Chapter 3: Condemned (Part 1)

Nicole

The rumbling continued as Miranda walked. Nicole immediately started to feel the change in the atmosphere. The sweat pores in the great chasm of flesh was radiating more heat than usual and several holes in the ground and in the walls started expelling steam. The air around her, stale and foul smelling, started getting warmer and warmer by the minute.

"Crap." Nicole shuddered, watching as the witch's sweat pour out of these holes. It was still summertime not to mention, this was Southern California and heat waves here were often oppressive. Nicole knew she had to climb out of here before the line indent in the skin flooded with sweat, so she looked up, far up, towards the ledge of jagged dead skin. The large jets of sweat discharged from the pores in Miranda's skin forming a small lake at the bottom of the ravine. Not only that, but the substance looked oily too. A stronger rumble occurred, and Nicole screamed out in fear as she fell into the disgusting substance. Another stomp of the goddess's caused the lake to warble.

This was it. Nicole would die, insignificant and humiliated in this god forsaken fleshy line on the foot of a wicked witch. It was so wrong and unfair. All Nicole wanted was to be a good neighbor to a newcomer. She thought Miranda was a bit of an odd recluse, but she never could've imagined Miranda was capable of something like this.

Late Afternoon Yesterday.

Nicole

Nicole thought back to last night when she'd been on another one of her late afternoon jogs. She had stopped to catch a breather and a drink of water by Miranda's house and then overheard a conversation about the Coven and re-occurring Rituals. If only she had realized that going toward the back gate of the house to hear more was unwise. She should've turned back when the ungodly smell of rotting goat flesh stung her nose, when the sounds of throaty chanting grew louder and louder and the sight of the women wearing robes with animal bones on them and a younger girl nearby holding a scrying bowl. She could've slipped in and out without anybody noticing her, unfortunately as Miranda prepared to sip some goat blood from a stone bowl, their eyes had met.

"What are you doing!?" Miranda roared and had briskly stood up. The thick black robe hugging her 5'11 toned figure.

"What?" the other hooded brunette turned around and spotted her. Nicole immediately recognized her as Cherice Daughtry, the local librarian. "Oh dear, this isn't good."

"Mother? Who is that?" asked the youngest of the group. She was a cute teenager with strawberry blonde hair, freckles and grey blue eyes like Mirandas whom Nicole had to assume was Miranda's daughter Luna. Unlike Miranda who was taller and more fit, Luna was smaller, but she took after her mother in filling out in all the right spots.

"I thought I told you to put up the barrier spell, Luna!" Miranda snapped at the girl.

"I-I did," the girl Luna replied meekly, "... I, I guess it didn't work."

Luna appeared scared of her mother seeing as she tensed up when Miranda yelled at her. Seeing the distress she caused between them, Nicole tried to intervene despite not knowing what was going on at all at the time. "O-Oh no, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to intrude." I just heard you all talking, and I thought-"

"And you thought what?" Miranda replied while suppressing her rage, "That it was ok for you to just waltz into my backyard uninvited to spy on me!?"

"I knew that nosy habit of hers would get her into trouble one day," Cherice sighed and crossed her arms, "It was only a matter of time before she slipped up."

"Go get my spell book, Luna," Miranda ordered.

"Yes, mother," the girl obeyed and ran into the house.

Nicole remembered the anger in her eyes and the fury in her voice. She had sent her daughter away because she didn't want to show her what would happen next. Miranda had crossed her arms and then raised her hand up while extending her pointer finger, Nicole could see her eyes begin to change from grey-green to an unnatural lime green. Nervous and confused, Nicole began to beg the tall red-headed woman for forgiveness. "Miranda, I'm so sorry. I-I'll just walk away, and I won't tell anyone about... this."

What a silly and imprudent woman she had been. Nicole was totally unaware that Miranda had already begun casting her curse on the 32-year-old soccer mom as Cherice looked on with a mixture of amusement and weariness. 

"Nosey mortals," Miranda grumbled. The witch's eyes flashed and everything suddenly went dark for Nicole. Miranda and her friend on the other hand, had just witnessed their nosy neighbor disappear in a flash of green light. Although, the laws of magic could not allow a person to just vanish into thin air. They had to be teleported to another location or shrunken down to a miniscule size. Unfortunately for Nicole, Miranda chose the latter.

Nicole was startled awake by the low rumble of a sound she couldn't make out coming from the heavens. She sat up in a strange place filled with dirty, smelly brown and black filth that clung to the pinkish walls around her. The sky above her looked strange as well and that's when she saw them.  The blurry yet still recognizable faces of Miranda and Cherice peering down on her like dull satellites with Miranda's face being the closest to her.

"Miranda!?" Nicole covered her mouth, frightened as she realized exactly where she was. The tip of Miranda's index finger shrunken to an imperceptible size. The woman screamed in terror as the sky darkened and more dull rumbling shook the air around her and the ground she stood on. Miranda's grey-green eye moved around back and forth, slowly, and ominously as it scanned the surface of the fingerprint for her the shrunken mother of two. Since Nicole was so small, Miranda's rapid eye movement to her was like a slow, foreboding searchlight. She could see every fine detail of her iris, the black abyss that was her pupil as it shrank and grew ever so slightly over and over again, and the slightest imperfections within the smooth, wet sclera that covered her eyeball in an endless thick ocean of oily moisture.

Miranda

Initially, Miranda thought of other various ways she could be rid of her annoying neighbor, but the Coven Rules worked conveniently for her. Miranda breathed and grinned as she felt the intoxication of power flow into her as she focused on the soccer mom in one of the many ridges on her finger. Cherice watched with a smirk on her face as she watched her red-headed friend's antics. Personally, Cherice liked her tiny mortal's ant-sized, heck she even granted them the strength and durability of ants so they would complete tasks for her and live longer, but Miranda was even more cruel to them. Shrinking them down to the size of mites and dust and making them survive on her body for her pleasure.

"Is she there?" Cherice asked as she cocked her head.

Miranda laughed and lifted her head to meet her friend's eye. "The poor little thing is absolutely terrified."

Cherice chuckled. She knew Nicole for about 3 years now but felt nothing for the woman. She got what she deserved. If Miranda hadn't gotten to her first, Cherice probably would've had Nicole purposefully catch her in the act of witchery so she could have an excuse to deal with the annoying bitch once and for all.

"You're a cruel one, Miranda," laughed Cherice as she watched her best-friend's giddiness.

"You're one to talk darling," Miranda quipped along with another excited giggle not caring for the nearly microscopic woman on her finger.

The red-headed witch focused on her prisoner once more and saw that she was hysterical with fear. Miranda never experienced what her tinies went through after she shrank them. That required her to shrink down and experience that for herself, which she could never do for two big reasons: the spell was in fact a curse which had a permanent effect on those afflicted, and witches were strictly forbidden by magic law from casting such magic on each other. Miranda was curious as to how her tinies experienced the world around them, but she wasn't stupid enough to do that. Shrinking magic, was only meant for mortals.

Miranda heard the pathetic shrieks and hilarious frantic yelling of the ditzy blonde on her finger. It was so amusing that Miranda couldn't help but laugh, which involuntarily caused a powerful storm for her captive just as her daughter Luna came back with the large spell book.