Chapter 15: The Grand Chelem

     They settled on a ridge overlooking the Shakes, its rambling cliffside hovels, and Mooth and all about were flying the colors of every coven, swirling over the castle like flocks of tropical birds. An enormous ball of pink energy ballooned enveloped a quadrant of their airspace, dropping burned bodies down like flies, and Endor and Heathcliff felt it prickle their skin with mystery radiation, its discharged burst of interference sending a broom rider wayward. Her crazy descent unable to be anticipated, they jumped clear as she careened into the rock face next to them.
     “What the hell’s going on?” Heathcliff asked her.
     The broom rider got herself upright, she looked down the neck of her blouse, bottles shifted and clinked around, held up by a belt cinched around her belly. “Ah, shit,” she said, “it’s all fuckin’ broke in there.” she pulled out a long one and handed it to them, drunkenly proclaiming, “We’re just fuckin’ with each other! It’s the End Times! We’re just fucking with each other - mercilessly!” She laughed and open palm slapped Heathcliff in the crotch and sailed off on a long arc, turning upside down at its peak where another rider rammed straight into her at high speed, exploding her into a spray of green glass and sparkling shrapnel. She died moments later on impact and they shouted thank you for the liquor in case some part of her was still in that broken body registering some final phenomena.
     Endor and Heathcliff drank their mystery liquor, which perked Endor up a bit, and watched the final showdown among the witches go down as the swarms predated and parasitized one another, dropping each other in brilliant displays of aerial acrobatics. Heath and Endor counted up all the covens they knew: there was the Debbies, the Mountain Girls, the Crystal Ball Cannons, Hell-Fire, the Hazzards, Anal Poison, the Cold Callers, the Shady Ladies, the Red Hots, the Sacred Blue Beauties, the War Boys, the Puppy-Mill Princesses, the Green Fang, We Love Cunt And We are All About Cunt, the Dissatisfacts, the TRUE Worshippers of the One Eternal Goddess, the Misties, the Mystics, the Late Bloomers, the-Fucked-to-Death-Pieces-of-Shit (aka the FDPS,) the Häagen-Dazs Dick-Biters, the Sunset Spirit, the Weeping Willows, the Lonesome Death, the Forlorn Hope, the Squeeze, Lethal Enema, the Scars and Stripes, the Small Wonders, the REAL Small Wonders, the Islets of Langerhans, Stiletto, the Betty Cooper Fanclub, the Milkmaids, the Secret of Piss, WE PUT BELLA DOWN THE WYTCH ELM, the Losers, the Lovers, the Breakfast Belles, Dude We Love to Party!, the Shehawks, the United Workers Association of New Mexico’s Largest and Best Exotic Battery Emporium, the Bella-Downers, the Very Gnawty Beavers, The Priestess Will Prevail, the Night-Fliers. All throughout this vortex of dazzling wraiths were Red Devils and Her Dark Revenge defending their covenstead like dark squid in the open ocean.
     It was like an afterparty with all the greatest hits. Endor leaned in and kissed her precious Heathcliff. Everything was right with the world, now that it was finally ending, the worthless piece of shit, good riddance. They stayed until their lower back ached then went down into the Shakes to find a place to lie down.
     The streets of the Shakes were rich and lively and they wondered why it couldn’t be the apocalypse all the time. Everyone was attending to final business, expressing whatever the hell they wanted, giving it all away, fighting, comforting and attending to loved ones, letting it all out.
     “Hey, she got all the damn blankets!” Someone shouted, and a witch who had wrapped herself in some thirty blankets walked through the streets smiling and waving resplendently to all. Heathcliff and Endor determined that they needed one of those blankets and with several others wrestled to win one from the blanket queen. “No, my blankets!” she shouted and they gave one last yank and sent her into the gutter, flailing, unable to get up. Endor and Heathcliff stole off with their spoils into a shack and began tending to one another’s souls.