Bedazzled | ✓

Chapter 9

Shit. Jeffrey thought as he opened his eyes to meet the bright blazing sun.

Not this again. He thought, feeling the hot sun heat his skin as the sound of footsteps crunching the rough beach sand approached him.

"We meet again," a voice that obviously belonged to the witch muttered, coming to a stop by his lying figure. She towered over him, blocking the blazing sun from his view.

"I guess we do," Jeffrey said in response, looking up at the woman. She didn't look as bright as always. Her brows were knitted into a neat frown, and the edge of her lips were downturned to show she wasn't quite happy.

The woman let out a small elongated sigh, patting the side of her updo before looking down at Jeffrey to address him.

"I've been living in this small town whoring for as long as I can remember," she started, looking straight into Jeffrey's eyes. "I've always lived here. I stayed with my mother and filled in her shoes when she passed," she continued, placing her hands on her chest dramatically.

"All I want to do is escape this life, is that too much to ask? I'm tired of living of small earnings from my madam, I'm tired of getting my wardrobe restocked by men that only care about my body, and I'm darn tired of getting harassed by pained wives every once in a while," the lady complained, making Jeffrey give her a look of pity. Her life did sound hard, but he was sure there were a lot of things she could do besides whoring. Jeffrey had met a lot of women whose lives had taken a turn for the worst at one point in time or the other but had never considered the profession she was in.

"How will pearls relieve you of your hardship? They too are sure to be exhausted of their worth after a while," Jeffrey pointed out, before proceeding to sit upon the sand.

"Truth be told, I would never care for them if I could practice my witchcraft openly. I know prostitutes get rallied up and burned in times of disease spread, but it's not as bad as the number of people burned for believing to practice witchcraft every other day," the woman said, putting a hand on her corseted waist.

"I do say it's brighter than usual," she said, straying off topic as she squinted under the sunlight.

Jeffrey thought about what the woman had said. She did have a point, but he was sure exploiting merpeople wasn't the way to go.

"Why me?" Jeffrey asked in a low tone. He'd been wondering why the woman had even entrusted a task like this to him in the first place.

"Isn't it obvious?" the majority of us humans are oblivious to the existence of merpeople. Most of us have a small idea, but most of them are myths relating them to the supernatural. You've been down there, you know they're just like us, as normal as ever," she said, turning her attention to the ocean. "If I asked another person to do this, they'll be more concerned with capturing the merpeople and making a bounty out of them. I might seem uncaring, but I don't want anyone to get hurt."

"But you," she started, tearing her gaze from the water before squatting so that she was on the same level as Jeffrey. "You won't hurt them, and from what I've seen you won't mind even being one of them."

"Isn't stealing from them doing exactly that? As in, hurting them?" Jeffrey asked as he allowed his blue eyes to meet her darker ones.

"I don't need a lot, just enough to live on for a while," she muttered, taking Jeffrey's chin in her hand.

"Do it for me, please?" she asked before everything went blurry and Jeffrey was subjected to that feeling of being plugged back into reality.