By day her grave is littered with pentagrams and stumpy, gutted candles. On moonless nights, gothed-out teenagers chant her name at the stroke of twelve. They tell drunken stories of surviving her spells.

Before she died, the old woman’s only sins were berating trespassers and living with too many cats.

D.L. Shirey lives in Portland, Oregon, writing fiction, by and large, unless it’s small. His stories of 100 words or less have been published by 50-word Stories, The Drabble and blink-ink. Short of listing them all, visit dlshirey.com and @dlshirey on Twitter.