It was never easy being lumbered with the job of an evil witch. Her mother had told her that one daughter, in the family, had been ‘blessed’ with the task of evil witch over the ages.

After all, her mother argued someone has to do it; someone has to balance out the good witches, which, as mother put it, were a dime a dozen these days.

To make things worse, she had been named Alice, and whoever heard of a wicked witch called Alice. There were all Grizellas, or Gertrudes or Lucindas, never an Alice. She couldn’t believe she could be in any way convincing being Alice, the wicked witch, it just didn’t work.

Never the less once her mother had given her the handbook for Evil Witches, she was left with not much else to do but get on with it.

So, she dished a liberal share of plague and pestilence, conjured a storm or two and one of her favourites, if there was such a thing, was the sudden wind storm just as picnickers were settling down to a nice afternoon out.

In her travels around her territory, she came across some folk who were more than deserving in bad luck or just plain maliciousness.

One such body was Henry Haughty a land owner on the edge of town. Henry, she observed, treated his staff poorly, cheated on his wife and beat his children. He was a nasty piece of work, and ordinarily, as a wicked witch, she should have embraced Henry as one of her own and praised him for his evilness.

But Alice had a soft spot in her heart and saw that Henry was indeed evil, and it upset her that his family and employees were so mistreated.

One day she witnessed Henry being particularly nasty, and that tipped Alice over the edge.

Henry’s wife awoke the next morning, dreading the day ahead, and found no Henry but instead a large ugly toad looking at her from the end of her bed.

Henry’s wife, Agnes, didn’t like toads, disgusting warty creatures that they were, and took to it with her millet broom sweeping it from her home and into the family cesspit.

It was a quiet day after that, and Agnes celebrated with her children their first day free from Henry.

Alice seeing what had occurred, felt there was something good about what she had done and wondered if it would be ok for her to throw in the occasional good deed after a hard day of fire and mouse plague.

She was sure her mother would have something to say, but hey, Alice thought, it’s my life, I can live it my way.

Having reached that conclusion, she set out with a basket of poisoned apples to see if she could something about the insufferable Snow White who was doing far too much good at quelling the exuberance of the seven dwarfs. As it was, people were gossiping, and it was time Alice put a stop to it.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2021/07/29/tale-weaver-29-07-21-a-question-of-perspective/