(This was published in the zine Shallow Waters by Crystal Lake Publishing. It’s behind a paywall, but I figured it’d be all right to share with you, my fan.)

by Richie Narvaez

1. Love Spells Are No Substitute for Listening.
So, you and your spouse feel like you’re just roommates now, sitting on the couch, scrolling on your phones, while the TV plays content neither of you wants to watch. She’s bored. You’re bored.

You could talk to her about what she’s going through, be open about what you’re feeling, try to repair your relationship.

But instead you go to that botanica store you pass every day on the way home, a mysterious vestige of the neighborhood’s past. Paintings, statues, candles of sad-eyed saints and bloodied Christs cover every surface inside, which is tiny, cramped, smelling of sage, cigar smoke, sulphur dioxide.

The lady smoking behind the counter sells you an elixir. It’s fifty bucks, which you think is pricey. In the end it might’ve been cheaper to see the marriage counselor your wife—let’s call her Alicia—found on DocFinder and asked you to contact.

2. Dark Magic Can Backfire.
At the botanica, you—let’s call you Albert—had asked the lady for something to turn you in the man you used to be, the man who won Alicia’s hand in marriage years ago.

Swallowing said elixir, you follow the lady’s instructions, chant into the mirror, “Let her love me again, as I once was.” You feel silly, but you’ve a marriage to save, after all.

Shimmer-shimmer, the magic makes you twenty-five again. Hair fuller, face less jowly. You don’t have a six pack now but you didn’t have one when you were twenty-five. Still, maybe she’ll notice and say, “Did you lose weight?”

And you’ll proudly say, “Been working out.”

But she’ll say, “I hope you’re not sick because there’s something going around.”

Sure, you can climb the stairs without wheezing again. But she doesn’t come near you, still spending hours on her phone, giggling at something, and when you ask, “What’s so funny?” she’d say, “Oh, you wouldn’t be interested.”

By next full moon, you’re back to your old self, meaning your old self, not your younger self, just to be clear.

3. Enchantments Can’t Replace Emotional Growth.
You go back to the botanica and beg for help. The nice lady says, “Well, there is this book.” You have to run to the ATM to get enough cash to pay for it, but you get it—a barely held-together faux leatherback, pages taped and stapled, possibly bloodstains inside. And you see something right away that gives you an idea.

Alicia has always wanted to go to a Disney resort, and you could never stand the idea, but marriage takes sacrifice, as does the spell you want to cast, in this case of a live chicken. You slice its neck, say the spell, and then, as soon as you voice your intended destination, you realize you’ve made a big mistake: “Magic Kingdom.”

Too late. The sky reeks of brimstone, and everyone is yelling and chopping. No enchanting costumed characters here. You and the wife witness an entire village pillaged and burned to the ground. Your stay is for two weeks, but you’re lucky enough to find a boulder to shelter behind and some burnt protein you ask no questions about.

Back home, you’re more estranged than ever. And without a souvenir.

4. You Gotta Know Your Stuff.
In the book of spells, you try the one meant to “spark a flame of life in the heart of the one you love.” This requires yet another chicken, and Bell & Evans won’t do. You get another live one at a petting zoo, and do the spell, and—well, Alicia doesn’t change.

You realize dark magic spells really need to be precise. Maybe it was your pronunciation, maybe it was your focus. But—

—your PlayBox video game controller can suddenly move on its own—and it leaps off the couch and waddles over very slowly, as best its can, to where you are standing, waiting for your wife to love you, and it rubs its toggles against your ankle, massing you as a cat would.

5. Enchanted Love Has Needs Too.
With a little trial and error, you finally aim your spell in the right direction, and there she is, Alicia, finally, entirely focused on you, her phone nowhere in sight.

However, she is glowing green and she banshee screeches whenever you’re not in sight. She also eats the pets and all the plants.

You reverse the spell, she stops glowing, picks up her phone, and then asks if you can walk the labradoodle. The game controller toggles its toggles at you with excitement, so you put a leash on it and go to the park.

6. It Might Just Magnify What’s Wrong.
Did you make errors in judgment before? Dark magic just might make them worse.
Like, thinking that what will save your marriage is children. You haven’t had luck in that department, but lo and behold there is a spell for that. You decide on three kids, so there’ll be around for ages.

Alas, what you summon are soulless husks who crawl along the floor, bang on pipes, hide in the walls, all the while giggling insanely. But maybe Alicia will find them charming in some way, since they are literally part of both of you (having been manifested from hair and nail clippings).
But when you go to show her, all you find is an empty room and a goodbye note.

7. Dark Magic Can Make You Go, Well, Dark.
Eventually, Alicia calls and tells you she’s now living with her work friend—let’s call him Diego—and she admits that they’re lovers now. And rather than trying to work things out, you turn your TV into an all-seeing crystal ball, and stalk the both of them constantly.

You do this until you get upset enough to cast a killing spell. But you’ve had too much bourbon and it goes astray (see #4), and it ends up killing your animated game controller, whom you had named Gamey and to whom you had grown quite close.

8. At the End of the Day, It’s Not Real.
You received a surprise visit from Diego, who says he  knows what you’ve been up to. It wasn’t hard to figure out from the magic kingdom vacation and also from the soulless children wailing behind you. He says he knows you love your wife, but that your effort to capture her heart with magic is false because it removes her power of choice. That kind of love could never be genuine.

You nod, listen to his earnest words until he is finished—and then you recite the spell that explodes his flesh into a million atoms. It takes weeks to clean up the doorway, and you have to get a new welcome mat.

9. You’re Not the Only One with Access to Dark Magic.
Grimoires are easily available online for cheap, your wife can easily find one, and just as easily she can find a way to get back at you for what you did to her Diego.

You, Albert, get turned into a pink jewelry box—she’d always asked for one, but you asked what was wrong with her top drawer—and you are placed in her bedroom, facing the bed, where she and the magically reanimated Diego go at it like preternaturally enhanced rabbits.

10. Sometimes It’s Best to Move On.
Eventually, Alicia brings you back to your place, turns you back into you, and asks quietly, calmly for a divorce.

You think of casting a spell, to destroy herself or yourself or both. You think of drowning yourself in bourbon. But you do none of these things. You agree to get a lawyer, and you part ways relatively peacefully.

Could you have avoided all this by avoiding dark magic? Duh. But you decide to make the most of it, reanimating the game controller and learning to love the sounds of your spectral children giggling underneath the floorboards.