Short story
Magic. When I was a child, the movies and novels all told me about stories of little boys and girls like me. Little boys and girls who suddenly discover magic in them and become powerful, powerful enough to defeat the toughest bad guys that even the most powerful wizards and witches cannot defeat.
Well in real life, that ain’t how shit goes down. Magic is not stable, nor is it a stable. No one rides around on a broom in this town even when everyone who lives here is technically a witch. The youngest of the children might try once in a while and then the medics have to come around to fix a fractured rib or seperate ligament. You see, magic isn’t stable. It’s flow is about as stable as the brain waves of a schizophrenic. Sometimes it’s strong enough to destroy multiple skyscrapers (if you had the innate ability to with that is) and sometimes it’s just like a brain fart and only a dusty cloud of disappointment comes out between your palms.
Most people rotate between dust clouds and small fire balls because that’s life, deal with it. It isn’t something that can be stored, it cannot be saved up, it cannot be charged up. There is nothing logical or consistent about magic. The glorified versions shown in the ‘Hot’ category on Netflix is just the fantasies of those who can’t even summon brain farts.
Now, when you live in a town of witches and mages, there’s bound to be people who come at us with the aggressiveness of a starved paparazzi photographer. What they end up seeing though are normal people with normal jobs doing normal things.
Which brings us back to today. It’s tourist season as of today, a season Hollywood would see as money season but alas it is the most annoying thing for the people of the town. For damn’s sake who in the entirety of hell’s 300 levels could ever bring themselves to enjoy obnoxious tourists following their equally obnoxious tour guides like newborn ducks snapping photos of us like we are zoo animals? For some magical reason these people feel that it is ok to scramble around like headless chickens touching everything they can get their grubby little fingers on like they own the place. Then huff about how we are too normal, like they were expecting a freak show.
It’s like when Aunt Karen barges into your house uninvited and started pointing out all the little insignificant imperfections about the best place to ever exist, claiming her house is immaculate. Well guess what Karen, not all of us like sweeping everything under the rug like you.
Which is exactly what we do. Remember how there was that one point in time when witch hunts were popular? Well they are popular in witch towns as well because you know, we have a lot of them. You’d be damned to think we do it normally though because we don’t. See, tourist season lines up perfectly with witching season. Even if the flow is usually unstable, even the roughest of waters has a period of calm.
And like any normal person suddenly hitched with a bottomless supply of power, we abuse it. Hence a witch hunt. Any numbskull who thinks they are safe in a town of magic has got to be out of their mind, because damn is hunting a popular sport in the wild west.
At the bright hours of 3pm, the adults take the children upon the much more reliable transportation device called a vacuum cleaner and start plucking stray tourists out of the streets. They scream and cry but what of it? It was written in bold on waivers when they set foot into the town. IF YOU DIE, THIS SERVES AS YOUR DEATH CERTIFICATE. CAUSE OF DEATH: WITCHES. Most people ignore it like they ignore the terms and agreements. Typical.
The great thing about these tourists that we usually pick are that they are the same type of people that die first in most horror movies. Reckless beings who run off on their own and cause quite the disturbance when they see their lives flash before their eyes. Such a tragedy that a demon’s favorite meal are the souls of such unsavory people.








