Dry Wheat Stubble

from the SWIRLS Collection

based on a true story

“Mrs. Beckie Blake, I am Lisa Paternino and I am in love with your stud husband. He loves me too. So, we’re going to get married. He’s going to divorce you, so he can be all mine. He has such a great body. So warm. So sexy. I just love it when he touches me . . . .”

In the thousands of times that Beckie Blake had mentally replayed the call from Lisa Paternino, she said she always heard the conversation end with a distinctive witches’ cackle. A witches’ cackle?

No. Of course, that wasn’t true. Lisa was not a witch. She had no magical powers. She didn’t have a caldron in which she mixed special potions.

It was Beckie’s mind playing tricks on her.

Beckie would never call another woman a witch. That would not be a Christian thing to say. But, deep in Beckie’s innermost thoughts, she could imagine a witches’ cackle, reinforcing her perception that weird, black magic had transformed her husband into something he was not.

Beckie Blake was the kind of woman who married for life. Her strong religious faith only solidified her determination. She was married for life with three wonderful sons, and the most perfect husband. She was working full-time only to help ends meet. Her druthers had always been to be a stay-at-home mom, who was constantly available to meet the needs of her men.

That’s how she saw herself. One who was there primarily to meet the needs of her sons and her husband.

How to explain Jeff’s behavior? The only answer, she believed, was that a demonic force had come into her life.  Probably Satan himself. The only reason she could conceive of was that her faith was being tested. Just like poor old Job in the Bible. Her faith was being tested by the Devil himself, and he was using this woman, Lisa whatever, to do it.

As she figured things out, she found that the witches’ cackle had grown louder, grown closer, grown clearer.

Six Chapters