Aunt Nora lifted her eyes and saw me struggling; she and Aunt Sora exchanged conniving looks at one another and back to me. It was all according to plan.
‘The gift we have planned, Annie…’ Aunt Cora began, lifting her skin– the way you lift a dress from falling down your chest – ‘is one in which your beauty plays the key role’.
‘My beauty?’ Annie asked, in a non-serious manner.
‘Yes…you see, in times like this, people compete for the crown – but Nature creates the biggest foil to that…’ after a pause, ‘…with old age’.
‘Old age?’ Annie was not obviously getting at what the thing was saying.
‘I’m talking about a feat, that, forget Nature; GOD won’t even be able to stop Annie. Something that annihilates everyone else’s looks in their faces…for all eternity.’
Annie lifted her arms out of Aunt Cora’s grasp and looked down. ‘I’m sorry Aunt Cora but…’
‘Immortality, Annie!’ Aunt Cora broke out, her eyes getting bigger and bigger.
Annie stopped short and stared. Aunt Cora knew she was understood. ‘Ever wonder what it feels like to know you’re perfect and that your perfection can NEVER be taken from you? That’s what we will do tonight… All we need is for you to sign this clause that will preserve your beauty, till the end of time.’
I fidgeted massively at ‘clause’. THAT was what mother and father and that gypsy were talking about! THIS was what mom meant for Annie to say no to! I began to murmur loudly to help gage Annie’s attention, but she couldn’t hear me.
Annie was now getting jewels in her eyes at the prospect of eternal beauty. ‘How can you make my beauty immortal?’ She asked them. ‘I want this so bad.’
Aunt Cora’s fangs were visible once again. ‘We’re witches, darling. Black magic is our art.’
‘Mother wasn’t a witch! Grandma Neema wasn’t a witch…how are you three witches?’
‘We…were the only ones that learned the Dark Arts. Beauty was what inspired us. Tonight, the night of your birthday is one where our powers are at their prime – which is why we need you to sign this quickly. It gives us your word and honour – it makes Adelyn’s wish come true.’
‘What wish?’
‘To see beauty live on…forever… She died in vain. Such an ephemeral face could not be preserved, which is why, she bequeathed her face; only ten times more amplified…to the one who would fulfill this prophecy…you.’ Annie stared with an awe-struck expression. ‘So now…for Adelyn…for beauty…for forever…sign this…’
After a moment’s pause, Annie finally said the thing that set my heart on fire. ‘I DO want to look the most beautiful, although you can’t really improve upon my perfection!’ Annie was acting more arrogant than usual…her arrogance was almost becoming defiantly dangerous. ‘And I’ll BE the most beautiful while my friends turn wrinkly and old as prunes!’ She giggled. ‘Give me that paper…you Aunts are the coolest! What a present I’ll remember…”forever”! And began to giggle again, shortly before uttering a grave mistake… ‘Why…after this, even GOD Himself won’t be able to outdo me! I’ll be even MORE perfect than Nature itself!’
I mumbled, moaned and groaned, and moved my head violently…but it was a force field that divided us – making Annie immune to my minute sounds. I watched as she actually signed that fateful contract…I watched her make that fateful mistake…
‘Done!’ Annie smiled, and bolted the pen back. ‘When does the magic start?’
‘Right nowwww…’ Aunt Cora hissed in an abominable manner, as Annie watched in bewilderment, her eyes began to turn bright baby pink. Her hair began to grow and grow, turning wilder and whiter…her skin turning silver with warts and crumpled creases…her fingers turned long and sour and crooked, with blood penetrating from her broken nails…her eyes became red now. Red, blood stained eyes in a silver face that sunk, sucked into her skull, leaving behind hollow cheeks and the disfigured bony features. Her forehead backwards became bare with the thick cotton wool of silver hair dangling downwards and her teeth disappeared – save for a few blackened teeth here and there. She was shown her mirror; all cracked from all corners, and Annie gave out an ear piercing scream.
Hot, salty teardrops plummeted down my eyes; it was the most terrible scene of my life. I was helpless and I couldn’t protect her.
‘WHAT’S HAPPENING!?’ Annie shrieked…but it wasn’t Annie anymore…it was an old skeletal witchy little creature…whose nails bled, and eyes bled tears of blood.
‘You made your own choice, stupid girl!’ Aunt Cora cackled, her own skin beginning to vibrate. Seconds later, Aunt Cora, Nora and Sora, shed their bodies…the empty carcasses fell to the floor, leaving behind floating faceless creatures; slouching and moth-eaten.
‘You…you! You were the witches? You haunted me in my dreams!’ Annie cried out in horror.
‘And still, you didn’t get the warning.’ Aunt Sora chuckled, who turned her limp cloth-face towards me, and the bewitched effect wore off.
I ran to Annie and held her, afraid. ‘Annie! Annie!’ I stuttered, inconsolable, shivering and lost. ‘You FREAKS!’ I shouted. ‘WHY? WHY DID YOU DO THIS?’
Aunt Cora transfigured her hole of a mouth to make it like a snigger. ‘Why? She never knew what it’s like to be ugly! Horrible, gory, despicable, ugly! Why can’t she experience that now? Before she eventually dies.’
I went paler than before. ‘No! You will reverse this! Change her back!’
‘We can’t. She wanted to dance with the devil...and so she took the plunge. Her soul has been sold.’
‘Then the whole nonsense about immortality?’
‘That was for us. We NEVER specified WHOSE immortality we talked about. Now she and Adelyn will rot in hell!’
‘SHUT UP! IT’S YOU WHO’LL ROT IN HELL!’ I clenched the pen on the table and threw it to her face, feeble and hopeless, it just went through the torn bits all over her.
‘We won’t. We will live forever. Unfortunately, if our stupid sister didn’t protect her first four daughters, you worthless insects would be dead by now. But then she had FIVE.’
Annie, who began to breathe heavily, turned her head to the floor. I was running out of time. ‘What do you mean, five? I’m quite surprised you didn’t hang our dead bodies on your filthy walls!’
‘Oh believe me…even our filthy walls are too good for the likes of you. Before Annie becomes ours for good, in just a matter of minutes, I suppose we CAN afford to tell you what we’ve done.’ Aunt Sora and Nora flew closer to their leading sister. ‘We are going to use her body as the ultimate sacrifice. Her looks are bound to Adelyn’s, which means we will get the amplified looks of the supposed deity of our family; creating the most PERFECT bodies for ourselves. We will be the gorgeous ones now.’
‘Why didn’t you use my mother’s body?’
‘Adelyn had our immediate blood in her – to use her would be ineffective. The idea is to combine heterogeneous blood types that DON’T match ours, for the ideal bodies that would have a unique blood type, after all those combinations of course. Annie doesn’t have traces of our blood, because unbeknownst to our prophecy Adelyn had a fifth child, the chain reaction of four sisters had been broken – however, YOU worthless four DO have our blood, and can thus be protected by Adelyn’s clause. Which is why we couldn’t kill you, and violate the laws of her clause, rendering our spells obsolete.’
‘What laws? Why kill mother? Why Annie?’ I was sobbing beyond reproach now.
‘Ah, you weakling… Adelyn knew about our witchcraft. We were punished from our very birth – by being born ugly. Adelyn was Miss flawless throughout! The one who was unequaled, unblemished, and infallible! We tried everything to become nearly as pretty as HER. But failed. Our mother hated us, because we were ugly. She loved Addy, because she was beautiful. So we went to the most extreme length of securing celestial looks for ourselves too by adopting black magic, after a series of mortal procedures failed exceedingly. However, the black magic had a g
rave side effect…and it changed us and made us like this.’ She pointed to her cloth–like body and torn scarf face, with moth eaten bites and no features. ‘That’s when we started wearing bodies instead. Bodies gifted with undeserving beauty – that they didn’t even appreciate. We bound them to ourselves with our witchcraft, temporarily, and have been transferring bodies ever since.’
‘…And the laws?’ I asked cautiously.
‘We had predicted Adelyn would have four daughters and she did. But Adelyn bade us not to harm them; she made us confirm it in the clause that prohibits us from killing you…because if we do, our blood will reverse the effects we wish to gain…and that of beauty. Also, we won’t be able to wear bodies anymore…it will make us completely useless! We dispose of bodies at OUR will, not because of some stupid clause!’ She turned to Annie. ‘But our prediction was wrong, and much to Adelyn’s horror and our delight, she was born. A fifth child. The clause never armoured the last one and so we were free to use her.’
‘But…she’s dying! Her beauty is of no use to you!’
They began to laugh – sinister and provoking. ‘Excellent. You really are smart!’ Aunt Cora guffawed. ‘Her beauty has already been taken. She’s plagued with the old age, the age the hundreds of thousands of girls we murdered – who were cut off from a normal life cycle - would have had. In a matter of minutes we’ll perform the spell and dip ourselves in the cauldron and live beautiful forever.’
Annie began to cough violently. ‘I…I still don’t understand. Why is Annie suffering?’
Aunt Cora’s cut out eyes suddenly blazed. They appeared for a millisecond – evil and adder like. ‘Because of Adelyn, you fool! Adelyn G. Phoenix! Why was she so beautiful? Everyone loved her so much! SHE was supposed to be the maggot. NOT us! You can’t imagine the feeling of sheer ecstasy I had when I finished her off! Slit her good-for-nothing husband too! After HER death, NO ONE can stand in our way!’
My body began to shake mad. ‘You were the gypsy? You were the monstrosity that killed our parents? Why this façade, witch? Why did you wait for so long before killing my mother who was the most radiant woman ever born?’
Aunt Cora yawned. ‘Your interview is verbal exhaustion. Killing even Addy darling has its ramifications…it puts a loophole in our powers. WHY do you think we didn’t do it any sooner?’ Her voice, that sounded like the voice of many little girls, tiered together, began to increase its volume. ‘We had to do it because Adelyn was going to tell Annie about the clause and that was a direct violation. Even though she was unprotected by it, her clause states, “If any of my offspring shalt object, thy spell will be refracted…right choices thou shalt witness even in their oblivion.” Thus death was the only consequence.’
I lowered my head.
‘So that is why if she knew, she would have denied it, and we would be unable to do it. Addy always had the winning cards, but we twisted the words and instead claimed the trophy!’ Aunt Cora’s serpentine eyes flared, and she added, pityingly, ‘I wish I could kill you, though. But upon doing so, I’d only put my best interests in peril…and I’ve come TOO far to do that again…so, I would much rather watch you suffer than see harmless, peaceful death sweep over you.’
I was quiet. I was dumbstruck. I was defenseless. But before I could shake myself out of the perplexity I felt circumference me, I unconsciously asked her in a low voice… ‘Do you know why all those mirrors broke?’
Aunt Cora looked at me at once. ‘Eh? Well aren’t you an annoying little inquisitive cookie.’ Aunt Sora and Nora glanced at each other…I couldn’t really make out their expression because of my misty eyes, but they didn’t expect the random question, and weren’t exactly pleased. Aunt Sora and Nora began to whisper things to Aunt Cora…who cantankerously bade them to shut up. ‘What’s the stupid point of concealing this when she bloody well knows the rest?’ The two Aunts backed off a bit. Aunt Cora’s hollow, icy gaze thus fell on me. ‘We…were the reason they broke. It is our curse.’
I averted my gaze from Annie and perused her ghostly moth-eaten face.
‘We cannot look at ourselves in the mirror. It shatters. So since we could not see ourselves in them, we decided no one should; which is why all the mirrors broke in that store at Alistan… The curse entails a prophecy stating the predictions of our existence through the surviving mirrors that do NOT shatter. The second time it happened, there were only three mirrors surviving, signaling Adelyn’s death. But ours were always cracked… that is when we knew, getting to Annie was ultimate, or else we would remain beleaguered by our haunting physical disgust. We had to snip away all barriers. And we did. While we don’t look into the mirrors, they don’t break…but the cracks appear when we merely pass them by.’
My brows furrowed together. ‘So, we amassed our own collection of mirrors…stored away since all those years…till we can finally look ourselves in the eye and smile at how beautiful…most beautiful we shall become!’
‘A reality nearing its fulfillment.’ Aunt Sora piped in, glaring at Annie viciously.
Having disclosed their surreptitious secrets, Aunt Cora grabbed Annie, who could barely keep her eyes open, and flung her into the boiling cauldron, which released a smoke of bright orange. I screamed, for it was the only thing I could do. The Aunts were laughing triumphantly. Then they, one by one, sank into the cauldron themselves, that began vibrating. I thought the vibration would lessen or stop…but it grew worse, and began to hammer down onto the floor.
‘Sister…what is happening?’ Aunt Sora whispered to Aunt Cora.
Aunt Cora’s eyes were drawn maliciously towards the possessed cauldron.
‘I don’t understand either…quick! We must immerse ourselves before the spell wears off!’
With that, the three of them dipped the rest of themselves into the cauldron…reciting ‘On…beauty live on…let beauty live on…forever…forever…’
However, the cauldron began to break apart as its boiling intensified like a volcano itching to erupt and devour the world in lava…until finally, a huge explosion sounded…and with a big cloud of purple smoke, it broke.
The entire room was blown apart, the windows broke into smithereens, and the walls and roof fell. Trying to gain consciousness from the explosion, I saw Joe, Roxy and Del approaching the sight; they had somehow managed to break the door and now beheld the scene beyond ordinary perception. Getting up and walking towards the broken cauldron, I saw that the Aunts weren’t there. But the impact had been such that it tore the fragments of their loose bodies, scattering them all over the floor mixed with the liquid of the spell for immortality they had been preparing. It seemed as if the spell itself had proved too much for them and it sort of made them…vanish.
But Annie was still there…on the floor. She wasn’t moving. For those who had just come, it was confusingly shocking. For those who had been there to witness it, felt the magnitude of their loss.