Free Maleficarum: Hunger of the Witch by Jeremy Bennett

and it looked like they were going to have to do it one last time. She didn’t know how, but they’d find a way.
    * * *
    Outside , the flames of the witches’ bonfire still burned high, and around it the diabolical fiends cavorted. Some rubbed themselves with potent salves and balms made from human fat, and as soon as their naked bodies were covered, they began to transform into beasts of the field. They sprouted hair, claws, and fangs. They ripped at their own flesh, pulling it off as if it was a cellophane wrapper, and they exposed their real natures.
    Hegel strutted among her kind with a determined eye as the smell of sex and sweat wafted about on the musty air. In her left hand, she clutched her pitchfork. It was, as far as she could remember, taken from a farmer during the Great Depression, and what a time that was to be a witch—all of the mass confusion of the Black Plague without all the annoying accusations. She had gutted the farmer with a razor, or maybe she had chopped his feet off and made him eat them? She honestly couldn’t remember the finer details of her life
,
unless they were something special , but she could still remember Ann and her stupid little pocketknife.
    She could also remember that tonight it was her job to provide for the feast. So far, they had eaten almost all of the hobos and the bodies from the porno store, but witches were nothing if not voracious. Even a few people who were travelling down the lonely road had been taken; however, more was going to be needed and soon.
    How was she supposed to know that they were going to wind up in a place that was fortified against witches? In all her days, such a thing had never happened, but she knew that the holdouts would be subdued as the demons would be raised in mass. Demons were not like the imps and dark earthly spirits that cavorted with the witches as pets and familiars, but fallen angels who have existed since before light separated darkness. These beings did not obey the laws of magic like the lesser beings. They would often pretend to be affected, but no mere circle of salt or iron bars would stop them.
    The problem with these demons was that they could not be controlled like the meeker spirits. They could be enticed to do something only if it was part of their agenda or amused them. Yes, songs and rites would be performed to entice them, but even this was more a form of appealing to their vanity than it was a mystical event. This fact meant that there was always some chance that they might not show themselves, but with tonight being such a large gathering, at least a few would probably have their interest piqued. After all, the witches had s’mores.
    Hegel saw that one particularly ugly witch was chomping at the last bits of flesh that clung to one of the slow-roasted hobos.
    “I hunger, ” she yelled.
    “Me , too,” another bleated.
    “I ’m not starving, but I could eat,” added another.
    “Eat a s ’more,” Hegel barked.
    “We want meat, ” the first one growled. Hegel launched her pitchfork as if she was Zeus, and it was a bolt of thunder. The pitchfork smacked the gut of the first witch. She let out “oohhh, it hurts,” but before she could collapse to the ground, Hegel stormed over to her and latched her hands around the end of her pitchfork. With one powerful motion, she hoisted the wailing whore of the devil into the air. The naked, impaled fiend’s feet kicked furiously as she tried to pull herself off the pitchfork. Her bile leaked onto the hot pavement around the fire, hissing with each drip.
    “You eat too much, and you think to o little. I have gone through a lot of trouble tonight, and all you do is complain. I spent a hundred dollars in Solo cups alone. Too good for chocolate and marshmallows, are we?” Hegel growled as she hoisted the squirming witch into the inferno. Her still-kicking legs blistered and peeled, showing the meat underneath, and she screamed in agonizing pain. The fire was so hot that it