The Next Witch

Throwing the hay over the fence, Aidan separated it into smaller bundles. It broke his heart to tell his best friend that this was the last of the hay left to feed her, but there was little he could do. "I'm sorry, Faith," he said to the horse on the other side of the fence as he petted her snout.

"For the good of Salem, all witches must burn!" Aidan heard a man yell from a mile away yet his disposition was loud and clear.

"HEAR!" the crowd before him agreed. The things Aidan heard in this town haunted his every reverie like a ghost that can't see the light. Last night they killed another woman they claimed must be a witch. She had apparently stolen the gift of sight from a woman Aidan saw miffed at a fly as she passed by the baker's shop. The sounds of agonizing screams and burning flesh still sank his chest to his back.

Aidan went into the fenced area that he used as a horse stable, to pitchfork the hay and crud inside clean. He did this everyday yet today he was especially somber about it. The small patches of hay almost nonexistent by the hunger Faith had built up over time. Her ribs a notable enclosed area where she held nothing but her appetite. Not even for Faith, Aidan could keep living this i'll-advised routine. About a week ago he had talked to Father Porcius, told him he will no longer attend mass nor their weekly confessionals.

Bruised knees and teary eyes were a thing of the past. Clasped hands and empty whispers didn't bring him comfort like it used to. He felt so dirty after he would leave the church every week, he didn't seem to feel the liberation he use to feel; that everyone else felt.

"Is that the last of it?" Aidan was startled to see Marina staring at him from the other side of the fence. Aidan just nodded and continued his work. "What will you do now?" she asked but Aidan just shrugged. "Why don't you just go back to the church?"

"I'd rather die," he scooped up a pile of horse droppings.

"Be careful what you wish for," she said climbing up on the fence to sit. Her feet dangled as she kicked them back and forth.

"I thought you weren't coming back after yesterday?" Aidan said, never ceasing his labor.

"Me too. But they didn't find it," she giggled.

"Didn't find what?" this time he looked at her confused.

With a huge smile, from between her bosom she took out a key. "Even after the shower, they had no idea," then she whispered "I hid it in my bum." Aidan chuckled. "Those showers are torture! They scrub you until your skin threatens to fall off," she exclaimed.

"Isn't that the point?" he questioned her reasoning. "Why keep escaping?"

"It's so boring in there, Aidan. I feel like I soon might go mad!"

"But you have food and shelter, that's what we've been looking for since we were children. Aren't you grateful?"

"I would be a lot more grateful if they'd actually let me eat. They say I'm too "untamed" and until I'm not ready to follow instructions, all I'm getting for supper are scraps."

"That's what Father Porcius gave me, I was grateful."

"Grateful enough to abandon the church altogether?" Aidan was silent at her remark.

He had gone through all these years asking God for forgiveness and peace, like Father Porcius had thought him. Aidan, through his own eyes, sometimes felt anchored to certain physicalities. Certain carnality unholy in the eyes of God. Aidan peered too often, lingered on his fellow brethren as labor fastened on to their routines, and father Porcius caught glimpses of him in the act. The yearn in his eyes betrayal to the angels. Yet, Father Porcius gave him a second chance. He took him in, offered all his fruit of life. In the beginning it felt like heaven, though it seemed outlandish how a priest could siphon impurity from his marrow to his own. Yet this was the case for years, he agreed to attend church with Father Porcius and in return he offered food, for him and his steed, and purity of mind and soul.

Right now, though, the last thing he ate was an apple he found yesterday afternoon at the roots of a tree. It was bruised but he couldn't be finicky, before he found that fruit he had gone twenty eight hours without food. This owing to Aidan noticing something change in him, what he did at church was simply unsound.

"In my opinion, I rather have something to eat than feel spiritually sane." Again, Aidan just shrugged. Apart from the fact that he really enjoyed her company, although his stoicness is unreadable, she was a nosey girl most of the time and she wouldn't take a hint. "Then… I'll be heading back to the convent. Lest the nuns find out I've escaped again." she hopped off the fence while Aidan still scopped dung. "I'll try and bring you something to eat tomorrow, alright?"

"Stop mothering me," he said.

"At this point, I might as well be your mommy," she smirked "I'm just a year younger than you, you know, there isn't much difference. I've always wanted to pinch your cheeks," she reached out jokingly, finally bringing Aidan to smile. "Tomorrow, ok?" she reaffirmed making Aidan nod this time.

Once he was finished at the stable, Aidan went back into the little shack he called home. On the table laid a small piece of bread which made him smirk. Marina always looked out for him, and no matter what the reason of her succor was, he appreciated her. In all adversity he had his angel to keep him company.

Rejoicing in his delicacy, he then put on his small amethyst colored cape, harnessed Faith with a makeshift rope and went out about the town in search of something to accomplish.

After greeting a few friendly faces that still hadn't shunned him for being the dispossessed shut in he was, and while still abnegating his call for virile prurience as he scrutinized godly greeks laboring about, he still found nothing to do or calm his hunger, but alas satiete his thirst for fulfilling design. Upon a late arrival at his small home, the night suns winking in gloom, he took off his cape and sat on a tall wooden bench he called his bed. Standing up, into an old stained and barely visible mirror on the wall, he stared at his reflection. He was a handsome young man, he stood tall for his sixteen years and if he wasn't a poor orphan, he thought, he would have been many of Salem's townfolk's eye candy. Pushing his sleek black hair back with his hands he breathed deep. He yearned for happiness like he yearned for the impalpable embrace of love, yearning that will leave him thwarted save for a miracle. At the ability he possessed he sneered in discontent because it could not bring him what he most desired.

He was defeated.

His drive to continue had emptied.

He laid on his lumpy rigid bed and before he knew it his consciousness fell. But just as quickly his consciousness came in a snap when the smell of smoke filled his lungs. Coughing he waved his hands at the fume inside his shack. The flames creeping on the wooden ceiling, eating everything in its way. He quickly grabbed his cape and ran out through the crooked door to a mob of torches, clubs and pitchforks, along with angry people who held them. From between the crowd Father Porcius came forth holding his Bible as he always did. "Aidan Sage," the priest started. Aidan's hands went frigid cold despite the roaring fire that burned his home behind him. "You are hereby declared a witch by the Salem Village Court. Surrender or be prosecuted." his sticky grave voice a sharp nail to Aidan's ears. He couldn't even fathom a word as he began shaking.

"N- no, this must be a mistake!"

"A mistake?" Father Porcius said "You rejected God and the church, and are infecting others with your insanity, now you will be prosecuted for your unholy actions!"

"I've done nothing wrong!" Aidan yelled as people from the mob began closing up on him.

"Did you or did you not deny the church?" the priest said with a sneer.

"I didn't, I-" Aidan's tears dripped on his long sleeved shirt.

"Did you or did you not deny God?"

"It was wrong!" Aidan now yelled. "The church is a wicked place and so are the people in it!" At his outburst, now all the people who were not angrily thrusting their weapons for sanctity or furiously yelling at the witch, now definitely were.

With falsehoods his livelihood was collapsed. As two men grabbed him by the arms another tied a rope around them so tight he thought they might snap.

As the mob moved out into town they pulled him along by the rope, one small stumble and he was on the floor being dragged through dirt and rocks. The screeching and yelping of the uproarious righteous mob were like hands to his throat. Unable to breathe, unable to hear, unable to think past the thoughts of imminent death. From a few feet away he saw his small steed behind her fence, looking into her eyes he murmured "Be free." in an instant Faith's calm turned to storm. One brutal yank that threatened to crack Aidan's wrist made it possible for him to stand once again, the blood from his legs and knees, mixed in with the dirt he was just part of, slid down to his ankles. He coughed, the smoke still in his body like a chimney.

𝘍𝘪𝘳𝘦. 𝘐𝘵 𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴𝘭𝘺 𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘭 𝘢𝘴𝘩 𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦. 𝘋𝘦𝘢𝘧𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘮. "𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦!" 𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘤𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵. Marina caught her breath in the whirlwind of emotions that sank her mind deep in her slumber. In a hop she was out of bed and in two more out of the convent. The smoke was an accidental signal, not that Marina needed one to know where Aidan's home was. She ran through the trees like a forest spirit, her red hair, fire behind her trot. Awestruck by the destruction she gawked at the scorched frame of a shack that used to be Aidan's only home. But then her eyes fell upon Faith in her stable. She neighed and shuffled and jumped about like something bothered her. Marina ran to her in a shaking panic. "Calm, Faith, calm!" Before her eyes Marina saw Faith's small horse frame grew twice in size as the skin between her eyes lifted like a wart threatening to burst. Yet, the wart kept augmenting to a point. A sharp point that kept growing while Faith neighed like it pained her greatly. At once, that hard point had expanded into a long horn in the mare's head, her black mane flipping and whipping restlessly as she fidgeted. With a thunderous kick, Faith had decimated the stable fence, liberating her from restraint.

Aidan's spine was rigid against the square pole, the corners pressing against the skin on his back. Blood fell from his nose and mouth in surges as the puritans beat him with their clubs and bare fists. "Witch!" a woman yelled spitting him on the face. "Begone demon!" a man clubbed him in the ribs, Aidan's reaction was coughing out blood. "Profane!" a guy, about his age, Aiden's eyes had grazed earlier wandering through town, now yelled in his face before punching it with force.

"This here boy..." Father Porcius started, "Is a witch!" The crowd witnessing his torture roared at the priest's words. "He's denied the faith of God!" People threw objects at Aidan, a rock colliding with his hip made him scream in pain. "He denied the validity of the church of God!"

"Kill the witch!" someone yelled from the mob.

"You have all seen what we do to witches in this town!"

"YES!" they all called in unison.

"What do we do!?"

"Kill the witch! Kill the witch! Kill the witch!" they chanted as their holy hymn.

Marina had grabbed on to Faith's mane like a lifeline as the mere galloped all the way to the middle of town. Her horn, not bright, but yet lit the way as if night time were as visible as when the sun gleamed. Once Marina saw the mob she jumped off of the unicorn in a haste, her legs nearly collapsing on impact, yet she ran and ran and pushed her way through the sea of angered bodies like a warship. "No!" she yelled seeing Aidan tied to a wooden pole in the town square. "Aidan, what have you done?" she asked frantically and her eyes filled with tears. His beaten body barely even sensed her presence. "Aidan!" He finally heard her within the mobs' hate,"Kill the witch! Kill the witch! Kill the wi-" he looked at her through swollen eyes, and just shrugged.

Some of the men had started dousing him with oil, the priest took one of the many torches offered by the crowd. "Any last words, witch boy?"

"I- I'm innocent." he managed to say through a broken jaw.

"Not anymore." the priest whispered with a smirk.

He then turned to the crowd but still addressed him. "May God have mercy on your soul."

"NO!" Marina screamed before he placed the torch at Aidan's feet and watched the beast eat away at his vitality like a rapacious parasite. His agonizing screams made angels and demons cry at their wake. The pain rose up his body reclaiming every part as its own. While the little clothes he had burned off his skin, his skin burned off his body and sizzled in it's evaporation. Marina covered her ears with her hands and closed her eyes, shrinking herself from the horror spectacle these advocates of peace produced and consumed like flies to manure. Crying she rocked herself on the dirty floor trying to keep Aidan's screams out of her head without ignoring his pain or his absence. His flesh was no more as it scorched into charcoal. Food for the dirt. His small amethyst cloak still sound on his shoulders, grasping for dear life.

In her sobs, nobody consoled her. No one had since she was five years old and she was acclimated. Until, at this moment, someone did. Father Porcius stood before her and offered his hand to hold. His shoulder to cry on. His body to purify through. From that moment bruised knees and teary eyes were a thing of the future. Clasped hands and hopeful whispers will bring her comfort. She will feel the liberation everyone else feels because that's what the church is for, to free yourself of culpability. Aidan could have told her that that path of Faith was the erroneous one, he had lived behind it for so many years, he would have known. But Marina will live in this bruised knees and teary eyed cycle until she is aware. Until it is too late and she realizes that she is the next witch.