My Grandmother was a Witch
Chapter 5
"Take good care of yourself, honey. Remember I'll always be here to help you if you need it and give your father that potion as often as he needs it," Anna reminded her.
"Thanks, Grams." Kate meant it, too. Grams was all she had left even if she was no longer alive. That didn't stop her from trying to hug her before leaving.
"What have you done, Johanna? What did you get yourself into this time?" Anna shook her head and then vanished, awaiting the next visit from her granddaughter.
_/\_
Kate sneaked into her home trying to avoid her own father lest he hit her again. Once in her own bedroom she closed and locked the door and then got out her book, looking over her potion options.
What she didn't find was one that would stop her father from drinking. But she did find one where she could command him not to drink any further. "Obedience Potion. Make a person obey whatever they are told to do." If she could get her dad to drink this she could command him to stop drinking so that he would become sober again. Then all she'd have to do was to get him to drink it again. So just what did she need to make the potion with?
"DAMN!" She could make two potions max which meant searching for what she was going to need. However, she had learned that there was one place in this city that she stood a good chance of getting what she needed. "Chinatown."
Kate gathered up what she needed and went into the kitchen to work on her potion.
She was straining the liquid just as her dad showed up drunk as usual.
"What are you doing here?" He was pretty sure he had told her to get out. Though his mind was a little foggy.
"Here, drink this." Kate held out her coffee cup to him.
"I have what I need. No coffee." He had come out to pee and thought he heard something and found her in the kitchen.
Kate's mind ran over her options furiously. How did she get her dad to drink this and not try and force it down his throat? "It's not coffee, it's alcohol. You like alcohol, don't you?" Her parents had tried this reverse logic on her when she was little. Maybe it would work on her drunk dad.
Kate watched him drink it down. "YUK! That was disgusting." He threw the coffee cup into the kitchen where it shattered.
"Jeez, Dad." Kate had ducked in case he was trying to throw it at her.
"Now get out!" He didn't need to see her. She looked so much like his wife. He didn't need to be reminded that his wife was dead so she had to leave. "I SAID GET OUT!" he yelled.
Kate needed a couple of minutes for the potion to work. "All right, Dad. I order you to bring me all the alcohol you have in this house. Do it now!" Kate commanded. She was amazed when he silently left and brought her every bottle of alcohol he had in the house.
"Thanks, Dad." Kate was thrilled that her potion had worked and began opening bottles and dumping them down the drain. It was taking forever and the kitchen sink was starting to fill up with empty bottles that needed to get thrown out into the trash. But that could wait.
"All right, Dad. I forbid you to drink any alcohol at all for any reason. No more alcohol at all," Kate commanded him. "Got it?"
"Yes," he replied.
"Good. Now what have we got in this place for you to eat before you kill yourself. I've already lost one parent I'm not losing another one." Kate went through the kitchen looking for real food. She quickly realized this place was not her grandmother's and she didn't have much to work with.
"Soup, that's a place to start." Kate opened the can of Chicken Noodle Soup, warmed it up, and gave him the small sauce pan it was in. Fewer dirty dishes for her to clean. "Eat your soup, Dad, and then go to bed and get some sleep. And no drinking alcohol at all." She still wasn't sure just how long her potion was going to last.
After eating his soup, her dad gone to his room and to bed. Kate needed to figure out what she could make for herself.
_/\_
Being in Chinatown was a bit intimidating for her but she needed to change her thinking. If she did what Grams had suggested she needed to toughen up if she wanted to be a cop.
"I need these items." She handed over a small piece of paper that had everything she wanted to make her potions with. A few she didn't even have immediate plans to make any time soon but she needed to be ready.
This place had jars filled with items all over the place. The owner had bins that people obviously wanted more often than most and she watched as he didn't even blink. He took her list, walked around with a little basket, and slowly collected what was on her paper.
He came back taking each group out, wrapping them up in paper that he wrote on, setting them aside. Then when that was done he used what he wrote to calculate a final price and told her what it was.
Kate had been expecting it to cost her. She knew some of these things weren't all that easy to find, let alone keep. So maybe a few hundred but not a few thousand. Thankfully she had all of her mother's money so she paid him by using her card that wasn't a credit card. It was basically a load card. It had money in it and when that money was gone she could put more money in it or cut the card up and throw it away and start all over again.
It wasn't really all that many items but they had been costly. Yet she was pretty sure he had still more of all of them. Maybe not a lot but more so she could come back later for more.
Once back home she checked on her dad and saw that he was still sleeping in his bed. So Kate went into her room and locked the door. She opened her papers and put each herb, or bark, or whatever into each of her small, plastic, zip bags. He might use jars but she used plastic bags. They were safer to move around with.
Next was a trip to the grocery store. She needed groceries and if she could keep commanding her dad not to drink, he was going to need food.
_/\_
Kate was ready for him when he came out of his bedroom. She had real food ready and opened up her hot pad. She had a box of 24 of these things though she had only used a few. She just had to squeeze to make the chemicals interact and wrap it around her potion bottle.
He came out looking like shit. "Here, just what you need," Kate told him and watched him drink it all without conflict. Once he was done he made a face of disgust that it had tasted so terrible.
"Dinner?" Kate asked him but he shook his head.
Kate needed a couple of minutes for her potion to reach him. "Sit down and eat your dinner, Dad. That's an order." Kate grinned as he sat down and picked up his fork. He actually took a bite!
"This just might actually work." She suddenly saw light at the end of a very dark tunnel.
Once he was done she had two more orders for him. "You will not drink any alcohol and you will get up and go take a shower since you stink, Dad." Kate watched him get up and go to his bedroom.
Kate picked up his empty plate and empty glass and put them in the sink. The second she heard the shower running she ran into his bedroom and looked for clothes to wash and stripped the bed. She shook out clean sheets and put those on his bed. "There." The bed looked better though the room still stank but that was going to have to wait. Still she had to wait till he got out of the shower.
Kate put her hand over her eyes since he came back naked. "Put on clean clothes and set any alcohol you have in the kitchen sink. That's an order." Kate moved a finger aside to make sure he did as he was told and then left his bedroom.
Now she just needed to figure out what came next.
_/\_
Next turned out to be grocery shopping. Kate managed to open the door and carry in her two big paper bags full of assorted groceries. Setting them on the kitchen table she didn't see her dad. He had his orders not to drink alcohol but that didn't mean he couldn't go out and buy more for later.
Kate put everything away and went to his bedroom to see if he was still here. Once at the doorway she saw him lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling fully dressed.
Satisfied that it just might be working she went to her room and closed and locked the door. She needed to review her potion list again. She had turned him into a robot. He only did what he was told and she needed to find a different potion. There had to be something in this book she could use.
_/\_
The next day Kate had her answer. Classes at the NYC Police Academy didn't start till March and it was still January, though just barely. So she had an entire month to wait and make sure her dad wasn't drinking and turning himself back into a drunk. If she was at school she wouldn't be home to make sure he didn't go out and buy alcohol and get drunk.
This also meant she needed more potions which meant she needed more ingredients for her potion which in turn meant going back down to Chinatown and buying more of what she needed. She could tell by the jar that she was running him dry. He had maybe one more trip and he would be out as well.
Thankfully she asked for less this time so it cost her less.
_/\_
"Drink this, Dad, it's good for you." She wasn't passing it off as alcohol any longer. It was simply good for him.
Sadly she had nothing in her book meant to prevent him from drinking alcohol. The best she could come up with was ordering him not to buy or drink alcohol. She was hoping maybe the more he drank the potion, the longer it would last. If it all went well he would get used to not drinking alcohol at all and just might avoid the stuff completely.
_/\_
Today was her first day of classes at the Police Academy. It was going to last months. Sadly she didn't trust her dad just yet. She needed to do this a few times and then maybe talk him into going back to work. She was spending money and they had no money coming in. Thankfully her mother had left her a lot thanks also to her life insurance policy. But still this needed to stop.
It was just she was only 20 years old and had been in college. She really shouldn't be having to make these decisions but there was no one else.
Kate gave him a potion to drink. She could only make a few more of these so she was banking on all of them combined to do the job. Like always he was ordered not to buy or drink any alcohol at all. She left out today or any day. Maybe if she left it out it would last for days or even maybe weeks.
_/\_
Her first class hadn't been all that difficult. She came home with uniforms she was expected to wear all the time from now on. The only real hassle was that the Academy was several metro rides stops away. It was going to take time to get there and back again.
Coming home she walked in on her dad sitting in the living room, dressed and watching TV. "Dad?"
"Katie?" Jim responded.
"You look good, Dad. How do you feel?" She needed to get her uniforms into her room and get started on dinner.
"Not bad, I guess. I feel thirsty but I'm not sure for what." He was confused.
"I have several different juices in the kitchen. Let me put this away and I'll get started on dinner." Kate retreated to her room and suddenly felt like she had reason to celebrate. Still she needed to not get too enthusiastic over this. It had only been just over a month since he started drinking and she was running out of ingredients for her potion.
"Here, Dad, try this one." She gave him a glass of juice that was the strongest juice she'd bought.
Kate retreated to the kitchen to work on dinner and watched him sip it. If pomegranate juice didn't do the job she also had prune juice. After that she had red grape juice that would maybe taste like wine. She knew her parents drank wine.
"Interesting," he commented and kept sipping so Kate continued working on dinner.
_/\_
"How is it?" Kate hadn't cooked for her dad that she could remember.
"Tastes pretty good." Jim intentionally avoided talking about his wife or her teaching Katie how to cook.
"Good, you're getting skinny, Dad." Kate decided to tease him.
"I'll make sure that I don't try to be Santa in the department stores," Jim joked and Kate laughed. Her dad was actually acting normally. Still she needed to watch him and be ready to make him another potion.
_/\_
Kate came home weeks later and found her dad going through the refrigerator. He found what he wanted and pulled out a big bottle of juice. "You addicted, Dad?" Kate teased him.
"So it would appear. What's in this stuff?" Jim poured out a glass full and put the bottle back.
"It's bad for you. You'll love it. Think about all those artery hardening burgers you used to eat as a kid." Kate smiled at him and went to her room to change clothes.
Kate came back to start on dinner. "You're still going through with this Police idea, I see," Jim mentioned as he drank his drink. He was leaning against the kitchen counter.
"Yes, Dad. Someone has to solve who killed Mom. That idiot detective has no intention of trying. Someone stabbed her. Not shot her, threw her off a bridge, or the top of a building. An unarmed woman who wasn't even remotely dangerous. And why did she still have all of her money? Even her wedding rings that you gave her. Even this ring." Kate pulled it up out of her shirt. It was on a simple chain around her neck along with the other necklace that was around her neck. Her mother's ring came off at night. The other one never came off for any reason.
Kate let him finger it. Jim looked at her. "I remember that ring. You actually think this will work?"
"Are you ready to go back to work, Dad? Really ready?" He might be introduced to something at work that might change things. Make him go back to drinking again. He was just getting back to normal.
Jim shrugged. "I feel fine. I can't even remember why I even stayed home."
Kate was happy for that. There was one potion that sounded promising but she had to be selective in what she took away from his memory. Remembering what alcohol did to him. Why he had even started drinking in the first place.
It was just she was afraid that if he had even one beer all her work would go down the toilet. She was far too scared to talk to him about it. To try and keep him from drinking any kind of alcohol, even wine, was what she was afraid of. He might ask questions she couldn't answer. She was a witch and he wouldn't understand that. He was a man.
"Just promise me to eat and drink what I send you to work with in the morning. Please, Dad. You shouldn't be eating that junk. You're skinny." All that time not eating and drinking had taken its toll.
"I'll do my best, Katie." He would do what he could. At least until he was teased once too often about eating and drinking his lunch that he brought from home like a little boy long ago that his mother gave him.
_/\_
It had been weeks and for Kate everything was doing pretty well. The classes weren't that hard. Learning to use a weapon was coming up soon and that was when things were going to get really serious really fast. A weapon was meant to kill with. She wasn't sure she was cut out to shoot someone.
It was officially two months in and Kate came home where she found her dad in the kitchen drinking from a whiskey bottle. "DAD!" He was drinking again and that wasn't good.
"GIVE ME THAT!" Kate took it from him and while he complained he didn't fight back which Kate took to be a good sign. It hopefully meant he wasn't drunk yet. "Go take a shower or something and let me get started on dinner. Go, go." Kate pushed him.
Once he was gone his whiskey went down the drain. Kate retreated to her room and only took off her belt. She sighed and gathered what she needed for another potion. This was going to be her second to last potion. She was going to need more ingredients from Chinatown if he still had what she needed.
_/\_
Kate actually was working on dinner when her dad showed up looking for his bottle. "Here, drink this first." She handed him a coffee cup that didn't look or smell like coffee but she watched him drink it. And she waited a couple of minutes.
"No buying or drinking alcohol, Dad and that's an order." Kate pointed her finger at him. "Repeat that back to me."
"No buying or drinking alcohol," Jim told her.
"I mean it, Dad. No more alcohol ever." Kate pointed at him again then went back to cooking.
_/\_
Kate was hoping but was afraid they were back to square one so while her dad was watching TV after dinner she was making a different potion. She'd found this one and was hoping that if he did drink alcohol it would upset his stomach and cause him to throw up. Maybe he wouldn't drink if it meant throwing up every time.
"Here, Dad, a little pick-me-up after dinner." Kate handed over the coffee cup.
Jim thankfully drank it down and at first it looked like he liked it. Then that changed to a look of disgust. "Pick-me-up?" Jim didn't think it picked anything up. It did, however, get him up and into the bathroom to throw up.
"Oops, sorry. I forgot you already had alcohol in you. My mistake," Kate said to herself given that her dad was in the bathroom emptying his stomach of everything including his dinner.