The Worst Story I Have Ever Written

He blamed his family, his upbringing.

How could he possibly live up. His oldest brother was a famous Sergeant known throughout the world. The attention was stifling.

To make it worse, there was also a famous Doctor in the family. All of that money, power, and luck concentrated in a single family proved almost too much to bear. Lightning had struck twice in the family, would it strike again.

He definitely saw it in his little sister. She was nicknamed Red because of her fiery personality, and many people avoided her. Even the ones who liked her had to admit she was a cultivated taste, a little outside the bell curve of appreciation.

His birth name was Fred, but because he was the black sheep of the family, he gained the nickname Black.

Black Pepper.

And he was wanted with assault.

Tales of the Occult - My Encounter with Teenage Witchcraft

To break from the happy happy joyful funtime that is this blog, I have decided to spend a week telling stories of the deranged and disturbed. That’s right, this week is Tales of the Occult here on this blog. Each story of the occult will SHOCK and TERRORIZE if it doesn’t totally BLOW YOUR MIND!

Today’s story – MORE Witchcraft!

I managed a video store when the movie The Craft came out. For those of you who have not seen the film, it was made by and for pierce-me-up teenage goth girls who wear black lipstick and leather and practice witchcraft.


Frankly, these people baffle me because I get them mixed up with all the different fashionable special interest groups. For some reason, I link teenage witches with groups like PETA, which believes that no animal should be harmed ever under any circumstances. This would seem contradictory to someone who worships pagan gods – gods that regularly demanded the blood sacrifice of animals. But I am not one to judge.

I also associate teenage goths with people who regularly glorify the so-spiritual-and-tuned-to-the-land-that-they-were-contacted-by-aliens Native American cultures - cultures that routinely kept women away from such “male-only” activities like reading. The fact that black-lipsticked suburban girls worshipped a culture that would have made them do nothing but plow a field and bear children may seem strange and ridiculous, but it takes all types.

Anyway, back to the video store. When the movie The Craft came out, flocks of teenage girls would come to the video store, pick the tape of the shelf, and gently caress it, cooing words like, “It is so real. So true.”

So I decided to watch the movie. Big mistake on my part.


For those of you who haven’t seen The Craft, it is about teenage witches who prance around and do spells and stuff together. They worship a being called Mamon who they describe as “the football field that God and the Devil play on.” This means they worship Astroturf. They have parties where instead of doing their hair and nails together, they practice magic that does their hair and nails for them. One of them turns her hair blonde with the power of magic, which led me to hope that the next one would accidentally turn her hair pink and then summon the Teen Angel from Grease. The Teen Angel would sing a song and they would go back to high school after dropping out of the Hogwarts School of Beauty. Sadly this does not happen.


What does happen is that the most obviously insane person in the group asks their St. Mamon of Astroturf for all the powers of the universe. And Mamon gives her all of this power.


This is the point where the movie completely loses me, because I do not believe anyone should worship any being that is dumber than a box of rocks. Mamon may be all powerful as Astroturf and yadda yadda, but he is an exceedingly poor judge of character. In fact, I am quite sure all of the other pagan gods actively mock Mamon for being so stupid.

“You would probably give all of your power to Eddie Murphy so he can make more movies where he plays all of the characters, you are that dumb!” they would say. And all Mamon could do is put on heavy mascara and weep a little, so that the mascara would run all over his pale goth-like cheek.

Seriously, if there is a guy on the side of the road wearing a tinfoil hat and babbling on and on about “gamma rays from Venus,” would you give him first strike nuclear capabilities? Of course not, but this is exactly what Mamon does.


And the rest of the movie consists of the obviously crazy insane, but now all-powerful witch wreaking havoc while the other witches try to stop her. Or something like that. Maybe there is a prom and some sisterhood of magic traveling pants in there somewhere, I don’t know.

Anyway, after actually watching the movie I began to try to talk to these teenage goths in the store about what a waste of time the whole thing was. Their response was to hate me for it. They would cradle the little video tapes in their arms, protecting these tapes from the horrible horrible video store manager who watched the movie and thought it was stupid.

Maybe they cursed me. Maybe they cursed my video store. Maybe they even CURSED THIS BLOG! I will never know because I never saw them again.

Duh dah DAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!

Your mind is blown. Your nerves are shocked and all of your senses are now terrorized! Join us next time for the final Tales of the Occult!