It was 3:30 a.m., the witching hour’s weird, overly caffeinated cousin, and the house slept in blissful ignorance… except for the faint chanting and the smell of singed sage coming from under the laundry table, glowing faintly violet.
There, cloaked in shadows and a robe made of an old velvet scarf stolen from Karen’s closet, sat Lilith, black as moonless night, yellow eyes glowing like mystical highlighters, beneath an arch of precariously balanced Swiffer pads and dryer lint. Her ritual was finally ready. A perfect pentagram of sea salt (fine grain, pink Himalayan, thanks Karen for your weird salts addiction!), twelve ethically sourced goat bones (courtesy of Amazon Prime), and her personal spellbook (“The Chaos Witch’s Guide to Getting Shit Done,” paw-signed by Meowgatha the Elder).
She took a deep breath. Tonight was the night she would finally summon Spooky Steve to do her bidding: perhaps reanimate the Roomba, make the porch cat obey, or simply curse Charlotte with a perpetual bad fur day.
A black candle flickered. The room trembled. But just as she raised her paw and began her chant:
“Spíritum obscúrum, audí me—”
CLICK. The overhead light turned on. In walked her twin sister Luna, clipboard in paw, reading glasses perched on her snoot. “Liloncia, do you have a permit for this summoning?” she asked, squinting at the salt circle, enough passive aggressive energy to power a small Scandinavian village.
“I’m invoking a specter, Louloubelle. Not opening a bloody bodega,” Lilith hissed.
Luna frowned and shook her head, pulling a laminated form from her clipboard. “Mmm, not according to Section 3, Sub-Clause 7B of the Household Magical Regulation Act. You need to submit a Ritual Notification at least 48 hours in advance. Did you even fill out the Ethereal Disturbance Waiver? And I don’t see your hazard cones either.”
Lilith stared at her like she was about to get turned into a toad.
“MY WHAT NOW???? I am the ethereal disturbance.” growled Lilith.
Luna didn’t flinch. “Mmm. Still needs a form.”
But before she could finish threatening to hex Luna’s Google Drive, in barged Charlotte, as loud and orange as a traffic cone with opinions. She skidded across the linoleum and immediately knocked over a stack of summoning stones.
“WOOO-HOOO!”
“Ooooooooh, is this a séance? A party? Who’s dying? Is it Karen again? Are we getting a ghost butler again? That guy made fun of my handwriting. I kicked over his ectoplasm!” she asked, hopping onto the dryer.
“It’s a summoning. Not a séance.” Lilith growled, carefully repositioning the knocked-over bones.
“Charlotte squinted at the floor. “You sure? Because that pentagram’s a bit… wobbly. Is that a chicken bone?”
“It’s a femur.”
“Of a chicken.”
“You’re a femur.”
Charlotte nodded, impressed. “Okay, fair. What are we summoning? Are there snacks? Is this gluten-free? What happens if you sneeze mid-chant? Will you summon like, half a ghost? Or like, the ghost’s butt?”
Lilith, now twitching, tried to focus.
“Spíritum obscúrum audí me—”
CRASH. ZOOM. POUNCE.
The door didn’t open this time. It exploded. Tartiflette shot across the room like a blur of chaos, launched off the dryer almost pushing Charlotte off, and body-slammed into the pentagram, scattering salt, candles, and any lingering sanity. She flung the goat bones into the air, and headbutted the velvet scarf off Lilith’s shoulders. Small, grey, stripy, and vibrating with demonic glee.
“HI!HI! HIHIHIHIHI! WHAT’CHA DOIN’? IS THIS A GAME? I ATE A CANDLE!” she yelled, trailing glitter and a broken twist tie behind her like a comet of evidence.
Lilith blinked. “You… ate a candle? Don’t you need a form for that?” Luna gave her an eyeroll.
“YUP. It was waxy. I named it Margaret. I didn’t like her tone.”
Charlotte screamed-laughed. “Oh my GOD, Farti. You’re gonna poop Victorian furniture.”
Tarti did not stop moving. She climbed the curtain halfway, knocked down a jar labeled “TEETH OF THE UNWILLING,” licked the salt pile, and then headbutted Luna’s clipboard.
“NO PAPERWORK! DOWN WITH THE SYSTEM! UP WITH FROGS!” she howled.
Luna tried to reason with her. “You are violating at least five noise ordinances and there’s frog slime on my documentation.”
OH WAIT I BROUGHT A FROG! I THINK IT’S DEAD! I NAMED HIM MARCEL!” she squeaked, dropping a pretty limp amphibian directly onto the spellbook.
The bones landed in a suspiciously phallic shape. Lilith stared at them in horrified silence.
“WHY,” Lilith asked, “is there always a frog?”
“He was cold,” Tarti whispered.
Charlotte laughing hysterically wiped a tear. “That’s beautiful. Frog funeral! FROGUNERAL.”
“DO YOU THINK I COULD SUMMON A CHICKEN?” Tarti asked, attempting to balance one of the bones on her nose.
“No. Get out. Get out before I turn you into a mushroom.”
“COOL! Like a glowy mushroom?”
Lilith looked like she was actively dying. She inhaled slowly, deeply.
“Everyone—please. I’m trying to summon Spooky Steve.”
Charlotte clapped. “Oh! That guy! Didn’t he date the toaster ghost? Or was that the creepy mop?”
“I don’t know,” Lilith muttered through gritted teeth. “I just need him to make the porch cat obey me.”
“You mean Tulio?” Luna raised an eyebrow. “Good luck. Tulio answers to no one. Not even the HOA.”
“Spíritum obsc—”
And then, to top it all off, Ziggy Stardust entered.
Silently. Gracefully. Like a gentle whisper.
Without hesitation, she looked around, yawned, turned once, twice, then settled dead center on the mangled salt pentagram, one leg pointing due North, directly at the forbidden quadrant. Her massive tabby bulk snuffing out two candles and knocking over the Book of Doom, which flopped open to a page titled “Summoning Mistakes and How to Own Them.”
The spellbook hummed menacingly.
Lilith froze and made a small choking sound. “Ziggy. You’re defiling the sacred space.”
Ziggy yawned. “I am the sacred space.”
“She’s not wrong,” said Luna, taking notes.
“But Ziggy… you’re… you’re inside the summoning vortex.”
Ziggy blinked. “I am the vortex.”
“YOU’RE GONNA WAKE THE VOID!”
“I am the void.”
Suddenly, the air crackled. The remaining candle burned upside down. The spell book hummed. So did the walls and so did Luna.
“I told you to fill out the damn form!” Luna hissed, bracing for impact.
Lilith froze. “Nobody. Move.”
Tarti immediately launched herself across the table and kicked the frog into the dryer lint, singing something vaguely threatening in Latin, mostly about cookies.
Charlotte climbed again on the washing machine to get a better view. “Wheeeeeeee!”. Then she threw a crouton into the vortex and yelled “YAHTZEE!”
Luna dropped her clipboard and muttered, “I hope this void has insurance.”
The pentagram pulsed. A cloud of purple smoke shot up from the frog remains.
Then, Spooky Steve’s eyeballs blinked in, blinked out, and left behind the scent of disappointment and expired magic.
Lilith sat in the wreckage of her hopes, covered in salt, frog juice, and the faint smell of Luna’s anxiety.
Charlotte clapped. “Well. That was a disaster! When’s the next one?”
Lilith growled and pointed to the door. “OUT. ALL OF YOU. YOU’RE BANNED FROM MAGIC. FOREVER.”
Ziggy, still lounging, purred, “Too late. I already summoned something.”
Everyone paused.
“What did you summon?” asked Lilith.
A slow, eerie creak echoed from the hallway. A shadow moved. The floor chilled. A deep, haunting meow rattled their whiskers.
Out of the haze, stepped…
Tulio.
The thief of souls.
Wearing a miniature black cape, a crow feather crown, and a look of extreme contempt.
Charlotte gasped. “He brought the drama.”
Tarti screamed, “IT’S HAPPENING!” and ran in three circles.
Luna blinked. “Lilith. Did you accidentally make him… a deity?”
Lilith said nothing.
She just stared at her broken ritual, her goat bones, her glitter covered frog, and her life choices.
Tulio glared at the circle, hissed dramatically, and in one sharp motion, scratched Lilith across the shoulder before turning his tail.
The room went silent.
Lilith’s eyes glowed like solar flares behind a storm cloud, but before she could react—
“YOU LEAVE LILITH AND MY MOMMY ALONE YOU STUPID SCRATCHY OUTSIDE TROLL!”
A small, streaky missile of fur and fury launched across the tiles like a possessed raccoon in a blender, dragging her fox Bruno with her. Tartiflette. All fluff, no brakes.
Fur puffed, pupils dilated, ears in full gremlin mode. She charged at Tulio like a toddler with a sugar crash and a vendetta, screaming incomprehensible kitten rage the entire way. Tulio blinked, stunned. Then, wisely, ran for his undead life. Tarti chased him down the hallway, launched off the couch, kicked a slipper in the process, almost knocked down the Christmas tree and slammed the door shut behind him with a final growl:
“AND STAY OUT!”
The house fell silent. Luna’s clipboard hit the floor. Lilith sat frozen, mouth slightly open, claw halfway raised. Even Charlotte, who’d appeared just in time with a bag of popcorn, stood blinking in awe and let out a long, impressed “Daaaaaaamn, Buffy”.
Tartiflette reappeared ten seconds later, licking a paw like nothing happened. Her fur was sticking out in twelve directions and her left eye twitched. Her entire body vibrated with residual chaos. She looked up sweetly and mewed: “Can I have a cookie now?”
And that, dear reader, is when the Coven of Chaos unanimously promoted her to Vice Commander of Spooky Defense and Snacks.
