Badgered, bothered and belittled by those around him, not to mention the mugging and maltreatment, Harvey had had enough! The worst of them was Bill, that proverbial bully and sand-kicker, that brute who had dogged his path through high school, and now even worked in the same office with him. That day at work was especially rude - Bill had ridiculed him behind his back, and even the boss had laughed. Now Harvey wanted satisfaction. He paged through the telephone book, hoping to find something that could hurt Bill, when his glance fell upon the ad for Dial-a-Witch. "Love trouble? Want riches? Enemies to deal with? Dial-a-Witch is the magic for you. Full-service conjuring! Curses removed and reinstated! Homeopathic spells. All services affordable! Open Halloween only!"

"This is what I need!" - he told himself - "This is exactly what I need!" Visions of supernatural torture with Bill as the recipient danced jigs around his head as he rang up the number. "Trick or treat?" came a sultry female voice at the other end.

"Yes, please!" Harvey answered.

A moment later a puff of sweet-smelling smoke billowed out of nowhere and when it cleared, he saw the witch, sultry as her voice on the phone, standing before him. Harvey eyed her from the tip of her black hat, all the way down her black satin robe to her pointy black shoes and back up the broomstick. She lowered the broom, showing a face he'd have sold his soul for - to the lowest bidder, even!

"What can I do for you?" she asked, looking Harvey square in the face, an action that always made him stutter.

"I-I have an enemy I'd like dealt with. His name is B-B-Bill. Can you t-turn him into s-something awful?"

"Like a toad, perhaps?" Harvey liked the way she said it. Decisive. She knew exactly what to do, then again, she was a professional witch.

"Yes, a toad, with leprosy," he said, regaining some composure.

"And crooked legs?"

"And warts and shingles and dysentery and allergic to lily-pads!" His imagination was on a roll.

"My, you certainly are vindictive," she commented, laughing from behind the broom.

Harvey blushed. "He's my worst enemy!"

Again her laugh, hidden by the broom. "Why are you hiding your face?" Harvey asked her.

"It's so sensual when I laugh," she giggled, "I don't want to give you any ideas."

She waved a hand in the air, spoke an incantation, then snapped her fingers, studying Harvey after she'd finished.

"So it's done now?" he asked, somewhat confused. He had expected something more spectacular, like a sudden explosion and Bill the Decrepit Toad appearing at his feet.

"It's done," she said and smiled without laughing - which, by the way, looked very nice to Harvey.

"Will I be able to afford this?"

"Some Halloween candy is all I want."

Harvey grabbed a handful of goodies from the Halloween bowl and let them fall into her open palm: chocolates, jelly beans and assorted bonbons. "And there's no catch?" he asked

"Oh, that. I'm afraid there is..." At this Harvey's jaw dropped. She went on: "These days, we witches have to be psychologists, too. Your worst enemy is not Bill, it's you. You see Harvey, you're too timid, and people walk all over you. But I've solved your problem. Each day you must do one bold thing, or you yourself will turn into the toad we talked about."

"Oh no! Please! I can't! I couldn't! Turn Bill into the toad. Not me!" - but somehow he knew it was over, and that nothing he could say would sway her.

"Oh, incidentally, it's almost midnight, so you better start right away!" she added, and purred her magic giggle, face veiled by the broom.

Harvey wasn't sure himself what came over him then. He brushed the broom aside, grabbed the witch by both shoulders, pulled her near and kissed her open lips. Just as he felt that pleasant tingling of a kiss returned, her firmness dissolved into smoke, lips and all.

"I'm a very good witch," he heard her laugh from someplace distant, fading into the midnight silence of Halloween.

Story #378

Happy Halloween! Also: last year's Halloween story, and the year before.

It's been quite an intensive month for me life-wise, which has left me in the last couple of weeks with very little mind for writing stories. Already I am two stories in debt, the story for the previous photo (#376) and the story for #370. November should be back to abnormal, so please bear with me. A warm thank you to everyone who took the time to click by here, and especially for enriching this domain of 24 letters with your comments and stories! (Really, I counted them "indeterminacy.blogspot.com" has 24 letters. Who would have thought?)

Last but not least: a salute to the prolific blogger with a wry sense of humor who is Tom & Icy, Lammy, Lula, the Alien Guy, the Dog-Faced Alien Girl, Dusty Doggy, the Devil, and really more people, creatures and beings than I can keep track of, but it's so much fun to try - thank you for sharing your awe-inspiring creativity with us! There are more worlds in Ohio than one might imagine. Enjoy your well-deserved break, and don't be a stranger, and know that we will all be right back there to see you, at whatever time, space or domain you appear.

Sara: How did you get here?
Boy: I followed you.
Sara: Impossible.
Boy: I only had to close my eyes the moment you vanished.

Silence for a moment. Sara in her private Wonderland was right to be astonished. "By Invitation Only" was the law of her fantasy realm, yet here was the boy, and somehow he had found a way in.

"Run that way," Sara pointed off in the direction of the pink sun. He was off immediately. "But he'll be back," she thought to herself, "when I turn the path the opposite way." Now she pondered the uses of a boy in her Wonderland. "He could put the leaves back on the trees." They were constantly falling to the ground whenever the trees snapped themselves to attention. "Or put me on the slide, in moments I am not." She slid the blue slide down to the gravelly ground. "Now come back," she spoke.

"Here I am!" the boy announced, "I found a tablecloth. We can have a picnic!"

"What will we eat?" she smiled coyly, "There's no food here." There really was nothing. If Sara became hungry, she merely forgot more of the real world, to notice, moments later, that her socks became striped or a wall sprouted dots in shades of primary colors. The boy went away, then returned a while later with a handful of jelly beans. Sara was trying to catch her breath after swinging a complete Ferris-wheel cycle on the swing. He let the jelly beans fall and helped her, heading off the long strip of breath that looked like a rosy red ribbon flapping in the chaotic wind. What a mad dance it was! Never more than two feet on the ground between the two of them, and sometimes none, and neither in reach of the other - nor the ribbon. But finally they cornered the renegade breath. Sara snatched one end, the boy the other, and they shared it between the two of them. Afterwards, contented and waiting for something to say, they noticed the spot where the jelly beans had fallen. A spiral of cotton candy had sprouted into the strawberry sky!

"You can't catch me" Sara teased, or maybe it was the boy. They chased each other first one way, then the other, all the way up the candy, pausing for little bites along the way, for the running was making them hungry. When they reached the top they were holding hands and stickily sweet all over.

There they sat, on top of the Wonderland world, breathing their breaths together. "I still would like to know how you slipped into my Wonderland," Sara persisted.

"It was easy," the boy answered while glancing down at rainbow meadows. "This whole fantasy is my imagination."

She smiled with primal joy, and joined his gaze into the fairy-tale lands below, "I knew there had to be a logical explanation."

Story #377

Thank you to Dark Firefly for sharing her photo with us!

And now, for your further reading enjoyment: Comatose...

The first moment he saw her he could not meet her glance. A repelling force stronger than magnetism diverted his eyes to the sidewalk and her shadow borne by the tips of her toes. She stood among friends. Talking. Unaware. He moved in sideways, looking upwards, as if searching for clouds, inching closer until his sliding steps pinned the shadow. The girl's bus came, and she left with her friends, but the shadow remained with him. The living girl did not miss it. Shadows are transient creatures with as many incarnations as there are angles and shades of light.

Once home with the girl's shadow he arranged the apartment for cohabitation. Shadows enjoy a cool room with sources of light, to accentuate the nocturnal nature of their animation. The shadow girl explored her new abode, casting herself upon the wall, rippling over curtains, and brushing by her newfound protector. That night they lay side-by-side on the bed, the dim glow of the nightlight absorbed by her figure, so that he could only sense her presence where the bed was darkest.

Have you ever felt the warm, breathlike touch of a shadow as it slides upon you, like a second skin melting into your own? He felt it then, as the girl-shadow wrapped him like a larva in a silk cocoon. He became conscious of every nerve in his body, and through each nerve coursed tingling pleasure. The incessant stream of total sensation dazed him beyond sleep into a contented stupor that ended with the morning rays through the chiffon curtain.

The intensity of those hours drove out even the knowledge of who he was. He was someone new now, and so stunned he could only wonder if the intangible memory of the night was of a dream or a reality, or some twilight compromise between the two. The shadow rose and began anew to explore the walls of her home. With ultimate agility she merged herself into corners, danced a twirling dance across the wallpaper, looming or shrinking, depending on her mood. Her two dimensions contained a universe.

He sprawled in the arm chair in the center of the room, head turning to trace her flickering motions, much like a paralyzed moth might follow a moving flame. She grasped the shadow of his camera, began an orbit around him, shooting snapshots from all sides. Then she stood still in the morning light. He planted his gaze directly onto her blank face, wanting more than anything to decipher the wistful emotion that directed her. She stood poised to snap his picture, to capture that moment of bafflement. She did so, then turned the camera upon herself and snapped. The sharp burst of the camera's flash was too much for her to absorb. And she was gone, without leaving a note.

Story #376

Many thanks to Alexandra Shcherbakova for allowing me to repost her photograph. You may view more of Alexandra's photography at her fotocommunity.com gallery.

Also, many thanks to all who contributed their creativity this weekend! You guys are great!

Previous shadow stories at Indeterminacy:
Story #24
Story #43
Story #340

And for those who are fascinated by the art of shadows, here is a link to the marvelous Shadow Art Gallery of Mayuko Fujino.

I posted this photo because everone is looking for love, and I think, but I'm not sure, that the love is right there in her eyes. If you're stopping by here the first time, from BlogAdvance, or perhaps some random search, I decided to compile a list of my most popular stories, at least among that digital entity known as the "search engine." The list probably wouldn't convince anyone human to stay, but here it is, just the same, along with the search terms that found the stories.

1. strip poker (Story #89)

2. hair fetish (Story #84)

3. lolita island, lolita queen, lolita feet, underaged lolitas, etc. (Story #29)

Sometimes people actually found my blog searching for Indeterminacy or Synchronicity, and lately, my post for Whitlow Awareness Week is moving up in the search ranks (which means my campaign for awareness was a success!), but the above three pages are always among the last 100 hits. The really crazy searches like "extremely naked gymnastics"??? which should have gone here would be a subject for another post...