Peter Clarke

Richard Dawkins By the Light of the Moon

Seven witches gathered at London’s Highgate Cemetery to cast a spell on Richard Dawkins. They were dressed in black with hoods and shawls. As the sun went down, they placed candles on top of nearby headstones, making long shadows dance and flicker on all sides. 

“Fuck you, Richard Dawkins,” they chanted quietly.

A special potion (wine with mugwort and other herbal additives) was passed around. One of the witches snuck away to pop open a fresh bottle of merlot while the chanting continued.

“Fuck you, Richard Dawkins.”

“Okay, it’s starting!” a witch named Ada exclaimed. She was holding a cellphone, which was streaming a live speech by Dawkins at Oxford University. The witches gathered around to watch.

“You are stupid, stupid people only fooling yourselves,” said the esteemed atheist and evolutionary biologist, his voice projecting authoritatively from the phone’s tiny speaker. 

On the screen, the audience came into view: a group of Wiccans, palm readers, fortune tellers, Ouija board enthusiasts, followers of Cthulhu, believers in Odin, and other fanatics of the occult and the esoteric. 

“There is nothing magic about the world, and there is certainly nothing truly magical about your spells, paranormal beliefs, prophesies, curses, and whatever else you have chosen to form your identities around.”

“Curse his eyeballs, that they might pop right out of his face and go rolling around on the floor, where he’ll step on them,” said a witch named June, holding the spell-casting broomstick.

She passed the powerful item to the witch on her left, a runaway teenage girl named Sammy.

“Curse his head, so that his hair might catch fire and for that fire to form a mirror in his soul so he has to look at himself in the mirror for all eternity, not able to see anything else except for how mean and ugly he is.”

Gina, a lifelong witch and equally dedicated punk rock girl, was suddenly caught between the wine bottle and the broomstick.

“Come back to me,” she said, dead serious, taking the wine bottle and letting the broomstick be passed along to Karen.

“Curse his luck,” said Karen, “so that everything he touches turns to shit, including his food.”

With each curse cast, the girls became increasingly excited. Another bottle of wine was popped open. One of the witches lit a joint mixed with suma root and Avena sativa for stimulation of the libido. Another witch burned sage. As Dawkins’ voice rose in anger and disgust, the witches began to undress and touch each other.

“To live successfully, we must engage with the world—with the world as it actually exists, not as we project it to exist based on unsubstantiated beliefs. If prayer worked, we would see the results of prayer. And yet there is absolutely zero evidence ever documented of prayer’s effectiveness. If you have two sick children, you give one prayer and the other penicillin, guess which child gets well? The answer, of course, is obvious. The same is true for casting spells and playing around with magic. By engaging with these things, you are not engaged with what is real in the world, and so you undermine the core of human progress.”

“Curse his soul,” said Georgia, holding the broomstick like a microphone, “I hope he burns for all eternity in hell!”

Ada took the broomstick next, rubbing it between her legs as she cried, “Curse his big, fat, self-important brain, that it might explode in his head and his old, grey cortex might splatter all over the witches in the crowd, and so they might eat his brains.”

June crept behind Ada, kissing her neck and caressing her thighs as Ada made good use of the full broomstick handle.

“Go ahead,” said Richard Dawkins, “cast a spell on me! Pray to your favorite god to have me expire in a puff of smoke! Sick the devil on me while you’re at it!”

“Aww,” moaned Karen, leaning against a headstone with Sammy’s head sinking down between her open legs. “Fuck you, Richard Dawkins,” she said between moans.

“Fuck you, Richard Dawkins,” said Ada, kissing June and fondling her breasts.

Richard Dawkins loosened his tie and took off his jacket. “Is it getting hot in here?” he asked the crowd, taking a sip of water.

The camera zoomed out again, showing the entire auditorium turned into a giant orgy of spell-casting witches and occultists moaning in ecstasy. “Fuck you, Richard Dawkins,” they chanted, until Ada muted her phone and flung herself, body and soul, into an unholy tidal wave of multiple orgasms.