Once upon a time, a woman went online shopping for the end of the world.
Perhaps she should have scrolled for armor, or a sword hammered from the bones of a dead god, or a palette of freeze-dried beef stroganoff.
She shopped for pants. Velour pants with a 28” inseam because she was willing to confront the forces of darkness but not with muddy cuffs. Maybe a matching sweatshirt. A complete velour tracksuit.
She sat in a parking lot, awaiting the return of her child from one of the many activities required of modern children. The woman was exhausted. She was weepy, but not beautifully so. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s So Far played.
She’d been scrolling. The scrolling disgorged the usual monsters as well as new species. Brotherhoods, Two-headed Chieftain Beasties, Keepers of Things, Couriers, and Tribunals, all bowing to His Most Blameless Majesty, while casting truth into the moat. Pactum Virorum.
(There were lesser demons, of course, that wouldn’t devour the kingdom but merely infest every corner of it. For example, those who insist on calling sandwiches “handhelds.”)
The woman had slain none of these monsters, though not for lack of trying.
She had, however, become extremely tired of them, so she looked at velour tracksuits. Then her algorithm offered up fleece capes. Fleece capes possess neither the grandeur of a cloak nor the practical advantages of withstanding a direct assault by a collapsing institution, but she could be a little comfortable. And yet, and yet, comfort is not consolation, and neither one is repair.
The woman considered this and considered her life and her algorithm. She glanced up, trying to catch a glimpse of her child at practice or rehearsal or a meet or a match or in conversation. Safe, for now. She considered this as well.
Perhaps the woman could become a witch, she thought. Not one of the beautiful witches, with their flowing black hair and rings of moonstone. A different sort. A Richard Simmons witch, if you will, but one who had all but abandoned the cardio.
She would stand before the monsters and say their true names. LIAR. COWARD. FRAUD. SANDWICH.
The woman sat in her car, waiting for her daughter, listening to music and welling up (again! still!) from loving a world determined to destroy its own better qualities. Although she was not languishing, she was tired of the monsters devouring everything and everyone, then demanding gratitude for doing so.
And so the Velour Tracksuit Witch of the Fleece Cape, wearing neither cape nor velour tracksuit, considered the many ways the kingdom described its troubles in elaborate think-pieces bewailing the decline of civility (and by all means, please ignore the dragon in the mead hall). Elegant chronicles all.
The woman had lately become inclined toward a less elegant description. Everything Is Horseshit.
Yet the Witch Woman Who Was Not a Witch, sitting in a parking lot, listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, waiting for her daughter, contemplating a fleece cape, conceded that every proper account of monsters must also acknowledge the possibility of something good surviving.
She made a comprehensive list That Which is Not Horseshit:
- Reese’s Peanut Butter Pumpkins
