My lips feel as though coated with sand. And my throat—sticky with the grease of disuse.
And it hurts. Dear God, it fucking hurts. If I could just stop my lungs from inhaling and exhaling, I would, but I am too tired to try even that.
I shuffle my body against the post and wince, forgetting that my hands are tied behind me. The knots are done so tightly that my shoulders are numb. I can’t see them, but my wrists are raw. I can’t move my arms, but I can still (somehow) wiggle my fingers.
My hands are desperate for a job and so I give them one: soothe the searing sting, though I know it’s in vain. I can feel the wounds, like moist, sticky bracelets; the cracked skin all broken fissures. These wounds cannot heal, though they try. Instead, they seize up, oozing and crying.
My legs are exposed, all my flesh dirty or skinned, and my knees — oh my poor knees — they’ve given up shaking altogether. I don’t know how they’re even holding me up right now.
Grit and dirt clog my eyes and the crust of sleepless desperation welds my lids shut. I’m well-wrung of tears to clear them. I am empty.
I am blind.
They call me, but my mind is far away. My voice is with my soul — halfway between here and purgatory. Or maybe this is there, already?
I don’t respond, and I don’t think I could, even if I could make out a question from the jumbled mass of shrieks and prayer. My raspy breaths are too weak to give me a voice, yet still too stubborn to cease altogether.
Witch, they say to one another. Devil’s whore, they whisper as if they’re afraid to offend the being they accuse me of serving.
Their words pour over me like glacial waters and I am drunk on pain but oh so sober and present.
I am paralyzed. I cannot speak, but in a flash of cognizance, I sneer at the irony, releasing a soft, coughing chortle — a sputtering half-grunt full of blood and pus that bubble from my core.
If I was a sweetheart of Samael’s, after all, should they not be afraid of what retribution he might visit upon this nasty, vicious town of vipers? They are persistent, insistent, and insolent beings. And of course, they are afraid. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here, would I?
Again, they call my name. I hear the anger and panic rising in their voices and the crowd’s cold enmity brands my being with their loathing.
I want to respond, I want to defend myself, so I open my mouth, and I lift my chin to speak — but my neck is weak, and the effort brings my heavy skull lolling to one side, catching my stringy, dingy hair in the chinks of my chains. My empty stomach lurches and the world spins around me, the only thing that grounds me is that I know I’m standing (or at least I think I am, but I’m not sure if those are my limbs I feel or the phantom echo of legs long gone numb.)
The leader of this exuberant flock speaks. His sharp voice cuts the air between us, but I can’t make out the words. His voice rises, surging hysterically, and I feel compelled to respond.
I manage only to turn my head, a feeble, failed attempt to participate in this farce.
Bitch! Whore! Liar! The crowd swells closer, their collective heat licking my skin.
“Do what you will,” I rasp. The gravelly sound of my voice is tinny — grating and hollow to my own ears.
“Repent, and you shall be spared.”
I try to mumble a defense, but my voice and breath elude me.
“Cease with the tongues, hag!”
I feel the blood upon my lips before the sharp pain from my tormentor’s switch even registers. In my unlucky surprise, I gasp, gulping down a painful swath of burning air. Enough to
“I’ve done nothing,” I whisper.
She speaks! The witch speaks!
“You will not mutter your hexes and spells, witch!”
I meet his cold, dreadful gaze, and his eyes flash. Is that anger I see, or is it fear? Do they fear me even now?
I am delirious, I think. A wry, dry wisp of a laugh lodges in my throat as impossible tears try to break free.
My neck cracks sharply to the side. I feel the viscous drip of blood down my other cheek.
Twin scars. What will mother say, I think. Ah, but even if she could, these wounds will never heal, I muse, and I wheeze a bitter giggle.
Burn the cackling witch!
It’s all slipping away from me now, and I pant, wasting my final breaths on an ugly, uncontrollable laugh that burns my chest and brings me closer to my end.
Burn the witch!
Burn the witch, I muse my final muse. Extinguish the ember.
This flash fiction story was inspired by the following Reedsy writing prompt: Set your story in a town full of cowards.
