Microstory 1095: Wanda

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Your five minutes are up. If it were up to me, we wouldn’t separate you from Ralph at all, but Della’s worried you’ll start working on an escape together, and we can’t have that. I suppose this is the part where I sit you down and explain our dastardly plans, isn’t it? It looked like Julius was already filling you in on the ritual we’re going to perform today. He wasn’t really meant to do that. But I do want to talk to you, because...well, you’ve talked to just about everyone else in our graduating class, haven’t you? I’m fully on board with this project, but I don’t think we have to be mean to people. The truth is that Gertrude and I really were friends. We lied to the cops, and said that we were all in a group of friends together, but my friendship with Gertrude is a hundred percent real. Homer even had to do some witchy woo to prevent people from realizing they had never even seen us all together before. That was the opposite of the original plan, which was to stay as far from each other socially as possible, so no one would suspect we were the killers. Of course, the whole thing went awry when Viola showed up to stop us, and we had to improvise. You may be asking yourself, why would Wanda sacrifice Gertrude if she liked her? That’s precisely why I had to do it, and also precisely why I hesitated when it came time. You see, Homer claimed that it was only a sacrifice if we were losing something, which makes sense, when you think about it. You can’t really sacrifice a stranger, and expect the universe to be impressed by it. Annoyingly, it appears that this was a total lie as well, and Homer was just doing it to be cruel to his own people. We’re not actually sacrificing someone to the universe, but creating a new balance between life and death, which means the targets could have been anyone. This is where you and Ralph come in. I still don’t love that we have to do it at all, but at least the distance between us will make it easier. I intend to wield one of the holy blades again, and I intend to carry out my mission, without question this time. Even though Homer lied to us, I know that he has a pure soul, and this will herald a better future. Climate change, the refugee crisis, wage disparity, homelessness, disease, racism. These are all human creations, and the only way to fix the lunacy is by accepting the leadership of someone who is not quite human. But Homer can’t do it on his own. He needs more people to be like him, and the six of us are the start of that. Why six? It has nothing to do with the ritual itself, but Sidney apparently came up with that number for strategic purposes. He says, if you want to surround a building with a tactical team, you need a minimum of seven people, so you can box them in on all three dimensional axes. I don’t know exactly where he came up with that, but Homer seemed to agree, which is why he recruited five more people, and stopped there. Anyway, you better prepare yourself. The end is nigh for you, while the beginning of a new day is at hand.