The Witches Hammer 1.0
My name is Constance Hammer, and this is my story; not only mine, but the story of my daughter, and her daughter, and all the daughters that come after that. It's the story of how I left my home and family and built something new. I'm not going to start at the beginning of the story. That part's boring. I'm going to start where it gets juicy, right in the middle. The best part of a story has always been when the hero is in her darkest hour, cast adrift in the world, utterly alone. Alone is where I'll begin.
It's not true to say I'm completely alone. It just sounds more dramatic, so I lied. I do that, sometimes. It's a shitty kind of story that always tells the truth. Sometimes a truth that has been bent, or even completely broken, makes for a better tale. Regardless, the only company I had was my dog, Hexen. He was better company than most humans I'd known, though. You might think it doesn't sound safe, just a girl and a dog in a house out in the swamp. I had a secret, though, a secret that is the reason I'm telling this story in the first place. All the best protagonists have some kind of dark, mysterious past, after all.
Mine is that I'm a witch, just like my mother, and her mother before her, all the way back to the Burning Times. Some cunning ancestor of mine decided to hide, and so she set herself up as the wife to one of the very men who was responsible for burning her sisters. Nobody would think to look for her, there. All of it was clearly bullshit, anyway, if he couldn't even recognize the witch in his bed. That's what we've done since, the women in my family, attached ourselves to someone who could protect us, keep our talents hidden. I'm not going to do that. I want my daughters to be proud of what we are, not like my father who forbade any mention of the word in his house. He's what most would call a good Christian man. I call him a blind jackass. Magic is beautiful, and wonderful, something to be embraced instead of shunned.
After all, with magic I can fly, I'll never starve as long as I can conjure food, and that's only the tip of my talents.
Oh, who am I trying to fool? In those days, I could barely make bright sparks shoot out of my wand, and my conjured apples tasted like shit, mealy and rotten. I practiced, though, in hopes that one day I could reclaim the glory my foremothers had rejected. They always tell you that practice makes perfect, and surely if I kept practicing my weak magical gifts would blossom, in time.
Hexen wasn't much of a familiar, either. Most of his days consisted of digging holes in the yard and tearing up my furniture. I'd sensed something about him when I'd gone to the shelter to find myself a companion, though, a kindred soul of sorts. He was a smart dog, and fierce. He was capable of so much more than life in a cage had given him the chance to be, just like me. I couldn't leave him behind, after that, not for some more biddable dog who would never have half the spirit.
I knew that Hexen could become a true familiar. He just needed the right training. I might not have known what it was, but I did the best that I could. I taught him to hunt, so that he could seek out rare things, secret things, things that might be useful to me in my spellwork. At the very least, he might find something that would turn a profit.
Hexen took to the training as though he'd been born for it. It was a great distraction for him, when I was busy, to be able to charge about in the weeds looking for valuable things. At first, all he brought back to me were leaves and bugs, but I praised those trinkets. I knew that someday, his finds would be more valuable by far. Just like me, he needed to take it in steps.
I'd never been the domestic type, before moving into my hut so far away from town. I'd always chosen to eat my mother's cooking or drive to the nearest fast food place, before I'd stand over the stove making even something from a box. That wasn't an option, living as I did. For fuck's sake, my house was built on stilts so that it wouldn't flood when the water was high. I couldn't afford to drive into town every time I was hungry, so I learned.
As long as I stuck to the most basic of meals, I produced things that were, in the most lenient sense of the word, edible. Far better than the conjured apples I tried to live on, at first. The diet didn't do my figure any favors, but I'd never had much of an appetite, anyway. Most of my food became leftovers, allowing me to live for a while off of a single meal. That was a blessing, when money was tight.
For the most part, Hexen truly was my only company. I rarely ventured into town, content to spend my days playing with my dog. People as a whole grated on my nerves, after a lifetime of being surrounded by idiots who could never begin to understand me. The city I lived near was much more accepting of those whose identities ran to the alternative, but it's hard to break old opinions, and I always did hate to admit that I was wrong.
Then, of course, there was the magic. I practiced whenever I could, trying spell after spell. Most of them I found less than useless, producing no real effect. The sparks shooting from my wand became more reliable, though, as time went on. I could feel myself getting stronger, and I knew I was right to have left the soulsucking little town where I grew up.
A woman can't live by magic alone, though, as I believe I've already covered (conjured apples, disgusting, you remember). I had to have some source of income, and I stumbled into hunting ghosts quite by accident. A woman of my particular talents has a knack for this sort of thing, though. I've read books, I know that all the best witches work as paranormal investigators. Haven't you heard of Anita Blake?
I'd have to have been stupid to not be a little intimidated as I approached the first house where I'd received a call for help. I had all the equipment, but it's impossible to practice without having spirits to exorcise, and typically finding spirits to exorcise means taking a job. I covered my fear, though, because no one wants a novice ghost hunter showing up at their doorstep pissing her pants in terror.
There were a few problems with the equipment over the course of that first night. It was more difficult to aim than I'd expected, and there was a bit of a kickback to the thing that threw me at first. Oh, I hated that the people who had called me were in the house, watching me fuck up my first job, but I kept going. If I could rid the house of spirits, what could they possibly complain about?
Once I got the hang of it, though... oh, the power there. It might seem foolish, going around sucking up ghosts into a vacuum sealed canister, but I held a person's soul in my hands. I could do with it whatever I wanted. It was then that I knew that was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and I would find a way to make it happen, even if the pay wasn't the best I could dream of.
The old loser who'd sold me my equipment warned me that even the people I helped wouldn't respect me, would look down on me as a lunatic because of how I chose to earn my living... well, they looked grateful to me.
Very grateful, in fact. It might not have been professional, but it had been the first positive interaction I'd had with one of my new neighbors. Sure, the man might have been married with a kid, but a girl can look and appreciate the attention, right? Not to mention being friendly might get my name passed on to anyone else having inconvenient ghost problems.
Most nights, though, I was too exhausted to do anything more entertaining than go to an all night diner for coffee and an omelette before heading back home to fall into bed. The crowd there at the time of night I was didn't inspire any attempts to get to know them, and I wasn't that desperate for attention, yet. I might have been a social outcast, but I still had standards.
Night after night of sucking up ghosts and then going home to a cold, empty bed starts to wear on a girl, though. Was being the best ghost hunter really worth sacrificing normal daylight hours when normal people were up and about, looking for friends and lovers? I started to doubt, for the first time since leaving home, that I'd made the best choice.
A day off was just what I needed, and the summer fair in town gave me that. I took the time to pamper myself and Hexen, and neither of us had to get up and moving before we wanted to. It was a nice change, and I found I'd missed the sun far more than a typically nocturnal woman such as myself would have expected.
The fact that my services as a ghost hunter had been noted by the government didn't hurt, either, nor did the shiny plaque they wanted to give me. It would look out of place on my barren walls, but a little bit of recognition was exactly what I'd needed to get myself on track and even consider risking the summer festival.
It was disappointing to realize that the majority of people in the town weren't like the ones that called me and requested my services, or the surprisingly intelligent members of the local government who decided to get on my good side. Most of them were exactly like the fucking idiots I'd known back home, willing to stare at me and imagine me naked but never brave enough to talk to me in the daylight where someone else might see.
I didn't have much time to get discouraged by that, though, not when I bumped into an aging rocker and had the best conversation I could remember with another person. He was too old for me, of course, but flirting never killed anybody, and the fact that he understood what it was like to not be a cookie cutter more than made up for the years between us.
"I don't know what a pretty little thing like you is doing all alone, even in a place like this," he told me, "but you come and see me if you ever get lonely. I'll show you a good time." I wasn't ready to take him up on the offer yet, still holding out hope of a better one, but knowing I had my options put a spring in my step.
I even had it in me to flirt with the poor schmuck working the food booth as I picked up a quick bite to eat before heading off to go catch more ghosts. He wasn't sure what to make of me, and I left him flustered and incapable of counting the change back correctly. I felt more like my old self than I had since I moved, and I knew right then that, career-oriented or not, I had to make the time to get out more often.
That was how I met Abdul. I'd gone out for a drink after work, not expecting much from the crowd, and instead he caught my eye. He was the most gorgeous man I'd ever seen, and I wanted to do horrible, horrible things to him.
My mother's mistake wouldn't be my own. I was honest with Abdul about being a witch from the start, and not only did he not mind, he seemed very enthusiastic about the entire prospect. It seemed he knew someone else who had powers, and everything to do with mine, as well as my job, captivated him as much as his looks captivated me.
Of course the night turned to flirting. That's just what happens, when an attractive man and an attractive woman spend time together. We flirted, and we danced, but when the end of the night came and I invited him to my place for some good, sweaty fun, he turned me down--nicely. It seemed he didn't hook up with random women in bars, and nothing I could say would sway him. That was when I decided that I had to have him.
No matter what it took to snare him, in the end.
This started out as a test lot that I ran while trying to fix the random borking in my regular legacy lot. I took caps mainly out of habit, not out of any real intention to use them, but then I realized that I really liked Constance and her potential as an unreliable narrator, which I have a weakness for. Since this didn't start out as a legacy, I haven't followed legacy rules. I'm hoping to correct this within a few updates, but as of now I haven't gotten them into a lot that meets legacy regulations. It'll get there, hopefully soon! This legacy will be a matriarchy, with the daughter having to be a born witch to be eligible as an heir. Cut text from the Malleus Maleficarum, aka the Hammer of the Witches.