Chapter 1: Natasha

Be careful when performing this spell. Remember that all energy you put out there into the universe will come back to you times-three.

I runmy finger beneath the instructions to make sure I’m reading the spell correctly. Give me a damn break. I have tried numerous magic spells to manifest love from social media and not one of them has worked. The only reason I’m dipping my toe into these scammy ass spells a fourth time is because if I don’t cast this curse successfully — I will catch a damn case.

What do I mean by that? I mean I will act on my written plan to murder my roommate, Tate Whitmarsh. Spiritually, of course. Lying in bed, gazing into my phone screen at the spell, over the sound of my noise machine turned to its maximum volume, I can hear him snoring. His snoring sounds like a 747 taking off and landing and taking off again… and landing… And unlike a Boeing, the screws aren’t flying off of Tate and sending him into the ocean. Ugh.

I can’t stand his annoying ass. If Tate’s snoring was the only terrible part about living with him, I would buy a pair of headphones to wear over the earplugs and call it a day. But he’s the worst roommate I’ve ever had and I didn’t even choose to live with him. Finding a roommate in a small town is even harder than finding a man and considering how long I’ve been single, that’s saying something.

I got myself in a situation because my previous roommate sold her virginity to some psychopath billionaire online to get her student debt paid off and the only person who would sublet her apartment for the rest of the year with me was this motherfucker. He somehow recently got a job with the fire department, despite his face tattoos and the rest of his stupid asshole personality. She must have known I would never have agreed to this if I met him first.

All she told me was that he was an employed, sexy white man. I told her that I wasn’t attracted to white men and didn’t find any of them sexy, but what did my stupid ass do after that? I signed the lease and my friend unloaded the rent for her two-bedroom apartment on me and that goddamn monster.

No wonder Tate’s old roommate wanted him gone. I should have known $200 a month for a room was too good to be true. My other friends tried to warn me but I told them they wouldn’t know a good deal if it smacked them on the ass. I’m the one who looks like a clown now. I’m talking Bozo, not It.

The only thing that could make this situation worse is if Tate did something stupid and got a dog. He’s exactly the type of guy to adopt a dog with no plan for taking care of it. See? Tate is the type of man who will have you angry about things he hasn’t even done yet. I exhale slowly, letting the rage float through my body to my fingertips. Rage is important for magic spells. I think.

Okay, focus, Natasha.

I re-read the ingredients for the spell.

Small pink sachet

3 chest hairs or pubic hairs

1 tsp cayenne pepper

3 bay leaves

3 opened safety pins

1 cotton ball

3 tsps chewed tobacco

turpentine

I have a mesh pink sachet in my possession already along with all the other ingredients, except for the tobacco, which I haven’t chewed yet.

The directions are clear:

Even though I”m twenty-three years old, I’ve never bought tobacco before. I didn’t even know what to ask for but luckily, I had a better source of tobacco than the gas station. Nasty ass Tate indulges in every form of tobacco known to man, so I stole a handful of raw tobacco from his stash which the spell says I have to chew right now. My hand shakes nervously as I place the teaspoons of tobacco into my cupped palm. The apartment rattles from Tate’s next loud snore. My motivation gets stronger as the windows clatter.

This motherfucker…

He’s 6’8” of pure muscle, otherwise I would smother him instead of resorting to curses. You grow up hearing not to mess with the devil, witchcraft and all that evil shit, which I completely understand. Unfortunately, that advice was for women of a different time, who didn’t have roommates like Tate.

Shit, don’t you think I tried praying? Nothing works on Tate.

I’m not trying to mess with the devil, anyway, so you don’t have to worry about anything bad happening to me. The girl who sold the spell on social media gave me her assurances. Apparently, this spell will simply attract karma to my obnoxious ass roommate who once farted into my Easter themed decorative pillow right in front of me just to piss me off.

Jesus, please protect me in case this curse goes wrong and also while I chew up this tobacco.

If I was paying any attention, I would see Jesus sending me a sign. The second I put the tobacco in my mouth, my world spins out of control. I want to throw up and pass out at the same damn time. White boys put this shit in their mouth?! Spit it out, girl!

I fight my gut instinct to spit out the nasty ass tobacco, instead clutching my bed frame for support as I chew it up nice and good. Just when I can’t handle it anymore and I swear I’m about to throw up for real, I spit the tobacco into the sachet. It looks nasty. And I throw up anyway. Luckily, I make it to my trash can to empty the contents of my stomach, but it’s still nasty. I can’t get the tobacco taste out of my mouth and I’m crying from the pain of vomiting and the nastiness of tobacco.

That’s how much I hate that damn white boy. I’m willing to put myself through this warrior shit to get his ass.

Luckily, I don’t wake Tate up, so I still have time to finish my spell. I shouldn’t be surprised since he sleeps like a hibernating bear. I know he’s a firefighter, but he sleeps like the town spends all night on fire. How can one man need so much sleep? How many fires does he even put out? Tate reminds me of a hairy, hibernating bear.

When I recover from my vomiting spell, I prepare myself for the most difficult stage of the spell.

Chest hair extraction.

It should be obvious why I’m not bothering with the pubic hair. There’s no chance in hell I’m going anywhere near that evil Caucasian yeti’s penis to get some hair. It’s bad enough I have to use my good tweezers on his furry ass chest to pluck a few hairs and risk possible capture along with getting my tweezers nasty.

I genuinely feel like my ass is about to head to war. I prepare for the worst — Tate waking up. I take my phone out and hold it in my less dominant hand. If he wakes up, I’ll tell him it’s a social media challenge and lie my ass off. But this man sleeps through everything. I doubt I’ll wake him up.

The apartment floor rattles again as I fling my bedroom door open. He’s still snoring, still sleeping, and when I walk into the living room, he doesn’t budge. Tate sleeps in his underwear on the couch whenever he wants to nap because “couch tired is better than bed tired”. Even if I wanted to bring another guy over, how the hell does he expect me to do that when he’s laid up on the couch with his shirt off and bare chest exposed like he’s about to try out for a role in the Magic Mike Broadway show?

His tight black boxer briefs hug his thick, athletic thighs, reminding me that if he wakes up and tries to chase me, I am completely fucked. His legs and thighs are hairy as hell too and rippling with defined muscles. Those thighs could kill me. The whole giant man could kill me.

Just breathe, Natasha.

Tate doesn’t wear a shirt when he naps on the couch and every inch of his bare chest (and some of his shoulders) is covered in thick black hair. His chest heaves as he snores again and I flinch nervously as he moves his hand away from his chest, exposing his tattoo.

The man is obsessed with being a firefighter, even if he just got the job. Does he have to tattoo everything that happened to him all over his body? He has his engine number tattooed on his chest, an axe on his bicep, tattoos on his face, and even more tattoos on the parts of his arm that aren’t hairy as fuck. But most of him is hairy as fuck. Especially that chiseled ass chest. Okay, I can’t be thinking about his muscles. I take a few steps closer to Tate’s half-naked body.

His long hair splays out around him as he emits another noisy, shuddering snore. The temptation to kill him gets stronger the closer I get to him. I extend my tweezers and hover over him nervously as he snores loudly again. My hands are shaky as fuck as I pinch three of Tate’s hairs at once and then yank away from his chest, so terrified that I almost yelp.

My chest is so tight that air can’t enter or exit my lungs. I freeze, stuck with several tweezed chest hairs that I successfully yanked from Tate. He makes a soft grunt and then… he just keeps snoring.

I can’t believe my luck. Once I’m sure I didn’t wake him up, I sprint back into my room and shut the door. Yes. I did it.

The rest of the spell is easy. I sprinkle Tate’s chest hairs into the sachet and climb out my ground floor bedroom window to the small garden outside our apartment. Each apartment has a small, fenced off garden. Mine used to have flowers and tomatoes until Tate urinated on them after a drunken night out and they all died.

This is revenge for my plants. Revenge for all black women forced to live with unsanitary, gigantic, muscular and deeply annoying white men. Using the only trowel I have left that Tate hasn’t destroyed, I dig a hole deep enough to bury the sachet and hopefully avoid drawing the attention of Tate’s dog.

I drop the sachet in the hole and say the words of the spell.

For your safety, I won’t repeat the words here, but I say the spell’s magic words three times and then… I feel nothing. There’s a slight breeze, but nothing after that. I don’t know what I thought would happen. I guess I’ll have to wait and see if the spell works.

When I climb back into my bedroom window, I shut it again and change into a gigantic t-shirt before crawling beneath my duvet. The spell might not work, but I feel better now that I did something. I guess it’s better than going to jail for attempted murder. I put my earplugs in and turn my noise machine all the way up, but I still can’t drown out Tate’s snoring.

After an hour or so, I finally fall asleep. I convince myself that the spell worked. I don’t have much longer with Tate Whitmarsh. I can feel it. His ass is cooked.

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