Chapter 1: The Witch's Whiskey Revenge
The dive bar smelled like a wet dog that had been chain-smoking for forty years. Marcus Thorne settled onto his usual stool, the vinyl split and bleeding yellow foam, and surveyed his kingdom with the contempt of a man who'd long ago decided the world owed him more than it was paying out.
The flickering fluorescent tubes overhead buzzed like dying insects, casting everything in that particular shade of sickly green that made even the youngest faces look jaundiced. The floor was a minefield of sticky patches and old stains, the kind of linoleum that had given up on being clean sometime during the Reagan administration. A jukebox in the back corner wheezed out some synthwave love song, the speakers so warped the melody sounded like a robot having a slow-motion breakdown.
Marcus ordered his usual—a bourbon, neat, because he was the kind of man who thought that signified sophistication—and let his eyes crawl over the room. A couple of worn-out regulars hunched over their drinks. A bartender with tired eyes and a rag that had seen better decades. And there, in the corner booth, some old broad nursing a whiskey like it was the last friend she had left.
Perfect.
His lips curled into that familiar sneer, the one his ex-wives had learned to recognize three seconds before he said something that would eventually get him slapped, divorced, or both. The mustache above his lip twitched. He was forty-five years old, his hairline receding like it was fleeing a crime scene, and his gut had long ago surrendered to gravity. But none of that mattered. He had something to say, and there was an audience, even if that audience was just a wrinkled woman in a faded cardigan who probably couldn't hear him anyway.
"Staring at yourself in that whiskey, sweetheart?" He slid off his stool, bourbon in hand, and made his way over to her booth. The bumper sticker on the side—Lesbian Pride in faded rainbow letters—made him snort. Of course. "Or are you trying to remember what it felt like to be relevant?"
She didn't look up. Her hands, gnarled and spotted with age, cradled the glass like it was a precious thing. Gray hair hung in thin wisps around a face that had weathered more decades than Marcus had probably seen. Deep lines carved through her cheeks. Her skin had the texture of old paper, thin and delicate, like a single wrong word could tear right through it.
But Marcus wasn't the type to notice when the universe was trying to warn him.
"Look at those hands," he said, sliding into the booth across from her without invitation. The leather creaked beneath his weight. "Like a relief map of the Sahara. Tell me, when's the last time anyone actually wanted to touch those? Twenty years? Thirty?"
The jukebox switched tracks, some mournful synth melody that seemed to underscore the cruelty in his voice. The bartender glanced over, then quickly away. This wasn't the first time Marcus had done this, and the regulars had long ago learned it wasn't worth the hassle to intervene.
"You know what I think?" Marcus leaned forward, elbows on the sticky table, his bourbon sloshing against the glass. "I think women your age are only good for one thing. And it sure as hell isn't conversation."
He laughed at his own joke, the sound wet and phlegmy in the back of his throat. The woman's fingers tightened around her glass. Just slightly. The motion was so small he almost missed it.
Almost.
Then she looked up.
Her eyes flashed violet—not metaphorically, not in some poetic sense that Marcus would later convince himself he'd imagined. They flashed. A deep, electric purple that cut through the dingy bar light like a knife through flesh. For a single, suspended breath, Marcus felt something cold and sharp slide down his spine.
The jukebox crackled. The overhead light flickered. The bartender froze mid-pour, whiskey sloshing onto the counter.
The old woman smiled.
"You're wrong about that," she said, her voice soft as old tissue paper but carrying an edge that made Marcus's balls try to retreat into his body. "We're good for far more than you can imagine."
He swallowed hard. Tried to rally. "What, you gonna cast a spell on me?" The laugh that followed was a beat too late, too loud, too desperate. "Turn me into a frog or something?"
"Nothing so crude." The woman's smile widened. Her teeth were yellowed but straight, and somehow that made it worse. The violet in her eyes intensified, swirling like smoke trapped in amber. "But I'll tell you what I am going to do."
She leaned forward. The light around her seemed to dim, shadows pooling in the hollows of her face, making her look ancient and infinite and hungry. The bar had gone quiet. A heavy, pressing silence that felt like the world holding its breath.
"I used to be like you," she said. "Not quite as loud. Not quite as ugly in the soul. But close enough that I can see the shape of what you are. The way you treat women like they're appliances. Something to be used and discarded when they stop working right."
Marcus opened his mouth. No sound came out.
"So I'm going to give you a gift." She reached across the table and wrapped those gnarled fingers around his wrist. Her grip was iron. The touch burned cold, like grabbing a metal pole in winter. "By closing time, you're going to be eighteen years old again. A girl named Yaretzi Xochimitl. Pretty little thing, with skin the color of warm honey and hair like a midnight river."
"What the fu—"
"And you're going to be a lesbian."
The words hit him like a physical blow. Marcus jerked back, but her grip didn't loosen. Her fingers dug in, and he could feel something moving through his skin, his blood, his bones. A warmth that was spreading from where she touched him, crawling up his arm, into his chest, settling into his lungs.
"You're going to spend the rest of your nights in bars just like this one," she continued, her voice calm and measured and utterly terrifying. "Wanting women. Needing to touch them. To be close to them. But you won't be able to speak. Not more than a few words at a time. No explanations. No charm. No negotiation. Just silence and a desperate, overwhelming hunger for contact."
The jukebox had stopped. The flickering lights had stopped. Even the drip of the leaky faucet behind the bar had ceased. There was nothing but her voice and the steady, drowning beat of Marcus's heart.
"Maybe if you're lucky, some kind woman will take pity on you. Let you touch her hand. Hold her for a moment. Give you a taste of comfort." She released his wrist. The cold lingered, then began to spread, sinking into his marrow. "And then she'll leave. They always leave. Because you can't tell them who you are or why you need them so badly. You can only sit there, mute and trembling, and hope someone sees the pain behind your eyes."
Marcus stared at his wrist. The skin was pale, but beneath it, something was shifting. He could feel it—the heat spreading through his body, a strange tingling sensation that started in his fingertips and worked its way up his arms.
"What... what did you do to me?" His voice came out thinner than usual. Higher.
"I told you." The old woman picked up her whiskey, took a long, slow sip. "By closing time."
Marcus pulled up his sleeve. The hair on his arms—dense, dark, the kind of thing he'd always been proud of in his younger years—was thinning. Disappearing, actually, like frost melting in the sun. His skin was growing smoother, softer, and a shade of brown-gold that made no sense at all.
"No." He shook his head, scrambling back in the booth. The leather caught, and he stumbled, nearly falling. His pants were loose now, pooling around his waist. His belt buckle slipped, and he had to grab the table to keep from losing them entirely. "No, no, no—"
"I'd suggest you find a bathroom," the woman said, almost kindly. "The transformation can be... uncomfortable. And messy. I doubt this fine establishment wants to clean up after you."
The bartender was staring. The regulars were staring. The whole damn world was staring, and Marcus could feel his face changing, his jaw softening, his beard—the only vanity he'd had left—receding as if it had never existed. His gut was shrinking, his shoulders narrowing, his entire body flattening and reshaping itself into something smaller, softer, more delicate.
"Make it stop," he gasped. His voice—her voice now, despite everything, despite the panic and the rage and the denial—was light and musical, with an accent that felt like a foreign shape in her mouth. "Please, I'll do anything—"
The old woman's eyes flickered again, that impossible violet glow. "You should have thought of that before you decided to be cruel to a stranger. But don't worry, Yaretzi." She rolled the name like honey on her tongue, savoring it. "You'll have plenty of time to learn. Eighteen years old, remember? You've got decades ahead of you. Decades of wanting and not knowing how to ask. Decades of reaching and never quite touching."
She stood up. Faded cardigan, sensible shoes, a body that had weathered ages. She placed a five-dollar bill on the table and patted Yaretzi on the head like she was a well-behaved child.
"Enjoy your new life," she said.
And then she was gone.
Yaretzi sat frozen in the booth, her heart hammering against ribs that felt too small and too fragile to contain it. Her clothes had reshaped along with her body—a skirt now, a tank top that hugged breasts she definitely didn't have an hour ago, and her former pants were... gone. Vanished. Like they'd never existed.
The bartender was still staring. So was everyone else.
She opened her mouth to explain, to demand help, to say something, anything that would make this stop. The words got stuck in her throat. They tangled together, jammed up, and what came out was—
"Hi.Um."
She clamped her hand over her mouth. Her hand. Smooth, small, the nails neatly trimmed. Not hers.
Not hers.
The jukebox crackled back to life, some synthwave song crooning about love and longing and the ache of wanting someone who doesn't want you back. Yaretzi's eyes found the bar again. Then the women at the bar. The bartender, with kind eyes and a soft mouth.
A warmth spread through her chest. A hunger. A need that made her fingers itch and her thighs press together and her breath catch on something that felt terrifyingly like desire.
She didn't know this body. Didn't want this body. But it wanted—she wanted—and she couldn't wrap her mind around any of it.
Eighteen years old.
Decades ahead.
And not a single word that could explain any of it.
Yaretzi looked down at her hands. Small hands. Dusky gold skin. A skirt that rode too high on her thighs because she wasn't used to sitting like this, wasn't used to existing in a body that felt like borrowed clothes.
"Closing time," the bartender called, and she had no idea if it was minutes or hours later.
Had no idea what she was supposed to do now.
Had no idea how to survive in a world where she couldn't speak the things she needed to say, and a body that wouldn't stop wanting things she didn't understand.
She slid out of the booth on shaking legs. Walked away from the sticky floor and the flickering lights and the jukebox playing its mournful song. Outside, the parking lot stretched in every direction, and Yaretzi stood at the edge of it, looking down at the body she now inhabited.
Eighteen.
Lesbian.
Mute.
She wasn't sure which one terrified her the most.
A woman passed by—tall, dark-haired, wearing a jacket that made her shoulders look strong. Yaretzi's hand reached out before she could stop it, fingers brushing the woman's sleeve. Just a touch. Just a connection.
The woman glanced back, confused.
Yaretzi opened her mouth, desperate to say something, anything, to explain.
"Pretty," she whispered.
The woman's expression flickered between surprise and something else. Something uncertain. Then she smiled, awkward and unsure, and walked away.
Yaretzi stood there in the flickering parking lot light, her hand still raised in the air, and felt a grief so deep it swallowed every cruel word she'd ever spoken in her forty-five years of being Marcus Thorne.
She had to touch them.
She couldn't explain why.
And she had no idea how to survive the hunger.
The jukebox inside had gone quiet. The bar was closing. The parking lot stretched out like an endless, impossible road.
Yaretzi Xochimitl pulled her skirt down and started walking.
She didn't know where she was going.
She didn't know who she was.
But she knew, with a certainty that terrified her, that she could not stop touching women.
And without the ability to speak more than three words at a time, the only way she could do that was to stand close and wait for someone to want her back.
She walked to the edge of the parking lot and stopped.
Then, because the body was eighteen and the hunger was fresh and she had no idea what else to do—
She reached for the first woman to pass.
Her hand caught nothing but air.
Yaretzi stood there and didn't know how to say the words I need you without losing everything that remained of who she used to be.
And in the end, that was the curse.