by H C Turk
Exactly at the hilt it snapped, and I was astonished to find the sinners’ metal little stronger than wood. Attempting to use the implement with no handle, I cut my palm, bleeding on the sticks I next gathered, inserting them into my gap and prying, then using larger limbs that functioned better due to their length. And though my hand was a viscous, reddish mess sticking to the wood, the pain was not important, not with the greater pain to come from within that box when I opened it.
Limb after limb I broke, others I had to discard, being too brittle or too flexible, like a frail and weak witch. Up the slope, slipping and crawling into the forest time after time, during my later returns simply sliding down and scraping myself bloody. I had entered another contest, a failing challenge with the sun, for I would not be repairing the dark. And I did not wish to fail. I did not wish to fight nightfall and magic and Satan and the sinners’ work all together against me. So I sought limbs, but the best was too large for my narrow gap, and those thinner broke and broke. Therefore, I used my hands and nearly broke them, so that as well as cut and bloody, the one became so swollen and sore I could scarcely close it. Crawling to the trees again, I returned with as fine a limb as any, but too large. So I entered the crack with my bent arm, and with my shoulder at the lid’s edge, I stressed every muscle until some part of my flesh came loose enough to have me gasp and go rigid; but there was a space as though part of God’s sky, enough for my best tree limb. Inserting the stick, I was pained by my side and my hand as I pried along the lid’s perimeter in a strong continuity of movement, aware that this great effort was required merely to open the coffin; and there was the lid on the ground and Marybelle before me.
Not so dim was the remaining day that I could not see perfectly, see all of Marybelle’s…person. Her parts. Everywhere within were lengths of broken tree limbs, on Marybelle’s legs and torso, one on her neck, her empty neck. There on her crotch was Marybelle’s head, askew, the cut end a plane of red flesh and vessels as though from a beast half-eaten by predators, but cut so cleanly, like a butchered animal in a sinner’s shop. But the first astonishment was her face, the lips partly open, eyes closed, but the cheeks and nose were smashed and bruised, and must have been terribly painful—but what could she feel? And I knew the source. Marybelle’s thrashing before the magistrate had not caused this damage, but my own mishandling, Marybelle’s ruin due to my rush, my hurry to avoid her sight, herself.
Death has no smell, for death is nothing, but I was sickened by Marybelle’s subtle odor, that personal fragrance of her body, my sister’s body, and her blood, so meager a smell that she could only be dead, she would always be dead. I was sickened because here was all my love in the world, that love for my departed mother and minor love for Elsie incomparable to the desperate love I felt for Marybelle, my sister so great a portion of my life that she seemed yet living. And I fell away from the casket and to God’s ground and vomited nothing, for I was empty of food but filled with agony, my body retching in spasms to force up none of the poison within me, for it was that very love to sicken me, and would remain. Was I ill because I knew Marybelle to be gone, or because I believed her ideas of magic, believed her to be partially present; and the only force in God’s universe to save her continued living was me, though I could not, not in my ignorance, weakness, my imperfection as a witch? But I wished to, desiring her life enough to kill myself instead of accept her death.
Ah, bless you, God, this knife would do, and I reached for the broken metal, having begun the contest of ending Marybelle’s death by somehow killing it. Once in my hand, did not the metal feel fine? Yes, but also cold—like my flesh—then hot—like the metal’s forged source—too hot, so hot I perspired as I stared at the metal in my palm where it never belonged until now and thereafter would never have a better place. So hot I perspired and my mouth salivated as though trying to aid me sweat. So hot I became that I removed my clothing to remove some discomfort, all my clothes except my shoes, which were too difficult to dislodge, as though nailed on, a coffin lid of leather. Then I wiped the sweat away, wiped it from my neck and shoulders and then my chest, and that hand on my bosom felt the sinner’s, a touch I recognized; for surely males had touched me there more thoroughly and often than I. That hand was a sinner’s by being mine, for I was part sinner, in my blood and my desire for their life, that hand on me a sinner’s because it remained and fondled and squeezed the flesh made to encapture sinners, kneading my breast as had those men who died from the touch—and was this not the death I sought? Yes, and from the nearest sinner—me—came the smell of sex at the body’s bottom, but different here; for all the others had been male and this was a woman’s, my smell different by being invert.
Hot was my breast in one sinning hand and my baby slot in the other, for that was the next goal of sinners conveying their lust along my torso, and my lust was life, was death. One hand on my breast and one on my cunt as I looked to Marybelle, her head on her crotch like that sinner’s hand on mine. And here were the rules of my evil challenge, for could not some exchange be arranged in that I wished to displace deaths? Why not limb for limb, for were these not the parts transmitting death to men and Marybelle? So I continued that conveyance of lust, lust of love, along my body as I had conveyed the coffin’s opening, proceeding from end to end, from teat to groin, taking Marybelle’s head with no remorse nor fondness to stick the bloody end between my legs while that sinner continued to squeeze my breast. Since one hand held Marybelle’s person, the other was required to hold the knife, and that was the sinning one against my bosom unable to resist my white flesh. So it continued to squeeze metal and flesh as I pressed Marybelle against me to have her love as near as possible, the emotion conveyed so profoundly that I hoped for her to grow there. The season above was not that of new growth, however, but autumn, the one of fall in that my parts were dropping, not so neatly as the leaves via God nor Marybelle’s head via Satan; but there was my breast hanging only by skin, no smell of fresh blood noticed, no sound of meat being cut away. No perceptions had I, for all were occupied by this incredible screaming, such a vibration that my spine shook and my jaws were locked open, and the cry was terrifying; but how was I to notice even so frightening a response when the devil was cutting me asunder? How could I feel mere spiritual sex when I was dying by mutilation?
Though the witch in me could not scream loud enough to obscure that agonized idea, perhaps my audience could cry better; for either Satan had sent demons or God his angels to observe, and actively, for they as well were screaming. They as well seemed mad, for these aides from Hell or Heaven in the guise of sinning males rushed down the slope less neatly than I to approach me as though desperate to gain part of my dying before it became alive, thus dead. But too late they were, for I was finished as they arrived, my breast dropping onto Marybelle’s face and remaining as my vagina contracted against her neck like a fist to squeeze an animal dead; and there came the blood, squeezed from my sex by my heart into Marybelle’s throat as the angels came to take me away.
Chapter 27
Impossible Contest
No more peaceful sleep could I have achieved than in that era devoid of troubling dreams. But forgetfulness did not survive the night, for ignorance participates not in understanding, and the latter was my characteristic concern. Therefore, when I awoke, I remembered everything, details of the attempted repair recalled by my corporeal outcome.
So extensive was my misery that I discovered no single prevalent pain to consider. My attention was on a general agony impossible to sleep through, despite my need to implement recuperation by resting. My challenge was to heal a suffering within me that was me. When recollection began, I was grateful for silence, thankful for the absence of the sound of that torture I had invoked not in the name of Satan, but of living and therefore God.
Less gratitude had I after dropping my dress to discover one breast and one wet scar, the latter found beneath a wrapping; and I knew this part of me was not damaged, but departed. With that
madness came an accompanying humor surely from Satan, for I considered this bodily lack beneficial in that sinning men would now have only half of my bosom to molest. Thereafter, in all graveness and begging love, I prayed to Lord God for that breast to have done my sister good.
• • •
“What manner of fiend are you to slaughter me in my sleep as you did my aunt?”
This was my greeting for the jailor who entered my cell as I awoke to examine my chest. Literally I had nothing to hide, and allowed him to enter with no change in my audit. Rapidly he departed, having seen my hand near flat gore that should have been feminine. Returning soon, he was accompanied by the magistrate and a priest not seen before, even as that erect member of the clergy was never seen again by me. As the males entered, my story came forth, and it was accusation.
Despite my stern intents, I could not avoid a mien of pleading, for the small effort of looking up stretched my side enough to astonish me with pain, and I felt violated.
“How long I have slept I do not know, but God I bless forever for allowing me peaceful recovery,” I began. “Each second asleep I knew the truth, that part of me was asunder, for the revelation was divine, praise Lord Jesus. And praise His Father to have His good men of English church and law explain why they have butchered me.”
So astonished that they lost their questioning, the magistrate and priest respectively explained that my damage had been inflicted by myself, by Satan. Then the constable to lead my captors was summoned, his witnessing a settling tale: although horrid, did it not combine the two official views in a type of descriptive peace?
“The poor Chloe woman did seem a person in her death,” he began, looking anywhere but at the fallen lass. “Even if not, no fiend if ever human could deserve the vile acts done by that young lady, whom I pray God was taken by Satan himself, for that screaming from within her—Jesus please us—was the sound of Hell itself. And her doings were equal in being satanic, for no person alone could do those things I can’t scarcely describe, and never even think of now without feeling a fear of evil never known to me afore. Such were the deeds that the girl did force herself with every breath—I swear of Jesus—to resist, so firm was her desire to be merely human. Lord Magistrate, if you were Lord God Himself I could be no more certain than to tell the truth I saw, that this miss was taken by a sinister power beyond my understanding which did force her to have at these acts. And if you saw her face and heard her screaming, you would know as well as I that the miss was being tormented and reviled beyond her will to be what her common soul would never have her be.”
“As you removed her from the activity,” the magistrate asked with no emotion, “was the fiend within her seen to depart?”
“Everything seemed to depart inside her, Magistrate, including her life, in that once we pulled her away, she collapsed like death, so much that we listened to hear her breathing. Then wrapped her naked form well we did, in her gown and our own jerkins, and bring her gently here. In truth, Lord Magistrate, to look at her screaming was to see Satan himself but see him attacking a lady. And when he left and left her calm, only the lady did we have, and pitiful she was to make every man weep what with her sweetness so ruined, and blood complete all over.”
“No further sign of Satan was seen thereafter,” the magistrate continued, “in the wagon as you brought the person here?”
“No sign saw we of anything but a pitiful miss, Lord. And in the belongings of the two was nothing devilish. The wench was naught but an executed folk that we could see. But so devilish was the previous activity with her that my distraught men could scarcely find the effort to bury her. But they did, these good men, with much prayer for everyone about, alive and dead, for peace and all good spirits to go to God. And I tell, sir, that I was gladdened to be taking the girl and not burying the other, for those men had to pick up the portions and place them in the casket with their hands with some puking done, God bless them, before the hole was dug and filled with the poor woman.”
Gracious God be thanked, I prayed, for not allowing them to have cut her further or burned her body. Blessed Lord be praised for giving my most extremely unrealistic hopes new life.
Though the magistrate spoke again, I heard only the end of his query about my having truck with ungodly spirits, for I was occupied with worship.
“I desire only for God to be within me, not Satan, whom certainly you are more familiar with than I,” came my displeased response. “Perhaps more than familiarity, you have influence over the devil; for all my godly recollection describes me as whole upon leaving the wagon with my aunt’s casket, yet violated and in pieces when placed therein again by men of yours, men with their hands upon my tortured, naked body.”
So distraught the rescuing constable became from my moral deprecation that his spirit was damaged, pain seen in his moist, disbelieving eyes as he looked to me when before he had been unable. Thus, I blessed him as though the nearby priest.
”Good sir, cure your distress with the presence of God within you and find in me no condemnation. Whereas ’tis true that my flesh being taken I do not recall, I do know that males cut my aunt worse than I lay butchered now, and before God must acknowledge. But you, sir, are an individual of such godliness that I disbelieve you responsible even if witnessed with my own eyes. And praise Jesus that I observed none of this torture, for whoever took my vision also took a torment whose experience would have killed me.”
“God be with you miss,” the constable pronounced; and though he may have gained some of the relief I wished for him, he yet retained distress from his witnessing. And was this lady’s speaking not reality itself? What could he think of that previous screaming turned to pointed speech measured first as pain, then hate, and finally prayer?
Perhaps his greater relief was in quitting this experience, for with his telling done, he was ordered away by Waingrow. Thereafter, the magistrate queried me as to potions, spells, chants, and charms for all demonic occasions, to which I shook my head not in rejection, but pity. What aid to English law was the available priest who asked nothing and displayed no expertise in seeking the devil? A poor observer he would be if I moved against him via Satan, for the priest looked to God with closed eyes, his clasped hands no preventative for oncoming evil.
“I know nothing of these things,” I retorted to Waingrow. “How bizarre you are to mutilate me then ascribe responsibility to your victim.”
Undaunted, the magistrate continued to interview me as to my recollection, my interest in the forest, my great-uncle.
“A man never seen, a part of our family promised by my aunt.”
“Yet you professed to having seen him,” the magistrate returned. “What other lies have you to tell?”
“None besides the fallacy that your sense of Jesus is deeper than that of Satan, for the latter alone you seek. And since by your own description my aunt was stolen by Satan, how could I of such youthful experience not believe her corrupted words? She instructed me to profess having met Granduncle so as not to appear the gypsy and thus become the receptacle of prejudice. But not so receptive of your bigotry am I as to allow you to place Satan in my mouth to thereby justify cutting him away. You may have begun your mutilations with a sexual part to please your manhood, but with God’s strength and Jesus’ love, I’ll not seek your further slaughter.”
Experienced in his official ways, the magistrate continued to confront me, eventually presenting me with a formal trial, and before a justice of the Court of King’s Bench I would tell my story and see how intimidated God, the English public, and Queen Anne’s law would be by my speaking. Therein adjudicated would be my responsibility for the demonic things done to myself and my aunt, and that initiating crime which was the murder of an associate of the constable’s office.
As though sickened by his allegations, I told Waingrow, “Jesus save your soul that now you accuse me not only of slaughtering myself and being demonic to my dead aunt, but doing so in advance and thus causing her execution. H
er blood was drawn by your hand, Lord Killer, an achievement that in your secret thoughts perhaps you find prideful. As for the English public, more impressed might they be with the magistrate’s handiwork on lady prisoners,” I returned, then succumbed to presenting my best weapon, reaching for my dress above that missing breast, reaching with that cut hand as though to apply gore on gore in mutual attraction.
With my move, the priest held his hands out, fingers twitching for me not, not to reveal this, a plea given without words, and respected.
“Lord minister,” I spoke, remaining covered, “comprehend through Jesus’ guidance how astonishing it is to live with a wound agonizing even to view. But if your law has its way, not long will I have to suffer.”
“Use your words well, miss, but pray for yourself,” Waingrow returned. “Proving yourself rid of the demon that took you will not be easy when all of Lucansbludge knows of Daniel Cameron, a fine man gone most horribly.”
“In the same manner as I, Lord Butcher,” I moaned, and made a sharp gesture with my wrapped hand toward that absent breast.
Desiring none of my revelations, the priest again held his hands toward me as though obstacles, this usage more intense than when clasped for God’s perusal.
“Blessed Jesus, this could be so!” he insisted. “Lord Magistrate, known well to us all is a demon’s having taken a woman only to leave her completely, is it not? Overcoming a person to perform a sinister crime and thereafter vacating is an accepted trait of Satan, do you say?”