The Blair Witch Reject

The Zero Boss' October Blogging For Books contest stirred up some long forgotten memories of a Halloween long long ago...

It was my senior year of high school and life was good. I wasn't one of the cool kids, but I was among the coolest of the outsiders. I attribute this to the fact that I ran in many circles. I was a drama geek, a skater geek, and a regular old geek geek. Also, I was one of the only females around to eschew black eyeliner, lipstick, nail polish, hair and clothing. In my school, you were either a cheerleader or you were goth. I was neither, and so that made me relatively attractive to those rejected by the pretty girls. As a bonus, you could take me home to meet your parents without fear of getting grounded.

There were a few other kids that I ran with more often than not, and like me they kind of overlapped several social circles. There was Tracy and her cousin Nicole, Tom, Flick and this guy we called Bummy. There were two other folks, but my memory has erased their names. Either that or all the tequila I've consumed in the years since then. We all decided that it would be fun to go Trick-Or-Treating one last time before some of us headed off to college. I dressed up as Princess Leia. My hair was so long then that I was actually able to braid it and make the signature buns without any filler. In my very small town, it was a little unusual to get dressed up and Trick-Or-Treat after age 10 or 11, so we got more than a few doors slammed in our faces, but we just laughed it off. Finally, we decided to head to someone's house, I think it was Bummy's, and hang out.

We were all sitting around in the garage, smoking cigarettes and eating candy. Very wholesome. All of a sudden, Flick asked me if I would leave for a few minutes. He said he wanted to discuss something with the rest of the group, and that he would come get me when they were done. Weird, yes, but we were a weird group. I went into the house and watched a little TV with Bummy's grandma. Just a little while later, they called me back out. Everyone looked very solemn. It seemed as if they had dimmed the lights or something, although everything else seemed unchanged.

Flick proceeded to inform me that the seven of them were a coven of witches, and they believed that I was destined to be their eighth member. But first, I must be tested. Something about their faces told me this was no joke. They took me to the local cemetery, where I went off alone with Flick. Apparently he was the leader and most powerful of this little coven. My test, he told me, was this: he was going to create a terribly frightening witchy illusion, and if I was one of them, I would be able to harness my powers to destruct this illusion.

We walked together in almost total darkness, and when we stopped, we were in front of an open grave. I shit you not. I had been a little freaked out before, but now I was consumed with crazy fear. Flick said the grave wasn't really there, and all I had to do was focus my energy to make it all go away. But I couldn't, and it didn't. I tried and tried, not because I thought I was a witch, but because I was shitting in my pants and I just wanted this whole thing to be over. After a few minutes, Flick told me to stop, it wasn't working, I couldn't do it. We turned away, and I refused to look back to see if the grave was still there.

Needless to say, I wasn't invited to join the coven. I kind of lost touch of those guys after high school. To this day, I don't know the reality of what I saw that night, and I think I prefer it that way.