August 2025 Short Story of the Month

I stopped for a breath before cutting the turkey. I wanted to appreciate the moment. Seeing everyone there, sitting around the table, almost felt like we were a family again. But if we had been a real family I wouldn’t be seconds away from killing them all.

In order to understand why I would go to such lengths, you must understand what they all did to me. They ruined my life because they didn’t like my choice of husband. I suppose they thought I wouldn’t discover the truth, but magic has a way of biting you in the ass, especially the dark arts.

Roughly ten years ago, I introduced my family to my fiancé. It didn’t go well.

My family was gathered for our monthly get together dinner at my sister Margaret’s house. Our monthly dinners were usually full of laughter and story telling. My parents and grandparents would tell the same stories to all of us, and we would act like we’d never heard them before.

Being a magical family, those family dinners were a time for us to retell our magical exploits and share what normally we had to keep hidden. Being witches in the modern world is challenging. We can’t use magic in front of just anyone. Everyone in my family was married to someone with at least some magical ability. It allowed us to be ourselves at home. It also protected the magical lineage by increasing the chances that the next generation would also have some magical talent.

My three sisters had all found husbands with magic. I was happy for them, but not all of us were that lucky. I fell in love with a normal person, and they acted like I’d declared war on them. While Dwayne and I were dating, they’d been polite and mostly ignored him. That changed ten years ago.

Margaret’s house was minimal. A little too minimal for my liking, but it was her house, so I tried not to let my feelings about her taste show. Sisters know though. We have a way of saying something without saying it.

When I arrived that day with Dwayne in tow, the smiles all dropped away. Dinner was strained. The conversations dried up and the only audible sounds were silverware clinking with the dishes.

The whole dinner went like that. After salad and a main course were served, Margaret cleared the dishes.

“Who wants dessert and coffee?” She asked.

Rather than answer, most around the table just raised their hands like they were back in school.

Margaret quickly and quietly cut pieces of cake and brought them back to the table. She disappeared one more time to get the coffee urn.

Before anyone took a bite though, Dwayne tapped his fork on the side of his mug and got to his feet. He cleared his throat.

“I have an announcement to make,” he said looking around the table at each member of my family in turn. “Samantha and I are engaged.” He reached down and took my hand, pulling me to my feet.

He’d warned me he wanted to tell them, but I wasn’t prepared for it. I smiled at him and looked around. Every one of my family members were staring, mouths open, in complete shock.

My mom was the first to speak. “No,” she said and starting adamantly shaking her head.

Dwayne looked at me in shock. Hurt was crossing his face.

I had to fight the tears welling up in my eyes when I saw how much they were hurting him. “We are engaged.” I looked around at all of them again. “And since, I can see from your oh-so-welcoming attitudes, none of you will be invited to the service.” I pulled Dwayne away from the table.

We left that day. I never spoke to any of them before we got married. I didn’t need to. I knew how they felt. I just didn’t think they would go to the lengths they did to get him out of our family.

A month after that day, we were married in a court house. We had a few friends attend, but no one from my family was there. Dwayne’s parents attended. We kept it small. It was one of the best days of my life.

Our life together was exciting at first. We moved into a small house. We both worked to get promotions with the hope of moving into a larger home in the next couple of years.

Once we upgraded, we wanted to start a family. There were moments throughout the years when I thought of contacting my family, but I knew, no matter how long it had been, they would never accept him as one of us. They thought he wouldn’t be able to handle being in a magical family. The irony of it all was that he knew all along.

He was actually from a family of magic users, but their magic wasn’t inherited by every member. Neither of his parents were magic, but several of his aunts were. My family only knew that he didn’t have any magical abilities and was therefore not good enough to be in their family.

We were happy though, and none of them even bothered to ask.

Two years after our marriage, things changed. We were blind sided by Dwayne being diagnosed with cancer. He was given a very bleak prognosis and little hope of living much longer. His illness took over our lives. We tried every treatment under the sun. We gave up trying to move or progress. We focused on just keeping him alive.

After he was diagnosed, I tried magical healing, but it didn’t work. At the time, I didn’t suspect any member of my family had done anything. I thought it was just rotten luck. Magic, even dark magic, usually left a trace and could be detected using the right spell. His illness didn’t appear to be magical in any way.

After we’d exhausted treatments, Dwayne pulled me aside on one of his better days.

“I think we need to just accept what is happening.” He was sitting on the couch, under a blanket, looking frail and tired.

I couldn’t be deterred though. I was going through a stack of pamphlets from spiritual healers and yogis. I was looking for our next idea.

“You’re not hearing me. I don’t want to try anything else,” he said.

I sighed. “You don’t mean that. You want to just give up?” I stared at him.

He nodded. “Yes, I do. I’m tired. I can’t take much more. I want to stay home, and live out my days, with you.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to accept that. “There are things we can try,” I suggested.

He shook his head.

This went on for a day or two more, but finally, he made me promise to stop. I did. I didn’t want to, but it was his decision to make.

His death felt surreal to me. I couldn’t believe or accept that he was really gone. I would never see him again.

I filled my time by working twice as much as I used to. I needed to focus on anything. Eventually, I sold the little house we’d lived in. I moved to a house almost exactly the same size, but one that wasn’t filled with memories of our life together.

I visited his grave regularly. It was on a trip to his grave nearly eight years after his death that I detected it.

I was replacing the flowers on his grave when I got a whiff of magic. It was sulfur and brimstone. The stuff of dark magic. I stood up quickly and looked around. I was alone. I looked back at his grave. The smell was definitely coming from his grave.

At that moment, I knew. Somehow I just knew, but I needed to find the proof. I learned and studied new spells in my free time. I consulted a few witches on the internet who knew more about how to make a spell go undetected and how to trace magic back to its source.

I tried everything with little luck at first, but eventually, I found the right combination of spells. The magic led me to my sister Margaret’s house on an afternoon when they were having a family dinner.

I didn’t knock on the door because I was still tracing the spell’s origin. I walked around and peaked into a window.

I couldn’t believe what I saw. There, surrounding each and every one of them, was a dark cloud. They’d all worked it together, which is why they’d covered it so well. It took a powerful witch to hide a spell that well, but if a whole family worked together, the spell could be nearly untraceable.

So, how did I get to be the one hosting a turkey dinner with all of them present? After my discovery, I slowly started to visit with them again. They believed I was just trying to be a part of the family again. In reality, I was plotting my revenge.

My turkey dinner was our last supper together.