The wiggle-witch was a strange and mystical being. She had hair the colour of ivory, and a plum, cone-shaped hat that would dissolve like jelly when she took it off her head and reconfigure as a pitch-black cat that followed dotingly at her heels. She was called the wiggle-witch by those that knew her because any time she needed to get away quickly in a scrape, which was particularly handy when she was on the run from the law, she need only wiggle her iridescent crimson umbrella and she would be gone in a flash, never to return.

She never stayed in one place for very long, but the places she visited would invariably become haunted by supernatural phenomena. Albert, the attorney from Newcastle, for example, had been cursed so that any time he sneezed an anthropomorphic tissue would appear out of nowhere and force him to blow, before disappearing back into thin air. It was particularly troubling when he had a cold.

It had all started when the wiggle-witch had made an appointment with him on the matter of a neighbour’s dispute concerning an expeditiously growing fig tree in her backyard. He had been ill with flu at the time (little to his concern) and, unfortunately for Albert, the witch had found his behaviour so troubling that she’d made up her mind to cast a spell so that nobody would ever have to put up with his incessant sniffling again.

And so it was, that near and far she went, she caused mischief and mayhem to nearly all she came across. It made it easy for Max and Mindy to conclude, when they saw a low-hanging, purple gelatinous cloud during their mid-morning dog walk, that she must be the one responsible. They reported the incident to the Didcot town council.

‘Now this is beyond the pale.’ The mayor, Stanley Friedrickson, said sternly during one of the town council meetings. ‘How long can this woman be permitted to terrorise this country without fear of rebuke? It’s unconstitutional. And now she insists on polluting our environment too? I had WWF on the phone this very morning.’

Another one of the constituents piped up. ‘Well, sir, I don’t believe it’s from lack of trying. It is to my understanding that she has evaded the law in surplus of 50 times.’

‘50 times!’ The mayor boomed in shock. ‘How is this woman to be brought to justice?’

‘We did have the idea of a trap.’ The man said daringly.

‘A trap?’ The mayor queried.

‘Yes. Clearly she is much too good at evasion to be easily reprimanded by the police, which is why we need to battle with her using her own means.’

‘Which is?’ The mayor was truly curious now.

‘Well, she uses this red umbrella to disappear.’ The woman who was sat beside the man who’d been talking started. ‘We only need to steal it and she shall be caught without any means to escape.’ She looked rather proud of herself, but there was at least one major flaw with her plan.

‘This witch carries this umbrella with her wherever she goes. How do you intend to get it out of her grasp?’

The woman only smiled, clearly unfazed. ‘She is as much a victim of the weather as the rest of us, yes? My plan is to trap her outside during the upcoming thunderstorm, where her umbrella will be swiftly blown out of her grasp before she has the chance to use it, leaving us to finally apprehend her.’ The mayor mused on this for a moment.

‘I haven’t even explained the full extent of it yet.’ The woman continued, before the mayor had the chance to dispute her. ‘Since we have yet to confront her here, she will still be living in the same location, right here in Didcot. Which, thanks to Betsy,’ she pointed out another elderly woman amongst them, ‘we know to be 66 Brewers Lane. This plan, it simply cannot fail.’ She finished confidently.

The mayor just slowly smiled at her to show his approval.

**

The witch was making her way home with her groceries in tow on the Saturday. The black cloud overhead was a bad omen, but the weekly shop was a necessity, so it would have to be ignored for the time being. It made her uneasy still, it was a good thing she was only a few blocks from home.

In spite of what everyone else thought of her, in truth she was really a rather normal person. Her name was July, and she kept house like everyone else, had to feed Blackjack the very best cat treats otherwise he would endlessly complain, and she resented her neighbours just like everybody else. Especially that Betsy Naylor, who had taken an immediate dislike to her. Curses knows why, maybe she didn’t appreciate her homemade blueberry pudding.

She didn’t relish the opportunity of moving from place to place, it was done out of necessity. And, if anyone could be rational for just one minute, they would see that all these supposed instances of disturbance were actually just mere misunderstandings. I mean really, what was she to do: let that man infect all his poor clients with plague?

So, she tried to be polite and respectful as much as she was capable of being and kept her head down until the next incident of disturbance would send her running for the hills again.

Suddenly, it started to rain, then pour, and before long it was hailing and thundering, the wind whipping her hair across her face. Oh no, Oh no, she thought to herself, what about the hot-crossed buns? They would easily be soaked through by the time she reached home. She should never have trusted Betsy when she said she’d be able to make it home before the thunderstorm.

July groaned loudly as she reluctantly took off at a running pace towards her house, when out-of-the-blue she found her foot had become lodged in something sticky. She tried to extract it, but the struggle only sank her foot even deeper into the mysterious sticky substance. She tried to look through the mess of rain clouding her vision - was that pitch? Just as she realised what was going on she looked up to find a whole crowd of people eagerly watching her entrapment.

She simply sighed: when would they ever learn? Tentatively she took out her umbrella, and as she expected, it was blown right out of her grasp as soon as she tried to open it. The people gathered around moved towards her as if to finally confront her. But, she only blithely smiled. She clicked her fingers and to the other’s astonishment the purple cloud burst at the top of the hill, releasing a horned dragon.

She waved at the crowd as they still stared at the giant dragon circling overhead, then gradually down, down towards them; and used a thread of magic to pull her from the pitch and back into the hands of her umbrella. Served them right for being ungrateful, she thought wearily, as the dragon blew a fiery blast at the fearful townspeople and she wiggled her umbrella by it’s handle and disappeared from the town for good.