The new girl in class smiled at me as she sat down at the desk across the aisle. Her grin was a little crooked, revealing dark, red-stained teeth, as if she’d just been drinking fruit punch.

I'll admit, she seemed a bit weird right from the start. She wandered in halfway through the semester, causing the teachers in my high school a lot of grief. During every lesson she was confused, as if whatever school she had been to previously was not up to snuff.

Regardless of that, Hilda attended class every day and sat right beside me. We shared glances back and forth across the aisle and I got the impression she liked me.

Then one day she passed me a note asking what I thought of her. Being a sixteen year old boy with few romantic prospects, I passed it back with a picture of a cartoon wolf howling at the moon and she burst out laughing.

After that we were inseparable. She started coming over to my house after school and I introduced her to my parents. We went to the movies together and watched TV in my basement. We made out on the couch down in the darkness of my den, listening carefully for my mom’s creeping footsteps coming down the stairs.

We dated for a few weeks before I began getting a little freaked out by some of her quirks. She hid it pretty well at first, but after a while things started to add up. It wasn’t any one big problem, just lots of little things.

She collected my hair. That was weird. She gathered up bunches of it from my brush and I caught her stuffing it into her pockets one day. When I confronted her about it she just denied it.

The other strange thing was that I was never allowed to go over to her house. She said her parents were very religious and would never let her have a guy over. But when I dropped her off at night I would see strange flashes of red and green light glowing through the windows from inside. And once I could have sworn I saw someone levitating - hovering several feet off the floor and screaming at the top of their lungs, looking terrified. But when I looked back the person was gone, as if I had just imagined it.

Oh, and she wore strange jewelry as well - upside-down crosses and pentagrams. Weird, druidic symbols made into necklaces and rings. I asked her if she was into Wicca, but she just looked confused and told me she prefered comfortable furniture.

It wasn’t just those things that made me break up with her. My friend Greg told me this other girl Sarah had a thing for me, and I always thought she was smoking hot.

In retrospect I should have been nicer about it. I should have called Hilda at least, to break up with her.

But instead I just sent her a text, saying it was over.

She called me two seconds later, bursting into tears when I confirmed it was real. She asked what she had done wrong, and I told her it wasn’t her, it was me. But she didn’t sound any happier about things, and just kept asking why I was really breaking up with her.

I started to get impatient and we ended up bickering back and forth for a while. After thirty minutes of arguing, I told her what I really thought of her and the actual reasons why I was breaking up with her.

Big mistake.

The crying stopped suddenly and I heard the sound of a dial tone.

After we hung up, I felt a stabbing pain in my belly, as if someone were driving a knife into my abdomen. It got worse and worse until I doubled over, and I was soon laying on the floor of my living room, howling in agony.

It let up after a few long minutes and I groaned with relief, getting up from the floor on wobbly legs.

I got a text from Hilda a moment later.

The message included a picture displaying a strange-looking homemade doll with wispy strands of human hair protruding from its head. The face on it looked like my face. And there was a needle being driven into the doll’s belly, deforming the soft fabric with its sharp point.

Another text came through from Hilda.

Sore tummy? She asked mockingly.

I began to type in a message with shaking hands, begging for her forgiveness and telling her I didn’t mean what I said. I just needed some time alone.

Bullshit, she responded. I know you’re leaving me for Sarah.

Before I could type anything back, I felt a searing pain in my belly again, but this time much worse than before. I looked down to see blood pouring out and dripping to the floor, forming a puddle around my feet.

Another text came through and this one was a picture again. It was her cutting the doll’s plump belly open with a serrated knife, peeling back the fabric to reach inside.

The phone dinged again with another message and another picture. I had imagined there being white fuzz inside the strange figurine, like any other stuffed doll would have inside, but instead there was blood with bits that looked like tiny organs floating in it.

I felt as if a hand were reaching inside of me, pulling on things and twisting my guts, cutting and hacking with a knife.

Surely enough, the next picture she sent showed her clutching a chicken liver or a kidney in her hand, and another showed her squeezing it into a juicy, chunky pulp.

On my left side it felt as if something had burst and I screamed as the warmth of blood filled my insides. My guts felt like they were being twisted and pulled for a few long moments, but then that sensation stopped and I was left gasping for breath again, down on my knees although I didn’t remember how I got there.

I sent Hilda a text with my trembling hands, missing the buttons and taking five minutes to get it done. But finally I managed to finish the message and sent it.

Please, take me back. I’m sorry.

It was all that I could think to do. It was the only way to get her to stop hurting me.

I’m coming over, she replied a moment later. I’ll see you soon.

With a pit of dread forming in my stomach, I sent her a response, saying that I couldn’t wait to see her.

I just hoped she could fix whatever she had done to me, using the magic of her strange little doll.

When she arrived at my door, a wave of relief washed over me, seeing that she had brought the doll with her.

Maybe she did intend to fix me, I thought, and a hopeful grin spread at the corners of my mouth.

“Thanks for coming over,” I said. “So? Will you take me back? Can you fix me?”

Hilda seemed to consider this for a moment, then shook her head.

“No,” she said. “Nobody can fix you. I just wanted to watch this part for myself.”

With that, she produced a small pocket knife and began to cut long gashes going vertically down the doll’s face, running across the eyes and popping the tiny sewn buttons which were attached there. She dug the blade and twisted it, sending pieces of the doll flying through the air.

“Not so handsome anymore,” she said, as blood began to pour from my cheeks and my eyeballs burst open, spilling intraocular fluids which ran warmly down my chin. “I don’t think Sarah is gonna be interested in you after all.”

She left me blinded on the floor, terrified out of my mind and bleeding profusely.

It took a while to recover in hospital but I'm doing a little better now.

Thank goodness for the speech to text software that allowed me to post this to share with you all. And the help of friends and family.

Witches, what can you do?

MAD

TCC

YT