The rain… a perpetual shroud over the fetid swamp of DC, mirrored clammy despair in the heart of someone whisperingly referred to as the Befuddled Witch of the East (BWE). Not a cackling crone of storybook malice, but a figure of unsettling obsequiousness, her very presence a damp chill upon the sunniest glade. Her name, if she ever possessed one beyond the epithet, was lost in the miasma of her singular, consuming obsession: the great and terrible Wizard of Oz.

Like Uriah Heep, that crawling embodiment of false humility, BWE haunted the periphery of the Riviera, her shadow a constant, unwelcome guest. Each pronouncement from the Wizard, each flick of his theatrical wrist, was met with her fervent, unsettling adoration. “Oh, most wondrous Oz,” she would croon, her voice a wheezing whisper, “your brilliance blinds me, a humble speck in the dust of your magnificent eminence.” The Wizard, a man of smoke and mirrors, found himself perpetually slimed by her devotion, recoiling inwardly at her damp palms and the unwavering, unsettling gleam in her wide, unblinking eyes. He’d force a strained smile, a practiced gesture of benevolence that never quite reached his own authentic countenance.

Her dwelling, a dilapidated hovel sinking into the mire, was a testament to her singular focus. Scraps of emerald fabric, pilfered or bartered for with dubious trinkets, adorned the rotting walls like pathetic devotional offerings. She hoarded every discarded pronouncement from the Wizard, every stray spark from his grand pyrotechnic show, as holy relics. Her days were spent in a grotesque pantomime of service, offering bombastic bumper sticker slogans or suspiciously dubious conspiracy theories to any unfortunate soul venturing near the Riviera, all the while proclaiming her utter unworthiness compared to the glorious Oz.

But beneath the veneer of simpering devotion, a darker current stirred. As Uriah Heep’s false humility masked a gnawing ambition, so too did BWE’s obsession curdle into a grandiose delusion. In the long, dreary evenings, amidst the croaking of unseen things in the swamp, a transformation would take hold. The stooped posture would straighten, the wheezing whisper would deepen into a resonant pronouncement. She would gaze into a cracked, tarnished mirror, not seeing the gaunt, damp reflection, but the fiery eyes of Isobel Gowdie, the Scottish witch who confessed to consorting with the Devil himself.

“I am she!” she would declare to the silent, dripping rafters. “The ancient power flows through my veins! I ride the winds, command the shadows, and the very beasts of the air tremble at my decree!”

And here, the parody took its most ludicrous turn. BWE genuinely believed she commanded a legion of flying monkeys. In her mind’s eye, they were a terrifying, disciplined force, executing her malevolent whims with ruthless efficiency. In reality, the flying monkeys, a ragtag bunch of mischievous creatures with a penchant for petty chaos, simply tolerated her pronouncements. They found a certain amusement in her self-importance and the opportunities her “commands” presented for causing minor mayhem. A market crash here, a stolen election there – they were chaos agents, and BWE, in her delusional grandeur, provided the perfect, self-unaware puppet master.

So, the Befuddled Witch of the East lived out her days in a grotesque ballet of misplaced adoration and self-aggrandizing fantasy. She simpered at the feet of a Wizard who wished her gone, and she issued imperious commands to a band of flying monkeys who merely indulged her for their own amusement. The bogs of DC remained damp, the Riviera remained oblivious to the true nature of its most devoted admirer, and the legend of the Befuddled Witch, a gothic absurdity woven from delusion and damp despair, continued to fester in the shadows. Her end, when it comes, will most likely be as anticlimactic as her life – a sudden, ignominious squashing, leaving behind only a pair of striped stockings and the lingering, unsettling echo of her fervent, misguided devotion.

Stay tuned… much more to come.

Onward through the fog… Rohlfie.