There's a legend in these parts. A terrible beast lives here. Many have claimed to have seen it. Some have even met it face to face. I'm one of those people. It's something I'll never forget even if I live 1,000 years.
I think it was during my freshman year in college. I was sitting in the breezeway of the fine arts building talking to my friend's girl, Donna. It appeared without warning from behind us. Baby blue tennis shoes allowed it to walk quietly on the concrete. From its horrible mouth that was missing one tooth came a voice that would send chills down my spine every time I heard it. "My, you two look like a couple of gargoyles sitting there." We were sitting on either side of a small stairway so it was a fair observation. I thought it would go and leave us alone after that, but that was not to be. It stayed and spoke to us for a half an hour if it was a minute. Several minutes into its prattling its true intentions were revealed. It wanted to talk to us about God. I didn't say anything because, for one, I thought she'd stop soon, and two, because my friend's girl was there, and I was sorta trying to mack on her a little and she probably wouldn't have dug me "turning on the charm" to the old crone.
Eventually she did go away, though. That was the first time I encountered this foul beast, but it wasn't to be the last...
One day between classes, my friends John, Robert, Chris (the one whose girl I mentioned) and I were in the mall. The payphones at the mall were in these kiosks that were sort of X shapes, with one phone in each corner of the X. John and I went down to a store for a moment while Chris and Robert stayed by the food place we just left and Chris was sitting on one of the little seats they had as part of the phone kiosk. So when John and I get back to where the others were waiting, I see a familiar baby blue tennis shoed figure has him cornered in the phone kiosk. We stand there for a few moments grinning at Chris's misfortune. He was wearing a Misfits "Earth AD" t-shirt.
She looks at his shirt and says "Misfits? Do you feel like a misfit? Is that why you're wearing that?"
Chris replied "No."
Then she basically pokes him in the chest pointing to it and asks "Do you know what AD means?"
John jumps in real quick and says "Yeah, that's when Satan comes and destroys the Earth." Then he grabs Chris and says "C'mon, lets go".
Magda begins following and says "No, no... it means..."
She is immediately cut of by John replying "Yeah, that's great you fuckin' nut!"
She followed us for a little while but soon gave up. It wouldn't be the last we see of her though.
In relaying the previous two stories to a group of people I was sitting with one day after one of my classes, one of the group spoke up. "I know her" said one of the guys, "She's my neighbor... she keeps stealing my newspaper in the morning, her name is Magda Maywald."
We finally had a name.
One day, in the lobby of the theater building, they were having some sort of art exhibit. I, along with John, Robert, and Robert's girlfriend went inside for some reason. There she was, powder blue tennis shoes and all. Magda. We sat on one of the stairways on either side of the building which led to the theater itself, then John starts talking in a demonic sounding voice: "Worship Satan!!!"
Magda wanders over "Are you preaching what you believe?"
"What the fuck do you care?" he replied.
The conversation continued for a few moments until John said "Look, I was just fucking with you, lady."
"You won't touch me!! I'll have God break your arms!!"
"What?!! I don't want to touch you!"
"Yes you do! All men want that!"
That's about when we decided to leave, unable to contain out laughter. That little exchange would be the source of much amusement for years to come.
Magda's name was easy to find in the phone book, so naturally, it was only a matter of time before we gave her a call. John and I happened to be on the way to West Virginia when we did this. I think it was somewhere in North Carolina. We called collect. John pretended to be a friend of ours named Oscar because he had a fun voice to imitate. So we place the collect call. This was back when the operator handled it all and you could hear the other person's voice. She said "Well I don't know you, but you seem to know me, so I'll accept the charges."
John started off by telling her that one day she talked to him at the college in Ocala and that helped him turn his life around and he was working as a missionary now. She believed it. The funniest part was that she went on talking for a good 20 minutes while she was paying for the call. She probably felt pretty good about herself and I guess John didn't have the heart to take that away from her so he ended the call without delivering any sort of punchline.
One of the times a punchline, of sorts, was delivered was when we called her to offer her a job. John, speaking in his best Protestant voice, tells her he's heard of the good work she's been doing talking to people at the college, and wanted to know if she would be interested in a deaconship at his church. She asked what the name of the church was and he replied: "The Church of the Satanic Asshole" and then made a sort of weird heavy breathing sound followed by a fart noise. She hung up.
The last encounter we had with Magda, was after we discovered a toll free number for a well-known video rental store's corporate headquarters voicemail system. We would leave messages, some weird, some perverted, some flat out absurd, and we would leave Magda's number (among other people's) as the number to call back. Eventually, we discovered that the company had their security people investigating and they were in contact with local authorities in our area. Since we didn't want to chance calling the voicemail anymore, we decided to call Magda under the guise of someone investigating the phone calls. Once again, John put his phone skills to use. He pretended to be an agent from the FDLE investigating the phone calls. They spoke for a few moments. She, of course, had no idea what he was talking about.
After some back and forth, John tells her "I'm an agent from the FDLE, do you know what that is?"
"Do you know what I do?" she replied.
"No."
"Then how am I supposed to know what you do?"
"..."
"..."
"Lady, are you insane?"
*click*
I've seen her from a distance once or twice since then. I find that some distance is best when it comes to Magda. I also saw that she had been arrested in Dunnellon, Florida back in 2007. I don't know what for. Probably something more serious than stealing newspapers.
EDIT: Further research has lead me to believe that Magda left us in 2015. So long, you bizarre woman. You have achieved legendary status and will live on in memory for decades to come.