The Witch
A Fictional Story by MinimusPuck.
‘What in the hell do you want access to the roof for?’ the landlord had asked.
‘Astronomy,’ she told him, handing him ten one hundred note bills.
He asked no further questions, just handed her the keys.
And so from these places she observed him. He had a one-bedroom apartment with a large living room and combined kitchen. He was in his mid-twenties, with sandy brown hair and slightly more handsome than average, which she appreciated, yet unapproachable, which she also appreciated. He seemed unimportant at his job and had few, if any friends. Not someone who would be missed.
While he had enough discipline to eat a healthy diet, which was necessary for her purposes, he did not exercise much save for a few yoga videos of Yoga with Sadie, an attractive, unageing woman, who, depending on his mood, would wear either long leggings or bikini bottoms in a special beach yoga class. He cued this video up often but would pause it around 14 minutes when Miss Sadie entered Parivrtta Surya Yantrasana, better known as the compass pose. He would sit watching her for some time before he would retreat to his bedroom, where she could not see him, where she imagined he would masturbate. This happened 3-6 times a week, with an average duration of three minutes and forty seconds, well below the average man’s time. He would return in a daze and, upon seeing Miss Sadie in Compass pose, would quickly shut the screen off.
His frame was slender and flexible, and she could see through binoculars that his veins were prominent, especially in his wrists. She caught sight of him leaving his bathroom after a shower. To her disappointment, he was not nude but was wearing white briefs, which seemed odd to her. She noted that he did not fill them out, his genitals seeming as small as the rest of him. She also noticed the veins in his thighs.
She was patient, waiting a few more weeks to initiate contact, or rather, to let him initiate contact.
She made every effort to appear nervous, bookish, naïve, and cute. None of these things was she, but it helped get him to lower the invisible guard she wasn’t even sure he knew was up.
Her outfits, like everything else, had been curated specifically for him. Not to arouse his sexual appetites, but to draw him in. She incorporated as much as possible from the yoga influencer Miss Sadie, wearing her hair short, her dark curls making her look all the more waifish, boyish, and innocent. While she would not dress in yoga attire, her outfit was mostly unchanging, consisting of white button-up blouses, black stockings with black shoes, and a series of black skirts of increasing length as the days passed, never, of course, reaching the point where they might be too short.
It was autumn, her favorite time of year, and the days were growing colder and shorter, so naturally she wore a casual black sports coat, or, if it were especially chilly, a knitted grey sweater of a wolf howling at the moon.
She wanted to give off the impression that she was a librarian who was so close to being sexy, but didn’t know how, the perfect blank canvas for him to project whatever he wanted in a woman. The perfect woman who would not betray him, would not manipulate him, would not humiliate him, would not hurt him.
Oh, how wrong he would prove to be.
And yet he took no interest. Fearing he may be homosexual, for he was slender and slightly effeminate himself, she began to doubt her plan. A homosexual would not do. The process had been tried before, but the results were not to her liking; besides, she could not satisfy her sexual appetites with a man who preferred men, and that played more of a role than she cared to admit. She had nearly broken into his apartment twice to install surveillance equipment in his room, both to see if he was indeed masturbating and to confirm the size of his erection. Still, she deemed it to be an unnecessary risk. She must remain as flexible as Miss Sadie.
More weeks passed before she initiated contact, waiting until he arrived home from work, something tech-related. After approximately eight minutes, a sufficient amount of time for him to relieve himself and relax, but not before he began one of his yoga instructor’s videos, or rather, began masturbating to her, she rapped lightly on his door.
He answered, a loosened tie around his neck and a can of soda in hand. He was tired but pleasantly surprised to see her, confirming that he had noticed her.
‘I’m so terribly sorry to bother you,’ she said helplessly, in an unplaceable, yet posh accent that was by design exotic, but not to the point of ever being misunderstood, ‘but I am afraid I’ve locked myself out. Oh, this is so terribly embarrassing, but I’ve noticed you, and you seem kind, so I was wondering if I might wait with you until the locksmith arrives?’
Such an opportunity rarely falls into a young man’s lap because such opportunities do not exist.
‘Sure, of course,’ he said, immediately straightening his tie and stepping out into the hall.
‘Um,’ she said quickly and innocently, catching him before he locked himself out, ‘I meant if I could wait with you in your apartment?’
‘Oh, right,’ he exclaimed in embarrassment and welcomed her in.
He had unrolled his yoga mat already. She had caught him just in time.
‘Have a seat anywhere you like,’ he told her as he made his way to the kitchen, allowing her to satiate her curiosity with more of his apartment than could be seen from the roof across the street.
In his apartment, she took in his decorum, if it could even be called that, was scant and lacking personality. She hoped there was more to him, and maybe there was. On the walls were no photos of family or friends, a good sign in case he should go missing for any prolonged period, but that would come later. For now–
‘Something to drink?’ he asked from the kitchen.
‘Yes, please, and thank you so much for taking me in like this. I do hope it isn’t too inconvenient.’
He raised a can of soda from the fridge.
‘This okay?’
‘Water, please, if you don’t mind,’ she said, hoping it would give her another moment to make a mental map of the place which would prove helpful.
He said nothing as he returned the can to the fridge, and she listened as he filled a glass with water.
‘I hope I am not keeping you from any engagements,’ she told him. ‘If the locksmith takes too long, I can simply wait in the hall for him.’
‘It’s really no trouble,’ he shrugged. ‘I didn’t have anything planned anyway.’
No, of course not.
‘Say, where are you from? I noticed your accent?’
Of course you did, you were meant to.
She kept her ethnicity intentionally vague. She had a natural olive-oil complexion but, for obvious reasons, avoided the sun. She could be from anywhere between the Western Mediterranean and Eastern Mesopotamia, though she had learned long ago it was wisest to avoid being backed into any one region. She used to say her family originated in Athens, until she met overcurious Athenians who asked questions she did not have answers for. Greeks ask far too many questions, she had learned. So, she changed her origin to Cyprus until something better could be found.
‘My family is from Malta,’ she answered, ‘but it’s been years since I lived there.’
In her long travels, she had never met another Maltese outside of the island. They spoke English there, and she learned Italian and even passable Maltese to support this claim, just in case. Still, she appreciated this about the people who lived there: they did not ask unnecessary questions.
He nodded, as if it was a place he’d heard of, but likely could not find on a map.
‘It’s an island in the Mediterranean,’ she told him.
‘Right,’ he said as if his memory had been sufficiently jogged.
‘I am sorry if this is too inconvenient,’ she said innocently, ‘but I was wondering if we might order a pizza? I’m more than a little hungry.’
He immediately began ordering the pizza, asking her what she might like. It was an acceptable display of submission, but she would need much more than pepperoni or extra sauce.
They spent the evening together. She gave subtle hints that she found him attractive, and she was sure he picked up on it on a biological level, for each time, he would give an awkward reply, not that he was uninterested, but that he was intentionally holding himself back.
If he was in a relationship other than with Miss Sadie, he didn’t say so, but she found this possibility unlikely, as she hadn’t seen a woman visit in the time she’d been watching him. He kept shifting the subject back to her, as if he took no pride in himself. She told him about her time in Malta, sticking to a script of awkward childhood and teenage experiences that would appeal to him, before she moved to the United States in an attempt to reinvent herself.
‘Was it difficult?’ he asked, ‘with the visas and everything?’
‘No,’ she answered, without elaborating.
She did not inquire about his heritage. He was a Caucasian American, originating, if she had to guess, somewhere from Western Europe, but likely with some traces of the indigenous peoples of the New World. Cherokee, perhaps, if she had to guess.
Her performance was decent, and she did not detect any suspicion in him. When she finally asked if he was seeing anyone, he became nervous in an almost adolescent way that made her suspect that even at his age of twenty-four, he might still be a virgin. Sexual immaturity was even better for the ritual, though to better bind him to her, she would need to take his virginity from him.
‘I just don’t date too much,’ he said awkwardly in a way she relished.
Another piece to the puzzle, she thought—a very big one.
‘Neither do I. I’ve really only had one boyfriend, and it didn’t end well,’ she said, giving him hope that she might still be a virgin as well.
She saw a flicker of hope in his eyes, of him already wanting it to be true, whether because he would be the one to deflower her, or rather more likely, because it would come as a relief to him that she would not notice his ineptitude. Was he a romantic after all? Hoping to meet a fellow virgin and pass this threshold together? Or was he simply a loser who held antiquated beliefs of breaking her hymen and proving that he was a man? She would grant him that kindness when the time came, regardless of his intention. She figured it was the least she could do, considering what would happen to him.
They met three more times, and never would he invite her back to his place.
On their fifth date, she wore a black minidress, bra and bikini briefs, nothing too provocative; black is provocative enough. They went out for dinner at an Italian restaurant that was sufficient to mark the occasion should they indulge in sexual congress that evening. She ordered a bottle of mid-range wine that in Malta would not even be good enough to be served.
With the wine in his system, he loosened up, telling more about himself, though nothing remotely interesting, though she took it as a good sign he was opening up. When they returned to their building, she invited him back to watch a movie at her place, and even still, he seemed skeptical. Although she could tell he wanted to, he very nearly declined. She nullified this with an innocent yawn, offering him the option to return to his own apartment if she fell asleep in his arms.
That got him.
She kept her heart rate under 70 bpm and the air just cold enough to cuddle.
‘It’s kinda cold in here,’ he said upon entry.
‘I guess I run hot by nature,’ she said meekly.
It was, of course, not her first lie to him, but if he’d picked up on it, he might have been fine. She picked the movie, a light romp that was 30% action, 50% comedy, with the remaining 20% split between a tacked-on romance and hackneyed dramatic beats to make it take itself more seriously. It was just something to put him ill at ease. She knew he had seen it before a few weeks earlier when she watched him watch it from the roof. If he suggested something else to watch, she would go along with it.
He didn’t.
As the opening credits rolled, she told him she would change into something more comfortable in case she fell asleep. She changed into a pastel pink tank top and pastel blue bottoms. It allowed her to remove her bra, which she imagined he would have difficulty with. She kept her panties on underneath, an extra layer for him to feel underneath her pajama bottoms if he initiated touch, which she did not expect him to. She did not want to appear too easily. When the betrayal came, it would be all the more crushing and confusing for him.
Approximately twenty minutes in, between the first major plot point and the second, she made her move. It was subtle: cuddling up to him, she didn’t want to seem easy; she wanted to seem tired, but inviting arousal, yet it needed to come across as natural.
It did. Approximately four minutes after that, she kissed him on the neck; he took the lead, and she allowed it- why not? It would likely only be just this once. He was bad at kissing, but if the rest went according to plan, that could be overlooked. He needed training, which she would provide.
Before the second plot point occurred, she turned the audio down 36 points, until it was only background noise. Two minutes after that, she pulled back and smiled, letting the light of the dramatic scene in which the protagonist shared a backstory about his father reflect in her eyes as she smiled in a way that said ‘I don’t do this for just anyone and I’m doing it with you,’ and pulled her pajama tank top off.
She could tell he was pleased at the sight of her a-cup breasts, for why would he not be, but he was still sheepish, reluctant. She was worried she had made a mistake seeming too loose, but it did not matter. In another moment, she was unbuttoning his shirt while he pawed at her breasts as if he was unsure of how attached they were. She refrained from admonishing him, though she very much would have liked to, as the nerve endings in her breasts were incredibly sensitive. It would be a punishment dealt out at another time.
After making out and generously allowing him access to her breasts, she stood and slipped her pajama bottoms down and stepped out of them before returning to the couch. Just as he began to run his fingers over her legs with what appeared to be restraint, she gently took his hand in hers.
‘I am enjoying myself,’ she lied, ‘but may I ask if you would like to continue in the bedroom? It might be more comfortable there.’
He said nothing, but nodded, and she led him to her bed.
‘Perhaps you could remove your pants before you join me?’
At this, he seemed hesitant, so she softened him up with a smile.
‘I only ask since I just changed my sheets this morning.’
Reluctantly, she noticed, he unbuttoned his pants and awkwardly removed them. He was wearing his white briefs, just as he had when he had left his shower. It was a confusing development for her, as few men wore this style of underwear past a certain age, and those who did either filled them out incredibly well or not at all. She could tell he was the latter, but did not remark upon this fact as she knew men would be very sensitive about the subject of their size.
Pretending not to notice, she climbed into bed and lifted the blanket for him. He got in beside her, and they resumed making out. She feigned a soft moan at his touch, and this encouraged him to continue touching her, yet he made no further advances. So much for a good fuck, she thought.
And yet, that did not bode ill for the ritual itself; he would be perfect for it. And it came as a relief to her that her months of planning and preparation and pursuing him had not been in vain. He lacked self-confidence. And a fair amount of that could be attributed to his sexual insecurities. All of this she would use to her advantage when the time came.
As she helped him help her out of her panties, she then removed his briefs and provided a condom, though she did not need one as she was immune to both pregnancy and any sexually transmitted diseases.
Even fully erect, his penis was smaller than average, and as he pushed it inside her, she would estimate its length to be just shy of four inches. She had found her man. Found him at last. She did not expect him to last long, and he didn’t. She took more satisfaction in her own performance than she did in his. She had always enjoyed acting. If things had gone differently for her, she might have enjoyed a career on the stage. After approximately 65 seconds of underwhelming intercourse, the last eight of which involved heavy moaning on her part to put him at ease, he ejaculated.
As his breathing returned to normal, she began kissing him, telling him that she hadn’t done this before, but was so glad she did with him. A dumb, dreamy smile slipped onto his face. She helped him remove the condom, and as she put it gently on her nightstand, distracting him with the offer of a glass of water in the same moment so that he would not notice. It was dark, so he did not notice the water’s faint discoloration caused by the sedative.
In a few moments, he was sleeping soundly. Now she could relax. There were no other variables to worry about; nothing else could go wrong. She reached under her bed for the small wooden box that contained the hypodermic, and with all the expertise of a practiced nurse, she folded back the sheet, inserted the needle into the prominent vein in his thigh, and watched the vial fill with dark red blood.
Still nude, she took the vial and the used condom and returned to the living room. Pleased with herself, she turned the lights on and stood by the bay window, looking out into the night in which she felt most comfortable, hoping someone, preferably a man, might notice her.
She summoned the attention of a passerby walking his dog, though he would never know what had caused him to look up at that moment, to see the lithe, beautiful young woman standing bare at her window, holding what could be anything at that distance.
He was, of course, unable to look away until she grew tired of him and released his gaze. A small gift to the mortals, she thought, before she turned and unlocked the door to the second bedroom, bringing his blood and his semen to the shrine she had set up.
The blood magic could begin.
—
The shrine was simple. She’d learned that complexity was the hallmark of amateurs—those who confused theatrics with power. A shallow brass bowl sat centered on the windowsill, flanked by two white candles she’d dressed with a thin film of her own saliva, worked into the wax with her fingertips during the waning moon three nights prior. Inside the bowl: his semen, still viscous in the condom she’d knotted and snipped with surgical scissors, and his blood—three vials’ worth, a deep arterial red that had surprised her with its vibrancy. She’d expected darker. Sluggish. But his blood was bright, almost eager, as though his body hadn’t yet registered the betrayal.
She’d prepared the binding agent in advance: a paste of dried mugwort, powdered bone meal, and a single strand of her own pubic hair, plucked from the root during the seduction phase. The hair was the tether. The semen was the key. The blood was the lock.
She stood at the window in nothing but her bra and the black stockings, her body still carrying the faint mineral scent of him—latex, sweat, the particular sweetness of young male arousal spent too quickly. Below, the street was empty save for a single figure: a woman in a grey coat walking a small dog, head down, pace brisk. Not suitable. She waited.
The ritual required a witness. Not a participant—just a pair of living eyes, a consciousness to observe and thereby seal the working. The principle was ancient: observation collapses potential into reality. A quantum mechanic’s parlor trick repurposed for older ends.
She lit the candles. The flames caught and held steady—no draft. Good. She uncapped the first vial and let his blood drizzle into the bowl in a slow, deliberate spiral, overlaying the semen. The mixture curdled slightly, thickening into a rust-colored sludge. She crushed the mugwort-bone-hair paste between her palms and let the powder fall in a fine rain over the wet mixture, murmuring the words she’d memorized six months ago in a rented room in Valletta, taught to her by a woman with no fingernails who drank tea from a chipped cup and never blinked.
The words were not in any living language. They approximated Phoenician, her instructor had told her, but the pronunciation had drifted across centuries as a game of telephone played through bloodlines and secret rooms. What mattered was the intent behind the phonemes—the shape of the sound in the mouth, the way certain consonants required the tongue to press against the teeth, creating a sealed chamber in the oral cavity that resonated at specific frequencies. She’d practiced for weeks with a voice tuner app, matching her formants to the target ranges.
As she spoke, she dipped her index finger into the mixture and drew a line across her own sternum, between her breasts, down to her navel. The paste was cold and gritty against her skin. She continued the incantation, her voice low and even, no theatrical whispering, no dramatic crescendo. She spoke the words the way one might read a grocery list—with flat, practical authority.
Outside, a man appeared at the corner. Mid-thirties. Tall. He walked with the unhurried gait of someone killing time between obligations. He glanced up—perhaps the candlelight caught his attention, perhaps something else—and for a span of perhaps four seconds, his eyes met hers through the glass.
That was enough.
She pressed her palm flat against the mixture on her sternum, sealing it to her skin, and spoke the final phrase. The candles guttered and went out simultaneously, though there was no wind. The mixture on her skin warmed—genuinely, measurably warm, as though she’d pressed her chest to a radiator. A tingling sensation spread outward from her sternum, racing along her lymphatic pathways, flooding her arms, her thighs, her throat. Her vision blurred, then sharpened to an almost painful clarity. She could see the man outside with preternatural detail—the texture of his jacket, the individual hairs on his knuckles, the slight asymmetry of his jaw.
Then it passed. The warmth faded. The hyper-clarity receded. She stood in the dark apartment, breathing normally, two dead candles and a brass bowl of congealing matter on the sill before her.
She looked down at her chest. The mixture had absorbed into her skin entirely. No residue. No stain. Just a faint pink line along the path she’d traced, already fading, like a scratch from a cat.
—
She cleaned the shrine methodically. The brass bowl went into a plastic bag, then into her backpack. The candles she snapped in half and wrapped in a paper towel. The remaining vials—she’d taken four, using three for the ritual—she placed in a padded envelope she’d addressed to a P.O. box in Tunis. The fourth vial was insurance. A properly stored sample could be reused if the binding weakened or if she needed to reinforce the connection at a distance. She’d learned that lesson in Malta: always keep a reserve.
She showered. The water ran clear immediately—no trace of the mixture, no blood, no semen. It was as though her skin had consumed it entirely. She stood under the spray and inventoried herself, the way she inventoried a room after entering it. Heartbeat: steady, sixty-two beats per minute. Breathing: unlabored. Vision: normal. Emotional state: calm. No euphoria, no exhaustion. She’d expected something—a rush, perhaps, or a crash. But there was nothing—just the same flat, competent woman standing in a stranger’s shower.
She toweled off and dressed in clean clothes—jeans, a grey sweater, plain cotton underwear. Nothing from the Miss Sadie wardrobe. That costume was retired. She gathered the white blouses, the black stockings, the skirts, the sports coat, and stuffed them into a donation bag. Someone at the Salvation Army would get a perfectly good wardrobe out of her operation. The thought amused her briefly.
She checked on him. He was still unconscious on her bed, lying on his back, one arm draped across his stomach, mouth slightly open. She checked his pulse—strong, regular. The sedative dose had been calibrated to his body weight, which she’d estimated at one hundred and fifty-five pounds based on her observations of his frame and gait. He’d be out for at least another two hours. When he woke, he’d have a mild headache and no memory of the injection. He’d remember the sex—vividly, she suspected, given that it had been his first time—and he’d remember her being gentle with him afterward, bringing him water, kissing his forehead. He’d think she’d fallen asleep beside him and that he’d dozed off naturally.
She’d be gone by then.
She’d already planted the exit narrative. Over their five dates, she’d mentioned a sister in Portland, a family obligation, a possible move. When he woke alone, he’d text her. She wouldn’t respond. He’d wait a day, then two, then a week. He’d drive by her building—she’d already sublet the apartment to a visiting professor from NYU who had no connection to her—and see another woman’s name on the mailbox. He’d conclude she’d left. He’d feel used, probably. Confused. Maybe a little heartbroken, if he was capable of that depth of feeling for someone he’d known for three weeks. But he’d move on. He was young. Resilient. His body would replenish the blood within weeks. The semen was trivial—his body produced it constantly, thoughtlessly, spilling it into socks and sheets and toilet paper several times a week while watching a woman on a screen bend into shapes he’d never ask a real woman to perform.
He’d never know what he’d been part of.
—
She packed her bag. Two changes of clothes, toiletries, the padded envelope, the donation bag, her binoculars, her laptop. She erased every trace of her presence from the apartment—the sublet agreement was under a name that didn’t exist, and the payments were made in cash through a lawyer in Lisbon who asked no questions. She wiped the bathroom, the kitchen surfaces, the bedframe. She took the sheets and pillowcases and stuffed them into a separate bag for disposal. She’d burn them at a facility upstate that she’d used before—a crematorium operator who owed her a favor and asked nothing about the contents of the bags she brought.
Before leaving, she stood over him one final time. His sandy hair was mussed against her pillow. His lips were parted. The veins in his wrists were still visible, still prominent, still beautiful in their vulnerability. She felt a flicker of something—not affection, not guilt, but a kind of clinical tenderness, the way a surgeon might regard a patient who’d given consent without understanding the procedure. She’d taken something from him. Not his virginity—that was incidental, a means of extraction. She’d taken his essence. The specific alchemical combination of his genetic material and his life force, harvested at the moment of his most complete surrender, bound now to her will through a process older than any religion currently practiced.
She could feel it. Not dramatically—no voices, no visions, no supernatural fireworks. But there was a weight in her chest now, a density that hadn’t existed before. When she focused on it, she could sense him—not his thoughts, not his location, but his state. Alive. Sleeping and dreaming, probably. She could feel the slow tide of his unconscious mind the way a fisherman feels the pull of a distant current through the line.
She picked up her bags, checked the room one final time, and left. The door clicked shut behind her with the soft, mechanical finality of a lock engaging.
On the street, the man who’d served as her witness was gone. The woman with the dog was gone. The block was quiet. She walked to the subway, swiped her card, and descended.
On the platform, she checked her phone—a message from her handler: a single word, followed by coordinates.
Confirmed.
The next target was in Chicago.
She boarded the L train, found a seat near the window, and watched the city blur past. Her chest hummed with a low, private warmth—the first thread of a web she’d been spinning for eleven years, across nine countries, through the bodies of nineteen men who’d given her what she needed without ever knowing what they’d given.
She opened her notebook and began reviewing the file on the next subject. Male. Twenty-seven. A blood type—she preferred O negative, but A positive would do. Unmarried. No close family. Works in finance. Lives alone.
She turned the page and started taking notes.
The End.
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