I Live with Dead Witches

Chapter One: Breakfast Spells and Broomstick Bickering

I woke up to the sound of my dead grandmother threatening to turn my dead mother into a toad. Again.

“Don’t you dare wave that spoon at me, Mumtaz!” Mum shrieked, her ghostly form hovering above my bed like a furious cloud of lavender perfume and regret.

“Oh please, Shabana,” Grandma snapped, “you couldn’t even turn a potato into mash when you were alive!”

I groaned and pulled the blanket over my head. “Can you two not hex each other before breakfast?”

There was a pause. Then Grandma’s voice softened. “Sorry, darling. Did we wake you?”

“Yes,” I muttered. “And I think you singed my pillow.”

Mum floated down beside me, her translucent sari shimmering like moonlight. “We were just discussing your father’s ridiculous spell for scrambled eggs. He added cinnamon, Amira. Cinnamon!”

I sat up, hair sticking out like a hedgehog in distress. “I like cinnamon.”

Grandma gasped. “You poor child. He’s corrupted your taste buds.”

This is my life. I’m thirteen. I live with my dad, who’s a wizard and owns a magical repair shop that nobody knows is magical. And I live with the ghosts of my mum and grandma — both witches, both dead, both extremely opinionated. Only Dad and I can see them. To everyone else, our house is just a bit… drafty.

School Days and Spectral Sidekicks

By 8:15 a.m., I was dressed, fed (cinnamon eggs again, sorry Grandma), and ready for school. I packed my bag while Mum tried to braid my hair and Grandma tried to unbraid it.

“She looks better with it loose,” Grandma insisted.

“She looks like a mop,” Mum countered.

I ended up with one braid, one bun, and a glittery clip shaped like a bat. I looked like a confused Halloween decoration.

At school, things were mostly normal — except for the occasional ghostly commentary.

“Her handwriting’s atrocious,” Grandma whispered during English class.

“She’s thirteen, not a calligrapher,” Mum hissed back.

I coughed loudly to drown them out. My teacher, Mr. Qureshi, gave me a concerned look. “Are you feeling alright, Amira?”

“Just… seasonal allergies,” I said, while Mum tried to rearrange the classroom’s motivational posters using telekinesis. One floated off the wall and smacked a boy named Bilal in the face.

“Oops,” Mum said.

“Ghosts,” I muttered.

“Excuse me?” Mr. Qureshi asked.

“Toast! I said toast. I miss toast.”

The Invisible Family

Nobody at school knows I live with dead witches. They think my mum died in a car accident and my grandma passed away peacefully in her sleep. Which is technically true. What they don’t know is that both of them decided to stick around because, as Mum puts it, “You can’t trust your father to raise a magical child without supervision.”

Dad’s a good wizard. He’s just… distracted. He once enchanted the laundry to fold itself and accidentally gave my socks the ability to recite poetry. They still whisper Shakespeare when I walk.

At lunch, I sat with my best friend Zara, who was talking about her new kitten. Mum hovered behind her, making faces.

“Cats are overrated,” she said.

Grandma appeared beside her. “Cats are sacred. Don’t listen to your mother.”

I took a bite of my sandwich and tried not to laugh. “You two need hobbies.”

“We had hobbies,” Mum said. “Until death rudely interrupted.”

Home Again, Home Again, Ghostly Parade

After school, I walked home with my backpack dragging like a reluctant donkey. Grandma floated beside me, complaining about the state of the neighborhood.

“Look at that hedge. It’s practically screaming for a trim.”

Mum was more interested in the clouds. “That one looks like a cauldron. Or maybe a duck.”

When we got home, Dad was in the kitchen, trying to enchant a potato to peel itself. It exploded.

“Progress!” he said cheerfully, wiping mashed potato off his beard.

I dumped my bag and collapsed on the couch. “Homework. Help.”

Mum and Grandma swooped in like spectral tutors. Mum took math. Grandma took science. They argued over everything.

“You can’t use magic to solve algebra,” Mum said.

“Why not?” Grandma replied. “It’s faster.”

“She needs to learn the real way.”

“She needs to pass!”

Eventually, I got through my homework with only two minor fireballs and one floating pencil incident. Then it was time to cook dinner.

Cooking with Chaos

Dad was banned from the kitchen after the potato incident, so I took over. Mum and Grandma hovered nearby, offering unsolicited advice.

“Add turmeric,” Grandma said.

“Add love,” Mum said.

“Add garlic,” Dad shouted from the living room.

I made chicken curry with rice. It was edible. Possibly even good. Grandma tried to possess the rice cooker to speed things up, but it short-circuited and started singing nursery rhymes.

We ate together — Dad, me, and two invisible witches. It was nice. Chaotic, but nice.

Bedtime Bickering

At bedtime, I brushed my teeth while Mum and Grandma argued over which lullaby was best.

“She liked ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ as a baby,” Mum said.

“She liked silence,” Grandma said.

I climbed into bed and pulled the blanket over my head. “Goodnight, witches.”

“Goodnight, darling,” Mum said.

“Sleep tight, don’t let the broomsticks bite,” Grandma added.

They floated above me, glowing faintly. I could hear them whispering, already starting another argument about spell ingredients or Dad’s beard or whether ghosts should wear shoes.

I smiled.

Living with dead witches isn’t easy. But it’s never boring.

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