The Ahn'Ger Stone, Chapter 5

Martha Strasserman was always a bit of a morning person. In fact, she loved mornings! She loved waking up with the dawn, getting ready and going downstairs to make breakfast for her family (she insisted that they eat every breakfast and supper together when possible) and spending quality time as a family before going to work at the bank. She attributed this love of mornings to her own mother and grandmother, and the rural life that she had led before moving into Shermer…Or what Martha always considered ‘the big city’. So while her son, Bill, was outside on the porch ruminating on his own life and discovering a literally life-changing magical gemstone, she was still in the large kitchen of their modern colonial style home, cleaning up from the large breakfast. And also badgering her beloved little girl, Kimberley, to stop procrastinating and finish getting ready for school. Her husband and father of her children, Greg, had already left, leaving her otherwise alone with just the dirty dishes and the waiting dishwasher for company. And of course, her own thoughts; they were primarily about the various things she needed to do at the bank today as the assistant manager, but the thoughts of her children were never far.

“Kimmy! The dishwasher is almost loaded! You have three minutes!” Martha called out in a sing-song voice. She couldn’t BEAR to use a harsh tone against her darling daughter.

“GOD MOM I KNOW!” Came the slightly muffled and highly sarcastic reply from the second story of the large home, accompanied by stomping feet and the upstairs bathroom door slamming as Kimberley clearly hadn’t bothered to get ready at all. The attitude in the twelve year old’s actions were apparent, but Martha didn’t mind. Kimmy was just young! But Bill on the other hand…

Martha cast a long glance through the kitchen and dining room towards the front door and sighed. Her first born was…She didn’t want to say a disappointment, but he just wasn’t applying himself! She blamed the Internet, really. All Bill did was waste his brain sitting on the computer, or his phone, or watching those awful Marvel movies down in the basement! And he’d let himself get so…fat! Why couldn’t he have played sports like his friend Tom Ackerton! Not that she wanted either of her children being around Tom, what with those AWFUL rumors floating around about him, but Bill didn’t want to listen to Martha and she feared that such bad behavior would wash off on her son, further turning him into a lost cause. At least he’d applied to a college, some silly school out in Colorado. Maybe going off to school and living on his own for a while would make him wise up and-

But Martha’s judgmental thoughts on her son were interrupted as she heard Bill yelling! She couldn’t make out what it was, but there seemed to be someone else on the porch as well! At first Martha assumed it was Tom, he and Bill always walked to school together, but the longer she listened to the muffled voices the more clear it became that whoever the second person was, it was a girl! Did Bill have a secret girlfriend?

“That boy…” Martha growled as her mood turned sour. She closed the dishwasher and turned to stomp towards the front door to give her son a piece of her mind when a bright green-gold flash blinded her before she even had a chance to protect her face! What had Bill do-

But then the light was gone, and Martha blinked away the colorful after-image squiggles. She had turned around too fast and had been blinded by the sun!

“Ugh, that hurt…” The Matriarch of the Strasserman family grumbled. She turned back to the dishwasher and started it before heading for the living room where her purse waited, unconcerned with the lack of sounds coming from the darkened upstairs of the home. She was the only one in the house, after all. There were no thoughts of Kimberley, as now her youngest child no longer existed, having been wiped away by the change of reality. And of course, gone were the darker thoughts of her son, since she no longer remembered having one.

Instead, with the changed reality, Martha Strasserman had only one daughter; Willow. She was her pride and joy, and the somewhat old fashioned Gen-Xer had spoiled the frizzy haired teen rotten…Within reason, of course. Most of what Martha considered to be ‘spoiling’ was actually a smothering amount of sheltering and purposefully allowing the daughter she always remembered having to be more naïve and emotionally unprepared for the harshness of the world. Martha, in the back of her mind, knew that Willow was being bullied at school because of her choices and that her only friend was the very lovely, but unfortunately very ugly, Paige Walters, but she refused to acknowledge it. Instead she just chalked it up to the other kids having poor parenting, of being intolerant and any other excuse under the sun to deflect blame from her perfect Willow.

“Oh, honey…” Martha said with a sniffle as she stared at the shrine of family photos that now decorated where the original version of the Strasserman family photos had stood. Instead of just four portraits and a single picture of Bill, Kimberley, Greg and Martha as a family were now a plethora of smaller pictures of Willow in various stages of her life. The tiny pink little bean that Willow had been as a baby, to the pretty pink princess of her toddler years (a style that remained, mostly due to Martha’s insistence) through the rest of her young life all the way to the present day where the gangly, frizzy haired 16 year old smiled in a portrait that Martha had taken herself.

It was a good thing that Willow was only a sophmore, Martha couldn’t STAND the thought of her little girl being eighteen and looking at colleges. She wasn’t letting Willow learn how to drive so the thought of her perfect princess going off into the wide world terrified Martha to her core. She knew that Willow HAD to go to college…But maybe they’d just do online courses so Willow could stay here, with her.

“Oh, I love you so much!” Martha cooed as she gently stroked the picture frame. Andd she meant it. Being Willow’s mom was so fulfilling! She would have been a stay at home mom but…bills were bills, especially in the post-Covid world where inflation was still very high. Oh well, some things Had to be done, and-

There was a loud crash from the porch, and Martha’s bobbed brown hair swung wildly as her gaze snapped to the front door. Willow had gone outside to do some ‘last minute studying’, and Shermer was a safe town so Martha hadn’t been worried but…

“Willow?” Martha’s voice raised an octave in concern, and she hurried towards the front door, “hold on baby, Mommy’s coming!” Martha gasped the door knob and swung the door open, stepping out onto the empty porch, her brown eyes going even wider in alarm! “WILLOW!” She cried and she scanned the immediate area, following the trail of scattered papers. Oh, she NEVER should have left her daughter alone, not even for a second! Now she was in the hands of a predator and-

“M-MOM!” Willow’s voice stuttered over the morning air and Martha’s head snapped towards the source, seeing Willow pressed against the side of Martha’s sedan with a black haired girl towering over her with a finger pressed against Willow’s terrified face!

“WILLOW!” Martha shouted once more and hurried off the porch as she raced to her daughter’s rescue as the black haired girl turned. There, staring daggers into her, wwas Gloria Vanapolous! Ariadne’s daughter! What was SHE doing here!? But Martha’s presence, as she stomped across the still dew-covered grass, seemed to only escalate the situation as Gloria’s eyes widened.

“GIVE ME IT!” Gloria hissed as she grabbed one of Willow’s small wrists and pried at at tiny fist with manicured nails.

“OW! G-GLORIA, YOU’RE H-HURTING ME!” Willow whined again as she squirmed against the glossy exterior of the car, but she refused to let go of the gemstone in her fist. S-she couldn’t! Not if it really was magic! Thank god her mommy was here!

“GLORIA VANAPOLOUS, LET GO OF HER THIS INSTANT!” Martha screamed as she dove in between the two girls, her hands falling upon Gloria’s wrist and prying it off her dear daughter’s own. The protective mother used more strength than she should have, causing Gloria to yelp but the hateful daughter of her boss refused to budge.

“LET GO YOU HAG!” Gloria shrieked back, trying to push Martha away. She couldn’t let go! If she did, she’d lose the gemstone forever and then who knew what would happen!? Willow might figure out how to make it work and turn Gloria into some nerdy little girly girl like Bill had been! Or worse! She swiped at Martha’s eyes, trying to scare the older woman away. All she needed was a second!

“LET GO OR I AM CALLING YOUR MOTHER!” Martha bellowed as loud as she could as she ducked her head, trying to peel Gloria’s fingers away from Willow’s delicate, pale skin. She grabbed Willow’s fist, attempting to brute force her daughter’s hand out of Gloria’s.

“O-OW!” Willow cried as she tried to pull away from it all. She should have just run! Why didn’t she run!? Why was Gloria being so awful!? And why had she been so…so STUPID to trust the popular girl! She HATED Gloria!

Within her tiny fist, the gemstone began to glow. And it wasn’t a dull glow like it had been before, but almost instantaneously flaring as bright as a beacon as the hate and angry from THREE targets poured into it, all streaming from the multiple feminine hands in proximity. It could feel the bitterness of betrayal and resentment trickling in from Willow as the soft-spoken nerd girl’s mental barriers towards anger slowly burned away, the gushing defensive hate from Martha as she tried to protect her daughter, and the delicious anger that flowed from Gloria as she tried to get the gemstone.

“I WISH YOU WERE SOMEONE NICE LIKE ME!” Willow screamed.

“I WISH YOU WERE MY DAUGHTER SO I COULD TEACH YOU SOME MANNERS!” Martha barked.

“I WISH THAT YOU’D DO WHAT I WANT!” Gloria shrieked.

The three wishes poured into the Gemstone as…

What happens next?