The Wish.
Summer, 1984
Months and months had gone by and each time the weekend's missionary assignments were posted onto the Church notice board, Lucy groaned inwardly as she was never sent to the town she needed to be in order to execute her plan. It would be a tough ask of the circumstances anyway, but for it even to start, she needed to be where she could get the necessary supplies. Her palms went sweaty as she looked at the board:
Charlottesville: Lucy and Anna
Her heart sang for a moment until she felt a tap on her shoulder that made her jump out of her skin. She turned whirled round with a panicked look on her face to be greeted by the smiling face of Anna, thankful that it was not someone else, her Father maybe; the Church First Minister had an annoying way of seeing when she was keeping a secret or lying. Anna peered at the board.
"Seems we two are paired up for Saturday" she commented. "I'll pick you up from your parents' house at nine o'clock".
Lucy liked Anna. 10 years her senior, she was tall, with a round face and kind eyes that looked out on the world with a little sadness. She had married one of her cousins and had two rowdy children that she was always trying to keep in line, thought they were not hers, the couple having adopted, seemingly unable to have kids of their own. They appeared to be a burden on her nerves. The thought of having to marry one of the younger members of the congregation and make his babies made Lucy's stomach turn.
Of course, coming out was completely impossible in the Church, without being excommunicated or worse. One of the girls a couple of years older than her was now living with a woman in New York. She was never talked about, not even by her own family, and events involving her were a taboo subject. It was as if she had never existed. The 18 year old Lucy often fantasised about their lives together. Jobs, friends, other things.
She simply nodded, her plaited straw-blonde hair barely moving an inch under the square of cloth tied over the top of her head- her Mom was always quite strict with the arrangement to make sure it sat just right. She lined up with all the other missionaries to receive the box of flyers she was supposed to ensure she handed out in Charlottesville the next day.
She looked at her shoes as the line shuffled forward, round toed, sensible shoes. Her legs poked out of them, clad up to the knee in woollen socks, despite the fact it was the height of a stifling, burning summer. Her dress too, was a plain, grey fabric, done up to the neck where only a little white frill provided any sort of decoration. She pushed her glasses up her nose, bored, and took possession of her flyers.
Anna arrived at the door promptly on Saturday morning, her dark brown hair tied back in a bun. She was brushing her teeth when she heard the door being answered by her Mother who asked the same mind-numbing questions she always did of any of the other women she came into contact with in the Church. "How is Fred / Tom / Hank?" and "Aren't Billy / Sarah / Bobby" growing up fast? She rolled her eyes as she finished and whispered under her breath "It's like living in fucking Stepford". Her name was called up the stairs.
"Lucy! Come on dear, Anna here is waiting"
The train was hot, and the journey slow and dull. With nothing to read except a bible and the flyers in her bag, Lucy took to staring out of the window. At Richmond a girl around her age boarded the train, carrying a cloth bag slung over one shoulder. She wore cork-soled open sandals without socks so her painted toes poked out from the hem of her long white summer dress. The train was full so she simply stood in the space in the middle of the carriages where the sliding doors were. Every so often, the sunlight would catch her dress and show the outline of her legs. She had long brown hair and poked and swiped at her mobile phone every so often, some content or other making her smile with her very wide lips that somehow made her even more pretty when they lit up her face. Lucy caught Anna watching her as she stared at the beautiful girl and quickly turned her attention back to the window.
Charlottesville baked under a cruel sun that afternoon. As they emerged from the station, people cast hesitant, suspicious looks in their direction, mostly due to their attire before looking sharply away lest they be accosted by the proselytizing women in their severe garb. They went a little way towards where they intended to make their pitch that day before Lucy summoned up enough courage to vocalise her thoughts:
"Anna, why don't I go down to the University? That way we can cover both sides of the city".
Anna looked pained that she had been asked the question and put in a difficult position. "Your father is very clear that you should be chaperoned at all times." She said, before pausing a moment, some subtle change in her expression hinting at a thought, maybe a memory within the older woman. "But I can trust you I think, you're such a good girl" she said, lightly touching Lucy's shoulder. "I'll see you back here at four. Don't be a minute late though."
Lucy hoped that her joy at being let off the leash didn't show, but she tried to give Anna her sweetest smile and nodded before moving off at a normal pace down the street. When she turned the corner though, she picked up her feet, walking briskly towards her target despite the heat. The streets in this end of town were a little less well kept than elsewhere, litter collected in the gutters and music blared loudly from open windows.
She at last came to face the shop with its black painted frontage and a dark red window blind that completely obscured the interior. The window was painted with the words "Roslin's Occult Bookshop" and she bit her lip as she stood across the street nervously before she stepped off the kerb, crossed the road and up the other kerb, and opened the door, which gave a little tinkle as she did so. The cool interior of the shop was a welcome relief from the fierce summer outside.
The shop assistant raised her eyebrows as Lucy entered in her churchgoing clothes. To Lucy's eyes, she was the very embodiment of freedom, a black crop top, almost a boob-tube, with an exposed midriff, cut off leather hotpants and fishnet tights, and heavily made up in the goth style; purple-black lipstick, heavy eyeliner and many piercings. Her earlobes were stretched out with large plugs. Oh to live like that! she thought as she looked around, bewildered for a moment at the dark interior of the place, at the many bookshelves crammed full of old and new texts alike, hand-made signs above each denoting the field of interest "Wicca", "Demonology", "Mysticism" and so on.
The goth smiled, really very pretty behind her attire thought Lucy, another instinctive pang of guilt rising in her as she tried to suppress her homosexual thoughts. "Are you sure you're in the right place honey?" said the girl. "You look kinda lost". Out of place is really what she meant, though obviously trying to be kind. Lucy swallowed, terribly nervous. Her bag contained a thick slab of flyers proclaiming the benefits of Millenarian Christianity and she was stood here in a place where she knew she should not be. She nodded silently and held out a carefully scribbled note.
The girl behind the counter eyed her for a moment as the items were lined up one by one. "Do you know what you are doing with this stuff?" she asked her. Lucy kept tight lipped and nodded, licking her dry lips. The Goth took in a deep breath and got out a little ladder which she used to climb up to the upper level of the shop, kept off limits to the general clientele. They were the only two present so she tried to strike up conversation as she got Lucy's list together.
"You don't look like the normal devotee of this particular spirit" she said, before taking another glance at Lucy clutching her bag. "All those years of repression finally catching up with you huh?" Lucy blushed and shuffled her feet as her purchases were added up and an ancient cash register was used to produce change. "Be careful with this" she was told. "These things are sometimes better endured. Trust me, I know" she added with a humorous roll of the eyes.
"I will" said Lucy before adding "Thank you" and leaving. Back out in the street, she took around two thirds of her flyers and binned them in the nearest trash can, making it look like she had convincingly got rid of a sensible proportion in the time she had been absent. She looked at her watch. Quarter to four. "Perfect" she said to herself and hurried back to the station where Anna waved as she spotted her down the street. She smiled at her, feeling a little guilty for having used her in this way.
"How many have you got left?" she asked Lucy as she walked up to her. Lucy fished in her bag and grasped the remainder of her bundle of flyers, hoping the other contents of her bag would remain hidden in the bottom of it, which, thankfully, they did. "Not bad" said Anna, "Good enough to ensure we don't come bottom of the table I think. Come on, I'll buy you a Hot Chocolate before we go home"
Her fat aunt's snorting snoring could be heard loudly, even from down the hall. A herd of elephants could march through the house and she would not wake Lucy knew. She had no lock on her door and what she was about to do next was very dangerous given the reactionary nature of the Church. She opened her built-in wardrobe, revealing her limited range of austere looking clothes and unflattering stiff leather shoes and crouched down to remove the floorboards. Beneath was a small wooden square chest, the key for which she kept about her person at all times. Putting it on the bed she opened it to reveal her acquired supplies from the day and something else, a small glass bottle containing a tiny amount of red liquid - her own menstrual blood.
She unfolded the small lurid crimson square of cloth, a makeshift altar marked with an embroidered pentagram, the edges adorned with images of a naked woman on each side, a snake curled around the body of each depiction, and lit the thin black candle. Upon the cloth she lay a single, white flower. Unscrewing the small glass phial carefully, she drizzled the pure white petals with her own blood. Opening the small pocket sized book in her kit, she began to chant quietly. The first words were in a language she didn't understand, so she spoke them as best she could, the portion of the rite that was required regardless of what was uttered next, the supplicant's own prayer to her Goddess, of her own devising:
I wish, I wish, I wish, I might
