The Accidental Witch by Jessica Penot Page B

at her and smiled. She just stared into my eyes. I grabbed my clipboard and walked away. That felt so good, I wanted to laugh.
    I walked into the ER like I was on top of the world. I had on new clothes and my shoes clacked against the floor as I walked. I felt like a phoenix. I had burnt up everything that I had been and had been reborn out of the ashes. I was new.
    Diane watched me walk towards her with a quizzical expression on her face. She was wearing her usual ghost scrubs. She looked lovely, as always.
    “Wow,” Diane said as I approached the ER nurses’ station.
    “What?” I asked.
    “You are on fire,” she said.
    “What?” I said again.
    “Between the new clothes and the magic, you are glowing. You’re beautiful.”
    “Thanks, sweetie,” I said and for the first time in my life I believed what she said might be true.
    “Bed eight is for you,” Diane said.
    I grabbed the chart and walked down the hall to the room. I looked over the fact sheet before I stepped into the room. Bed eight was a paranoid schizophrenic with a long history of institutionalization who was having command hallucinations telling him to kill his wife and children. On the risk assessment, he scored a ten out of ten. I stepped into the ER room and waved away the security guard, who’d been sitting with him, with a pleasant smile and a wink. I assured the officer I was in no danger. The man who sat on the bed looked harmless. I couldn’t help but think, What a waste. He was a beautiful, young man. He looked like a model. His body was perfect, but his mind was lost.
    I sat down on the chair across from him and smiled.
    “I’m Phaedra,” I said. “I’m the therapist from behavioral health and I’m here to do your screening, okay?”
    The young man stared at me and the lights flickered. I looked up and when I looked back down, there was a shadow behind the young man. I had never seen anything like it. I blinked, expecting the shape to be gone when I opened my eyes again, but it only became clearer. It was a figure. It was some kind of living being. It had eyes that glared out at me across the room. I could hear it whispering to the young man. I could hear it telling him to kill me.
    I stood up and faced the creature. I looked it in the eyes and it seemed stunned and stepped backwards.
    “Kill the witch,” the creature snarled. “Kill the witch!”
    I turned away from the demon and faced the young man. He was crying.
    “I can help you,” I said to him.
    “No one can help me,” he said. “No one. No one. I just want to die.”
    Suddenly, I felt like something stepped inside of me. I could see what I was doing, but my hands moved without my permission. I reached out and placed my hands on the man. I put them on his shoulders and pulled him to me, so that I could feel his body pressed up against mine. I placed my hand on his face and a voice curled out of my lips that was hardly my own.
    “Be gone,” I said. “This one is mine now.”
    The demon wailed. It hissed and spoke a language I couldn’t understand. It cried out in many tongues and the young man looked into my eyes and wept. The demon screamed and the lights flickered again and then it vanished into the floor. As it vanished, it struck out at me and pushed the young man over. I could feel the demon’s claws grabbing at me as it disappeared. The young man collapsed into my arms. I was unable to catch the young man and he fell on top of me with an enormous thud. We both hit the side of the bed together. Pain cut through my side as we crashed into the small bed. I tried to catch him and hold him up. I tried to save him from the fall, but the momentum pulling us both down was too great and he weighed at least sixty pounds more than me. As I tried to lift him up, the bed fell over against the door. We fell with the bed and I hit the hard tile with an alarming crunch. His body fell on top of mine and again I tried to prevent him from falling on top of me. Finally, I gave