Wanda the Witch Hits Wall Street

Wanda Hits Wall Street
Janelle Meraz Hooper

Wanda was hot under her witch hat. It was bad enough that the crooks on Wall Street had stolen her retirement account, but their greedy screw-up was going to cause a case of trickled down economics at its worst. Parents everywhere announced they were going to have to cinch in their belts, and the first thing to go was the trick-or-treat candy. Well, Wanda didn’t blame them. She’d just been turned down on a loan for one of those new, hybrid brooms. It was Wall Street she had it in for, and she developed a two-part plan to get even.

The first part was easy. She provided Halloween candy for all of the world’s children, even in countries where Halloween wasn’t celebrated. She figured even if they didn’t celebrate Halloween, they would know how to celebrate a pocketful of candy. She paid for the candy with the petty cash the stockbrokers had hidden in secret bank accounts. That done, it was time to move to part two of her plan.

Right at midnight, Wanda flew into Wall Street with her fat cats and instructed them to leave deposits everywhere. On the carpets, on the desks, and in the fancy espresso coffeepots. Then, when the cats were done, with a wave of her wand, Wanda multiplied the deposits by 34.5%. That was the exact percentage the investors were charging for home and small business loans. Their golden parachutes she turned into fool’s gold, their retirement packages vanished into the crisp October air. Their trophy wives began to look like their first wives. As a final touch, the Halloween candy on their desks was exchanged for a special blend that gave the investors a permanent case of the green cherry quickstep. Then, on the way out the door, she waved her wand and permanently sealed the doors to their executive bathrooms.

Ah, it was a good night’s work. But it was over too soon. Wanda moved onto Washington, D.C.

Happy Halloween, Everyone! Oh, if it were only so!

I write other, serious stuff, too. Books, even. Read samples on my website:

www.JanelleMerazHooper.com

Happy Halloween!

©Joyce Stevens, 2006
Happy Halloween!

From: Free Pecan Pie and Other Chick Stories:

Wanda, the Wicked Writer of the Northwest
by Janelle Meraz Hooper

Wanda never went to the mailbox without her baseball bat. For every rejection she found, she gave the box one whack. Of course, this scared the bats that lived in the box’s belfry silly, but Wanda was always so angry that she didn’t notice.
Back inside her house, Wanda meticulously filed away each rejection. The rejected stories about gardening she kept neatly stacked under a leaky flowerpot. The children’s stories she filed in the bottom of her bird’s cage, and the novel rejections she filled at the bottom of her cat’s litter box.
Wanda was especially chagrined at the rejection of her latest 500,000-word novel. What were they thinking? It had a plot and everything! Actually, it had several plots—it was about a gravedigger who was afraid of dirt.
Other stories were rejected because they didn’t follow required format. Format, smormat! So what if the stories weren’t double-spaced? So what if she used the Rave font instead of Times Roman? So what if she didn’t include a SASE? One story was returned because she didn’t put any postage on it. The nerve.
They had to be punished. The whole lot. Publishers. Agents. Newspaper editors. All of them.
The ticked witch went to her kitchen and whipped up a batch of special candy for the rejectors. She’d show them to have a little respect. She filled her black kettle with a recipe of special hard candies that turned into wiggling slugs when they were sucked on.

After the candies were wrapped in Halloween paper, she put them into a tote bag and took off for New York. Thanks to her new 300 high-speed broom, she was able to zip in and out of each office without being seen.
Back home, Wanda poured a glass of wine and lit the candle in her Halloween pumpkin. Then she turned on CNN and waited patiently for the story to break. Soon, all over the city there were reports of people in the writing businesses choking on slugs. Oh, they just choked a little—they didn’t die. And how those slugs loved to sing! When they were spat out, they stood up and sang in a perfect imitation of Aretha Franklin: R-E-S-P-E-C-T! (Find out what it means to me…take care of TCB!)
Wanda put out the cat and turned out the lights. Tomorrow, she’d start a new novel. This one would be really big.


Custer and His Naked Ladies- Order now from your favorite bookstore! Distributed by Ingram, Baker & Taylor and others…

Quote du jour:
“Where there is no imagination there is no horror.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, courtesy of Halloween Sayings.com