Another Day

A Short Story based on "The Wotch"

Copyright 2008, Rebecca Ann Heineman

"The Wotch" characters are property of Anne Onymous and Robin Ericson

I don't own these characters. Please don't sue me, kill me or make me test my writing skills.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

The alarm clock danced around as it announced the arrival of seven o'clock in the morning. A groan was heard coming from the bed nearby as the occupant tried to ignore the clock's plea for someone to turn it off. Undeterred, the clock kept up the vibration and a framed photo of Anne and her friends that was teetering on the edge of the nightstand finally had had enough and tipped over and fell to the floor in a loud crash.

In a flash, Anne threw down her covers and sat up in her bed, holding out a hand encased in fire. "Who…"

Feeling stupid for being so jumpy, she extinguished the magical fire from her arms and the bedroom curtain had she accidentally ignited. She examined the burns on her curtain for a moment before casting a spell that restored it good as new.

Ring! Ring! The alarm clock rang again and this time Anne gave it a slow and lazy swat to shut it off. Looking out the window, she was greeted by a beautiful sunny morning with birds chirping in the tree in the yard and one of the neighbors down the street was shouting at his lawn mower as if the name calling was going to help it start.

Anne shut the curtains and sat in her bed, lifted her arms up high, stretched and made a yawn worthy of a entry into the Guinness Book Of World Records.

Without any ado, she flopped backward onto her pillow and pulled up her covers to go back to sleep. In ten minutes, the snooze alarm went off. Again it was insisting that she get out of bed to face the day.

With a flick of her wrist, the alarm clock disappeared and she settled again to catch up on her sleep.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door and a familiar voice echoed from the hall. "Anne? You in there?"

Anne groggily replied in a tone that barely conveyed her annoyance at this intrusion to her happy time. "No, I'm not here."

"You promised!"

Anne pulled the blanket down from over her head and looked at the nightstand to check what time it was. Too bad her clock was somewhere else. "It's too early."

"Anne! She's going to be here in an hour… Oh… Wheee!!" Evan's voice went from bass to soprano in midsentence as Anne uttered an arcane phrase transforming her big brother into her little sister.

"Now will you leave me alone?"

Lilly's voice faded as she ran down the hallway. "Yay!"

"How many more..." A musical ring tone playing the theme from "Buffy" came from Anne's cell phone in response. "Distractions…" Grumbling and no longer in the mood to go back to sleep, Anne picked up her phone and flipped it open. "Hello?"

Katie's voice came on the line. "Anne! Great! I just wanted to remind you that it's that time of the month. Wolfie will be here at six. You're still on?"

I forgot! "Sure, no problem. Six it is." She thought carefully about it, she didn't have anything else planned for the evening and she wasn't going to even think about making clones of herself again. "See you then."

"Cool! I got Teen Wolf and Teen Wolf Too from Blockbuster. Catch you then!" Then the phone went click.

Not another werewolf movie! Anne rolled her eyes. At least it's not another zombie flick. She tossed her phone on the bed and sighed. "Time to get up." Pausing for a moment, she waited, waited, and then flopped backwards into her bed and yanked the covers over her face to blot out the sunlight that was seeping through the curtains.

Just one more hour, that's all I ask, Anne closed her eyes and hoped sleep would take her away.

A few minutes later, just as Anne was about to achieve blissful slumber, another knock came at the door. She ignored it. The knock repeated. She kept ignoring it; after all, sometimes problems fix themselves. The knock came a third time, then a fourth, and then a fifth. Now the knocking became a pounding, as the sound demanded to be acknowledged.

Anne slowly lowered her covers and stared at the ceiling as she contemplated what sort of freezing spell would be appropriate for four-year-old girls. Realizing what her sister wanted, Anne begrudgingly got up and slowly opened the door.

Lilly turned on the charm as only a four-year-old could with a huge gleaming smile and her hands held together and one of her legs curled up behind her back. "Can I have a cookie?"

"If I gave you a cookie, will you please leave me alone?"

Lilly nodded her head up and down rapidly and if she went any faster, she would have broken the sound barrier. "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!"

"Fine." With a wave of her hand, a large chocolate chip cookie appeared and before she could give it to Lilly, the little girl was running down the hall and disappeared down the stairs. The cookie had simply ceased to exist.

Anne waited a moment, checking to see if her sister's sugar addiction was sated for the moment and after fifteen seconds of listening to her sister run around the bottom floor like a hyperactive squirrel doped up in raw Hawaiian cane sugar, she shut the door.

The bed, it called her. Anne answered the call and sat down, and fell backwards among the pillows. She didn't bother to pull the covers over herself. The was no point to it, after all, it was inevitable that…

Knock, knock, knock…

I hate it when I'm right. Anne lifted her head up and spoke in an annoyed tone. "What now, Lilly?"

A sheepish voice asked, "can I have a cookie for my friend?"

"Sure." Anne snapped her fingers and a squeal of delight was heard from beyond the closed door and her sister once again ran down the hall in glee.

Anne blinked her eyes in realization and she sat up, got out of bed and marched angrily toward the door. Slamming it open, she shouted down the hall. "Why you little!! She's not here is she?"

A little cute face, surrounded by blond hair in twin ponytails peeked out from behind the wall at the end of the hall.

"Lilly!" Anne stammered, slowly giving into Lilly's power of cuteness.

Lilly smiled and ducked behind the wall and flew down the stairway to hide somewhere.

Great, thought Anne, there goes my nap. In a few minutes, she donned a purple skirt and a pink top and grabbed her schoolbooks and walked down to get breakfast.

She placed her books on the kitchen table and was about to raid the refrigerator for something to snack on, when she caught the time flashing on the microwave.

It can't be? But it was. The clock said that school starts in five minutes. Grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl, she snatched her books and ran for the door. Muttering a few words in an ancient tongue she then added, "Maki, you behave, okay. And Lilly, don't worry, it will wear off eventually." Anne slammed the front door shut and ran off to school.

Lilly crept out from under the couch. She examined her blond fur and long tail and looked at Maki, their pet cat who meowed. "Wanna go catch a mouse?"

Lilly the cat shrugged and followed Maki down the hall.

"I'm late! I'm late!" Anne chanted as she hurried down the street. If there was a time to learn a time travel spell, this was it. She darted to and from, avoiding kids playing near the sidewalks and neighbors gardening their front yards. She reached the High School in record time and sat in her desk, gazing at the chalkboard in rapt attention.

It was only then that she noticed that no one was in the classroom.

"Uh, oh…" Anne wondered for a moment if somehow her nemesis, Xaos, had whisked away the populace in an attempt to test her again when her cell phone rang.

She flicked it open and saw that the call was coming from Robin. "Robin? Where are you?"

"I'm at home. I wanted to tell you that your alarm clock's at my place and it won't shut off. Can you do something about it?"

"Never mind that. I'm at the school and something's weird. The teacher isn't here. Nobody's here and… Hey, why aren't you here?"

There was a silence on the phone with the exception of an alarm clock in the background. "Uh, it's Saturday?"

Please review this story. It makes me feel oh so happy and prevents me from casting a spell that switches your gender.