Marina the Liar

Stroking the black candle with the oil was the last step in her recipe. Marina recited with enthusiasm the incantation she knew so well. Night after night, she prayed the spell with all her heart, lighting the candle and weaving the spell. Reading from the same grimy grimoires she had read from, always.

She was finished, she left the candle on the windowsill to burn down to nothing. when the light finally dimmed and died, the spell was successfully cast. Even now knowing in her heart, love spells can have disastrous outcomes. This knowing gave her a lump in her chest.

After all these years, she still spoke the incantations every evening and let the candle burn away. Other spells or magic were no longer in her repertoire. Marina was obsessed, and if she couldn't have him, she would destroy him and everything that he held so high above her. His beautiful new son. The apple of their eyes. Everyone's sympathy had left Marina behind in her own misery. It had been so long since he left her, but she had not moved on, like the old woman in the wedding party in David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. The beautiful corpse, never living. only thinking of love unrequited and lost to it. Swimming for decades in a sea of despair. A lonely lost tunnel of abandonment. But now, her spell was complete. Seven hundred and seventy-seven nights of enthusiastic chants, to cast the poison apple to the golden ones.

The golden boy abandoned her years ago, and his little golden children. She calls it abandonment, but she was the one who left him. Anything he said was abuse in her mind. Everything hurts. Everyone leaves. Trust no one. Let nothing in. She left him for the women of her group who had decided she was abused. With them she was loved, at least they pretended to like her. She became the poster child for the domestic violence shelter. Making a video for their website. Not sporting any black eyes, as truth be known no one ever laid a finger on her. She was lying about the abuse she suffered while idling in their sympathy and funding. She left him in his trama after Iraq.

It was very soon after the war that she had met him in a chat room and sent him an old picture of herself. Marina was not beautiful, Really couldn't even be said to be fair with her long straggling hair and sour expressions. Her smile was filled with decay, and she could hiss her poison at you through those ugly unwashed monuments that used to be teeth, without anyone but you noticing. Like a poison dart, with the venom of a poison toad that she raised in the sink of her dirty bathroom.

As the candle began to burn dimmer, Marina drank some red wine and smiled the deeply stained grin into the mirror celebrating the success of her endeavor. Now was time to shoot the poison arrow into the heart of the golden boy"s boy. She took a deep drink of the wine. The golden boy's boy was her own children's brother. So blinded she was by her defeat determined to show her power, the children were the only weapons she had to wield. . The weapons of her great assault.

She drank a lot of red wine. She waited a few more minutes for the candle on the sill to go cold and she went into her daughter's room. The prettiest most wonderful wonderland room. Conjured to deceive. Then, kneeling on the floor she whispered into the child's innocent ear, the path she was to take. Into her innocent ears and mouth, she put the foul thoughts of her tortured broken soul, for she asked herself what kind of monster she was, in the dim light in the mirror that night and she could see her rotten features. Scales and pointed bloodstained teeth.

So now she was this. Monsterous apparitions had overtaken her. It no longer mattered that the golden apple children were hers, Only that they were his, and she would destroy them all. In turn, destroying him.

How she would exact her perfect revenge on all the beautiful golden apples he so loved..? How she would cripple them all with her dabbling. Marina knew, always knew, she would never be a golden apple.

Each night for many months she had whispered dark instructions into the ear of his precious golden girl. How she should fear. How there was nothing for her to find or benefit from in her no-good father. Snickering at his happiness and success. Hating and distrusting him out loud. Planting the seeds of discord. His golden apple girl was dead and replaced by a poison arrow of the deadliest caliber.

And so it was, his children did hate him, Frog poison to his heart. The more he tried to be a father, offer advice, support, time, the more jealous and broken Marina became. All her schemes and spells had amounted to nothing until now.

After some time he married again. A plain woman with a gang of kids from her other marriages. After loving her children alone for many years she was tired, and he was tired, and they helped each other have their children and a life. Her troubles had been great, but she shouldered them with strength and grace. Oh, how this infuriated Marina and each time the new wife accomplished anything, as she was a motivated, hard worker, Marina raved on to her children how she was not so great. How she must be hiding in a corner kind of abused woman to be with their dad, and unaware of her predicament, because of her stupidness. Though she had none. New wife was a brilliant and loving person. Loved by many. This too enraged Marina beyond measure.

Any smile or kindness this woman gave to her or the children was treated with disdain, and although this new wife reached out to her, She rejected their love and mocked and criticized their efforts. Coparenting with a witch is not possible.

She cursed them and bound them and kept the children away from them. And when the girl, not so innocent, the plaything of her grandfather and the apple of her daddy's eye, turned on him with the poison arrow planted in her by her mother on the night after the seven hundred and seventy-seven chants, her father's heart broke, and he never recovered. The golden boy's boy was given to the wolves and the golden apple girl too.

The golden boy's boy was saved by his mother, for once she was a wolf, many many moons ago and had great unseen strength and vigor. Thankfully the wolves were listening to her cries. She would have saved the other apple children too, but it was too late for them. The witch kept them high in her ivory tower. The father was slowly mended some, He could live again in a new place far far far away. The sad apple girl, and her mother, the witch, were never seen again.