This one is a prequel to the Mutant Cyborg Witch one, but that's more of an easter egg than anything. This just shows how that dystopia got started. As always I dig feedback! I think this one is too dark.

My Kofi: https://ko-fi.com/timeraft

My archive: https://www.reddit.com/r/ASMRScriptHaven/comments/x9hb9v/script_archive/

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Dialogue in plain text

Context in italics

SFX in bold

context that changes the audio in bold italics.

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In a world not unlike rural America during the great depression the town grocer has gone bankrupt. This has made them unable to pay back the witch that made their prosperity possible. Now the bill has come due.

Grocer knocks

Come in!

The witch is a glamorous flapper girl type. She's sitting alone in a conspicuously empty office. Drinking tea. They great the grocer as an old friend

Good to see you again Mr. Grocer. Would you care for tea?

Listener refuses and she’s a little hurt

No? Very well.

I’d ask you what brings you here but I already know.

I was saddened to hear about your general store. Are you and your daughter holding up ok?

I warned you last year that this was going to happen. The landlords were not going to tolerate the unionization of the tenant farmers. Between the drought, the price of beef, and the agitation. They were going to break the leases and just use the land to graze cattle. The tenant farmer system is on its way out to begin with. And there goes the town, and there goes your customers and there goes your store. I guess if nothing else all these people get a clean break. Still though it's hard to watch them pile into their cars and go out west, nothing to their names, nothing to show for their lives in this town. They’re just castaways now.

I warned you, but you wouldn't listen. You had something to prove I guess. Daddy issues maybe?

It doesn't matter I guess.

This sort of thing always happens in broken towns like ours. We're not as young as we used to be, we should know that by now.

Come a little bit closer, I see you so rarely. Let me touch your cheek, like you used to.

She runs her hand down their face

I envy you, you know? I have to hide the bags under my eyes, the greying of my hair, and the tired countenance of my cheeks. And yet you get to wear them proudly. You're so rugged and hard now, like a hickory tree. I remember the jolly young man, whose boyish face couldn't hide their dreams. You're not the same man I used to know. I wonder if that's my fault in a way.

Sorry, I get wistful sometimes. The face of an old friend can do that to me.

So do you have my money?

Grocer places some cash on the table and she counts it.

Six hundred seventy three dollars.

You’re short by about three hundred. I shouldn't need to remind you that you agreed to pay me one thousand and one in exchange for my assistance this year. Just as you have for the last decade.

That's all you have?

sigh

Then I guess I’ll have to collect the collateral.

Grocer beseeches them to let them go

Oh stop your pleading, you signed the contract. Don't embarrass yourself.

You’re asking me to take this and let you go? This is only sixty Seven Percent of what you owe me Mr Grocer.

Oh sorry Sixty Seven Point Three. You know what, let's round up and call it seventy. You’re still short.

She stands

Explain to me why I should accept less than what was agreed upon. Were my services unsatisfactory?

Our agreement. In exchange for one thousand and one dollars I would use my magic to give you a year and a day of prosperity. We signed it in the moonlight on the crossroads out where old highway sixty one meets dockery road.

We renewed it every year, you know the ins and out of it. You pay me or I take the collateral. Did you think I wasn't serious?

I don't understand why you can't seem to wrap your head around this! I want what I’m owed. I’m going to have to leave town too, you know. I’m going to have to go to the big city.

And besides I’ve seen how you treat the people that are in your debt.

You hound and squeeze them. You insist that they honor your agreements to the letter. And you were perfectly happy to take advantage of the fact that you were the only place in town they could buy anything. The friendly neighborhood grocer, always willing to extend a loan if they couldn't cover it all in one go.

I bet before you came here you went around to all these people that had just lost their livelihoods to collect every cent they owed you! Hoping and Praying that it would be enough! You were out there squeezing people that had just lost everything.

And when you come up short, you ask me for something you never gave anybody else. You ask me to accept less than what I’m owed, when you yourself never would.

I didn't cast a spell to give you only seventy percent of a year's prosperity. I delivered the full measure.

And you would deny me

When that cholera outbreak happened I didn't put only seventy percent of a purification rune on your well. I gave you the full measure. You made a mint selling that clean water.

And you would deny me.

When that gang of robbers held up your store I didn't return seventy percent of what they stole from you. I returned to you the full measure. There's five graves out there just across the county line, the graves of men that died screaming because you paid me to make sure nobody ever stole from you.

And you. would. deny me.

When your daughter took ill. I didn't only heal seventy percent of her. I gave you the full measure. There were a dozen sick children quarantined in that schoolhouse. She was the only one who made it out. Did you think that a coincidence? Twelve for one, that was the price of that magic. It's tragic, but I had a deal to uphold.

And you would deny me!

Oh you didn't know about that? All you people that come to me are the same. So unprepared for the consequences. You act as if my magic is some unholy dark force-which it is, but you think just because you didn't cast the spell your hands are clean. You played with something you shouldn't have, and now you must pay the price. I have no sympathy for you. I am a witch and I am not to be denied.

Keep the money. I will collect the collateral.

Where is your daughter?

The grocer starts begging

Get off your knees, I won't be swayed by begging.

The grocer offers themselves up instead

Why would I take you instead? This was the contract. I’m disgusted by the fact that you’d put your own flesh and blood up for collateral like that, but I am not paid to judge morality. Its too late to come to your senses.

Sigh

I’ll tell you what.

I like you. We have a history, I'll acknowledge that. You’re probably the closest thing I have to a friend in this town. You were my first client, and until today my best. That counts for something with me. So I'll give you one more deal. I know you're not a gambling man, but why don't we test your luck?

They whip out a deck of cards and shuffle it

Lets play a hand. If you win, you get the collateral back.

If I win I keep it.

And I get you.

You become mine to do as I see fit. Those are the terms, double or nothing.

Deal?

Listener nods

Very well

I place three cards out here, from the top of the deck.

Flip

Ten cups stacked on a table. The Ten of Cups.

Flip

A young knight in black armor, drenched in the blood of his enemies. The Jack of swords.

Flip

A pale woman standing in a graveyard. The Queen of Spades.

Flip

Now we draw two.

How does your hand look? You can fold if you want.

Very well then, and so we go.

Listener throws their cards down

Not bad, not bad. The eight of wands and the nine of swords.

A straight, those are rare, but I have you beat.

She throws down hers

The King of Cups. And the nameless card. The pale rider who tramples them all, beneath the black flag and the white rose.

Death.

The Ten, the Jack, the Queen, the King, and the one that makes them all equal. The ultimate hand. I win, I get you both.

Listener desperately attempts to run out of the office

No running. VOURAIKNOS

She casts a spell freezing the listener in place

You know I held you in high esteem, but this is pathetic. I never would have thought when I made this deal with you that when push came to shove you were just a slimy worm, trying to writhe your way out of your responsibilities. You really have changed.

Perhaps I’ll make you into one for real? A small slimy worm, shrivelling into dust in the heat.

I have that right now. You belong to me. I think that's sunk in hasn't it?

She pins them against the wall. She's angry.

One word. One word and I can end you. Wipe away your ugly little life. And there's a voice in my head screaming at me. Telling me to do it. To do one good deed, wipe out a sketchy loan shark that risked his own child's life for his pride! but we both know I don't have the right.

For all my lecturing and moralizing I’m just as bad as you are, and there's far worse out there than either of us. You’ll be spared for now

The pinning ends

If it eases your mind any I’m not going to do anything to your daughter. Frankly I just believe she deserves a parental figure that wouldn't ever put her life at risk for their own gain, and I’ll be happy to fill that role.

We leave tonight. For the big city. Out there there's a man like you in every office, in every precinct, in every church, in every debating hall, from the hill to the gutter. Desperate men willing to make deals with a creature like me.

We’re flocking there in droves. People like me. To a land of desperate broken fools who will happily do whatever it takes to get what they want. Whose hearts have been replaced by cannibal dynamos. For whom no price is too steep to achieve a position of power and prominence. Just. Like. You.

My clients will climb to the highest echelons of society, and so will the clients of my rivals. Everyone with power will rely on a witch to maintain their power. And when you rely on me for your power? Well I guess that power isn't really yours is it?

Its been a long time since I cut myself down from that hanging tree. A new world is starting, a world of technology and cutthroat competition. A world of machine gods that demand sacrifice. A world where everything can be had for the right price. And in this world I’ll be as a queen, just like the ones in that deck.

Chuckle

Perhaps I’ll call myself the queen of cups, that has a nice ring to it doesn’t it?

And as for you?

She kisses them on the cheek forcefully

That’s a curse mark. Let me show you how it works

ENKAVMA

The listener is overcome with incredible pain. They fall onto the ground. She leans down and gloats

You feel that? That overwhelming pain, like you're burning alive and frozen in ice? That's the curse mark. That's how I’ll keep you in line.

You understand?

Good

DIA KOPTO

Pain ends

When I reach the city, I’ll need somebody to do my legwork. Somebody to help me out. A cringing servant. You’ll be my goon.

I think I’ll take your voice while I’m at this.

SIO PHI

Don’t worry you won't be needing it. I’ll be speaking for you from now on.

We’re going to take your daughter and take the train tonight. She’ll fall asleep on the train, and when she wakes she won't remember you. I’m going to raise her as my own. I’m going to keep her out of all of this darkness, so I can have one good thing in my life. One thing to keep me at least a little bit human. And if you ever try and so much as smile at her I'll make the pain from that curse mark seem like a warm bath.

I’ll keep her safe from everything. She’ll be the one white rose rising above a valley of thorns, I’ll lock her away in a tower, a paradise. She’ll never know hunger or fear or pain. And I’ll be to her what you should have been.

Now get up. My bags are over there. We have a train to catch. There's nothing for me here anymore.

-30-