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As I mentioned in the newsletter, my girlfriend, who is currently reading Don’t Read This Book, told me she wanted more of three of the characters in the sequel. Combined with a global pandemic, that has changed the direction of this sequel and the third installment in a good way. Just today I wrote a whole chapter. I normally wouldn’t share out a teaser like this, but I think this chapter can stand alone while also giving you a flavor of the second book. So, if you want to read Don’t Read This Book first and not have anything spoiled, get that here, but if a book with a title telling you NOT to read it doesn't sound like your cup of tea, consider reading this chapter that has some not-so-hidden commentary on the era we are all living through. (Just a first draft, of course, and subject to a lot of change in the future.) I think you’ll enjoy it. And if you’re fans of the McElroy Brothers who do the podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me, you’ll like it even more!
Chapter 9
About as far away as possible from the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, on a chilly, wet hill, the darkness pressed down on the three Wyrd Sisters McElroy just as oppressively as the midday sun weighed on Magdalena Wallace’ shoulders on the other side of the world. The witches’ cauldron didn’t sit over a fire, and it produced no heat, but they stood closely around it as though for warmth because the brightness of that sun glowing out of the surface of the water in the big pot created the illusion of heat. The witches didn’t mind this illusion, especially since the show they were watching in their cauldron was moving away from Lena’s current location into her future, and a bunch of their other misconceptions were being knocked down like dominoes.
“Oooo,” Garafina cooed. “It gets sexy here in a minute. I like this part. I may need some time to myself later, ladies. If you know what I mean. Down on Main Street. Me time.”
Taravisa rolled her eyes. At present, her left one was blue and her right one was green. “We have no idea.” Then she looked into the cauldron again as the scene changed, still in that Costa Rican glow, but now to a walled house on a hill. “I like the explosions. Action, you know?”
“I like a different kind of action,” Garafina said. Her left eye was brown and her right was blue, and both flashed as she bobbed her eyebrows up and down. “Sexy action.”
“We get it, alright?” Justinia, the eldest, growled. She was haggard and wrinkled and clearly balding, and she leaned on an aluminum cane with four legs at the base, each with a sliced tennis ball pinching the feet and sinking into the muddy Scottish loam. “The bone zone. You want to see more fuckin’. Well we see what we see, okay? This is what’s going to happen, not what we want to happen. It’s not all going to be sex and explosions, dinglebrains. Now pay attention.”
Taravissa nodded sagely. “That’s right.” She was the middle-est of the three sisters, with a giant quaff of hair like Sean Young’s Rachel in Bladerunner, and a high-necked, dark red dress, accented with white lace at the collar and white petticoats underneath the hem around her boots, like she’d picked out her clothes and an old-timey photo booth at a carnival. Ironically, she hadn’t dressed this way in the mid-1800s. She was just into steampunk. “Thanks for keeping us focused, Justinia.” Then she leaned over to Garafina. “I was actually with you on that,” she whispered loudly. “That’s why you’re my favorite.”
“I’m standing right next to you!” Justinia shouted.
Taravisa leaned over toward her older sister and stage-whispered, “Yes, but I’m trying to boost her ego because she’s the baby. I know you’ll be able to take it. That’s why you’re my real favorite.”
Justinia matched her whisper. “You’re not doing this right.”
Taravisa stood up straighter and flipped the umbrella in her hands onto her shoulder. It advertised for the Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition in Drumnadrochit, blue with the white logo of Nessy mostly hidden since it was collapsed. Her voice returned to its normal, slightly loud and glottal fullness. “I think I’m doing just fine, thank you.”
Garafina nodded. “You’re crushing it, Sis.” Her umbrella was a Japanese parasol decorated with white lotus blossoms, red maple leaves, and black kanji that mixed to make it look pink when collapsed, and she held it straight up behind her, its handle in her hands at the small of her back, its middle bouncing softly between her shoulder blades as she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. She looked like she was in her twenties, and she’d recently taken to doing her blond hair into a pixie cut with very close-cropped sides and some gel to point the top straight up, inspired by a vampire she met briefly in Edinburgh and then London about a year ago. But unlike that vampire whose sexiness spoke of danger and confidence, Garafina’s body seemed to want to dance and bob from from subject to subject just as her mind did. “So, to get very, very real for a hot second, it looks like shit is about to go down in a bad way.”
They all continued staring into the cauldron. Without sound coming from the images, they had to imagine the cracks of the guns, the splattering of blood on walls, the crunching of bones, and all that violence didn’t bother them too much, but one particular gunshot made them all flinch. “Um, not to be a buzzkill,” Taravisa said, “but have y’all considered the possibility that this is all our fault? I mean, we did play a role in this. We told that twat necromancer where to find the writer just so he’d leave us alone-”
“-and get himself killed.” Garafina added. “That was important. We wanted him to get himself killed.”
“And fail in his whole plot to destroy the humans,” Justinia said. “Don’t forget that part. We did that. And we intervened a little and made that possible. I mean, we’re kind of heroes if you think about it.”
“Right, right. No doubt. But...” Taravissa took a deep breath. “...also our interventions have caused all this, and it looks like it’s going to be whole lot worse than just killing off most of the humans.”
They watched in silence some more.
“Yeah, okay, you’re right,” Justinia said. “It’s worse.”
“And it’s on us, right?” Taravisa asked.
Justinia shook her head tightly, her thin wisps of gray floating over the liver spots on her scalp. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. Heroes, remember? Our intentions were good.”
“Not to get all philosophical,” Taravisa said, “and I absolutely agree on the whole heroes thing, but I’m starting to come to the conclusion that our intentions don’t matter a whole lot.”
Justinia shot her younger sister a glare. Her left eye was green and her right was brown, and both gave a warning. “I just don’t think blame is very constructive in a time like this. That’s what I’m saying.”
Garafina shrugged. “I think we can all agree the queen is the one to blame. I mean, c’mon!”
Justinia nodded once, slowly. “That’s what I’m saying. She’s the one who is going to cause all…” She waved her hand over the cauldron, pointing at the whole mess. “...that. All that.”
“Right, and I’m not making excuses for her,” Taravisa said. “It’s funny that we thought the danger would come from intentional malice. From that malignant narcissist corpse-fucker. What he wanted to do on purpose. But it turns out that the greatest danger of all is what will come about because of negligence and inattentiveness and just … stupidity. Thoughtlessness.”
“Criminal negligence if you ask me,” Justinia muttered.
“Sure, she should know better.”
Garafina tapped her umbrella against the back of her head. “She should have started using her noggin a long time ago. It’s amazing she got as far as she did.”
“But ladies, that’s why I’m talking about blame. She’s going to get her own kind of punishment. We’ve seen that. And it’s bad.”
Justinia breathed her words. “So, so bad.”
Garafinia bounced. “And really fucking gross!”
“Right. Agreed,” Taravissa said. “But that won’t really make things any better for the rest of us, will it?”
Justinia shrugged. “I’ll feel a tiny bit better.”
“Same,” Garafinia said.
“Fine, but then the whole world is still the poops, right? So maybe, and hear me out here, maybe we should intervene again.”
“I’m listening,” Justinia said.
Taravisa cocked her head to the side. “What?”
“I’m listening.”
“To what?”
“You said, ‘and hear me out here.’ So, what’s your plan? I’m hearing you out.”
“Oh, I don’t have a plan yet. I just mean we should consider intervening again.”
It was Garafina’s turn to nod sagely. “This plan is … not very good?”
Justinia pointed at her youngest sister. “It is a bit incomplete, isn’t it.” She made a show of looking into the cauldron and away from Taravissa. “Stupid,” she muttered. “So stupid.”
Garafina looked at Taravisa. “Not to get all Alan-Moore-Watchmen on you, Travvy, but the last time we intervened, we clearly made things worse.”
Taravisa pointed at Justinia. “What happened to us being heroes, Griffy? We saved most of the human race, remember?”
Garafina pointed into the cauldron. “And that led to this big giant pile of flaming radioactive shit, now didn’t it Travvy?”
Taravisa’s shoulders slumped, and her voice sank into her chest. “I mean, there’s sex as well as explosions before the flaming radioactive shit, so it’s not all bad, but, yeah, I get that.”
They continued to watch the scene in the cauldron. The bright light of the Pacific sun had been replaced by a dimmer glow as the characters moved about the globe, but now the sun was tropical and augmented by the flashes of explosions that came in increasing speed and size until the horrorshow in the cauldron created a club vibe on the faces of the three women standing on a lonely hill in the Scottish highlands, but the silence became more oppressive than the darkness or the night’s damp chill. It was the world’s worst rave.
Justinia’s voice was low and unusually sad. “Gals, I think we just have to sit this one out. And yes, it’s going to be really bad. I can’t even fully wrap my mind around how bad it’s going to be. But I just don’t think there’s anything we can do.”
“It’s beyond us,” Garafina agreed. “We observe. We know shit. We give excellent advice. Like, the best advice. But that’s all we can do. And no one is asking because this just has to play itself out.”
“Exactly,” Justinia said. “We’re just witches. Just three dumb witches with a cauldron. There’s nothing we can do.”
Suddenly Taravisa stood up straighter, her bouffant bouncing once and then remembering it wasn’t Grafina and standing still like Justinia. “You’re right. We’re just three dumb witches with a cauldron, and there’s nothing we can do. Unless…”
“Unless?” Justinia asked.
“Unless” Garafina asked.
“Okay, hear me out for realsies this time.” And she proceeded to tell them a different ending to the cauldron’s story.