To the Literotica Readers:
This story was categorized as (Sci-Fi and Fantasy) because some aspects are truly unbelievable. All characters depicted in this fictional work are adults of legal age. Please remember, this is just an old retired man's feeble, truly bored mind, and I never intended to hurt anyone's feelings. I hope it is enjoyed by all. Just let your mind wander about the unknown.
The Old Witch -- A Curse or A Blessing
An old witch changes a man's life forever and so much more.
It was just another day.
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Growing up in a small southern town in the foothills of South Carolina, not far from the Blue Ridge Parkway, had its ups and downs. Everybody seemed to know everybody: there were no street gangs, no crime, dull, always laid-back, and peaceful. I was in my mid-sixties, having lived a reasonably decent life.
I joined the United States Marine Corps at the early age of seventeen, doing my four years, with no desire to make it a career. I worked some construction jobs until I was offered a position within the company dealing with computerized maintenance systems installations and as an upper management consultant.
This position turned out to be quite lucrative, and I loved traveling worldwide, working and dealing with clients and their needs. My parents left this world in a plane crash, headed to Mississippi to visit my dad's family. This left me with a hole in my heart that seemed never to heal. Mom was the most kind and loving mother anyone could have ever had. Dad was always a very forceful man, although never at home. Family meant the world to him. Seeing the love in my parents' eyes so often always gave me a warm feeling deep in my heart. Dad and Mom were always there to explain or nurture me into doing the right thing in my young years of life.
I married not long out of the Marine Corps to a wonderful girl, having a son by her. Our life together was a good one until she started having health problems. It came to her dying on the operating table during open heart surgery at the young age of 31.
This tragedy tore mine and my son's lives asunder. Things slowly improved as the years passed, with my son doing well in adulthood and moving several states away for work.
I never remarried, never dated, and slowly became a recluse hermit in my later years. My only relief from loneliness was becoming a total gym freak, working out, lifting weights, swimming, and running almost daily. Being six foot tall with a forty-eight-inch chest and fairly big cannonball shoulders, I wore it well at the ripe old age of sixty-four.
However, the loneliness drove me to exercise more to offset the pent-up feelings of hopelessness. My life never changed; now, the house was paid for, there were no other bills, and I had a lovely 401k from all my consultancy work. I had much to look forward to in my golden years, although, be it alone.
One day, while cruising around the local grocery store, I saw a little, very old lady holding an empty bag of apples, with apples all around her feet as the bottom of the bag had come apart, spilling the apples all around her. Immediately, I dropped down and helped her pick up the apples; we chuckled at the amusing occurrence.
She thanked me and stared at me once we had everything back in a new bag. "I remember you!" she gasped a little, continuing. "Your father brought you to me twice; once, you had burnt your hands rather severely, and the second for a massive amount of hornet stings."
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My mind went off. These two things I had not thought about in many, many years. When I was about eight years old, we lived off Highway Eleven near Table Rock Park. My father owned a hunting/fishing preserve called The Wing & Fin.
We had a clay pigeon 3-away shooting range and a nice-sized lake stocked with bass and crappie. We would also put out quail, pheasant, and chucker birds so hunters could roust them up and shoot them.
We lived in a big old home. The house had a big fireplace and was primarily heated with a central kerosene heater unit and the fireplace. One night, I was cold, so I took a mason jar outside and filled it with kerosene from the little spigot on the tank.
Bringing it back into the house, I stood before the fireplace and just dumped it onto the fire. From the sudden whoosh of flames and the kerosene residue on my hands, I burnt both my hands very badly. The pain was more than I could stand, crying and screaming, waking my dad.
My father rushed me to a nice-looking lady up in the mountains. She took one look at me and asked him for some silver. He started to take some bills out of his wallet, and she shook her hands, saying. "No, I need silver!" He emptied his pockets and found about a dollar and a half in silver quarters and dimes.
She took them in her hands, closed her eyes, murmured something low, then put the coins in her pocket and knelt before me. She grasped my hands, murmuring low and steady. Being a small boy of eight, I thought she was a charming lady, and I pondered if she was as wonderful as my mom. She was holding my hands so gently it felt natural to be with her. In no time, all the pain was gone, and in a couple of weeks, my hands had healed with no scars or marks, as if it had never happened.
The second time, I was about ten years old; my grandparents owned about twenty acres of land. One day, Pappy took his tractor out and knocked down the about six-foot-high brush so we could get to a rather large patch of blackberries in the back of their land. We headed out down the newly made path, my grandfather, my father, my brother, then me, in kind of like a single file to the blackberry patch.
The three of them walking over the top brought out the little devils. As I followed, walking over the top of the giant hornet's nest that my grandfather had knocked down with his tractor, I was surrounded by the entire nest of hornets.
Bees and hornets are pretty different; bees have a barb-like fish hook type of end of their stinger. Once they sting you, their stinger and part of their insides are pulled out of them, and they fly off and die. A hornet is the devil incarnate; since they have no barb on their stinger, these little demons will sting you repeatedly over and over again before they fly away.
Screaming and wailing, my father rushed to me, grabbing me in his arms and swatting the hornets as he ran away from the nest. By the time we were free, I had at least two hundred stings all over my body. He placed me in the car and ran into the house, bringing back a mason jar filled with pocket change.
Driving like a madman, he took me back up into the mountains to that same nice lady again. She took one look at me, gasped loudly and told him to lie me down on the table. She looked up at him and said one word. "Silver!"
He ran back out, retrieving the mason jar of coins, giving her the jar, saying. "This is all I have!" She grabbed a handful of coins and threw them into a pot, adding way over a quart of water. Whisking around the cabin, holding some things, she put many things into the pot. It brewed for a few minutes as she murmured low constantly into the pot.
Adding a little cold water to relieve the boiling temperature, she soaked a cloth in the brew and rubbed it all over my hornet stings as if bathing me in the mixture. She continued to murmur low and steady as she doused me with the liquid. I don't know, although having her nurse me like that felt so motherly. She had the prettiest blue eyes ever. Was it like a mother's love in her eyes?
About ten minutes later, all the pain and swelling were gone. She started boiling a kettle with some herbs in it, sternly saying that I needed to drink this to help with the poison inside my body. When it was over, she tried to return the mason jar of coins to my father since she only needed a couple of handfuls.
Dad told her no, that she could keep the jar and use it as payment for anyone who did not have silver with them and needed her help. Reaching up, she kissed him on the cheek, saying. "Kindness goes a long way; I'll hold on to this for a long time."
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Now, I was looking at this little old lady in a completely different light. She was about 5'4", somewhat thin, although something different about her showed in her face. Yes, she was old, although her face seemed to be that of a younger woman. Noticing her blue eyes, it seemed like I was reliving my past. I introduced myself, and she told me her name was Sophie.