The mal-essense that covered Mena in a thick, goopy film exploded off her into thousands of tiny particles. Anguish’s jaw dropped in disbelief. It seemed even for a woman that was now a creature of the netherworld, this was not in her plan. “Mena,” May and Janus scrambled over to her and grabbed the young witch by her arms, carrying her to safety.

Anguish’s body didn’t move. Instead, her head followed the bits of particles zooming around. She held her hand out and began to gather them into clusters using her dark magic. “Oh kumquats,” May mumbled to herself. “She’s gathering the mal-essence again. What are we going to do? She’s going to repossess Mena.”

Mena raised her fist as she sat up. “Anguish can try. But I’m going to reject them again with the power of friendship”

Janus giggled. “Wow, near-death experiences really do make people corny”—the pixie reaper raised her fist at Anguish—”But you heard Mena. We’re going to save her again if you try that, you witch with a daughter.”

Anguish merely cackled. “That is why it’s always good to come with a plan C.”

Poshleen approached Anguish with her dagger in hand, ready to strike and chop Anguish to bits. “Running a scam contest?” she shrieked with her dainty nostrils flaring. “Even if he doesn’t like me, my father will hear about this. Too bad he’ll only here of your murder.”

Poshleen brandishes the dagger right at Anguish’s heart, but before she did, a dark miasma coated her dagger. It traveled from the dagger onto her arm as her eyes bugged in horror. She shrieked as the mal-essence spread to the rest of her body suffocating it. She struggled, but it pulled her down to the floor. “Oh mumsy…oh papa,” Poshleen sobbed. “I only wanted your affection—the only thing in my life I could never have. Au revoir, it is curtains for me.”

The mal-essence covered Poshleen’s entire body and began to morph and twist into a brand new shape. “Unlike you, Mena,” Anguish gloated. “This rainborn is full of hatred and disgust. More than you could ever muster in that sugary confection you call your brain. If I can’t have you, I will have the next best thing.”

Poshleen’s body cracked and crunched beneath the weight the mal-essense, but once she fell silent and her protests stopped, her body rose again.

“Poshleen?” Mena asked softly. “Are you okay?”

A deep, distorted voice sounding like an ogre with a head-cold reverberated from the figure. “Poshleen can’t answer your question right now…”

“Why?” Mena asked. She shuddered in fear as two crimson eyes flashed through the shadowy mass. A fanged mouth with a blood-red throat answered the question with a girlish whisper.

“She’s dead.” The dark figure gave a twirl, the amorphic mass disappointed and revealed a horrifying, if curious figure.

It was a girl. She had purple skin, burning orange eyes and sharped fangs, but also a brunette braid, braces on her fangs and a dark witch’s outfit. “Whoa-y Zoey,” the devilish girl beamed and put her hands on her hips with a cute gesture.

“Is that…” Mena’s eyes bulged, and her mouth crashed to the floor. “Is that…me?”

Despite her demonic qualities, the girl was a perfect mirror image of Mena, except her hair was parted on the other side.

“Meet my other daughter…” Anguish said with a polite bow. “Dark Phenomena, born of Mena’s darkest hatred, fear and self-loathing.”

“Hi guys,” Dark Phenomena waved, and added. “I hope you have a bad day. A very bad day. Like when you wake up in the morning and find out you ran out of maple syrup for your pancakes.”

“She’s definitely Dark Mena,” Janus whispered to a dumbfounded Mena and May. “Especially if she’s going to quote ‘Look What You Made Me Brew,’ from Taylor Witch’s edgy phase.”

Anguish extended her hand and pinched Dark Mena’s smiling dimple. “She will be a suitable replacement to wear those Dream Heels for me.”

“Anguish,” Clearmind limped in her direction. It was hard for him, as his foot had been turned into a mushroom. “I would like to propose something to you.”

Anguish turned her head with a non plussed expression. Dark Mena did too, only she offered a vacant, yet sinister smile.

Clearmind, though clearly out of breath, tried his best to remain poised. “Anguish. Now that you have a Dark Receiver, allow me to take the Receiver into custody myself. I promise I will only use her eyes to stop the Quantum Quandaries and not meddle in your own affairs.”

Anguish gave a resting witch-face that clearly ran in the family. “Do you really expect me give up my own daughter? Simply because I have another one? I’m not like you and your wooden puppets, Jonah.”

Nick glared at Clearmind who coughed nervously. “Dark Phenomena,” Anguish ordered. “Please take care of this nonesuch.”

Dark Mena raised her arms and hunched her shoulders sinisterly. She held her hand to her head and chanted, “Darkness from inside of me, swirling like a bog. Turn this stupid cyclops into a one-eyed frog.”

Dark Mena blasted Clearmind with her fingertips, sending Jonah spiraling into Nick’s body. He caught his father, but immediately, the cult leader shrank into a bullfrog the size of a bowling ball. It puffed out its green throat as its singular eyeball surveyed the terrain. It croaked and Dark Mena gave a mischievous giggle. “I hope your days are much worse now,” she said, waving goodbye to Jonah as Nick carried him off and ordered the Dream Police to retreat. “Like someone replaced your pansies with poison ivy.”

“Unlike my other daughter,” Anguish patted Dark Mena on the head. “You really take after your dear old mother.”

Anguish and Dark Mena…along with the gaggle of three witches and many ugly fiends moved in on Mena, May and Janus. “What do you plan to do to us?” Mena demanded.

“Well, daughter,” Anguish said, with a gleeful chortle. “I’m taking you back to the Nightmare Void where you can sit in your own shadow room and think about what you done. Maybe you’ll have a change of heart and join me and your sister.”

“But what about us?” May gulped as she held Janus tightly.

Anguish shrugged her shoulders. “You can be target practice for Dark Phenomena’s new powers.”

“Oh, I beg to differ,” a campy and theatrical voice echoed from the front of the room. Mena, May and Janus all turned around and saw Gemini in a dapper purple suit holding a tarot card between his fingers. He stood alongside Caligari, Stellaris and Nebula and several members of the Lollypop Security Task Force.

Gemini tossed a dark lock of his curly hair and waggled his eyebrows. “Did someone call target practice?”

Anguish turned her head, but she did not look impressed. “Ah the Clown Prince of Dreams. I’m surprised you managed to survive my phantom coup on your brain.”

Gemini boldly stepped forward with a squawking laugh. “I survived and I’m zanier than ever. And Anguish, something tells me you haven’t been using any skin lotion with how pink you are.”

Anguish rolled her icy purple eyes. “I see your terrible sense of humor is still intact. Seems I didn’t manage to destroy you from the inside out…”—the Blood Siren cackled—“That works, though, because now I can destroy you from the outside in.”

Gemini surveyed the enemies around him. He chuckled and put a gloved hand forward. “I would like to see you try. You’re pretty good, Anguish. And the clone of the ankle biter”—he pointed to Dark Mena who stuck her tongue out at him—“Has some of Mena’s powers, but come on, these three comic relief crones and a buncha nameless fiends. You’d have to be crazy to think they could take us all on.”

Bubbel let out an angry squawk, hoping up and down and stomping the ground. “That Flamboyant Fop. Who does he think he is regulating my beautiful squad of witches…and Karen…to a simpering comedy routine. We’re some of the most serious witches here, right Anguish?”

“Of course,” Anguish said in her deep husky tone. A smile spread across her face. “Show him that new move I taught you three. Perhaps then you’ll be taken more seriously.”

Bubbel’s eyes bulged in her head and a haggle tooth grinned formed below her warty nose. Toila’s pinhead bobbled up and down in a fit of laugher and Karen politely laughed and held her hands together.

“Oh nosies…” Mena said with her hands to her cheeks. “We weren’t taking them seriously for so long that they’ve somehow managed to undermine us all.”

The triad of witches joined hands, hopped around in a circle, and began to chant.

“Bubbel, Bubbel, Toila and Karen.

With our powers combined, it’s you we’ll be scarin.’

Alone, we’re a passing laugh,

but when we come together, you’ll really gaff.”

The witch’s bodies began to strangely fuse with each other, Toila’s height blended with Bubbel’s girth and Karen’s slightly above average looks. Everyone trembled as the fusion swelled while continuing to morph and contort to form a brand-new shape. Their black dresses all stitched together and wrapped around the new body, which was starting to get shapelier and curvier too. Now the fabric had become a cocktail dress framing green hips and thighs. The behemoth threw its head back and when it lifted its head, it was a now a giant, smooth faced green woman with long, black conditioned hair, red eyes and crimson lipstick.

“Now,” she said in a sultry voice, while sensually moving her arms across her body.

“Let your feeble mind take ahold of,

the glamorous witch by the name of Triplova.”

Most of the room was too stupefied to speak of the behemoth beautiful witch, but Janus was the only exception. With a red streak highlighting her gaunt cheeks, Janus remarked, “Hubba hubba. I guess two ones and a six really do make an eight.”

Karen’s high, innocent, and motherly voice came from the behemoth’s mouth. “Which one of us is the six?”

Strangely, Triplova began to fight with herself, punching her own body and tearing at her dress. Bubbel squawked angrily. “She obviously meant me, you plug ugly crone. But I’m more than a six. I’m definitely a six and a half.”

“Well I,” Toila giggled in her raspy voice. “I’m three sixes across the board. Karen’s more like a negative zero and three quarters.”

A loud blast of thunder followed by a blood curdling scream made Triplova cover her face. Anguish had raised her fist. “Ladies, you wanted to be taken seriously remember?”

Triplova dusted off her dress and straightened her hair. “Right, your Darkness,” she said with a theatrical guffaw.

Gemini looked at his teachers. “Alright. Stella and Cali, you take on that big behemoth.”

Caligari and Stellaris nodded. “Yes, Gemini,” they both said in unison.

“Nebula,” Gemini said to the overly buff gym teacher. “You take on all those nameless cronies…Nebula?”

Gemini turned around. Nebula ran her hand through her yellow-blond spiked hair and flashed a white toothed grin. “Already taken care of.”

Gemini spun around again and saw all of the fiends that had accompanied Anguish lying unconscious on the floor. “Wow, Nebby,” Gemini laughed. “You sure don’t skip ass kicking day.”

Gemini focused his rainbow-colored eyes on Anguish. “That leaves the big cheese for me…and…”

Dark Phenomena teleported and appeared in front of Mena, May and Janus. She leaned over with her hands on her hips. “I hear somebody isn’t having a rotten day,” Dark Phenomena giggled. “But that will change soon. I’m a bad girl and I don’t return my library books until they’re one minute overdue.”

“Oh yeah?” Mena asked, rising to her feet. She chanted and summoned a fireball out of her imagicnation, blasting it at her evil twin. Dark Phenomena flew backwards onto the floor.

“Doppelganger? You’re more like a double-gagger,” Mena chuckled, sticking her thin rear at her enemy and taking her sizzling finger, she placed it on her bottom. “Owwie,” she cried, realizing it was still burning.

“Wait a minute,” Mena cried, looking at finger. “I didn’t even do that.”

Dark Mena chuckled. “We’re connected, Mena. In more ways than one. Especially when I use my shadow twin magic.”

Mena, Janus and May all gaped in horror as Mena’s clone burst into an evil giggle fit.

“Teenyboppers,” Gemini called to them, before he ran to do battle with Anguish. “You gotta handle that, bad shadow girl. I know you can do it.”

Before Mena charged into battle, she took one last look at everyone. She prayed desperately that all her friends and teachers would make it alive.