, that was a red herring. If you had become fixated on it, you'd never have completed the task, which you were perfectly capable of doing on your own. The only real help you got was from yourself,” the witch reasoned.
The witch stared at her in a way that made her feel like she had scorpions crawling all over her skin as she remembered the sugar girl in the meadow. She imagined spraying the imaginary scorpions with imaginary scorpion repellent and imagined that they fell to the ground and ran away.
“The fact that you made it through the night, well, that clinches it.”
“I just want to go home, and have Reggie back to normal,” Lulu said.
“You’re sure you don’t want to stick around for dessert?” the witch asked. “I hear it's going to be very special.”
“No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.”
“What about the glitter plague,” Lulu asked. She didn’t want to take Reggie home looking like he currently did, either.
“Oh, that will be gone, too.”
“Let’s hurry,” said Lulu.
“Fine. The sooner I finish with you, the sooner I can get on to more pressing business.”
“What business?” Lulu asked.
“I’m raising the vibrational frequency of the entire universe,” the witch answered. "I make powerful magical inventions to interface with multiple dimensions. Stuff like that."
“That makes sense.”
“Minions!” the witch called out. Chupacabras emerged from the forest by the dozen, each as horrible and frightening as the previous one. The witch raised her wand and waved it and when she did the Chupacabras changed into mere weirdos; strangely dressed, wild-haired art school types. The kind you’d expect to do performance art.
Many sported absurd facial hair and fanciful headgear in wild colors. One had a golden axe and a matching gold cape. What Lulu couldn’t have known was that these were actual performance artists whom the witch had kidnapped, knowing they wouldn’t be missed. Since they believed absurdities they could be persuaded to commit any atrocity the witch wished, so they were perfect minions. Really, they were quite bezoomny.
“I’ll have to let the cat out of the bag, too,” the witch said, placing her purse on the ground. It popped open and out came Schrödinger’s cat, looking as indifferent as ever.
“The cat knows the way, so keep your eyes on him. Don’t look away from him for a second. Time-travel is exceptionally dangerous and if he coughs up anything save it for me, because, although I’m letting you go this time, I’ll be back.”
“I never want to see you again.” Lulu gave her meanest look.
“Sure,” the witch said, sneering at Lulu. “We may as well get this show on the road,” the witch said, raising her wand, “unless you want to come over to the dark side now.”
“I'll never come over to the dark side,” Lulu answered.
“I'm your aunt, Lulu.”
“I know that, but I still won't come to the dark side with you.”
“We'll see. You're not the first to make that proclamation, nor will you be the last. Even Cybil used to say the same, and look at her now. Anyway, just watch the cat.”
Reggie locked his gaze on the cat and Lulu did the same.
“Remember my promise,” the witch said, “I’ll be back. And so will you.”
Then the crowd of weirdoes started to do a song and dance number, which as far as Lulu could tell was probably titled “The Time Warp.” In a few seconds there was a flash of light and they were forced back, over the event horizon and everything except the cat seemed to melt away.
[91]The Nightmare Hag is a fine illustration of one of the witch’s portmanteaus from her primaries: whimsickening. It combines the horridity of a terrible affliction with a dose of whimsy.
[92]The appearance of the creature was inspired by a painting of a victim of sleep paralysis, known colloquially as “old hag syndrome.”
[93]Wicktionary: hexplosion- hexing leading to the victim exploding.
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