I stared at my nails over the keyboard. Stubby. Bitten to the quick. Chipped black polish, filled in with Sharpie to make the damage less noticeable.
The Sharpie had also been used to doodle on my arms. Pentagrams. Pokémon. Hand-drawn logos for some of my favorite emo bands.
It distracted from the scars.
I brushed the bright blue streak of hair out of my eye. The flat-iron did good work giving my long, dark mane the right effect, but sometimes having hair in my face was horribly annoying.
Ah well. Beauty is pain, and all that.
I turned back to the screen.
I learned magic the way any teenage girl does.
By scrounging chatrooms and internet forums for anything that seemed remotely real. It was one of those “plenty of fish” situations. A lot of catch and release.
Most of it was bullshit.
Threatening chain emails. Copy-paste rituals.
Girls swearing they’d turned their eyes violet or summoned demons in their closets.
I tried a few.
Nothing happened.
But then I met Rhea.
I found her on 4chan. She liked sharing creepypasta.
We started chatting on AIM.
Rhea was a few years older than me. Already in college nearby.
She wasn’t like the others. No glitter text. No try-hard energy. Just… effortlessly cool.
Her AIM away message:
Am I a little sick, or a little sane.
Seriously. So cool it hurt.
She sent me a pic.
She was beautiful. Short, choppy blonde hair with a long bang across her forehead. Covered in tattoos.
Real ones.
She had me practice a couple of spells. Simple ones. Paper. Intention. Fire.
The crazy thing was…
they worked.
I asked for an A on my test.
Boom. Done.
I asked for my ex to text me.
He texted me the very next morning.
Hey babe, I miss you. Wanna hang out?
It was incredible. Rhea was a real witch.
And she wanted me in her coven.
She said she needed thirteen of us.
So I asked my friends. I showed them her picture. Told them how cool she was.
She found the rest.
Finally, we had enough.
We set a date to meet in the woods.
Rhea was consuming me. I wanted to be just like her. I wanted her to like me.
Every day I sat at my laptop waiting. Like a dog wanting to be walked. Waiting for her to come online.
I hated myself. I hated this sad, small, needy person. I made myself bleed to make it quieter.
I was certain that if I could learn to be just like Rhea, everything would be better.
I even started to dress like her. And do my hair and make-up just like hers.
The witching hour finally came.
A couple of my friends and I dashed through the forest to the clearing—a ring of old boulders and fallen logs.
Rhea had placed urns of fire in a circle.
The other girls were already there.
They all looked like me.
Dark. Dramatic. Sad.
Rhea stood at the center in a sheer white gown. Sheer enough to see her perfect, naked body. Sheer enough to see how covered she was in tattoos.
Ancient symbols. Strange mythical beasts.
We circled around her and began the chant she had taught us.
Ancient Greek, I think. Or Phoenician.
We didn’t understand the words.
A few stood out.
Daimon. Lamia.
Rhea danced, and so did we. Frantic. Fervent.
The chant grew louder.
Then something shifted.
Not in the air—
in her.
She seemed… larger.
Not taller.
Just more.
Her smile stretched.
Far, far too wide.
She opened her mouth.
Wider.
Cavernous.
It didn’t hurt.
That was the strangest part.
Just a pulling.
A folding.
Like I was being made into something different, something better.
Something not myself.
I had gotten exactly what I wanted.
Later, Rhea logged into AIM.
Behind her eyes, I watched.
She updated her away message.
I’m not sick, I’m twisted. Sick makes it sound like there’s a cure.
A girl messaged her almost immediately.
She said she’d been trying spells for months.
Nothing worked.
Rhea smiled.
She was still hungry.
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I felt that one in my bones being an emo kid myself (way back when). I loved the social commentary. It was really well done and your prose is always so lush. The rhythm is particularly good in this one. The tension, just as much.
The sad hungry wanting in this felt way too real... which made the ending hit harder for me because it is not just horror, it is the ache of wanting to be remade by the coolest girl in the room...