The Memory Witch
Maggie awoke in her wooden shack to the squawk of some ungodly fowl.
She sat up on her cot. The bluish-white light of early morning shone in through the window. Maggie guessed it was about four or five in the morning. She grumbled at this. No decent human being should be awakening at such an hour of their own accord.
She looked around her small dwelling. The one-room shack was filthy; old clothes and books littered the floor like trash on a deserted street. The small wood stove that sat in the corner was covered in gunk and rusty metal. A half-dozen half-empty bottles of booze sat in pile, in a corner of room, opened, and appearing on the verge of falling over, and spilling their contents all over the moldy, rotten floor. In other words, the shack was just as she’d left it.
The squawk rang out again, and Maggie had had it. Her short, frail body leap out of bed. She put on her old slippers with the exposed toes on the right foot, picked up an unwashed frying pan from the stove, and went outside.
She walked onto her porch.
The tall, moss-covered trees of the swamp towered over her, casting frightening, jagged shadows over the shack. There was a long dirt road in front of the shack; the only link between Maggie and the outside world of cars, Internet, and the assholes who think they’re more civilized because they…
