The Hero's Journey: A Short Story

disintegration. Flying apart into a million psychic pieces did not do a witch’s mind good.

Sunlight was simply unpleasant. It yanked her from the womb as a fetus bobbing in cold bathtub water. Memories inscribed themselves into the body as well as the mind, and she trembled, muscles tightening, ten- dons and bones aching. She rubbed her legs and arms, face and neck, until her skin heated and relief set in.

As a woman, she suffered for days and nights after exposure to the light of the sun. Headaches, migraines, throbbing lights, voices, voices of men, fingers, hands, and bodies writhing, terrible things being done. She’d suffered in the light, so in the dark, her domain, she was the one who inflicted suffering. It was pleasant.

She smiled and stretched out like a black alley cat on crumbling brick wall. Lingering in bed, she inhaled the haunting smell of sulphur that lingered after her nightly sojourns.

Images of Sam Shear, the man who can because I love him so, brought swells of desire. Underworld excursions engorged passion. Many a time they lay together but not as man and woman. Sam the Man nestled into Sweet Mary as a child to a mother. He spoke of matters trivial to her yet to him, weighty and worrisome. She eased his mind, and then inserted herself into his mental nether regions. Instructions were given

Waves of gurgling and quicksand were no metaphor. Agitation could turn bad to worse. Eve clutched harder for a stable mind. It was a torment, nearly impossible not to panic. She gritted her teeth, tightened her mental hold. Gently, millime- ter by millimeter, she managed to raise her right hand. Mud offered no resistance. She raised her right forearm out of the hungry maw of dirt and grit. She grabbed hold of a desert oak’s dropping branch. It held firm. Five fingers clutched like a vise. She lifted her left arm and hand. Inch by inch, she loosened her torso from the deadly mud. Low-lying olive tree branches gave steadier