5

After breakfast, Jimmy wanted to do whatever Samantha wanted to do. Be it witchly or mortal. She chose the female thing to do; she wanted to peruse the shops along the street to look at the new styles and dresses coming out whether she wanted to buy something or not. Jimmy wanted to buy her anything she wanted, but she just smiled toward him. He loved her. He would have bought her anything she wanted. If she wanted a palace in France, he would have found a way to get it for her. Her followed her like a little boy from the dress shop to another and then a furniture store where they debated buying a house, but Samantha liked the apartment. She didn't want more than that. Along their day, little things began happening… all the animals in the pet store suddenly became distracted by Samantha. They all loved her, including the seeing-eye dog that lead the blind man along. After that interesting encounter, it was for a walk through the park and toward the business district with one after another parking meter exploding as they passed them, each of them erupting almost fifty dollars in dimes, quarts and nickels. Jimmy and Samantha looked back as people watched the meters and grabbed up the free cash and free parking. Just another weird encounter they shrugged off. It was almost as if the witch and demigod side by side exuded a presence of good luck around them. A taxicab suddenly lurched and stuck to a spot as they rushed to catch it, not a single red light came up as they headed for Times Square, the smell in the lab turned to jasmine and on arrival at their restaurant, a homeless person begging for cash suddenly tore off his glasses and realized he could see. Jimmy and Samantha watched him running down the street hysterically happy. They looked at each other wondering if they were at the cause of all the good luck. When Samantha asked for baked fish for lunch, the maitre'd told them that he was out of it. A few minutes later, he asked if she was still interested because several dozen fish were suddenly flooded out of their cooler!

From there, the occurrences became more surreal, paranormal and more disturbing. During lunch, young men were suddenly noticing her much more as if her female attraction had been amplified. Even a little crying baby in a carrier stopped crying and started cooing to the surprise of his mother. From there, Jimmy and Samantha visited a few more stores. The entire time, all the mannequins turned toward Samantha's presence to acknowledge her, and when they crossed that way again, they were suddenly all blonde and resembled her! It was right there that Jimmy suspected it might not be them but just Samantha. His suspicion was confirmed when they hailed a taxi and the back passenger door came off in Samantha's hand, spooking the cab driver so badly that he drove away at top speed. When the subway stalled, Samantha casually asked how long it would be for the power to return and the power came on, skipped two stops and took them to their stop. Everyone departed that subway right there calling it "haunted," but then it broke down again and didn't move for three hours. And then there were the voices… Samantha was suddenly hearing the thoughts of everyone and anyone. It started in the restaurant of twenty people, she was hearing the voices of more than a hundred, probably more than a thousand, thinking, planning, conspiring, plotting… It became really bad in the subway where she had to cover her ears from the voices in her head. Jimmy then rushed her home to deal with her headache of voices and conversations from across the city.

"Samantha, what's going on?" He guided her in to the apartment.

"I don't know!" She held on to the wooden staircase to their bedroom as leaves and branches started bursting from the processed and stained wood fixture, bringing it to life and forcing it to burst with flowers, leaves and branches. She jumped back from the phenomenon. Even when she stopped touching it, it continued growing a few seconds more, turning into a bush in the shape of the staircase banister.

"Is this a new spell?"

"Jimmy, I'm not doing this!" Samantha swore to him. "Witch's honor!" She gave him her word with the witch's gesture of honesty, her two fingers placed to her face as a solemn vow.

"Did you eat anything weird?" He watched her holding her hands over her ears to try and block out the voices. She walked forward into the apartment, the skies outside over the city getting darker as the weather reacted to her pain and discomfort.

"No, I had toast, eggs, bacon, juice and blueberries just like you this morning." She reached to him once again wanting his support, but as she turned to him, she was easily taller than him by two inches and she noticed it too. Whatever was affecting her was having an even bigger effect on her physical appearance!

"Did you shrink?" She asked.

"Samantha, this isn't good." Jimmy was looking at her up and down. Her skirt was now a miniskirt and her sweater was turning into a t-shirt as her body continued to develop and become much more voluptuous. She looked as if she were smuggling honeydew melons on her person!

"Jimmy!" Her eyes rounded in terrified shock, she started losing it "What's happening to me?!"

"Samantha…" He approached her and held her by her arms to look at him. "You are losing control over your witchcraft! Think! Did you eat, drink, touch anything this morning or at the party last night?!"

"Jimmy, we've eaten the same things since we got married." She looked at him. "How do I know where your food comes from?!" She looked at her body and felt violated. In the mirror, she even looked younger. It was as if she had turned back to her teenage years and took another road to adulthood, one more bosomy and obvious!

"Samantha, I don't like what you're implying." Jimmy turned worried and confused. "It comes from the market. It's not made or cooked any different than any other mortal cuisine. None of my other wives ever…"

"Jimmy…" Samantha had a revelation. She recalled the Kravitz couple. "Jimmy, I had a slice of pie while you were in the shower! Your neighbors, the Kravitz, they brought it over!"

"Neighbors?" Jimmy tuned confused after looking out to the terrace. "I don't have any neighbors. My sisters rent the other apartments on this floor!" He turned through the swinging door to his kitchen and looked around and in his icebox for the pie. He looked around once and over looking for the incriminating pie and headed back to Samantha staring in disbelief at her flawless reflection in the mirror and her tight sweater. "Samantha, think! Were they golden apples?"

"They were baked in a pie! I didn't notice!"

"By Odin's beard!" Jimmy realized the truth. "Samantha, I think one of my relatives slipped you golden apples! They're baked into ambrosia! Olympian wine is distilled from them. Samantha, they provide the youth and immortality of the gods!"

"I'm becoming immortal?!"

"I don't think your witchcraft likes it either!" Jimmy looked at her unsure what to do. "It's like… you've been switched a flashlight battery for a nuclear battery. Your power level is going to keep going up and up and up…"

"Doctor Bombay, come right away!" The frightened blonde witch called for her family witch doctor. Unprepared by the strong-armed magic, the poor doctor was lurched from his English home and toward the New York City apartment. There was no trying to ignore her. He was there one minute and gone the next. He appeared in her presence with a bolt of lightning, abducted by powerful magicks that left him just a bit overwhelmed and disoriented.

"Cobblestones and copper pots, Samantha!" He staggered on his feet. "Where did you get such a powerful…" He turned to face her and looked her over up and down from her centerfold figure, her longer blonde hair and to her incredible long legs. "Well, you're looking very… healthy!" He turned to Jimmy. "I get the feeling you had something to do with this?"

Jimmy just folded his arms disgusted and shot the good witchdoctor a nasty look.

"Doctor Bombay," Samantha turned from the mirror. "I accidentally ate some apples from the Garden of the Hesperides!" She got it right; she knew the tales from mythology. "I'm turning into a god! You've got to stop it!"

"I don't have that capability!" He couldn't stop looking at her new figure. "My lord, Samantha! I treat witches, not immortals… This is beyond my power!" He smirked with a twitch of his mustache. "Look at it like this, you might be better off as an Immortal. You'd no long fall under any of those nasty spells and hexes that mortal wizards and sorcerers let loose after us."

"Dr. Bombay!"

"You better be careful." Jimmy spoke to Bombay. "She could turn you into a fly and feed you to a pigeon."

"Right-O!" Bombay understood that warning. "Samantha, sit here, left elbow up, deep breath…" He took out a tuning fork, tapped it against her elbow and was distracted by her chest taking the breath. "She sure gets a lot of air in there, doesn't she?" He looked to Jimmy with a dirty grin.

"Doctor!"

"Yes…" Bombay turned professional again. "Spells and hexes, power of nightshade and wolfsbane, free this witch of all her mortal pain, restore herself, right as reign…" A burst of lightning off Samantha tossed him across the living room, off the fireplace mantle and dropped him to the floor. His wife jumping to her feet after realizing what she had done, Jimmy hastened over to the doctor and started lifting him up to his feet.

"Sixth floor - belts, sashes, shoes, boots and old coots…" Bombay mumbled out of it and collapsed again on to the sofa.

"Jimmy!" Samantha looked to him then her husband. "Don't you have a doctor or something?"

"Yeah, my cousin, Asclepius…" He wondered why he hadn't thought of him further. "Last I heard, he was doing relief work in Ethiopia… but Imhotep is much closer. He's a doctor in Chicago…" Samantha's parents suddenly appeared in bursts of light with her cousin Serena. Just a minor thought on how she was going to tell her family, and Samantha had unwittingly commanded them to her presence with her growing godhood. She had plucked them out of conversations, social gatherings and other worldly parties. Just a minute ago, Serena was wooing several beaus and now she was in a Park Avenue apartment in New York City.

"Sammy," She screeched with that annoying voice. "I was dating!"

"Samantha, you snatched me out of a meeting with…" Endora came closer to her daughter. "Why do you look different?"

"Mother," Samantha didn't know how to say it. She looked from Jimmy to her mother. "I'm becoming immortal." She tensed up from the explosion. She feared her parents' wrath on her husband.

"James, my boy!" Maurice was bursting with pride. "You made my daughter a god like yourself! I couldn't be more proud of a son-in-law who…."

"Daddy!" Samantha screeched as the New York sky reacted with her temper and cracked with lightning.

"Imagine the looks of our friends when I tell them Samantha is immortal!" Endora was ecstatic. "The Contessa will be so green…"

"Mother!"

"Folks, look…" Jimmy took charge. "Samantha doesn't want this. She needs control over her magic again."

"If she doesn't want it…" Wearing a slinky black-feather dress, Serena came up alongside Jimmy and noticed how much her blonde cousin had developed. "Can I have it?"

"Hecate help us all…" Endora did not want her flighty niece in control of that much power. The girl was the daughter of Maurice's sister, Enchantra, but she was not exactly all there.

"Not going to happen…" Bombay shook the delirium and confusion out of his head and stood back up. "Samantha's witchcraft and sudden immortality are incompatible. Literally speaking, Samantha is having a mystical conniption fit trying to control rival energies beyond her control!" Bombay realized. "Forgive the blasphemy, but witches are incapable of controlling mystical energies on a godly level!"

"Oh my stars…" Samantha looked at her hands. There were volts of electricity jumping from her fingers like small flashes of light dancing from fingertips. Two to three sparks at a time jumped from one finger to another in separate directions from her middle finger to her thumb, from her index finger to her finger and when her hands were too close, they both started cracking with balls of tingling static force waiting to become lightning bolts. It was a lot of power. She almost liked it, but when she lifted her eyes to Jimmy, they were full of tears…

"Jimmy…" She reached to him out of love and he exploded from her embrace, getting tossed across the room and bouncing off the wall with smoke burning from his clothing. Serena watched him leave a hole in the wall as he hit the floor.

"Dr. Bombay!" Endora narrowed her eyes to him. "You're a doctor, do something!"

"I am…" Bombay looked at her with worry and fear. "I'm doing what the Clantons should have done and getting the hell out of Dodge!" He gestured to teleport once, twice, three times and realizing he was not re-materializing anywhere else. "Confound you, Samantha, you're still grounding me here! You and your crazy godhood!"

"Dr. Bombay…." Maurice looked at Samantha wandering back and forth unsure what to do. "You're our family witch doctor. Tear some of those energies from our daughter and restore her to normal this instance or else I'll ruin your reputation across the cosmos!"

Bombay looked to Samantha on the floor wanting to help Jimmy but scared of touching him. She was crying emotionally distraught over so many things. Her powers were out of control, her husband was out cold on the floor and her body had been replaced by a six-foot-tall Playboy Playmate centerfold. Serena dropped down next to her as a brunette example of what her size and shape used to be.

"Sammy, does he have a twin brother?" She asked.

"My good, man…" Bombay stood face to face with Maurice. "I do not respond to blackmail…"

"I'll tell your wife you've been fooling around with your nurses…" Endora tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention.

"Threats, however, are something different…." Bombay was however afraid of Endora. He shooed Serena away from her new six-foot-tall cousin tending to her unconscious husband on the floor; Samantha looked up to him distraught, distressed and terrified as her own powers turned against her. Her own mind was reaching levels of enlightenment she had never experienced. Her once blue eyes were completely white and glowing and when she looked up, she saw levels and planes of existence around her. She could see through the world. Ghosts and spirits all around her, a universe teaming with life, people upstairs and downstairs in the beginning around her, the lives of millions around her for over hundred miles… her consciousness was tapping the life force of the universe.

"Young witch blonde and fair…." Bombay chanted over her. "Once a mortal from your feet to your hair… Shed this form which has bewitched you, become your true self, I beseech you!"

Samantha's body once again exploded as protection against the incantation tried on her. Everything turned a blinding white light and her family members were hurled around her beyond her control. When she looked down, she realized she wasn't touching the floor. She was levitating off the floor. Rings of power were cracking across her body up her legs and down her arms. Her breath rushing, her heart pounding with the fury of a thunderstorm, she looked to her parents at her feet then over to her husband groaning in pain. She had actually hurt him!

"You know… I don't think that did it…" Bombay tried lifting his head.

"Really, what was your first sign?" Serena rose after landing on her chest.

"Samantha!"

Levitated a foot off the floor, she had become pure light. Her long tresses of hair waving from the beats of energy flowing through her, she lifted her ands up to see them. They were perfect white, illuminating in the darkness of the cloudy and stormy sky covering the city. A pulse of lighting crackled from her heart and pulsed from her fingers. The voices in her head were not as bad, but she felt almost at peace… When she looked upon her family and doctor, she felt as if she knew them, but not quite… She was an Immortal without worshippers, energy trapped in a physical form, a force of nature that could do anything it wanted… All the power pouring through her, her body tingling with energies, she felt unstoppable… she could do anything! Extreme power was hers if she could contain it.

"Samantha…" Prostrate on the floor, Maurice looked at his daughter. Her unearthly white face was glowing from within, her hair pouring out from her head as undulating waves of forces resonating from the explosions of magic within her. She held her hands up to see them. They were white to bright yellow in color, surrounded in dull yellow light permeating off her skin. Within the light were flickers of electricity crackling off of her in short and quick bursts. Reaching to her face, she looked at her reflection in the picture frame over the fireplace. She had no features, no discernible eyes and her long blonde hair was little more than an aura of flame around her body.

"Jimmy…" She was reaching to her husband at her feet. Her voice had no reverb to it. It sounded like an echo from her ethereal lungs. "Jimmy… What's happened to me?" He was still out cold from the blast he took from her. She looked to her doctor and family. They looked scared to death of her.

"No!" She screeched an unearthly shriek and struck her arm skyward… exploding into nothing but energy collapsing into a pinhole of light that blinked out as fast as she vanished.