THE PRICE OF A PORTION OF CHEESE PIE

At the end of his life, as death approached him, Jed realises that there's one ambition he'd never achieved...

It took Jed the best part of a life time to discover that being married to a witch is possibly the least advisable thing a man can do.

Not that Mattie was at an unpleasant witch. She had many, many good sides, particularly in the kitchen when preparing the most delicious cheese pie a man could hope to torment his palate with. And anyway, he hadn’t known of her witchy qualities. To him she was a lovely wife, and that was that.

Jed had always loved cheese pie, and Mattie had known all about that fetish since before they were wed half a century ago. It had started in his school days, with school meals in which he was presented on an almost weekly basis with the triumph of the culinary school kitchen, a rich and glorious portion of cheese pie complete with chips, mushy peas and a sauce he always though might have been made from cheap canned tomato soup.

Most of the other kids had hated it, which had caused him to love it even more because of the ready availability of second helpings.

Mattie had perfected her own cheese pie (which he always said was definitely better than the school kitchen variety) with the help of her cauldron, a little bit of magic (which ran in her veins like syrup) and the peace she always declared was its most important ingredient. Hence she had kept him at bay and in total ignorance of her methods in the kitchen and fed him once a week on what he knew was culinary perfection.

But that’s all by the by.

There comes a time when things have to be paid for. Nothing in this Universe is free, and the lifetime of glorious cheese pie certainly wasn’t. And the time comes in life rather than after it, though Jed didn’t know that until it was too late.

He was very old, becoming crusty and certainly developing physical decay along with the mental variety when he paid for all that cheese pie.

“You’re not looking so well, my love,” said Mattie, trying not to croak like an old women, and almost succeeding.

“I don’t feel it,” he coughed back at her, and she frowned when she noted the colour of his phlegm and the way it was stained with blood.

“Is there anything I can do, darling?” she asked, knowing full well that there wasn’t. After all, she was a witch and knew with absolute certainty that her husband was dying. She’d seen it before, several times over the centuries, and each time the knowledge had hurt her. Her husbands had all been special, and Jed no less that the first one on the medieval Manor Estate in the bad old days when she’d had to be careful not to be burnt at the stake.

“I just want to get better,” he whispered. “I don’t like feeling like this. It’s nasty.”

“I’ll do what I can,” she assured him, “but tell me, is there one thing out of your lifetime of being with me that you wish you’d done that you haven’t done? One achievement you’d like to have had?”

“The cheese pie...” he began.

“Your favourite?” she whispered.

“Almost...” He sighed. He had to. It had been delicious, but…

“I would like to have been a porn star!” he croaked. “All those tender young things fresh from their teens and wanting to frolic...”

“You’d like to have been what?” she found herself exploding, the depth of the insult stabbing her until her heart uncharacteristically ached. Hadn’t she been good enough for this miserable mortal? Hadn’t they had a very good … personal … life? And hadn’t she been every bit as exciting as the tender young things he suddenly declared to have wanted over the years?

“It’s not you, it’s me...” he gasped.

“How dared you!” she snapped back. “Right, then, if you’ve always wanted to be a porn star let’s make you into one! Let’s think about it … most men in that industry are there because they’ve had some sort of enlargement you-know-where, or so I believe.”

He shook his head, not understanding. There’s one thing we must be quite sure about Jed, he’d married a witch, a very able one with magic at her finger tips and in her cheese pie, but he’d never known it. To him Mattie had been a wife, a loving, wonderful wife and a goddess in the kitchen, but a witch? No! Surely, there was no such thing?

“But you can be a porn star if that’s so important to you,” she remonstrated, “but it’ll cost you! Oh my goodness me, won’t it cost you!”

Then, to his utter bemusement and half demented confusion, she started muttering and then chanting such gobbledegook and insane murmurings the like of which he’d never heard before.

After a while she paused, her eyes fixed on him like no eye ever had been before. “You sure of this?” she asked, “Absolutely certain that you wish you’d been a...” she winced “...a porn star?”

“Then so be it, and I’m sorry,” she breathed. “It’ll have to be an exchange, of course. We get nothing for nothing in this life! Cheese pie returned and porn star taken. Enjoy!”

And she turned and stomped out whilst Jed found himself suddenly writhing in agony as his stomach, that had always been so gloriously filled with cheese pie, shrunk to just about nothing and something else expanded absurdly until it exploded into one bloody, painful mess.

And Mattie sobbed quietly to herself as she dialled the emergency services to report a most peculiar death.

© Peter Rogerson 04.08.16