Chainsaw Wicca Cheerleaders
by Perri Pagonis

 The Fairfax Ravens varsity high school football team was abysmally bad in the fall season of 1995; they were completely screwed-up in every facet of the game’s planning, development and execution on the playing field that unfortunate year. They’d lost their first three home games that they’d played in that frosty September by scores of 31-0, 21-0, and 45-6. The one touchdown that appeared on their side of the scoreboard in their third contest was a complete accident, as the opposing team’s second string running back, while completely hammered on Colt .45 malt liquor and cheap blotter acid, got turned around on an option play and ran into the wrong end zone, unintentionally scoring the Ravens’ only points so far that season.

With seven games left to play that year, and five of those contests being on the road, it looked like things were going to go from incredibly bad to incredibly worse for the inept players and their befuddled coaching squad. The one positive thing that had happened with the Ravens football club that semester, the one thing that kept the handful of school and community supporters coming to the games, had nothing to do with the team’s players or coaching staff. It was their dazzling cheerleading squad, the cosmetically perfect, mind-bogglingly beautiful, high stepping support group, the Ravenettes, that kept the local people attending the one-sided scoring massacres.

The twelve pompom shaking, baton-twirling, hip-twisting sirens were a joy to watch as they flawlessly performed dance routines, did eye-popping gymnastic feats, and effortlessly bounded into human pyramids for the crowd that had little else to cheer about when the Ravens were on the pitch. The appreciative audience in the stands craned their necks and stood on tip-toe as the resplendent troupe performed, and loudly cheered the choreographic work of the dozen girls, whistling and shouting with glee as they executed their various exercises.

But little did the adoring crowd know that their beloved Ravenettes practiced Pagan ritual, black witchcraft in their free time, and they did this cabalistic activity with great success in its metaphysical application and ensuing results. That is to say, when the troupe was not engaged with their shimmying dance routines or doing their Trigonometry homework.

Calista Taylor, head cheerleader of the Ravenettes, was undoubtedly the most powerful dark arts practitioner of the dozen letter-sweatered wicca, and, ergo, became the one who led their suburban coven in conducting their supernatural activities. Earlier in the year, she’d discovered that three grungy senior classmen, who were majoring in studies like lawnmower repair, masonry and afternoon bong hits, had been sexually harassing some of the freshman Junior Varsity drill team squad after their daily practice sessions.

By consensus, the dozen wicca knockouts cast a punishing spell on the perpetrators, and dispatched a lesser demon from somewhere around the fifth circle of Perdition after the witless trio. One night in late September, during a evening session of drinking and debauchery, the three goons were set upon by a an otherworldly devilish visitor. Their housefly-covered carcasses were discovered the next morning hanging upside-down from the rafters of the school’s basketball court. The corpses were naked, skinned, eviscerated, toothless, and had meager erections emanating from their garroted mid-sections. The Junior Varsity drill team had no more incidents of harassment, haranguing, or cat-calling from their audiences for the remainder of the ’95 season.

But now Calista Taylor and her dangerously cute crew had a new, bigger interest in mind. While the dozen girls were noshing pizzas and drinking cherry cokes at a local Pizza Hut restaurant, it was decided to do something drastic about their feckless football team, the miserable Ravens, and their inability to produce a mark in the win column. It was concluded by the squad that drastic measures needed to be taken in order to reverse the luck of their ineffectual football team.

That meant only one thing for the clutch of fetching sorceresses.

Namely, that there was soon to be some big juju activity in suburban Fairfax county for the comely and fair Ravenettes. The girls also knew something extra would be required for a spell of this magnitude to be successful in its application. They would need a good quantity of fresh male blood for this cunning spell to have a chance of success. They would need a willing, sacrificial human guinea pig for this piece of preternatural work to prevail.

They knew just who to pick for the job.

Tim Locke, the caricaturishly-suited, on-field mascot of the Ravens, had particularly adored head cheerleader Calista since they’d attended elementary school together. The small, red-haired teenager would don his enormous, garishly proportioned, Fellini-esgue looking bird costume during the games and hop, scamper, caw, dance, and flap his papier-mâché wings in agitation as the team went through their series of downs on the playing field.

The adoring young man’s worship of Calista Taylor was singular in its authenticity. He had no interest in football, or even understood the rules of the game, but did this weekly humiliation only to be near his beloved, pompom waving sweater-girl. When he was approached by several of the Ravenettes to have lunch with the entire cheer leading troupe at the local Taco Bell restaurant that week, he nearly swooned in ecstasy at their invitation, and wildly agreed to dine with them at the southwestern cuisine fast-food eatery.

Tim Locke looked like a high school-aged global power-broker as he walked into the franchise restaurant with no fewer than six pristine, gleaming, mini-skirted cheerleaders on each arm. They placed themselves at a large family table in the back of the place, and merrily noshed their delicious fajitas, enchiladas, chips, salsa and cherry cokes with zeal and enjoyment.

Calista sat next to the ecstatic Tim while they consumed their repast, casually brushing her hip against his, touching him on the shoulder while speaking to him, and holding his gaze firmly in her eyes as they conversed on various subjects. Her coquettish behavior was driving the young man to near distraction as he chewed on his giant-sized, perfectly-crafted, seven-layer taco.

The topic of the Ravens’ dreadful season record came up in conversation near the end of their meal. The stunning girls exhaled a group sigh of disappointment as they chatted about how they’d do anything to help the team score a touchdown, let alone win a game. Calista was now holding Tim’s hand in hers and staring deeply into his stunned eyes as she asked him, sotto voce, to please help them with a somewhat unconventional plan to help augment the chances of a Raven’s win in the upcoming game. The young man agreed instantly to do anything his heartthrob desired of him, and Calista Taylor breathed a gasp of relief at his acquiescence to her request. The attending Ravenettes squealed and cooed in delight as they welcomed the new, unsuspecting teen into their diabolical ranks.

It was decided by the group to meet that evening at cheerleader Jill Hart’s house at 8:00. Her father, Doctor Rick Hart, had a large basement with a variety of entertainments contained within: a ping-pong and snooker table, various video games, and a 50" television were available for the girls to use whenever they decided to convene at the residence for parties or merely to hang-out and talk. Also, Dr. Hart kept various unused pharmaceutical samples and discarded medical supplies in the downstairs utility room of his grandiose home for his own personal purposes.

At eight o’clock sharp, Tim Locke and the Ravenettes appeared at the door of the Hart residence. They were greeted by beautiful Jill, and whisked downstairs to the rumpus room where the preparations would begin for the witless mascot’s first bloodletting procedure.

After watching some evening game shows and drinking long neck bottles of Budweiser beer, Calista entered the basement’s utility room, and emerged with an intravenous needle, rubber tourniquet and feed tube, and empty blood donor reservoir bag. Soon she was conferring to Tim all of the intimate secrets of their clandestine cheerleading coven, and inferred to the young mascot how it was a true token of esteem for him to be chosen to assist them in their activities. She embraced the trembling boy like an age-old lover, and sensually brushed her lips over his in a soft, gentle kiss. Tim Locke, utterly blinded by his love for Calista Taylor, informed her he was ready for any paranormal exercises the smoldering cabal may have in mind for him.

In short order Tim Locke was spread out on the snooker table with the I.V. tube planted firmly into his arm. The attending Ravenettes all stroked his hair and ran their perfectly manicured hands over his body as Calista casually drained two pints of his Type B blood from his forearm. Afterwards, the dozen girls stripped naked, entered the downstairs Jacuzzi room, and drenched themselves in the rich sanguinary liquid while chanting and moaning to their various otherworldly masters for a Fairfax team victory.

The Ravens won their first game that Friday, by one point, 7-6, against last year’s division champion team, the Lorton Devil-rays. The disbelieving, ecstatic attending supporters who’d come from Fairfax stormed the opponents’ field in jubilation as the fourth quarter ended, and carried the players on their shoulders around the pitch in a victory lap. Tim Locke, who was feeling a bit anemic, but still smiling underneath his gigantic bird attire, was passionately embraced by Calista. He was informed by his lovely companion, amid the shouts of joy by his team’s fans, that his donating services would indeed be required again next week.

The following Thursday, the love-sick boy was drained a second time by the dozen enchantresses, this time of three pints of his vital juices for their blood-baptizing frenzy. Calista held his head in her hands, and spoke sweet nothings into the pale child’s ear as his hemoglobin dripped into the reservoir bag. The following Friday evening, the Ravens miraculously defeated the greatly favored Washington-Lee Generals by one touchdown, with a final score of 35-28.

Tim Locke was unable to attend school for a couple of days because of extreme fatigue. He was incapable of coming to Calista and the Ravenettes’ weekly bloodletting session the following Thursday, and the Ravens were clobbered by their division opponents, the Falls Church Jaguars, that Saturday afternoon by a score of 48-3.

But the Ravenettes had not been idle during Tim’s absence from their gathering. Calista Taylor and her crew had consulted with their dark masters by use of a Ouija board for confirmation that their victory plans for the team were agreeable and amenable to the whims of their enigmatic messiahs.

The returned cryptic message which was transmitted to them through the board stated, simply, that if the team were to continue to win, a greater offering would be required for tribute in the weeks to come. Not merely a quantity of blood, but amputated limbs and body parts would be needed for the team’s good fortune to continue. Calista gasped with disbelief at the communication sent to them through the Ouija. Then the young siren collected herself, gathered up her internal strength, and informed her loving cabal of mysterious seductresses that she would indeed provide them with a spare-parts donor for their black arts practices before the end of the week.

The following Wednesday evening, Calista Taylor showed up at the front door of Tim Locke’s house wearing a long, honey colored, ermine faux-fur, which she’d borrowed from her mother’s upstairs closet. However, underneath the long, elegant garment, she was packed into a sheer red tube top, white hot pants, and a pair of red, open-toed, stiletto-heeled pumps.

She was roundly welcomed into the house by Tim’s parents, and escorted to the young man’s room. The beaming mom and dad were absolutely joyous to see that such an attractive young girl had come to call on their son to see how his weakened physical condition was coming along. They left the two teens alone to talk, and then returned to the living room to watch nighttime game shows and drink their favorite decaffeinated beverages in front of the television.

Tim was cross-eyed and mind-boggled when his personal siren peeled off her wrap to reveal the sex-bomb ensemble underneath it. They chatted about his condition, the Ravens’ loss last week, and the weekly Ravenettes’ meeting at Jill Hart’s house for a short while. After a few more minutes of mindless conversation, Calista peeled off what little remaining clothing she had on, walked over to where the boy was seated, picked him up into the air, and body-slammed the lad onto the top mattress of his single bed. She had him undressed in a hot minute, and in short order they were in the throes of a nearly incandescent love-making session.

When the carnal festivities had concluded, she informed Tim of the new, escalated tribute which had to be offered to their mentors in the future if the Ravens had a chance of a continued winning streak this season, and that she’d like him to be the ceremonial donor. At first the boy balked at the idea, having some small amount of self respect remaining in his system, but as he began to beg off of the responsibility, Calista moved down the mattress towards his insistent bulge and began an oral performance on his post that made him nearly swoon in ecstasy. Within moments, Tim Locke was frantically agreeing to all of Calista Taylor’s unbelievable requests and then consummated in clean bliss for the second time that evening.

The next night at 8:00, Tim was picked-up by Calista, who was driving her family’s mini-van, and taken to the weekly meeting as her date. All the attending Ravenettes were giddy with delight to see Tim back on his feet and returned to their company. The welcome-back party began upon their team mascot’s arrival into the den, and all the revelers began knocking back shots of whisky and innumerable pony-neck bottles of beer.

After approximately an hour of hard drinking and levity, Calista and a few of her attending coterie excused themselves from the merriment, and went into the utility room of the Hart’s residence to gather up the necessary equipment for the evening’s upcoming grisly exercise. They returned to the recreation area with the goods, and a considerably more ominous tone took over the proceedings in the previously cheerful game room.

The diabolically beautiful head cheerleader took her date by the hand and walked him over to the edge of the billiard table. One of the other girls had spread out a clear plastic drop-cloth over the table’s felt, and the staging area was now ready for the evening’s altar offering to take his position on the platform.

Tim Locke, trembling with perfect dread, took his place on the table and lay down flat on its surface; he had his head facing up and was staring directly into the basement’s long fluorescent ceiling lights. His gorgeous date mounted the table after him, and straddled her love slave with her thighs at his midsection. Jill Hart had located a bottle of pain killers among the collected prescriptions in her father’s collection, and slipped two pills into Tim’s mouth as the rest of the ravishing sweethearts ran their hands over the boy’s body and began their otherworldly incantations.

Calista Taylor tied a rubber tourniquet over the boy’s left knee to cut off the blood circulation to his lower leg, and rolled the leg of his trousers up as far as she was able. After a few minutes she took hold of a small, hand-held, Wal-mart brand hacksaw, and began the crude amputation process directly above the young man’s patella.

Tim felt nothing as the jagged-toothed blade bit through his skin and began to skim the surface of his femur. The girls continued their moans and wailing as their leader tried to saw through the largest bone in the human anatomy. However, to her tremendous chagrin, the stunning girl had chosen the wrong tool for the job. The thin blade screeched loudly with each pass of her hand, as if it were cutting through fresh green wood, and finally snapped into two pieces after only a few perforations were made into the bone. The incensed wicca released a terrifying cry of exasperation from her failed procedure. She then dismounted her position from the table, and bolted from the proceedings into the Hart’s utility room.

She emerged a few seconds later with a Sears brand, 35 horsepower, gasoline operated, hand held chainsaw in her arms, and had a look of exquisite dementia pasted on her flawlessly put-together face.

The impeccably manicured knockout ripped the ignition cable of the powerful tool, and the dirty mechanical saw roared into life, chattering and snorting with high octane fervor. She stared at the gleaming blade for a long second, and then slammed the cutting edge down into the perforation she’d started with the hand saw moments before. The rotating teeth of the machine ate through her victim’s skin and bone like so much overcooked spaghetti. The Ravenettes howled like she-devils as the limb detached itself from the remainder of Tim’s anatomy, and slowly rolled to the edge of the billiard table’s protected surface.

The bloodlust of the coven was now at a fever pitch. A half dozen or so of the teenage wicca grabbed the disembodied member, placed it in a plastic garbage bag, and headed towards the large downstairs hot-tub. Jill Hart and Calista Taylor began tying a second binding tourniquet around the boy’s remaining stump, and started crude first-aid treatment on their sacrificial mascot. Tim still felt nothing as the wild proceedings spun through his head as if viewed through a kinescope.

When Tim’s bleeding had subsided, the remaining girls joined their sisters in the Jacuzzi room, and drenched themselves in the sweet hemoglobin which they’d collected from their mindless love slave. When the cabal had finished their incantations and blood baptism, they removed the severed appendage and plastic drop cloth to the basement’s interior, turned on the natural gas powered fireplace unit to its high setting, and burned the evidence down to its component levels, leaving no incriminating materials or forensic substances to be found.

The Ravens won their next game by an absolute landslide, 82-14 against the hapless Yorktown Patriots. They could do no wrong on the gridiron that chilly Friday night. It was the highest-scoring, one sided victory ever recorded in the history of Virginia high school football competition.

And that is how it went with the Ravens for the next bit of time. Week after week they easily won their contests, but with a smaller final scoring difference each time they played their opponents. In early November, the team had a scheduled bye weekend, and would not play again for eighteen days. The last regular season game was to be played on the Ravens’ home field against the highly favored Wakefield Warriors. The Ravens now had a season record of five wins and four losses, which had already beaten all predicted performance expectations for the team. If they could produce a win in their next match, they would be guaranteed a wild card position in the upcoming quarter-final playoff games; and Calista Taylor was going to do everything in her power to try and secure that win for the team.

Tim Locke had been treated at Fairfax hospital for massive blood loss, trauma, and shock on the evening of his left leg’s unrefined detachment from his body. The hospital staff had been informed by several members of the Ravenettes, who had arrived with Tim in the emergency room, that several boys from their school had been drinking heavily, taking prescription sedatives, and playing a game of chicken on the local metro system’s railroad tracks near the Prince William county power station. In a tragic accident, one of the young man’s trouser legs had become ensnared under the rail as a commuter locomotive bore down on his position, and the unfortunate limb was completely sheared from its owner. The girls informed the attending medics that the section of the boy’s anatomy could be anywhere within the metro system’s railway tracks, or may have been thrown from the engine’s grill into the adjoining weeds within the hundreds of miles of surrounding area.

The injured boy had stayed out of school for many days, but Calista came to visit him often while he convalesced at his home. She continued to make the young man feel loved and cared for by the Ravenettes, and endlessly told him how they were all waiting in great anticipation for his return to them. She also took care of any smoldering, carnal desires the boy may have had for her while she was present with him in his small upstairs bedroom.

During Tim’s absence from the Thursday meetings at Jill Hart’s house, the girls had been busy using their Ouija board to communicate with their supernatural masters. Not surprisingly, it had been commanded by the elders that the Ravenettes needed to offer yet another fresh amputation to them, which would guarantee not merely a playoff position for their team, not the league championship, but the greatly coveted state trophy. When Calista Taylor digested this glorious information dispatched to her from the black forces of the other side, she wildly guaranteed them that they would have their requested offering in short order.

However, Jill Hart, the second most powerful practitioner of their group’s alchemy, was beginning to feel tremendous guilt for the needless suffering they’d inflicted on Tim Locke. She intrinsically knew that Calista was ready to carve the young man into bite-sized fragments to selfishly secure victories for the team, and the malaise-filled girl also understood that she was this boy’s only hope of getting away from the clutches of their monomaniacal leader.

On the Thursday evening before the final game with Wakefield, Tim was at last able to leave his house with the use of a pair of aluminum crutches. Calista had called him to say that she’d pick him up for their regular weekly meeting, and that she was greatly anticipating his return to the loving Ravenettes. Also, the pathological temptress was fully prepared that night to remove his other leg at the joint with the gas-operated power-saw in an attempt to secure a winning season for her beloved team.

However, shortly before the head Ravenette arrived at her minion’s home, Jill Hart whizzed up to his residence in her Dodge coupe, pulled Tim Locke into the passenger’s seat of the ride, and whisked him away to the Hart’s summer cabin in Calvert County, Maryland, to have a frank discussion with the boy concerning the terribly dangerous situation they had at hand. Once inside the rustically appointed cabin, Jill informed him of her anguish and terrible personal guilt concerning the injustices they’d inflicted on him. She told the lad, in no uncertain terms, that Calista Taylor fully intended to saw off his other wheel with that same big freakin’ chainsaw she’d used on him the other evening if he entered the basement with the rest of her twisted squad of wicca.

Jill emotionally informed him that she was afraid he couldn’t survive another bloodletting procedure, and begged him to stay away from Calista no matter how much he carnally desired to be with her. They talked into the night about the raving head cheerleader’s insensitivity, egotism, and utterly solipsistic behavior; and although Tim Locke hated to admit that the girl he’d worshipped almost his entire natural life was a complete scumbag, he finally came to his senses about the situation, and decided he’d be better off staying outside of her dark sphere of influence.

Meanwhile, back at Jill Hart’s residence, the clutch of wicca cheerleaders stood in the cold November air, endlessly ringing the doorbell of the expansive residence. Finally, after nearly an hour of waiting for Jill to arrive home, the girls gave up trying to gain entry, and ruefully concluded that their turncoat sister had absconded with their intended sacrifice. It was finally, sadly resolved by the group that there would be no blood orgy tribute to their masters on this particular night.

Calista Taylor was frenzied with anger at Jill’s temerity to kidnap their coven’s sacrificial lamb. As she tried to contain her personal rage, small green static sparks would jump from her fingertips, and her usually flawless features became twisted and gnarled with unbridled ire. She swore, at that moment, to exact an unspeakable revenge on her former sorceress companion.

The evening of the final game had at last arrived, and the Ravenettes, save for Jill Hart, were on the pitch performing for the sold-out crowd at Fairfax high school. Tim Locke was still concealed in the Hart’s summer home, with doors and windows bolted. He was informed by Jill not to answer the phone or receive any visitors until she’d returned to his place of hiding. She was going to the game, wearing jeans, sweatshirt, and a down coat, to tell the Ravenettes that she’d had it with their abusive handling of their troupe’s incredible power, and was leaving their company permanently

At half time, the Ravens were behind the Wakefield Warriors by one touchdown, by a score of 10-3. However, the close score did not indicate the real situation on the field. The Ravens looked beat-up, disorganized, and completely flat on the playing turf. The Warriors had come close to scoring several other times that night, but had fumbled the ball near the goal line, or had penalties call back scores. At the beginning of the third quarter, the visiting team looked crisp, alive and ready to take the field. The Ravens seemed demoralized and ready to call it a game.

As the match proceeded, the Warriors scored twice again in the third quarter, making their 24-3 lead nearly unbeatable. Calista Taylor was enraged to the point of near apoplexy as her once powerful Ravens performed like drunken clowns on the playing field. Then, as the Ravenettes were performing a dance routine while the Warriors took a regulation time-out, Calista Taylor espied her new nemesis, Jill Hart, from the corner of her eye. The pretty, civilian-clad girl was seated on the far side of the playing field, keeping a cool, keen eye on the icy, vicious head cheerleader.

And then everything started to happen.

Calista walked away from the performing troupe, and began crossing the pitch at mid-field, with a look of pure, crystallized psychosis on her face. As she began her slow, measured strides to where Jill Hart was sitting, a cruel smile began to curl up at the edges of her picturesque, perfectly lipsticked mouth. Jill, the second most powerful wicca of the group, was now poised for confrontation with her former sister. She stood up, took a deep breath, steadied herself, and began to walk towards the approaching Calista with the determined paces of an outlaw gunslinger.

The crowd quieted as the two intensely-focused girls kept closing the gap between themselves. Calista began pounding her fist into her open hand while murmuring incantations to herself; electric discharges emanated from her fingers with each contact they made with her sweaty palm. Jill Hart was pulling up the sleeves of her sweatshirt, getting ready for a Virginia-style, down and dirty roadhouse cat-fight with her former friend in an attempt to settle their moral differences concerning Tim Locke for all time.

The two incensed wicca were now thirty feet or so from one another and closing the distance with each pace they took. The stunned silent crowd stood mute as they witnessed the girls prepare for their impending showdown. And while the grim combatants silently approached one another, wild formations of inky black clouds began to collect over the high school, and the game’s attendees heard muted thunder start to rumble in the far distance.

Calista Taylor stopped walking, and stared directly at her adversary. The head cheerleader’s eyes were now narrow slits of neon-green rage. Jill Hart continued her advance on the cruel girl, ready to engage her antagonist with fisticuffs and fury. But she never got the chance.

The head Ravenette held out her palm, closed her eyes, and released a massive thunderbolt of ball lightening from her hand. It exploded from her fingertips like a rocket propelled grenade, and then blasted directly into Jill’s midsection, knocking the girl twenty feet back from her previous position on the field. The crowd gasped in utter incredulity as she tumbled and flew back from the tremendous electric charge.

The black clouds continued to collect around the playing field, and the thunderclaps were now closing in on the area around the school. Several members of the crowd who had brought video-cameras with them were now getting footage of the unimaginable event which was now being played out before them on the pitch.

Jill Hart, who’d been knocked nearly unconscious by the horrific blow to her body, began wobbling to her feet in a desperate attempt to again confront her powerful nemesis. The injured girl closed her eyes, whispered the libretto to an ancient cabalistic text, and then returned a tremendous salvo of blue-hot current towards her savage aggressor. Calista Taylor reeled from the impact of the projected fireball, and collapsed to one knee on the turf.

Thunder began to sound like cannon fire around the two girls, and lightning started to pitchfork around the playing field from the storm clouds overhead. Still, the two girls blasted one another with their great amounts of channeled current. Jill Hart had been terribly weakened by the first gigantic hit she’d taken from Calista, and now the projections emanating from her hand were merely pulses of depleting energy. Calista absorbed the enervated salvos easily, and began her final approach to sanction the one who’d kidnapped her sacrificial offering.

Calista was now only a few feet from Jill, and was firing at will at her downed adversary. Jill twisted and writhed in clean agony as the charges coiled around her body. The obsessed head cheerleader now stood over her former friend and discharged her ungrounded energy without compassion, releasing salvo after salvo of unregulated juice towards the downed girl.

When it seemed Jill could withstand no more of the attack, several wind funnels of pitch black intensity snaked down from the giant storm cloud, and began to dance and jump around the two girls on the playing surface. Tremendous, tornado-like gusts circled the two injured wicca, and the localized storm now appeared to the viewer like something taken from of the worst parts of the bible. The Wakefield Warriors’ terrified players and coaches had seen and experienced enough of the night’s unbelievable action, and bolted from the field to the team buses which were waiting for them outside the perimeter of the bleachers.

Many members of the crowd took the lead from the fleeing team. They poured from their seats to the nearby streets and parking lots to get away from the unspeakable elemental conflagration that was taking place on the football field. The storm had now reached its fever pitch, and had concentrated down on the area where Calista kept Jill pinned to the turf. The sadistic girl had her downed companion flat on her back, and was pouring the hot elemental wattage from her palms into her helpless sister. As Calista Taylor prepared to administer the final, terminating barrage onto her foe, the two of them were surrounded by the unbelievable forces of the surrounding hurricanes. In what seemed like slow motion video footage to the remaining crowd, the two of them were sucked up into the epicenter of the black sky, and were swallowed in the maw of the giant storm cloud which surrounded the area.

As the two girls disappeared from sight, pandemonium broke out at the Fairfax high school football field. The leftover crowd scattered from their seats and ran away from the area like terrified children. Cannonades of thunder and multicolored fireballs emanated from the storm clouds overhead as the playing field and bleachers seemed to be under bombardment from the forces of Nature. Uncontrolled blasts of lightning ripped gigantic ruts into the grassy turf, and the endless rows of aluminum bleachers were detonated into twisted shards from the overpowering force of the lightning’s galvanic impact.

After several moments of the phenomenal cyclone’s destructive activities, the tempest began to subside. The gale force winds began to diminish, and the once eardrum-shattering thunderclaps receded. Soon, amazingly, within a quarter of an hour of the storm’s inception, all was quiet at the now completely abandoned football field.

Within hours of the playing turf’s complete decimation, the videotaped, Armageddon-like battle between Calista Taylor and Jill Hart was being broadcast on local and national news stations around the globe. The next morning hundreds of news agency representatives, reporters, journalists, parapsychologists, military personnel, National Guard units, Central Intelligence Agency field agents and just plain gawkers surrounded the smoldering area which had once been a high school athletic field.

CIA operatives had dispatched plain-car units to each of the remaining Ravenettes’ homes, and the cheerleaders were taken from their residences to safe houses and grilled by agents concerning the incredible events which had transpired between their two colleagues. The stunned girls cracked easily under the questioning of the intense agents, and all of them confessed to their practices of the dark arts and witchcraft to secure wins for their once hapless football team.

With the assistance of an unnamed internal confederate, a bootlegged copy of the video-taped confessions of the cheerleading squad fell into the hands of an unscrupulous tabloid journalist, a man named Al Sheen, from the National Weekly Gazette. He broke the story to his editor in Miami, Florida, and within a day, the entire country was being bombarded with the extraordinary tale of the Chainsaw Wicca Cheerleaders.

In the weeks and months that followed the fiery event at the school, many formerly unknown facts in the Ravenettes case were brought to the public’s attention through the media. From an exclusive interview on a local Virginia television channel, a college campus betting bookie came forward and announced that Calista Taylor had come to him after the first few weeks of the football season, and had bet an eye-popping ten thousand dollars, at 50-to1 odds, that the Fairfax Ravens would win the state high school football championship that year. The young man, who wished to remain unidentified, provided a written bet-receipt for the large transaction, which matched collected samples of the girl’s cursive signature, and also had exact matches of her fingerprints on the page. It appeared, on the surface at least, that Calista Taylor’s personal motives in her actions with the football team, Tim Locke, and the Ravenettes proved to be nothing more than a desperate attempt to make a tax-free half-million dollars by illegal bookmaking procedures.

However, in an ironic twist of Fate, instant media-celebrity status was heaped upon Tim and the remaining Fairfax cheerleaders after the incredible episode at the playing field. The young man had pressed no legal charges against the remaining girls, sighting his own weakness and poor judgment in his dealings with the late Calista Taylor, and they were free to reap the rewards of mass media interest and attention. They appeared on national talk shows in the United States, did campus speaking tours of universities throughout Europe, and became absolute TV superstars in Japan and the far east.

The injured but still smiling Tim Locke, after finishing a lengthy university guest tour of several Canadian provinces, was contacted by Columbia Motion Picture Studios in Hollywood, California. A made for television, Movie-of-the-Week special of his wild saga was in the initial stages of planning by media executives, and his services were needed as a script advisor. Tim contacted an intellectual properties lawyer in Bel Air, California, one Bill Leonard, B.A., M.A., J.D., shortly after he’d been approached by the studio, and secured all the legal copyrights to his biographical data before signing the deal with Columbia Pictures. His final negotiated payment for his release of the rights to the film making group was a whopping three and a half million dollars.

The remaining Ravenettes were all immediately offered professional cheerleading positions, complete with enormous signing bonuses, by every one of the National Football League’s active teams. In their final salary negotiations, the troupe of pretty, yet suspect girls signed multiyear contracts with various west coast franchises for undisclosed sums of cash and a variety of premium payment incentives.

Finally, from the video-taped footage of the fiery combat between Calista Taylor and Jill Hart on their final night on earth, it was decided by the Virginia High School Athletics Board that the Wakefield Warriors had been the first team to abandon the field that evening during the conflagration, and hence, forfeited the game to the Fairfax Ravens, despite being ahead at that point in the match by the score of 24-3. The Ravens ended the year with a six win, four loss record, and qualified for the upcoming wild card game which would be held a few days after the Thanksgiving holiday.

©2004 Perri Pagonis

Because of time constraints, this magazine will no longer have new issues but will be up-dated with new fiction as it comes in. Present fiction will stay for one month and be rotated to the archives.