The Sabrina Carpenter Folklore Fuck Cabin

“If you’re trying to do a terrible job,” Agatha says from her spot splayed comfortably on the kitchen floor, catching the grape in her mouth as it plummets toward the tile, “then you’re doing a wonderful job.” 

Billy lets out a bitchy little ugh, selecting a fresh grape from their dwindling bunch on the countertop. “I thought you said you had a special spell to help me beat up bad guys,” he says irritably, suspending the grape in midair. 

“Mhm,” Agatha says, lacing her hands behind her head. Surely, after so many years under her tutelage, Billy’s capable of putting the pieces together. It’s Wic-can, after all. If he’d gone and named himself Wic-can’t, they’d be wrangling a different rodeo. 

“Exactly how is this useful in a bad guy situation?” Billy says, a glow of blue magic peeling the grape’s skin from its fleshy pulp. 

Dear god. Wic-couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a map. “You know how you made me sit through seven seasons of Buffy even though the lezzies barely boinked while the straighties boinked like it was going out of style?” Agatha says. 

“Yes…?” 

Billy loses his psychic grip; Agatha gains another grape snack, chomping happily. “And you know how my fave scene was Willow flaying that guy to CGI hell?” 

“Yes. Disturbing. Why’re you talking about – ”

Through a mouthful of grape mush, Agatha gives Billy her creepiest child-eater smile. 

When the realization hits, superboy sucks in a harsh breath. Look at that! Through the power of friendship, Wic-can find his ass. 

“This is a people-flaying spell?” Billy says meekly, looking at the remaining grapes in horror.

“It’s a peeling spell,” Agatha corrects. “Point it at a grape, peel a grape. Point it at a person…you get the gist. Pretty a-peeling, don’t you think?” 

Billy starts frantically wiping his hands on his shirt like he’s Lady freaking Macbeth. Drama queen. “What if I’d missed the grape and hit you?” 

“Then we’d be hitting up your Maxi-mom to help us engineer Agatha three-point-oh,” Agatha says impatiently. The moral handwringing is putting a real damper on the fun of tricking Billy into feeding her grapes. “I’m trying to help you, kid. God forbid I jam some rejuvenating knowledge into that dried-up dad brain of yours. Can you chill out?” 

Despite Agatha’s glorious dionysian plans for her afternoon, the forecast’s never appeared less chill: with a clap of green light, a half-skeletal Rio storms through a tear in the air. 

“Hey, you,” Agatha says, her heart picking up speed as she scrambles to her feet. Today’s interdimensional outing wasn’t supposed to wrap up for hours. “Where’s – ”

Another green flashbang, this one blindingly bright. When Agatha blinks herself back into functional eyesight, her spine’s been slammed against the kitchen wall; Rio’s hand is over her mouth, removable claws slicing into her cheek. 

“Not a single word,” Rio rasps in the sandpaper-scrape of a voice that comes out when she doesn’t bother to form a larynx. She leans in, sniffing at the air with her cartilage nub of a nose. “What is that? Excoriation magic? You’re teaching him how the witches of eras past dispatched their enemies?” 

“I’m teaching him how the witches of eras now eat their grapes in style,” Agatha tries to say against the palm smushing her lips. 

Losing their shape, Rio’s pupils become jagged black streaks. “I’m walking into our bedroom,” she sandpaper-scrapes. “I’m closing the door. If you follow me, I’m excoriating the flesh from your bones in one long pasty New England ribbon.” With her free hand, Rio unsheathes her knife; drags the tip over the line of Agatha’s jaw. “No magic necessary.” 

“Hot,” Agatha says against Rio’s hand, waggling her eyebrows. 

Snarling under her breath, Rio makes good on her two-step promise – bedroom-walking, door-closing. For once, when Billy looks at her quizzically, Agatha’s fresh out of answers. What the hell was that about? 

A red clap of light briefly illuminates the room, half as bright as Rio’s green; Wanda fumbles through a new rip in reality, her face frozen in pure shock. 

“What happened?” Billy asks anxiously, hurrying over to grasp Wanda’s shoulders. “What did you guys see?” 

Rubbing her fingers over her lightly-bleeding cheek, Agatha braces herself for the answer. Million-eyed monsters? Deep-sea leviathans walking on land? At Agatha’s urging, Rio’s been taking Wanda on mini trips around the multiverse, giving the Scarlet Witch some hands-on experience in dimension-hopping. (“None of us want a baby behind the wheel,” Agatha had argued while making her case for these one-on-one seminars. “But if the bundle of joy’s already in the driver’s seat…don’t you wanna teach it how to slam the brakes?”) 

Although Agatha stands by that airtight logic – the Scarlet Witch is in dire need of interplanar training, lest she accidentally vaporize them all – she also knows that Lady Death’s lessons can be…intense. Especially when aimed toward Sokovia’s finest finger-sucking menace. What did Rio put them through this time? Does Agatha need to fetch her umbrella to endure the oncoming Wanda waterworks?

Apparently not. Meeting Billy’s concerned gaze, Wanda seems to break out of her stupor; a smile slowly splits her face, passably-witchy laughter bubbling up her throat until she’s bent over in genuine hysterics.

*************************

If there’s one thing Agatha can’t stand, it’s not being in on a joke. 

“You know how I’ve always been a font of honesty?” she says, chin in her hands. Today’s class was supposed to end in some silent reading on the history of transmutation; Agatha forgot how boring it is to watch someone else stare at a book.

Wanda looks up from said book, lips pinched in annoyance. “Uh huh?” 

“And even when I’m not, you take it upon yourself to crack my head open and scoop out whatever tragic lore I didn’t feel like sharing?” 

The lip pinch intensifies. Wanda’s going to achieve her rightful wrinkly hag status in no time. “Agatha, I’m trying to read what you told me to read.” 

“You are,” Agatha agrees. “And right in the middle of our conversation, too.”

“Is there something I can help you w – ”

“What did you see?” Agatha says, repeating Billy’s question from the day before.

It’s a question that Wanda and Rio have both repeatedly dodged. Which is, to say the least, unusual. When’s the last time the witch equivalent of water and oil shared a secret? Never. Agatha feels like she’s vibrating out of her (thankfully un-excoriated) skin. 

“Why are you hounding me instead of your wife?” Wanda says without looking up from her book.

“Uh, because that bitch is crazy. In case you haven’t noticed.” 

Wanda turns a page. Twitching her fingers, Agatha rearranges the letters to spell Tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me tell – 

“I’ve noticed,” Wanda snaps, tossing the book on the table. “Why do you think I’m not telling you?” 

“So you don’t care if I know,” Agatha muses, stroking the bridge of her nose in thought. A plausible scenario takes shape. “Was it me? Did you see an other-universe me?” 

Wanda tilts her head, chewing her lip. Thinking about how to respond. Interesting. 

“Was other-me with someone else?” A dagger of dread cuts through Agatha’s guesswork. “Oh, god – was I straight?” 

“We didn’t see you,” Wanda says carefully. 

Interesting. Had they visited the other-Wanda who had inadvertently led to real-Wanda’s first death? The one whose cowering sons had made Wanda realize that she was a couple doggypaddles past the deep end? But that doesn’t make any sense: Wanda never would’ve come back from that visit laughing. 

What sort of alt-Wanda would make her laugh, then? (What sort of alt-Wanda would get Rio in the mood for some old-fashioned flaying?) 

Something large and fuzzy starts crawling up Agatha’s leg. Biting the inside of her cheek, Agatha resists the urge to torch the intruder; as she’s grown to expect, her calf’s passenger is Rio’s pet tarantula. They never should’ve taught him how to teleport.

“Bad Bitey,” Rio scolds, appearing with a soft whoosh. “We’re working on being intentional with where we reappear. It’s a work in progress.” When she notices Wanda, the tarantula-softness of her expression disappears. “To be clear, he’s still my best student.” 

“It’d be such a shame if you lost him,” Wanda says, a smile playing around her mouth. “Do you want me to get him a collar?” 

The flash of steel is the only warning Agatha gets; her shield spell materializes in the knick of time, Rio’s dagger forced to stop half an inch from Wanda’s heart. And Wanda is laughing. Why is Wanda – 

“Tell Billy to prep his least comfortable sleeping bag,” Rio barks in Agatha’s direction, angrily plopping her tarantula on her shoulder. “I want the place to myself.” 

Agatha scoffs. If she’s gonna be kicked out, she might as well earn it. “You know, I’d expect this kind of tantrum from someone in their Terrible Two-billions, but when you’re thirteen billion years old – ”

“Out,” Rio’s voice echoes in Agatha’s head, loud enough to cause a tinnitus-like ringing. 

Agatha shuts her eyes, waiting for the soundwaves to stop ping-ponging around her skull; when she reopens them, she’s standing in the middle of Billy’s kitchen. 

“Hi, Auntie Agatha,” Alice says guiltily, who’s standing on her dads’ countertop with chocolate dust powdering her face. At four years old, she’s just tall enough to reach the high-up cabinet shelf where the Oreos are hidden. “I…am not eating cookies.” 

“Sure,” Agatha says, resting an elbow on the counter. “What are you doing, my friend?” 

Alice clearly hasn’t thought this far ahead. “Um – ”

“Because if Billy Dad were to walk through the front door,” Agatha says casually, taking an Oreo from the packet, “he’d want to know what you’re up to. Not what you’re not up to. You know what I mean?” 

Alice jams two Oreos into her mouth at once. “I’m standing on the counter,” she says, spraying Agatha’s shirt with crumbs.

“You sure are,” Agatha says, wiping her shirt. “I don’t know if Billy Dad would love that either, though. Can I tell you what I’d say, if I were you?” 

Eyes wide, Alice nods. 

“I’d say that your brother got the Oreos out, that little rascal,” Agatha says, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “But he forgot to put them away, so you’re doing him a solid. Harry never puts away his toys, does he?” 

“Ugh. Never.” 

“So it’s believable,” Agatha says, ruffling Alice’s hair. “You got that? It’s something that your dads would believe is real.” 

“Even though it’s not,” Alice says, swallowing her Oreos. 

“It’s not real until you make it real,” Agatha corrects, offering her niece another stolen cookie. “Trust me, kiddo – that’s something Billy Dad knows all about.” 

*************************

After a full week of failing to wear down either the water witch or the oil witch, Agatha convenes an emergency meeting.

“Alice and I were chatting the other day,” Agatha begins, doing her best to address both members of her audience equally. (Not easy to do. Wanda’s cross-legged on the couch; Rio’s hovering near the ceiling, arms tightly folded across her chest.) “She reminded me about the importance of healthy communication. Smart kid.” 

“Cut to the end so I can say no faster,” Rio says in a monotone, lazily spinning in place. 

“You don’t even know what I’m gonna – ”

“You want to know what we saw on our field trip. I’m not telling you.” Rio pauses mid-spin, making bored upside-down eye contact. “Meeting adjourned?” 

Agatha feels her blood pressure spiking. “The last time you two couldn’t talk things out,” she says testily, “we ended up leveling part of the great state of Massachusetts. And Wanda almost died.” 

“Which is…bad,” Rio says, her voice lilting upward in a semi-question. 

“Which is bad,” Agatha confirms. “Grudges grow like weeds. Let’s rip this one up quick and save ourselves some trouble down the line. How’s that sound?” 

“Can I make a proposal?” Wanda says, adjusting her stance to properly address Rio above her head.

Rio rights herself, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “Maybe.” 

“If we tell her,” Wanda says with a strange, hushed giddiness, “then she knows. But she doesn’t get to see. And she never, ever will.” 

Rio’s eyes narrow. “Damn it,” she says after a long, tense moment. “That’s really fucking funny.” 

“In the spirit of healthy communication,” Agatha says, her rage reaching proportions unheard of since the Darkhold days, “I’m about one vague sentence away from heading out and leveling the great state of Massachusetts myself. So if you gals could use your words to actually say something – ”

“Years ago,” Wanda starts, looking to Rio for approval. (From the ceiling, a small nod.) “Outside one of Billy’s first shows. We were talking about…preferences. You said – I don’t know, it was like – ‘I hope there’s a cooler Wanda out there with some decent taste.’” 

“Sounds like me,” Agatha says, the rage maintaining its boiling point. “So?” 

“So we found one,” Wanda says. “Not on purpose, but – ”

“You’re bad at talking,” Rio says, floating down to claim the free half of the couch. To Agatha: “I was trying to show her how to find stuff when it’s thirty thousand universes away. ‘Oh no, I forgot my keys ten planets ago,’ whatever. That way – she misplaces a kid, she can just find him. No more stomping everywhere wrecking my shit.” 

“You told her to find herself,” Agatha says, her rage giving way to mild disappointment. “The closest available bizarro-Wanda. Who eats pussy! That’s fun. Is that…it, or – ?” 

“Bizarro-Wanda has a girlfriend,” Wanda says through a cresting wave of laughter, glancing over at – 

Rio. Who’s glaring sullenly forward, tongue assaulting the inside of her cheek. 

Agatha hasn’t breathed this little since her reign as Ghost with the Most. “Bizarro-you? How – but there’s – there’s no you, you’re not – ”

“I look like a human,” Rio says, shrugging. “Flip side of that – there are humans who look like me. Not exactly, but. Pretty close.” 

Is the room spinning? It feels like the room is spinning. Agatha sinks into the nearest chair, Wanda’s annoyingly-vague statement starting to gain some meaning. She doesn’t get to see. 

“Our working theory is that my magic subconsciously reached out for both of us instead of just me,” Wanda says, giving Rio a tentative smile. “There are obviously a lot of dimensions out there. I found the singular one where someone who looks like me and someone who looks like her were – ”

“Fucking,” Rio says, her eyes boring into Agatha’s. “We were fucking. We walked in on bizarro-me and bizarro-her fucking.” 

Agatha needs to sit down. (Agatha is already sitting down.) “Huh,” she says. It’s the sound that people make when they get their cancer diagnosis. “Well. That’s – ”

“And Rio was wearing a dog collar and I was totally the top,” Wanda says in a giggly rush, bubbling herself in protective red magic.

When the luxury building’s manager is grilled on how the explosion could’ve possibly happened, he has no choice but to grasp at straws: a science experiment gone wrong, some snotty teenager’s fireworks all going off at once. What else could’ve prompted that detonation of green energy, captured by security cameras on a dozen surrounding buildings?