The Things Betwixt...

The Hunting

"Daily Flash Fiction Challenge"  Winner! 11-25-2015

It was the fall of a midsummer’s eve, stormy and warm, that I partook in a forbidden joining. A taboo it was for me to be with her, but I couldn’t withhold my desires. She removed one earing then another, as rain drummed against the glass of her shaded window. Outside, the thunder rolled sick with lament.

Mary her name was, and witchery was her craft. She hid her secret well, but I’d been told as much. She was an apple amongst women, sweet and crisp she was, but the forbidden fruit of Adam. I courted her for many months. In that time betwixt the loathing of the hunt to now, I came to know her as an extraordinary woman. Her language was rich with the felicity of expression, and her curiosities of the world were nigh a poet’s vision.

She poured us a scarlet drink from a pitcher, warm it was, as it steamed in the cold dark of her chambers. Blood – a witch’s rejuvenation. I forced myself to maintain an infatuation as a smiled at her, slipping myself betwixt the satin sheets of her bed. Therein the rise and fall of her chest increased with excitement, before stopping entirely. A sharp breath escaped her scarlet lips as I pierced her heart.

Lightning flashed a brilliant light as she breathed her final, desperate breath. Her icy eyes stared into mine as she caressed my cheek one last time.

I placed pennies on her eyes before I sought to remove myself from her house nigh the Hudson, but I saw something curious in that pitcher. Red it was, but it was not blood. Wine. Thence, I realized that lying cur's jealousy and deceit, for she was not a witch…

Thus I say… we all do things which cause us shame.

Word Count - 300

The great witch craze began with the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum in 1487 and did not end until the early 19th century. In that time, some 35,000 to 100,000 men and women were unjustly executed based almost entirely on fear and hearsay.

Mary Rogers "The Beautiful Cigar Girl," was a sensationalized, unsolved murder in New York in 1841. Her body was discovered on July 28th in the Hudson River. This murder inspired "The Mystery of Marie Roget" by Edgar Allan Poe.