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Runa

“No, I’m so sorry to have to do this last minute, I hope you understand.” I’m hoping she won’t hold it against me but Mabel is impossible to book less than five months out and she won’t take kindly to me canceling her spot at The Portal.

When mediums, psychics, tarot readers and other practicing witches come to the shop for a guest spotlight, they schedule months in advance to prepare their schedule and their clientele.

Me canceling on social media’s most famous psychic the morning of her spotlight because Chewie’s just too sick for me to open today is probably the worst thing that could have happened.

People were going to be lining up just to get to see her in person, let alone the client who had booked her.

And she traveled for this.

Of course Chewie was the reason she came at all, she’s the reason anyone has been bothering to come by the shop, the reason I’ve had any sales at all in the last four months.

This plant has been the only thing keeping me from going out of business, but now with her size, I just can’t keep her out front anymore.

The community will get skeptical, suspicious, and a man-eating, blood vomiting plant is bound to raise some red flags.

The last thing I need is for a SWAT team to come crashing through my ceiling while men in suits try to steal my plant for laboratory testing.

Mabel chuckles, “Of course I understand, Runa, darling. I’m not one to stop a fated encounter. Just be sure to send my cancellation fee by the end of the week and we can reschedule at your convenience. My clients will understand.”

My stomach drops.

Her cancellation fee .

I don’t have the strength in me to even ask what she means about the fated bullshit.

I run to my filing cabinet, hands still stained with blood from cleaning the floors all night from Chewie’s stomach bug.

Yes.

I’m calling a Rolex lodged inside her throat a stomach bug, who can stop me?

Rummaging through my files, I pull out the contracts I sign with guest witches and …

there it is.

The same stipulation on both sides.

If either party is to cancel with less than seventy-two hour notice, the person canceling will pay a fee of fifty percent of the bookings missed.

I’m pretty sure I’m the one who added that stipulation.

Instead of renting out the room per day or hourly, I take a small percentage of the booking instead.

Something I found to be beneficial to both sides, and didn’t require the guest witch to cough up a ton of money to reserve the space.

I groan, slumping onto the floor in pitiful desperation.

Just what I needed.

“Did you hear me, Runa?” The psychic’s voice brings me back to the phone between my shoulder and ear.

“Yes, Mabel. I’ll send that over as soon as I can.” I hang the phone up before throwing it across the room in anger.

This is going to cost me a fortune.

It’s going to take me a million farmer’s market booths for the shop to cover this fee.

I’m gonna be hocking rose quartz to eighteen year old college girls for the next six weeks.

Minimum.

I’m only half-considering dumping out my money offerings from Hecate’s altar for Mabel’s payment when the little bell hung above the door rings.

I thought I had switched the sign to closed.

“Hello?” A cheery voice calls from the entrance.

“We’re not open!” I shout back, stumbling over buckets of man goop I’m still cleaning off my bedroom floor.

I don’t hear another set of bell chimes to indicate the intruder’s leaving, instead I hear footsteps coming closer.

Scrambling to move and meet them in the store in an attempt to keep Chewie hidden, I trip over an ankle bone and land flat on my face.

“I said we’re closed today!” I scream out frantically just as my bedroom door opens.

I’m on my hands and knees, blood, guts and chunks all over my extremities, splattered over my face and bedroom walls when my eyes fall to the cutest leather Mary Jane’s.

Perfect schoolgirl shoes with two silver, heart-shaped buckles on the outside of them and lace-frills socks that run up to her mid-calf.

My gaze is pulled up just from the sight of her legs, the muscles drawing up her knees where the few inches above her flesh is left to my imagination.

A pink pleated skirt covers thick thighs and cinches at her waistline where a white, button-up shirt struggles to stay tucked in.

A ponytail matching the color of her skirt cascades down the front of her shirt over her shoulder, and falls just above her breast with purposeful shiny waves.

There’s a lustrous gloss to her lips, perfectly full paired with eyelashes so long and dark they don’t need mascara.

She bats those pretty things in awe, her mouth parted, shock setting in as she takes the room before her.

I’m one hundred percent freaking out about hiding the obvious remnants of a murder scene that I haven’t even bothered to say anything aside from “Get out!”

However, the adorable stranger is already inside, and I’m left wondering if I’m going to be forced to feed her to my plant for dessert.

“Holy sh–!” She shouts, ocean-blue eyes clearer than crystals dilating.

“The shop is closed!” I yell again, standing to stop her from coming any further into my space.

I’m breathy, panting, gasping for air as I try to push her through the door back into the storefront but her gaze remains locked on Chewbacca.

“What the hell is that?”

“Get out!” I scream, shoving her out of the supply room I’ve made my bedroom.

“You put the notice up about needing a plant … doctor … person … right?” She’s still trying to get past me to get back in the room.

“Your timing couldn’t be worse.” I’m sweating from every single pore in my body, my skin so damp from perspiration that when I lift my hand off from her arm, there’s a leftover imprint of dried blood from the night before.

Her eye stays on it for just a second, before Chewie’s burp brings her attention back to the door.

“No way.” She whispers.

“Did that thing just?—”

I don’t get a chance to deny it, Chewbacca’s next burp is so violent it actually pushes the door open, the pungent smell of rotting carcass hitting us both in the face before it closes again.

“Wicked.” She sounds more excited than scared, which I think should be a good thing but instead it puts me on-edge.

Mostly because I’m still covered in evidence.

Sure, not my crime, but I don’t think the police will be taking into custody a carnivorous plant instead of the person feeding it the overly-pushy college guys.

The girl tries to shove past me again but I block her, “Come back tomorrow, please?—”

She groans a frustrated sound, “Did I miss her feeding? Ugh.” She slumps to the floor.

“How often does it happen? I can come back right before the next one!”

It actually looks like her eyes are tearing up.

I’m so confused by our entire interaction that it takes me an extra second to realize that she probably thinks I’m feeding Chewie an animal of some sorts.

I laugh awkwardly, wiping the blood from her arm as best as I can, “I haven’t quite figured it out yet, she just kind of lets me know when she’s hungry.”

“She lets you know?” Her expression is nothing less than a child walking through Willy Wonka’s factory, and she hasn’t really even laid eyes on the plant yet.

I sigh, remembering that above all, Chewie needs help, and the majority of the actual man bits are gone and digested now, so there’s a good chance I can get away with this.

“She’s not quiet,” I gesture over to the room.

“America.” The girl sticks her hand out for introductions, “I saw your post, for the plant. I was hoping I could maybe try to help?”

“Runa,” I take her hand.

“I forgot that it was still up, didn’t get a single reply.”

It’s pointless to try to open the door slowly because America practically breaks her way into my bedroom, nearly collapsing on her knees in front of Chewie.

“Where the heck did this thing come from?” She can’t control her volume, her excitement is uncontainable.

I shrug, “She just kind of called to me, she was in the middle of a batch of flytraps at the grocery store, practically dead, so they gave me a good discount. I figured I’d try some spells and see what would come of it and the eclipse was as good a night as any to try.”

Meri snaps her head back to me, “That total eclipse four months ago?”

Guilt floods through me like fire in my veins when I first think of that night, how much she cried and roared from pain at her teeth growing and puncturing through her plant flesh.

She was insatiable, with an appetite that grew daily, making it so that no amount of worms or flies were enough to fill her.

Her size tripled within a week and she graduated from insects to small scurrying rodents around the shop.

When I started to work harder than an outdoor cat, I improvised.

I had to hunt elsewhere, provide fresher kill for Chewie.

You can give a woman a fish, and she will feed her plant for a day, but if you put a bar next to her house where drunk men are guaranteed to, without a doubt, continuously prove to pose a threat to her safety …

well, she will feed her plant for a lifetime.

And from their meat and bones Chewie grew and continues to grow.

Now four months in, I fear it may be too late.

I know there’s a soul in there and all I can do is help sustain her.

I think America sees it too.

Her voice is filled with an incredulous type of amazement.

“She’s … she’s sentient?”

It would be impossible for anyone observant enough to miss it.

Chewbacca purrs into her hand, a different version of the plant coming out than the vicious, blood-thirsty, bitch who has been feeding on Wall-street jerky just a few hours prior.

Her tongue flops out, sticky plant goop that resembles saliva coats America’s hand.

“Chewie!” I chastise, “She’s not usually like this,” I try to explain but the girl only laughs.

“Chewie?”

“Short for Chewbacca,” And just as I say it, my good girl gives out her best impression of the beast, the gurgling noises coming from a place no one but Baphomet himself may know about.

America’s laugh is even louder now, full of amazement and warmth.

It makes the room feel like summer, it makes my chest hot and the feeling runs all the way down my spine to?—

“She’s incredible.” She breathes out.

I chuckle, my eyes glued to where America’s collarbone meets her shoulder, watching the way it moves just slightly with each of her exhales.

“She is.”