Patron Pudding

Mister Pudding-Pants looked down disdainfully at the brood of witches gathered around his table.

His chief minion, Mistress Jupiter Alder fretted over the group like a mouse caught in a trap. She was waving her hands and complaining yet again that the spell had failed to work.

These people knew nothing of true witchcraft. They toiled among the plain people of the world, never pulling back the curtain long or far enough to see what truly lay on the other side.

“My rose bushes!” Jupiter shrieked, glaring out her window in horror. “They’ve turned into carnations!”

Jupiter was a plain woman, with dark brown hair and a pair of thick glasses on her boring face. She wore ill-fitting, pastel activewear in a vain attempt to stand out.

“You said the incantation wrong,” Pudding’s second favourite minion, Aura Quinn, hissed.

Aura on the other hand was rail thin and gangly. She reminded Pudding of a monkey with her long limbs, ears that stuck out too far and her squish-nose.

“I just wanted them to bloom early,” Jupiter said woefully, turning back to the table.

“Enough about your flowers,” Pudding’s least favourite minion, Ryza Gerlin, shrieked. “We’ve been sitting here for hours. When can we get to my list?”

Pudding rolled his bright green eyes and suppressed a chuckle. All Ryza ever wanted to do was poison her neighbours soil and make her husband's manhood work properly again. She was the closest thing to a troll that Pudding had ever seen. She sat there sneering, just a lump of unsatisfied bitterness.

Pudding licked his black furry paw in amusement.

“Maybe we should find Pudding,” Aura said gently, her eyes searching the room.

Pudding could have slunk easily from view. He was lying atop the cupboard Jupiter kept all her old, musty blankets and hidden potions in. But he couldn’t bear the thought of actually hiding from these gruesome people. What would that say about him?

“There he is,” Ryza said, pointing up at Pudding. “Come down, you little…”

“Please,” Jupiter said, her eyes flashing wide for a moment. “There is no need to be rude.”

“He’s a cat,” Ryza spat. “What’s he going to do?”

Pudding almost laughed at that.

“I’m just saying,” Jupiter said uneasily. “We can just ask him nicely to come down.”

Ryza scrunched up her nose like she’d just smelled his litterbox.

She’d be so lucky.

Pudding waited, examining his claws slowly. There were certain protocols his minions had to live by. Rules that kept them in their proper place.

“Pudding,” Jupiter said in a song-song voice. “Would you please come down, handsome boy?”

Pudding couldn’t stop his tail swishing in pleasure. Jupiter was his favourite after all.

He stood, stretched and over exaggerated a yawn.

“Aww, big stretch,” Jupiter cooed.

“Big yawn,” Aura said sweetly.

Ryza just glared up at him. She was such an unbelievably miserable witch.

Pudding leapt deftly from his perch and landed upon the table with practiced ease.

Their pitiful effigies, piles of bones and bowls of foul liquids rocked and tittered with the impact and Pudding spun in a tight circle, letting them all get a good look at him. His tail swished through the air and knocked Ryza’s cup of tea into her lap.

Ryza shot up from her chair with a shriek and brushed the cup from her skirt where it smashed upon the floor.

“You stupid cat!” Ryza cried, reaching out for him.

Jupiter slapped Ryza’s hand, so hard it made Aura flinch in her seat.

“Well I never!” Ryza declared indignantly. “I don’t understand you at all, Jupiter. Ever since you brought that cat into this place, you have been a slave to his every whim.”

Pudding nodded to himself. Finally this witch was beginning to grasp it.

“He’s a rotten familiar,” Ryza screeched, pointing a finger at him. “I know he ate Misses Nora!”

Pudding circled once and curled up at the center of the table and began purring in satisfaction. Ryza had never really figured it out, but her stupid pidgeon familiar had been as dumb as a dog. It didn’t even have a magical essence about it. It was just a dumb, delicious bird and as far as she was concerned it had flown the coop a month prior.

To Pudding’s complete surprise, Ryza began to cast an incantation at him. A nasty one too. She sought to turn him into a slug.

Jupiter made a strangled sound, Aura pushed her chair back from the table and threw her hands up and Ryza pointed at him with one of her fat fingers and grinned as if she’d bested him.

Then her eyes went wide for a moment and with a loud pop, turned into a slug herself.

The fat mollusk slid down through the witch’s poorly organised outfit and splattered into her shoe with a wet splatch!

Aura’s eyes went wide.

“Dammit,” Jupiter breathed.

The slug slowly lifted its head from the shoe, eyestalks swivelling and undulating in displeasure.

“Did you do that?” Aura said accusatorially at Jupiter.

Jupiter’s hands fell to her side and she glared down at Ryza.

“She couldn’t just sit down and mind her own business,” Jupiter hissed and looked over at Pudding before turning back to Aura. “Ryza’s spell must have rebounded. She was a terrible witch anyway. Simply abhorrent.”

Aura’s mouth slowly fell open, but she shut it quickly.

Pudding was barely listening to them flap their gums. He was watching the slug slowly slide across the floor and to the table-leg.

“We can change her back,” Aura said, shaking her head and grinning like it was all just a joke. “We’ve done this kind of thing before.”

Jupiter glanced at Pudding, who met her eyes and tilted his head to one side, acting uncertain.

Pudding watched as the slug’s slimy head poked over the edge of the table. It slid its fat self towards the cat, who purred in delight.

“Wait,” Jupiter said, reaching over and picking up the slug before Pudding could swipe at it. She placed it on her side of the table, out of the cat’s reach.

Pudding glared at her. How dare she do that. Ryza was his prize now, just like the stupid pidgeon.

“Let’s move on for now,” Jupiter said, smiling wide. “How about we hex the other contestants of the baking contest? Three years running champion, this Sunday.” She placed a hand on Aura’s arm, attempting to calm her.

“I suppose so,” Aura said, shakily.

The slug had begun crawling towards Pudding once again. Jupiter snatched it up and placed it on her shoulder.

Pudding narrowed his eyes.

They began the incantation, however Aura could not hold it together. The magic dissipated before they were even a quarter of the way through.

“Can we not just switch Ryza back?” Aura pleaded. “She is the strongest of us. She is the backbone of our spells.” Aura was staring at the slug as it crawled up, towards Jupiter's ear. “Two can hardly make a coven,” she said.

Pudding watched as Jupiter began to simmer.

Touchy, touchy.

“I can do it,” Jupiter said harshly. “I don’t need her…” she trailed off, looking down at her feet. “And I don’t need you.”

Pudding felt a thrill as Jupiter raised her finger to point at Aura. The other witch recoiled and pointed back. Both began to shriek an incantation at the other.

Jupiter suddenly jerked, her words turned to a gurgling cry and she danced around in a circle.

Pudding laughed. The slug had crawled into her ear.

Both witches stopped suddenly to regard him.

Oh, catnip. He had laughed out loud.

“He just laughed!” Aura said, her spell forgotten.

Jupiter was still dancing about, slapping at the side of her head and making gurgling sounds.

“Who knew,” Pudding said, his voice deep and melodious. “It would take a gaggle of dumb witches to break me.”

The slug flew across the room and Jupiter shook herself and shuddered.

“Why?” Jupiter asked, incredulous. “Why speak now, when we are growing so powerful?”

“What are you talking about?” Aura hissed.

Pudding chuckled and began examining his claws. “You were a bottom of the barrel, basic witch before I came along Jupiter. Same with you, Aura. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Aura looked between Pudding and Jupiter, her eyes wide in shock.

“I came when you all needed me the most,” Pudding said, his tail swishing back and forth.

“Are you even a cat?” Aura demanded, though her voice faltered.

Jupiter winced.

“Of course I am a cat!” Pudding yowled, bristling. “I am the greatest creation this world has ever managed to muster. Egyptians worshipped us, for they knew! They understood!”

“Understood what?” Aura asked.

Jupiter rolled her eyes and sat down.

“We cats are the fount of all power in the world. We are magic incarnate, gods among lesser beings. You humans are no better than dogs!”

“He gets like this,” Jupiter said, eyeing Aura.

Pudding glared at Jupiter. “You’re quickly becoming my last favorite minion,” he hissed.

Jupiter rolled her eyes.

“All cats?” Aura asked. “All cats are like you?”

“Of course not,” Pudding spat. He couldn’t believe the gall. “I of course am the greatest cat to have ever lived… but if you're asking if all cats can speak and have been hiding it since the dawn of time then… yes. All are like me, but none are as good as I, obviously.”

Aura and Jupiter shared a look.

“So what now?” Jupiter asked. “You said the pact we made would only work if no one else knew.”

“When you rescued me from that awful place, where they kept me in a cage, I was grateful to you,” Pudding said. “When you gave me this ridiculous name I almost finished you right there on the spot, however… I have grown accustomed to it now. It has a certain regality to it. To learn you were a practicing witch, no matter how bad, I knew I could repay you. But now its over. I don’t make the rules.”

“So was it you that turned Ryza into a slug?” Aura asked.

Pudding's ears twitched and he craned his neck to see where Jupiter had splattered the slug on the living room wall.

“Of course,” Pudding harrumphed. “She started it. I was well within my rights to defend myself.”

“Who makes the rules?” Jupiter asked, her eyes growing desperate.

“The universe,” Pudding said patronizingly. “I thought you’d know this by now. Humans are sooo far behind it all.”

“I feel strange,” Aura said, holding her hand to her chest.

Pudding glanced back at the slug. Just as he thought, its slimy, splattered form on the wall was no longer there. All that was left now was a small pile of dust on the carpet below.

“It’s a shame,” Pudding said. “If you weren’t a witch, we might have lived a long and happy life together, you and I.”

Jupiter looked back at him with a mixture of emotions that Pudding hardly thought worth trying to interpret, right before she turned to dust.

“Consequences for making me laugh,” Pudding said, clucking his tongue in disappointment.

Aura opened her mouth to say something, but never got the chance as she too turned to dust.

Pudding stood and stretched slowly. Then he padded to the edge of the table and looked down at the twin piles of litter-like dust on the carpet with a mischievous grin.

“Good thing too,” Pudding said. “I was about to burst.”