Mischievous Mab

Mab slammed the door.

“You’re cranky!” Miss-Teeq, Mab’s familiar, ferreted for cockroaches in the corner of the kitchen. She could be excused for this; she was, after all, a polecat.

“You know what they called me?” shrilled Mab. “Scary Old Mab! Old! I’m only three-hundred and forty-seven, for newts sake. Still but a spring chicken.”

Miss-Teeq grunted, followed by the crunch of a chitinous body.

“Well, that’s it. No more Mrs Good Witch!” Mab paced the floor with furrowed brow, “Now, just what can I do?”

“It is Halloween next week,” said Miss-Teeq.

“Hmm,” said Mab, smiling in gruesome anticipation.

Out came her biggest cooking pot. Mab stirred in the most unlikely ingredients, singing to herself as she went.

A little bit of spider’s kiss, a little bit of rat,

A fishy in its dishy and the whiskers of a cat.

Mix it up and make it nices,

It be ready in one or two trices

Fiddly-Fum and Twiddly-Dee

You’ll become what you dress up to be.

Mab examined the glorious result. The sweets in unappealing shades of puce and putrid green, the consistency reminiscent of slime. Of course, that’s exactly what children wanted at Halloween.

The fateful evening arrived. Mab’s pumpkins were ready to pull faces and hurl abuse, the sweets laid out in the skulls of her dead lovers. Mab retreated to her attic window to watch the entertainment.

Children arrived in ones and twos, then they came in droves, sticky little fingers helping themselves to treats.

Mab cackled gleefully at the agonised shrieks of the little boy whose bones popped and cracked, his face elongating into a snout. He ran from his mother, chasing Little Red Riding Hood down the road.

A tiny vampire startled his unsuspecting parent by jumping up and latching onto his neck, making the cutest little slurps.

Little ghosts floated above the ground, zombies moaned, snapping and biting at hands. Witches and warlocks flung spells that collided with the most curious effect.

Mab sighed, content. She’d never had so much fun. Too bad the enchantment would break at midnight, for those still alive!