Lulu Lopez Vs. the Wicked Witch of West Texas: A Magical Time-travel Odyssey

By Zelda del West

It’s a normal day in Walla Walla until Lulu gets a creepy phone call. It’s the Wicked Witch of West Texas, the family’s “black sheep,” or most unpopular member and she’s threatening to kidnap Lulu, her brother Reggie and their little dog, too. It has something to do with a hairball puked up by an alive/dead cat during a time travel thought experiment. It was the bezoar that protected the witch against poison until it was lost – or stolen.

Lulu’s only protection is a magical witch repelling ruby bling ring. Except that things are not what they seem. Not the bling ring. Not reality or time. Not Lulu’s little dog, Bob and especially not Lulu’s family, who somehow forgot to mention she had an aunt who was a notorious wicked witch.

Lulu soon finds herself in a weird alternate universe. Will she ever get back to Walla Walla? Can she trust anyone? Will time travel restore her brother to health? Find out...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zelda del West
• Release date: Apr 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9781310723254

Zelda del West

Zelda del West is the nom de guerre adopted by the one and only source for inside information about the Wicked Witch of West Texas and her evil deeds. Zelda's true identity cannot be revealed because of her proximity to the Witch. If her true identity were known she would be in mortal peril (or worse, and believe me, there *is* worse). Be that as it may, the truth about the Witch and her foul misdeeds must be told. For information about Zelda's upcoming tell-all about the Wicked Witch of West Texas and her ongoing campaign of fear and intimidation against her innocent niece, Lulu, and her little dog, too, go to http://zeldadelwest.blogspot.com

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Lulu Lopez Vs. the Wicked Witch of West Texas:

A Magical Time-travel Odyssey

By Zelda del West

*****

Published by Zelda del West – Smashwords Edition

Copyright  2018 by Zelda del West

First edition

http://www.zeldadelwest.blogspot.com

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Special thanks to Laurel Bustamante and Kynde Kiefel for invaluable advice and support for this admittedly absurd project. Without all of their very kind contributions the world may never have been alerted to the foul creature that calls herself The Wicked Witch of West Texas.

Disclaimer-- (Read this before going any farther): This book is classified as fiction, which means that it is, in no way a representation of real people or events. Fiction: made up, imaginary-- if you find commonality with any character in this tome, it says way more about you, for good or ill, than about the book. It's not about you. No character is based upon you, except, perhaps in your own mind and no situation is drawn from any events you may have really participated in. We cannot and will not be held responsible for the chaotic contents of your overactive imagination however ridiculously fertile that terrain may be. Some parts of the story you may find suggestive and even seductive, while some events may accidentally resemble things that could happen, but this is merely coincidence. The only part of this book which is not fictional is the legalese stuff in the front matter and the part where I, Zelda del West, claim authorship. That’s all true.

Prologue

I, Zelda del West, have reluctantly decided it necessary to write an account of events that befell an innocent girl from Walla Walla whose singular misfortune it was to be related to the Wicked Witch of West Texas, formerly known as the Wicked Witch of Western Washington, and before that as the Wicked Witch of Walla Walla. (It should be noted that after the events related here, the Wicked Witch has not been seen in Texas. She does have the resources to keep several lairs in several dimensions for her devious purpose, so it's always difficult to ascertain her precise location. However, there have been some sightings of her in fabulous attire, looking astonishingly glamorous in several Oregon locales. Suffice it to say she was overdressed. Suffice it to say also that her place name designation is likely changed.

For those of you familiar with her reputation, none of the wickidity contained herein will come as a surprise, but many, sadly, are unaware that wicked witches truly exist, and that they carry out misdeeds, sinister and terrific, daily. Many believe that even someone as famous for her wicked ways as the subject of this narrative is merely a flake with wild outfits and an over-realized vocabulary. Wicked witches are well served by this misunderstanding, as it deflects serious scrutiny and the vague, murky and disorienting effect is an element of their stupefying glamour. I have, therefore, set out to inform the public of the hazard these witches pose, purely as a public service and for no other reason. This, my dear readers, is a cautionary tale, so take heed. The girl who is the subject of this book, very kindly agreed to cooperate with its writing for this very reason: to shine the harsh light of day upon these denizens of half-light and mostly-dark.

This book is pseudo-truish, with some parts imagined as they must have occurred. You'll have to figure out for yourself, though, which parts are truth, and which parts are imagined, because you might as well learn right now not to trust everything you read. Even a harmless account of semi-factual events like this one could have a nefarious intent if it were written by someone less beneficent than I, your humble scribe. Some of the names have been changed to protect the mostly innocent. The Wicked Witch of West Texas is obviously not one of them. Add to these disclaimers the very real possibility, given the malleability of time, and the known proclivities of the witch in question to mess about with such material, that the factual events in the book, those that really happened, may now not have really happened at all, and could possibly have been replaced by other events that, at this writing, were only semi-factual or entirely made up, but which may now have become factual. Some things might even have become real that were entirely unimaginable at the time that the things that happened happened, which now might not have happened. Conversely, if things happened that didn't, then they may, subsequently, have been altered into the form in which they happened. This is somewhat difficult to ascertain in the realm of a fictionalized account of the possibly real or unreal or possible or impossible.

Ambiguous as the situation is, one might as well treat the entire thing as a total fabrication. It is equally valid, therefore, to regard it all as complete and literal truth. This, of course, precludes ponderment of precisely what truth even means, since that isn't a subject of universal agreement and thus introduces murkiness into the cloudiness of the ambiguity resulting in absurd levels of unknowability. Also, be careful what you wish for, because this story has proven one thing: it might just come true. If you do it right, it will.

All of this is to say: BEWARE.

Perhaps one should heed the advice of one reader of this tome who wishes to remain anonymous: I advise avoiding the book. Simply opening this book unleashes such a wave of particles of dimensions of chaos into one's existence that it is truly unadvisable to even possess this text. So, set it down and walk away. You probably won't, though. You've already opened Pandora's Box, so come on in. The water is strange and filled with creatures that are the stuff from which dreams are spun. The kind of dreams you barely remember and aren't sure you want to. These very sorts of dreams found their way into the waking lives of the family that lived in the brick house at the corner of Rose Street and Pomegranate Lane.

Chapter 1: When a Stranger Calls

Tell me right now to whom I am speaking, a voice like poisoned sour apple candy demanded at the other end of the phone line. And curtsey when you talk to me. It saves time.

Lulu was taken aback by this rather rude-seeming opening, and wasn’t sure how to respond. She'd never been told to curtsy while on the phone.

Uhh, Lulu hesitated, this is Lulu. May I ask who’s calling? She replied as her dad, Jake, had taught her, still trying to be at least semi-politish, but she was sure she was only partly successful.

The Wicked Witch of West Texas, that’s who, you little fool, and I’ll get you, and your little dog Bob, too, the poison sour apple voice replied. I’m coming for you through my trans-multi-dimensional portal, so get ready. Y’all are comin’ to Texas. Tell that brother of yours to get ready, too, because he may as well come along. I can always use more taco slaves.

I don’t want to go to Texas, you stupid wicked witch, Lulu replied, using her defiant tone to disguise her confusion, and you can’t make me, she added, without curtsying. She stuck out her tongue at the phone, even though the supposed witch couldn’t see her. Then, she hung up, another thing Jake had told her to do if a weirdo called.

If you answer the phone and some weirdo is saying something rude or that doesn’t make sense, just hang up, was what Jake told her. This is always¹ good advice and Lulu was right to follow it. Weirdos, incidentally, were a subject upon which Jake often weighed in, priding himself, as he did, on his highly developed normalcy sensibility.

Lulu wondered if this was someone's idea of a joke. If so, that person didn't really understand humor very well, and had seen too many movies featuring witches. The fact was, she'd never been anywhere near Texas, and she’d never heard of a wicked witch from there. Certainly, someone calling herself The Wicked Witch of West Texas, who was threatening to kidnap her qualified as a weirdo—even by the rather lax standards of Walla Walla, where she’d recently seen a neighbor walking his goats on leashes, while his dogs were unleashed. This, obviously, was the exact opposite of local statutes, which would have required the dogs be leashed.

Of course, Lulu didn’t know that the witch had seen her stick out her tongue and she had also seen Lulu’s failure to curtsy. Lulu could be forgiven for not knowing because she also didn’t know that the witch was calling on her crystal ball. Lulu could also be forgiven, by most, for not complying with such a rude demand issued by an unknown caller. Most people who answered such a creepy phone call would react exactly the same way.

Even so, the witch was unaccustomed to defiance, particularly since she'd gone into hiding in West Texas.² Again, Lulu had no way of knowing this, having been spared the knowledge of the witch’s very existence. Said witch’s minions and lackeys were too terrified of her, fearing transformation by magical means into an albino sea slug (or something even worse) if they annoyed her, such that nobody dared even speak in her presence, so you see, she was quite surprised by Lulu’s attitude and she was even more determined to do something very bad. If there’s one thing nobody needs, it’s a nemesis, or worst enemy for that matter, whose first name is Wicked. It might have been better if someone had told Lulu some of the family secrets before that call came, because had she known the story she may have been more careful.

Jake would later remark that hindsight is twenty-twenty, when her mom, Anne, pointed this out.

What's twenty-twenty? Lulu asked.

It means perfect vision, or perfectly okay, at least, Jake explained.

Lulu figured out he meant that you could always see reasonably well what you should have done in the past, but without the option of time-travel, there wasn’t much you could do about it, while with the option of time-travel, one could never be sure that what was done in the past was done at all. Not that she had thought about time-travel at that moment, or that Jake knew about it, but after her experience with the witch, Jake’s statement would come to mean more to her³, so when thinking back on the subject after learning of time-travel, she had to assume Jake was also considering the possibility of going back in time to warn Lulu of the call before it came. For the record, that would be giving Jake way too much credit for forethought, afterthought and hindsight. Second sight and precognition were both blind spots and remain so. He was also in need of bifocals and a colonoscopy, but that’s beyond the purview of this tale.

The day of the freaky phone call, was what Lulu would later call it. It was the phone call that would change everything, like when the guy calls to tell you you’ve just won six million dollars and you can also eat all the ice cream you want, except that this was bad. It was more like if the guy called and told you that you won a trip to the beach, but the beach was home to a herd of Komodo Dragons and you couldn’t get out of going⁴ and there were no weapons allowed because Komodo Dragons are a protected species and that ice cream no longer existed. As a Komodo Dragon is a killer 150 pound venomous lizard with a nasty habit of eating people, you can see why this would be an undesirable situation.⁵

Lulu liked Komodo Dragons quite a bit, because they were gross and dangerous and she liked to picture strange bad things happening. Particularly if the strange bad things were gory and horrible and befell people who had irked her. She once imagined a Komodo Dragon showing up in the school cafeteria and eating her math teacher, for instance. That was after the math teacher made a joke about a dog eating Lulu's homework when she forgot it at home. Bob didn’t eat paper, nor did any dog Lulu knew. Then, as sometimes happens, the imaginary bad thing got out of control in her imagination and she imagined that the Komodo Dragon finished her math teacher and then started eating everyone in the school, so she had to imagine that she locked herself in the bathroom to avoid being eaten until the police showed up and killed the Komodo Dragon -- even though it's protected-- and she came out of the bathroom to find body parts and blood and guts everywhere, which was a little more than she had wanted to imagine and she was kinda sorry she'd started the imagining. Once you imagine something it's really hard to un-imagine it, so it's good to be careful what you imagine. This was the advice Lulu always gave herself after an imagining gone bad, and then she immediately forgot the advice until the next imagination mess. Imagination messes were often, she’d found, the hardest sort to clean up. Time-travel, it would seem, might also be a good thing when it came to the mind-mess of too much imagination. That would really be adding a second layer of imagining, in a sense, which could complicate the matter nearly infinitely.

But that has nothing to do with the horrible phone call, which was the phone call that changed everything.

Up until that very moment, Lulu was a normal, if slightly morbid, twelve-year-old girl from a perfectly normal Walla Walla family. Well, to be fair, her family only appeared to be normal to those who were young enough, or forgetful enough to not recall a few unfortunate events of decades past, but to also be fair, the family had done a fair bit of obfuscation regarding those events in an attempt to seem perfectly Walla Walla normal. The dark secrets they buried on foggy nights under moonless skies would come to shock and haunt and bedevil, vex and bewitch the town, in that order. It has been said that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. Lulu, for one, won’t be forgetting her aunt any time soon, nor the horrible experiences related here. Though, after the phone call, her life would become vastly more complicated and way more confusing in ways she might like to forget. And her family would become way less normal, or rather, they would have their real weirdness revealed, or not, depending on Walla Walla’s collective memory. Maybe that conclusion has yet to be reached.

If it hadn’t been for that dreadful phone call, Lulu could have gone right on not knowing about the witch.

As it happened, Lulu and her brother Reggie learned that wickidity ran in their family. In fact, it practically galloped.

Chapter 2: Creepier and Creepier

Who was that on the phone, Lulu? Jake asked, having entered the room just in time to see her stick out her tongue at the receiver and