Chapter 17: The Farewell Debby Debster Chapter


Debby, the leaders of the Debbies, picked up tremendous speed to challenge Vermilla head-on, and dropped from her stance on the broom, so it caught in her armpit and she held it like a rifle and as she descended its tip shined bright and a emitted a beam of pink energy that buzzed just shy of Vermilla’s flexile frame and lit the clouds beyond with a golden profusion of light that sucked up all matter in its wake, clearing away a swirling vortex in the clouds that extended up like a tidepool into the waters of the whelkin, briefly illuminated eyelets of smoothly patterned water. Vermilla, unphased by the close call, plucked a golden key from the air, and reached out with it for the passing Debby’s, knocking it through her sternum, locking her in place, then circled back around for her paralyzed prey and turned the key within its chest. Debbie’s paralyzed body turned with it in a fine, machined motion, and there opened a red, ragged geometric prison, that enveloped the pink witch and in the brief motion of its progress, it revealed to its witnesses a vision of the first thousand years of Debby’s torment and suffering in that lockbox reality beyond the light of Gods and man and now claimed her soul for eternity. Needless to say, some spirits were dampened at the prospect of inflicting any final revenge on this most powerful of witches who sat herself on high and dangled her toes down, smiling down at her subjects. And in taking this survey her eyes fell on Heathcliff, who shrank in the fading light, her face a mask. “Darling!” Vermilla called down, “You’ve returned to me! I told you, all things within my domain return to me in the dark eons.” She stood up on her broom, her hair flagging in the darkling light “put away this tantrum of yours. It’s time to make ourselves whole again!” She threw down a small thing and called over the storm, “here, a souvenir of your great adventure.” Mistrial caught it, and there held a single small, wrinkled granny hand.