Excerpt From Early Draft Of Untitled Witch Story

This is an excerpt from chapter three, in which the nine-year-old character tries to gather more information about the witch[es] she believes must live in the spooky house.

If you want background, here's the first draft of chapter one: Untitled Witch Story, Part One, Draft One.

I asked my mother who lived in the spooky house. I cringed a bit as I asked, with a part of me expecting her to scold me for not paying attention to the reading materials supplied by my church – after all, if I had, I’d know it was the house of witches. Another small part expected she’d avoid mentioning the witch (after all, she’d never told me before, and keeping things from me to protect me was her way in many things) and just tell me to avoid the place. A part of me expected her to identify the resident.

All of me believed that she must know that there were witches in the house, and it was merely a matter of how much information she would impart.

No part of me expected her to say she didn’t know.

Our town’s population numbered in the hundreds, and among those who actually lived in town, rather than on the outlying roads and farms that had a Columbia address but weren’t in the normal walking routes, there were no strangers – or so I had always believed.

“I think she moved here from somewhere, a little while ago,” my mother said vaguely. “She hasn’t lived there long.”

“But you don’t know her name?”

“No, she’s not from here, probably. She might have come from Ohio or something.”

I knew where ‘Ohio or something’ was. That was the place that everyone came here from. It meant ‘up north where they talk strange.’ It meant ‘none of our concern.’ It meant ‘might as well be a different planet.’

Anyone who was from away was from ‘Ohio or something,’ and once they were discerned as coming from that foreign place, they could be dismissed: we would never really know them or understand them, and maybe if we waited, they’d go away.

“How long has she lived there?” I asked. I had a notion that maybe my reading the Halloween tract had caused her to exist.

“I don’t know, maybe ten years, or more. I didn’t see her move in.”

Somewhat insulted at the notion that a period of time longer than my own life could be dismissed as ‘a little while,’ I walked away and didn’t ask any more questions.

Why Do I Talk About Religion So Much?

This should be a really long post because I have a lot to say, but I think it will be a really short one because I'm tired. Maybe I'll decide to write more in-depth on bits later, but I wanted to get this basic gist out.

People ask me, and I'm sure others wonder and don't ask, why I spend so much time and energy talking about, reading about, joking about, making fun of, mocking, and thinking about a God I don't believe exists.

I know many people think it's proof that I really do believe, and am just, I don't know, fighting it or something. Some probably figure I'm just trying to make others mad. Or that the devil is doing this through me to drag others down. (Yeah, I'm aware some of you think I somehow forcibly converted my husband.)

Look, "Why do you talk about God so much?" is a question most atheists get a lot of. The following is my answer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

I talk about religion, and by extension, God, because religious beliefs, ones that aren't even mine, are a large part of my existence.

In fact, Christianity in particular affects me more today than it ever did when I believed, in an a more invasive way. (I am not going to do a long address to the question of why I 'only pick on' Christianity; just for now understand it's the one that affects me most of the time.)

Christianity worms its way into everything. Everything.

-Public schools.

-The pledge of allegiance, which is creepy enough without throwing a forced reference to one religion's deity in. (PS- you probably know, because you're smart, that there wasn't any God in the original pledge. Right?)

-Money. Do you know how ridiculous that is? I swear, someone should make one of those stamps, one that gives a veryshortform version of Jesus tossing the banking tables in the temple, and start stamping it on dollars. Seriously, you think that guy wants represented on your cash?

-Government. We have a national day of prayer. Our elected officials go out and hold prayer meetings, on the taxpayer dime. That means that the Jewish people in your town, the atheist people in your town, the Muslim people in your town- they're all FUNDING your religious ceremony. So not cool.

-Morality. Religion gets to hijack morality. People get to say that I can't be moral if I don't follow their God. "Well, where do you get your morals from, then?" People decide whether someone is moral based on his beliefs. Is he okay to date your daughter? "Well, he goes to church, he's a good Christian boy, he's fine."

-Sexuality. You think you get to tell me who I should be attracted to, who I should have sex with, how often, when, and why, based on your favorite book?

And there's more, but that's about all I have time to list tonight.

But let me give you an analogy, okay? Let's say that you don't believe in unicorns, but everyone else around you talks about unicorns basically nonstop. Let's say that your kids hear about unicorns at school, and get mocked or condemned for not believing in them. Let's say that when we have a presidential race, you hear people debating about what kind of unicorn the candidates have. People ask you about your pet unicorn. When you say you don't have a pet unicorn, your pregnancy care provider, of all the effing people, tries to sell you hers. You say you don't believe in unicorns, and she scolds you, and insists you come see her unicorn.

At some point, you start feeling kinda like you're being punked. How can so many people be so damned hung up on unicorns? I'm looking around, folks, I don't see any unicorns! So, you smile and try to just be nice about the unicorns. (Maybe you wonder if you're going crazy, until, thankfully, you meet some other aunicornists out in the world and learn you're not alone after all.)

But more and more, you find that other people's belief in unicorns is affecting your life.

Well, I kinda feel like you'd talk about unicorns, and probably kind of a lot.