Voodoo Curse
Disclaimer: Don't own Victorious
A/N: I'm going to say little here in the authornote and just jump in to let you see what's going on. It does involve magic (not wiccan though, think Charmed but this has nothing to do with Charmed). Trust me and enjoy, this is for the Halloween of this year (though uploaded after).
Chapter 1 (Once Upon a December)
A music box played in the distance as a small, two year old child sat in her high chair. She brandished her hands in the air with laughter as she watched the dancing care bears on the television before her.
Beside her was a stunning Christmas tree lit up with colorful orbs and shimmering silver garland. Below the tree was a bed of snow made up of cotton, and in the snow was a toy horse attached to the back of a moving train.
The child looked at a tall, dark haired woman nearby, grinning as the woman sung along with the lullaby of the music box. "Honey?" A strange man entered the room, and the toddler's eyes grew large. The man had on a red suit and a long, white wig. "This thing feels like it's been bathed in lice." The man scratched the white hair and groaned.
"So take it off, Beck." The woman pulled the wig from the man's head and the child laughed when she recognized her father. She reached her hands up, calling for her mother. Beck's eyes twinkled as he looked at his daughter.
The woman lifted the child from the chair and held her against her chest. "How are you doing, sweetie?" The mother whispered in a hushed tone. The child grabbed the wig with her hand, laughing as she eyed it with great fascination, and as though it were the only thing of importance in her eyes.
Beck approached his wife with a deep laugh. "Looks like she wanted the wig, Jade." Jade smiled brightly and her heart skipped as she leaned up to kiss her husband's cheek. He kissed her back and slid an arm around her waist. "By the way, the baby's diaper has been changed and she's asleep in her crib."
Jade let out an exhausted breath and sat on the couch, holding her eldest child close to her. "Good. I need everything to be clean before my sister shows up. If the baby's asleep, that's less to worry about."
Beck sat beside her and slid an arm around her shoulders. "You've been so busy lately, you're due for a rest." The toddler curled into a ball and clutched her mother's shirt tight between her fingers. Jade looked down at the child, smiling as the tiny heartbeats struck her chest like the pitter patter of tiny feet running across her chest.
"Maybe you're right." She didn't want to take a break, she wanted everything perfect. Her sister was angry with her and she wanted to make things right, if at all possible. "It's just…" Jade leaned into Beck, setting her head onto his right shoulder. "She can get pretty intense when she gets angry."
Her elder sister was a bit of an eccentric and involved in things that Jade didn't think were positive for the girl, but she didn't want to speak up for fear of insulting her.
Holland was just two years older than Jade, at thirty-two years of age, and finally had a boyfriend that wasn't scared off by her obsession with witchcraft and dark arts.
The doorbell rang, jolting Jade's head upright. "She's here," Jade uttered in a hushed tone. Chills ran down her spine and a peculiar sensation swept through her body. Something felt off, but she wasn't sure what. "She's early."
"Alright, let me put our daughter back in the chair then." Beck swept the child up into his arms and carried her back to the high chair. "Come on, you get to finish your show while mommy and aunt Holland talk…"
Jade rose up slowly and made her way towards the door, looking over her shoulder to see her child twisting around to peer at her from the seat. Jade raised her hands and pulled her hair back over her shoulders with a huff of air.
"Okay." She extended a hand towards her crystal doorknob, hovering it over for several seconds before grabbing and turning it. A feigned smile spread over her face and she pulled the door open, gasping aloud and in awe.
A woman not much taller than Jade stood before her, her face was long and her eyes were covered by sandy brown hair. Beside her was a tall man with dark, curly hair and a deep gaze.
"Holly! How are you?" Holly walked in as though floating on air, looking at her with a plain smile. Her boyfriend, David, followed her in without raising his eyes from the Mcdonald cups placed in a brown tray in his hands.
"I'm okay, Jade. Been better." Holly was curt and her voice was like an arrow poised to pierce the tension in the air. Jade shut the door behind the couple and turned to her sister with a frown. "We brought you and Beck some hot chocolate from McDonalds."
"Oh." Jade accepted one of the two cups graciously and looked up as Beck lifted the other. "That's generous of you." She raised the cup to her lips, hesitating for only a second when a peculiar smell hit her nostrils. Thinking little of it, she tilted her head back and let the hot liquid splash out onto her tongue.
She followed Beck to the couch, sitting with him as he sipped on his drink. A serene look came over Holly's face as she approached, her lips peeled back and her teeth flashed in the smile. "Consider it a peace offering, Jade…"
"Sure." Jade scrunched her face and moved her hand to her stomach, wincing as an odd sensation pulsed from within. "Look Holly, I apologize for before. If I did anything-"
Holly raised her hand to cut her off. "I told you in confidence and you blabbed to your husband. Did you think it wouldn't come around to me? That I wouldn't find out?" Jade bowed her head and Beck looked over with a guilty expression.
Under stress at work, Beck ended up telling somebody what Jade told him. It was an honest and simple mistake, but Holly had grown furious over it.
"I shouldn't be surprised, really." Holly paced to the right and narrowed her eyes. Jade's chest began to burn, and Beck's hand started to tighten around hers. She could feel a heaviness in her eyes and a sharp pain that was slicing through her muscles. "All throughout life you've been the special one of us, overshadowing me at every turn and dissing everything I've ever done."
"I only try to help you, Holly. That witchcraft stuff you're getting involved in? It's not good."
"It's the one thing I'm good at that you're not." Holly spun on her heels and crossed her arms while glaring down her nose at Jade. "And you would take that from me."
Jade raised her hand to her chest and leaned forward. "I'm only trying to help you."
"Well help no more." A jolt of electricity shot through her and the burning sensation in her chest grew intense. In the corner of her eyes she saw Beck flinch and watched with wide eyes as he dropped his cup onto the floor.
The cocoa spilt out on the carpet, but to her surprise, it bore a darker color than typical hot chocolate. To her eyes it looked almost like tar or oil. Her heart flickered and started to dull to a stop as she tried in vain to stand from the couch.
Her entire body was numb and paralyzed, and she had to strain her voice to speak. "W-What did you do? Sis?"
Holly's voice turned venomous as she circled the couch. "I'm done living in your shadow, Jade. You and your husband, living perfect little happy lives with a perfect family and good jobs-while I waste away knowing I'll never have any of it. You're always looking down on me, always acting superior and better than me-and the one thing I find that I'm better than you at-you want to take away from me."
"The stuff you're dealing with isn't normal."
"Like you would know about normal." Holly threw her head back and ripped out a scoffing laugh.
Jade could feel her voice and consciousness fading, but fought against it as she struggled to move. "Your witchcraft nearly killed someone, Holly. You can't say that's normal." Holly growled and threw her hands up.
"There you go again, repeating something I told you in confidence." Holly crossed her arms and glanced over at David. "Well no more. Start the incantation…" Jade gasped out and clenched her teeth together as Holly's burning gaze locked with hers. "Time to go to sleep, little sister. Let's see how you like being forced into the shadows for the rest of your life…"
Her eyes welled up with tears and she tried to force a scream, but her vocal chords felt as though they'd been turned to stone. David began to speak in mumbles, stammering over words he knew nothing about.
Their chanted words circled Jade and Beck like ropes, sending a vicious tremor through their bodies. At some point, she heard Holly shout that David had done something wrong, but it was too late.
Jade leaned her head back and her lips pulled apart to scream, but saliva clouded her throat and mouth. The trembling in her body intensified and she could think only of her little girl watching from the high chair.
"Not in front of my baby," she tried to say. Pulses of pain shot like waves down her arms and legs. "What are you doing to me? Holly?" Her tears felt like fire in her eyes and they ran down her cheeks like razor blades cutting deep into her skin.
"David you idiot," Holly screeched, "You're saying the wrong chant. You're saying the wrong." Jade thought she heard her sister say the number 'fifteen' with a defeated voice, but couldn't figure out what the significance of the number was before she felt a burst within her brain that snapped her of her consciousness.
When Jade awoke, she felt as though someone had run over her with a giant steamroller. She was facedown and lying beside another mass on a hard concrete sidewalk. She moved a trembling hand to the mass and curled it around what felt like a muscular bicep.
Jade raised her head slowly and gasped astonishingly when she saw her husband on his back. "Beck!" His eyelids opened partially and a weakened groan pushed apart his lips.
"Jade?" He looked up at her with silent horror growing in his eyes. "Jade, you look…you look like a teenager." She thought he was still recovering from the shock at first, but to her own horror and dismay, Beck looked just as he did fifteen years ago.
As she contemplated what kind of voodoo her sister had done, fear was gripping at her with lethal tendrils. A trembling gasp flung from her mouth, and tears filled her eyes.
"W-We're young again? Are we dead?" She turned her head and let her gaze fall onto an oddly familiar man standing near them. He wore long brown robes and had a scruffy brown beard that rose up towards the wild tufts of hair circling his ears and balding head.
The man's eyes were enlarged, and in his trembling hand he held a coconut. The familiarity was difficult to place, but her husband had the answer seemingly without missing a beat.
"Erwin?" Beck pushed his upper body up, resting on his elbows while raising an eyebrow at the man. "Erwin Sikowitz, is that you?" A rush of relief came over her and she started to smile. "Erwin it's me, Beckett."
Sikowitz was one of Beck's coworkers at the school where he worked, and he was an old childhood friend, so maybe he would be able to help them figure out what was going on with them.
"It can't be," Sikowitz said with a shaky voice. The man looked down at his coconut for a minute and dropped it, unable to hold it any longer with his violently shaking hand. "How are the two of you here? How are you so young?"
Jade stood slowly, helping her husband to his feet. "I don't know." She dusted her clothes off and let Beck lean against her in order to keep from falling over. "The last thing I remember, my sister was still pissed off about what Beck told you."
Sikowitz scratched his head and began mumbling. "I don't remember what that was." She jerked her head back and Beck exclaimed his surprise as though they were thinking the same thought.
"I just told you like a week ago."
"A week?" Sikowitz furrowed his brow and walked forward. He smacked his lips together and shook his head from side to side. "Jade. Beck. The two of you disappeared fifteen years ago…" Her heart stopped and the shock rushed through her body like a tidal wave, threatening to slam her into the ground. "Furthering that, you both look like you did when you were teenagers. Fifteen years old, I'm guessing…"
It had to be a dream, that was the only explanation she could muster. The magic her sister was involved in, she never believed actually worked; it defied all logical thought. "Fifteen years missing?" She sputtered. "Fifteen years younger? It's impossible. None of this is real. It can't be real."
Do you have any thoughts? Give a listen to "Secret" by The Pierces, that really sets the mood of the scene between Jade and her sister. Also yes, the beginning scene and the title of the chapter is inspired by the song "Once upon a December". Enjoy the story
