ROBBINS REEF YACHT CLUB: A Thousand Knives Come In Your Back

RRYC Post Card

Señora Rosa sat down at the deluxe MacBook Pro that she knew how to turn on and off, found Google, and typed in the name of the rich school teacher she was about to take down. She warmed her hands with a brand new caramel macchiato double whip that was just brought in by Uber Eats, an event no doubt noticed by the neighbors. The plastic of the top was pure white with no lipstick on it, the little green thing still sticking in the drink hole. 

It is not good to be seen to be doing too well in this business. Her big clients foot the bills — something always comes through towards the end of the month — but losing the bread and butter of the $20 DOES HE LIKE ME? reading was not part of her instinct as a worker. 

She practically drooled at the yearbook section of the Bayonne High School web site. All of those pom poms. She could almost hear the cheering of the crowd at the football game. She often went to the games. It is not that she cared about football. It was a fine event where she could spread out her power and get people interested in psychics and pass her card, which was, of course, enchanted. She needed a sense of who is strong among the players and can be placed as a slave on a spell. She carefully studied the rosters and put a star by the number of the potential patsies. In her heyday, Stephanie’s grandmother Ingrid would have seen this and taken that witch apart with her German powers. 

Knitters have needles in the afterlife. 

But she is old, times have changed, families have dispersed, off to better neighborhoods and nicer colleges, and the old grandmother didn’t have the team she needed to keep the Latin American magic in its place. It does have a place, and she knew her granddaughter would be in it, but something is lost when you cross the lines of culture, though it is not polite to say so. 

Señora Rosa could make a good case that she owned Bayonne. There were no other workers of her strength here. In the Bronx, even walking down the average street, you were going to be treading on powders ground by hand and filled with the dirt of graves. You could almost hear the hissing of the dead as they lay in wait for the food of power that could be leached out from the foot.

All humanity has circuits of energy that run along the nervous system. This is beautifully portrayed on the charts of acupuncture and reflexology that Señora Rosa gazed at in her home, visualizing her magic going up and down the body of her targets. Those currents line up the electromagnetism and nerve cells from the top of the skull all the way down to the sacred reptile power in the tail and out through the limbs. Powders on the ground can send the magic of herbs and shells and bones into the circuit through the feet, and oils can do the same for the knobs of doors. Anyone can be influenced if you get your stuff onto routine, legal places, and who knows that this is even going on?

The dead are underworked, and even the living have less direction in their energy than humanity is used to. Most of it is unused. People could be making all kinds of things if they worked, but they don’t, so they are put to work — for Señora Rosa. That is the law. It is like gravity. The energy flows down the hill and into her pocket. And they don’t even know it is happening. 

Life is boring if all you have is TV. All those novelas — and the most beautiful of all, the Hallmark channel con español abajo. They make you hate your body and your things. Who has all that perfect stuff? And when you get perfect stuff, there is always more. But when the power runs through you, even a normal woman looks like Marilyn Monroe. That is the key to seduction work. It is to make someone look enticing in the power.

One of the secrets of a takedown is you first destroy the person’s reputation by not saying a word about them except in the power. In fact, the best work is done when you are smiling in their face and commiserating with them on their bad luck. They cry. You listen. You wish them well and assure them that better days are sure to come. Then you strike again.

Their friends desert them, their family won’t come around, in the end they are all alone surrounded by wolves, and no one comes to their aid.

That is when you smile the most.

People are stupid. They don’t know who is sticking a knife in their back in power. Just dare to rise too high, and a thousand knives come in your back and you never know who they are. You walk down the street, and all you see are stares. 

That is what Señora Rosa likes. The hunted look. The wounds. The blood. And the surprise that it was your best friend all along. 

No one is good.

That is the secret of humanity — a secret that the nice people don’t learn until it is too late.

But you have to figure out how to make the pitch to the dark powers that the person needs to come down, or those beings will strike you.

It is always a gamble when you attack a nice person, and the nicer they are, the more it comes back.

In the end.

A strong worker can hold off the backlash. 

We are all sinners and we are all worthy of punishment. Señora Rosa has to figure out how this school teacher is dirty, and I mean really dirty, and the more real it is, the more it will stick.

© Joann L. Farias 2025