A WITCH NEXT DOOR

I guess it would be foolish to play with the years we've lived...

Jessica Smallsbridge lived next door to Griselda Entwhistle, and everyone in the village of Swanspottle (and for miles around) knew that Griselda Entwhistle was a witch. She made no bones about it and was perfectly happy doing far from pleasant things to people who she considered had crossed her. But at the same time she could be a kindly soul.

Jessica Smallsbridge (fortyish, but astoundingly innocent on account of a strict upbringing that had only terminated a week before the following events occurred with a double funeral in which her parents had been buried next to each other after suffering terribly from an outbreak of Covid) started off her single life wishing she hadn’t moved into the cottage next door to a certified witch. Nobody had warned her in advance and surely the estate agent must have known about the reputation of the old woman and her satanic ways? There was no doubt in her mind that she should have been told. She had no truck with magic. She never had done and never would, she was quite sure of that.

She had been in her new home and was trying to work out where to move to next and whether she could afford it when there came a knock at her front door. She had a bell, but it was the knocker that was used rather than the pretty little pink bell-push she had installed, because she absolutely hated the sound of metal crashing against wood.

Frowning, she opened the door, and nearly fell flat out to the floor when she see who had knocked the door. It was the old woman, the witch, the emissary from Satan, who lived next door.

“Oh dear,” croaked Griselda, “have I come at a bad time? You don’t look so well, my dear. In fact, you look as if you might pop your clogs at any moment, and that would never do, would it? I mean, it’s such a lovely day and the view from your front room window is second to none in the whole county, or so I’ve been told…”

“Blah…” was all Jessica could say despite the fact that the old woman’s speech had been so long it had surely given her plenty of time to think of something more erudite than that simple monosyllable.

But Griselda Entwhistle, besides being a witch, was an unusually sympathetic sort of person and she could see that something was wrong with her neighbour, so she did what any kindly old woman with a big heart would do and took her by one elbow and led her into her front room.

“What you need, my dear, is a nice hot cup of tea,” Griselda informed her, “I know that there’s little better than a cup of tea for the nerves, especially if you’ve spilt a drop of, say, whiskey into it. Just a drop, mind you, you don’t want to get inebriated on such a lovely day as this. Tell me, where’s your kettle and where do you keep your spirits?”

Jessica Smallsbridge didn’t drink. She didn’t touch alcohol, never had, not even the sort that’s impregnated into antiseptic wipes that she bought to rub her face at bed time. And if a grubby old man fresh from the pub on the corner should chance to breathe her way she would vomit all over everything within vomiting range of him. She was really firm about her hatred of anything remotely intoxicating. It had been bred into her by a stern mother and sterner father, who themselves only sipped anything alcoholic when the other wasn’t looking.

But at the moment her mind was in such a whirl she barely heard what Griselda was saying and merely shook her head as if she was in a permanently confused state. Griselda confused this with some form advanced dementia and shook her own head knowingly.

“We can’t have someone in such a forlorn state living next door to me,” she said, still shaking her head, “and so if you’ll excuse me, I have medication that might help you. Strong stuff it is, too. I once administered q good dose of it to Junkie Dave and it cured him all right. He never even touched a cigarette after he’d had a couple of spoons of mt special tonic, And as for what it did to Lily Smithers, she never swore at a cat again! Not that I minded her swearing, but it did seem a bit unkind to Tabbikins. Now just you sit here and I’ll fetch a bottle, and you’ll be right s right in ninepence!”

And with no further ado she flew next door to where she lived, and when I say flew I mean it literally. She had parked a broomstick, a knobbly old besom affair, outside the door before she knocked it, and it took a mere moment for her to leap onto it and whisper a private word of command that sent it shooting off out of the neighbour’s gate and into her own, breaking the sound barrier with a muffled crash as she did so. All of which meant she was back in less than no time. She was good at taking less than no time to perform her kindly deeds.

“Here, duckie,” she crooned on her return, and selected a suitably large table spoon from the drawer where she guessed spoons might be kept, and poured a bubbling effervescent green liquid into it.

“Take it in one gulp and you’ll feel so much better,” she grinned in what she hoped was a matronly way, though the point of her chin and her hooked nose looked as far from being matronly as any facial features can look.

The green fluid flowed into Jessica’s mouth and she gulped as it flowed down her throat and into her stomach.

“Now that’ll do you the world of good,” grinned Griselda, “all the fluff and dust obscuring the paths of your brain will blow away and you’ll be thinking as clearly as you did when you were fifty!”

“But I’m only forty now!” protested Jessica, whose brain had already calculated that something might be wrong.

“Oops,” grinned Griselda, “that’s done it, then!”

“What have you done?” demanded Jessica, “I never asked for you to pour any of your witch’s brew down my throat!”

“But it’s working, my dear,” soothed Griselda, “see, it’s working! You’ve got the years falling from you like leaves from an oak tree in autumn! Your brain is discovering the joys of youth!”

“Get out of my house this instant!” screeched Jessica, “Go, go go!”

“That’s not very friendly,” sighed Griselda, “if you like I’ll get another tonic that will reverse the one you just had. But, in all honesty, I thought you must have been at least fifty, and that was on the generous side. Now how old do you look? No more than a teenager I’ll warrant.”

“I don’t want any more to do with a witch’s brew!” snapped Jessica in a little-girl voice, “all I want is to be left on my own, in peace. Mummy and daddy will be home soon, and then you’ll be for it!”

Griselda stared with what might have been disbelief but wasn’t. Her neighbour, the shrinking Jessica Smallsbridge, quite obviously needed her nappy changing by the smell drifting from her, and she had no intention of doing that.

“Goodness me,” she muttered, and whispered some very secret words under her breath as she drifted out.

I might reproduce those words right here, but then who knows who might borrow them and turn their grannies into embryos in a twinkling? It would be safer for me to leave it at this because if your granny is an embryo, what does that make you?

© Peter Rogerson 11.08.21

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