Which Witch Way Sandwitch Witchenton

            “Did you find the tape of mom?” Ashely asked her boyfriend. They were both in the dusty attic of Ashley’s late grandmother. Ashely’s boyfriend Ronaldo was on the other side of the attic looking through cobweb infested boxes.

            “Oh. You know, I did find exactly what we came up here for, but I thought that we were having so much fun that I would just prolong leaving the hot and humid attic. Who doesn’t like to spend their entire Saturday looking through hundred year old boxes,” Ronaldo called back to her.

            “I’m going to take that as a no.”

            “No, I seriously already found it.” Ronaldo held up a tape and laughed. “I’ve just been waiting, so that I could make that joke.”

            “Are you serious?”

            “Never.”

            Ronaldo moved over to Ashely and placed the tape into her hand. The black edges of it, which had once been sharp were now dull, giving the tape an oval shape. “You’re an asshole,” Ashely said finally.

“I found the tape like 30 seconds into being up here. There were just more interesting things in these boxes.” Ronaldo held up a box of antique hand mirrors. “See?”

            “You were more interested in mirrors, then you were in leaving the hot attic?”

            Ronaldo handed Ashely, a particularly interesting hand mirror, but the mirror portion was covered with black marker. As he handed her more hand mirrors, they were all covered in black marker. ‘”Are you sure that isn’t interesting? Why would your grandmother do this?”

            Ashely held up one of the hand mirrors to her face and studied it. It seemed as though someone hand used the oil from their skin to write a number on each of the mirrors. “Do you see the number?” She held the mirror at just the right angle, so that Ronaldo could see the greasy number on the mirror.

            “One,” he said.

            “What do you think it means?”

            Ronaldo strained his neck, so that he could look at the rest of the mirrors, and each of them had a number ranging from one to ten. “I’m assuming it is a rating?”

            “A rating for old hand mirrors? Does that really make sense in your head?”

            “How about a sequence?”

            “That makes more sense.” Ashely licked her finger and rubbed the mirror. The black ink was barely able to come off.

Ronaldo pulled an old civil war era dress from one of the boxes. “How old did you say your grandmother was?”

“I think she was 67 when she gave birth to my mom,” Ashely said absently.

Ronaldo searched through another box of things and pulled from it a picture. “She doesn’t look that old.”

“She always looked really young.” Ashely finally wiped the last bit of ink off of the mirror to reveal a ghastly face. “This isn’t a mirror at all.” The two of them stared at the mummified corpse burned into the silver of the reflective surface. “Who would make something like this?”

“Witches, vampires, werewolves, generic villains of some kind,” Ronaldo said.

Ashely wiped the ink off of three of the other mirrors and they revealed similar terrified faces. “I feel like I recognize some of these faces.”

“How did your grandma die?” Ronaldo said as he pulled an old Egyptian headdress from another box.

“She died in a car accident that caused her to be hideously burned.”

“What if she was a witch?”

Then someone started to come up the stairs to the attic. Before someone emerged, then pushed their hand into the opening and tossed up an antique hand mirror. “That isn’t funny mom.”

“It wasn’t your mom,” someone called from the stairs.

Ashely lifted up the mirror and it had the terrified face of her mother on it. Ronaldo jumped up and closed the hatch. “This is exactly what I had in mind for my Saturday.”

A hand punched through the portion of the door and unlocked it, allowing the hatch to fall back open and the stair to unfurl. Ashely’s grandmother walked up the steps, looking somehow younger than Ashely. It was still clearly her. “Miss me?”

“You are alive?” Ashely’s grandmother held up a mirror, and it sucked Ashely’s body into it. It left a glowing white aura that wrapped around the crazy woman, making her even younger.

Ronaldo jumped up instinctively, and dived through the rotting boards that covered the top most window on the house. He survived the fall, but it snapped both of his legs in half. He was not going to be able to run away. Ashley’s grandmother jumped from the newly opened hole and landed effortlessly next to Ronaldo.

“I can’t use your life force. Too bad you and Ashely didn’t have kids.” She yanked a long knife from her sock and descended on him with no regard for who was watching.