Free Pecan Pie and Other Chick Stories
Amazon and others-Paperback and Kindle. Suitable for New Adults and up. Published by iUniverse.
Janelle Meraz Hooper
See my other books and short stories: Janelle Meraz Hooper
Wanda, the Witless Witch of Boo! Cul-de-sac circled twice around her split-level home in an expensive neighborhood before she landed her broom on the roof. As always, she slid into her home through the air duct to the kitchen fan.
“Darn!” she cried as the blades sliced her black hat and ripped her hair. “I forgot to turn the fan off again.”
See why they call her witless?
Okay, she was a little addled. But beautiful. Blond, and petite, she bought all of her clothes at Hoardstrom’s and flew to LA every week to have her hair done at Chez Cher-Fawcett’s.
Stopping only to check her makeup in the mirror, she opened the sliding French doors and threw out the pot full of frogs, slugs, and spiders left over from her morning spells.
“Darn crows!” she cried as the black birds flew down from the trees and covered her yard. “Why is it all the crows in the neighborhood end up at my house?”
Trust me. She’ll never figure it out.
“Who’s at the door?” she’d call toward the front of the house whenever she heard a scratching noise on the porch. But no one was ever there. She’d been glad when her husband had agreed to fix the doorbell and had left one morning for the hardware store. That was over three years ago. He’d been working so hard on it that she hadn’t seen him since.
Each day she noticed the hole by the front door was a little bigger and the red and green wires from the doorbell were all over the porch, so she hoped he was getting close to finishing.
Each night, she tried to wait up for Clyde, but about twelve o’clock every night she’d get tired, so she’d put his supper on the table and go to bed without him. The next morning, his plate would be empty. The cat, that grew fatter and fatter, never seemed to miss Clyde. Wanda didn’t know why.
While Clyde was off at the hardware store buying a new doorbell, she kept plenty busy. All day long she ran back and forth, chasing the crows off the back deck, and answering the front door whenever she heard scratching. No one was ever there.
Wanda was getting lonely. Maybe, when she saw Clyde again, she’d tell him to forget the doorbell, board the hole up, and put up a doorknocker. Of course, then he would have to go to the hardware store to buy the knocker, so she was reticent to do that.
The beautiful witch got lonelier and lonelier. And witlesser and witlesser.
Wanda decided that she was too slow, and that was the reason she never saw anyone when she heard noises on the porch, so she began riding her broom down the seven steps to the front door. The problem with that was her broom was too fast, and she could never stop in time. Over and over, Wanda had to peel herself off the inside of her front door.
And so her life went. Year after year. The crows got noisier and noisier. She didn’t know why. The cat got fatter and fatter. The hole by the front door got bigger and bigger.
“When is that man going to finish?” she asked her fellow witches. “I swear, he’s slower than a dead June bug.”
Did I tell you yet that she was totally without wit? I think I did.
Finally, Wanda was at the end of her broom. She’d fix the doorbell herself. She knew nothing about electricity, but how hard could it be? The first thing to do was go to the hardware store and pick up some doorbell stuff. Maybe the women there had seen Clyde. Maybe they could tell him to come home and change clothes. He must be getting pretty ripe.
The women at the store pretended not to know Clyde, but Wanda wasn’t fooled. She knew they were trying to keep him all to themselves. After all, he was quite a catch, and a heck of a doorbell-fixer.
When she got back she got right to work. It started to rain so she decided to work from the inside (witches melt in the rain, you know). With her brand new sledgehammer she broke a hole in the inside wall. That’s when she discovered that, all those years, it wasn’t company at her front door. It was birds, nesting between the walls; they came and went through the hole left by the broken doorbell. The house quickly filled with black birds of all sizes. Flying. Diving. Squeaking. And making a mess on her orange wall-to-wall carpet.
Wanda closed the doors and windows and opened the fireplace insert doors so they could find their way out, but they were very comfortable inside and showed no inclination to leave. That’s because the birds were bats, and it was still light outside. Bats hate sunlight as much as witches hate rain.
Not that Wanda knew they were bats.
Say it with me: witless!
Finally, Wanda called a fellow witch for help. “Esmerelda? Get over here right away and help me get rid of some birds, will you? Somehow, they’ve gotten into the house.”
After Wanda cleared the house of bats she was a happy Witless Witch, and she knew things would be perfect once Clyde got home. And he would come home. After all, she was Wanda, the Witless Witch of Boo! Cul-de-sac. And quite a looker. How could he live without her?
And where was Clyde? At the hardware store, wandering around the parking lot, looking for his car. He’d completely forgotten that Wanda had dropped him off on her broom years ago.
Turns out, he was the perfect match for Wanda. Zero wit. None.
The end
Wanda, The Witless Witch of Boo! Cul-de-sac, is one of the stories in my Free Pecan Pie and Other Chick Stories mixed genre book. Published by iUniverse.
Illustration for blog only.
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