nataliecparker:bethanyhagen:hanginggardenstories:CREMATION by Bethany HagenIn this town, we burn our
nataliecparker:bethanyhagen:hanginggardenstories:CREMATION by Bethany HagenIn this town, we burn our witches. Come summer, when the days are long and hot and even the grass bleaches in the sun, we begin collecting the wood. It takes a lot of wood to burn a witch, more than you’d think, certainly more than you’d ever want to carry.In the next town over, they’ve taken to locking the witches in cars and stuffing some rags into the gasoline tank. And of course, most places around here hang their witches or press them with stones. It’s cleaner and more traditional, and tradition is such a comforting thing in the face of evil, don’t you think?In the fall, we collect the wood in earnest. After seventh hour AP Chem, a few of us head down to the creek together to gather sticks and chop logs. Sometimes we leave the hatchets quivering in the wood and we splash in the creek instead, sometimes we’re able to source a bottle of Fireball or Southern Comfort and we sit in the woods laughing and drinking until the stars poke their way out of the dark. I had sex for the first time gathering wood for witches. Smoked my first cigarette, figured out where I wanted to go for college. Realized I was in love, realized I was in hate.It’s different, you see, from when the witches gather. They gather together to whisper and plot, to have dark orgies, to conspire against us.I know it looks the same, groups gathering in the woods for sex and talking, but it’s not. The difference is us. The people doing it. And when you get older, you just get a knack for figuring out who the bad people are.Who deserves to burn.***Connor’s one of those boys with eyelashes so thick and long you feel trapped in them. It’s not natural, his eyelashes, or even the rest of his face. It’s heart-shaped and freckled, highlighted by a shy smile and brown eyes so liquid you might drown in them.My mother calls a meeting on a warm night in October, and the whole town comes, the elder women in front with my mother, the rest of the citizens in back. I expect the meeting is about fundraising for the winter carnival, but it’s not.A girl steps forward, a girl I know well. Her name is Abby Jean. The first time I had sex was with Abby Jean, with leaves in her hair as she inched her way down my body and yanked up the hem of my skirt.Abby Jean opens her mouth and accuses Connor of being a witch.He’s in the room. He gets gracefully to his feet, those eyelashes blinking fast. “It’s not true,” he says.“It is!” returns Abby Jean. She turns to my mother. “I saw him in the woods with his coven dancing around a fire!”“It was a bonfire,” Connor protests. “Lots of people have bonfires in the woods.”“And they were throwing things into it–spells and poppets and things like that.”Connor sounds impatient now. “We were throwing beer cans. I know we’re not supposed to drink, but that’s hardly witchcraft.”Abby Jean is talking over him. “And when he turned and saw me and looked into my eyes, I felt my tongue being drawn down my throat. He tried to choke me with my own tongue!”“She’s lying,” Connor says loudly, and the room goes completely silent.I fidget in my chair, suddenly nervous for him. His fervent belief that he is innocent is undeniable and it’s hard to believe such a pretty boy could be guilty of such terrible things…but I know his outspoken defense won’t be appreciated by women like my mother. They prefer it when boys are meek. Respectful. Polite, even when threatened with burning.I look back at Connor, expecting to see him staring at my mother, but instead he’s staring at me, brown eyes pleading. It feels like a hatchet right to the heart.I turn back around.“The trials will begin tomorrow,” my mother says.***“Don’t do this.”It’s cold this morning, every tree and house wreathed by fog, the sky cloudless and weak with a sun that’s already given up for the year.“Please, Tanith. Please. I know you don’t believe Abby Jean. I know you don’t believe your mother.”The wood has stayed dry through the rain, but it’s still heavy as I unload it from the wood pile to the ground next to Connor’s stake.His breath frosts the air, huge white puffs as he pulls fruitlessly at his restraints. The Spanish used rope to bind their victims, but we use zip-ties. Sometimes tradition is over-rated.“Tanith, it’s just us right now. You could let me go.”I set down the wood and look at him for the first time. In a field nearby, my mother is leading the town in prayer. Soon, they’ll sing a few hymns and bless the Zippo lighter my mother holds as an instrument of God’s will. I wish I were over there, and not here listening to him beg. It makes it all the more awful somehow. Why can’t he just submit to God’s will like the other boys do?“You’d say anything right now. I’m not listening to you.”“Then will you kiss me? Before it all starts?”My stomach flips over at the thought of touching Connor’s soft lips, kissing the places where the freckles spill over onto the edges of his mouth. “Just one kiss,” he whispers. “Please.”The hymns rise up from the field, loud and clear. I clamber up the pyre to Connor’s platform, and stand in front of him, breathing hard.“I’m not supposed to kiss witches,” I say.“It’s a good thing I’m not a witch then.”His mouth is just as soft as I thought it would be. He tastes like toothpaste and chilly fall air, and when I slide my hand around the back of his neck to hold him close, his hair is like silk under my fingers. I press my body close, and then closer, every nerve ending lighting up. His long, long eyelashes brush against my cheek as we kiss.If I cared about him, I’d cut those zip-ties free. If I cared about his soul and my soul and the souls of everyone in this town, maybe I should do it. Mother would be angry, might even accuse me of sympathetic witchcraft, but I’d make it through the trial, I know I would. I know what those women want to hear, how they want the accused witches to act.But if I’m wrong, if he is a witch…I pull back and search his face, surprised to see that his eyes are already open, their irises hard and flat, like river stones. “Let me go,” he says.“I–” “Let me go, or I will find a way to hurt you,” he hisses. “I will make sure that every flame that touches me touches you for the rest of your life. I will choke your lungs with smoke as you sleep, prick your children with needles, drown you while you’re on dry land.”Doesn’t he understand? I’m already drowning.“Abby Jean was right,” I whisper, aching with disappointment. “She was right. Witches are real, and you’re one of them.”Connor yanks and struggles against his bonds as I scramble off the pyre, fishing for the matchbox in my pocket as I do.“Don’t, Tanith,” he snarls. His skin is red behind his freckles, his mouth an angry slash across his face, but oh how beautiful those eyelashes are still. “Don’t do it.”I strike the match. Nearby, I can hear the swelling strain of the final hymn. His tone changes, suddenly seductive and sweet again. “I can give you anything you want. Everything you want. Cut me loose and you can take as many kisses as you please.”I hate how much I want to take him up on that.It’s too early to light the fire, but only by a few minutes. I toss the match underneath the platform, onto the bed of shredded newspaper there. The beautiful thing about newspaper is that it burns instantly. Bright and eager.“It’s not too late,” Connor pleads. The sticks are catching fire underneath him now, sending smoke up through the platform. From the field, someone has noticed the smoke and there’s a yell. The hymn breaks off and I see people coming this way.“You tried to trick me,” I say, feeling a little betrayed. “Yeah, well. You’re trying to kill me.”“No,” I say softly. “Not trying.”We stare at each other through the smoke, and then he presses his lips together and closes his eyes. I can see those long eyelashes resting on his cheeks.My mother scolds me, but not very much, and the elder women of the town make sure everyone’s at a safe difference as the cords of wood around Connor catch fire. The flames lick his feet and his legs, but he doesn’t cry out, just coughs as the thick smoke does its job and suffocates him.I threw the match, but I can’t watch, can’t listen as his skin bubbles and bursts, can’t listen to the jeers of the crowd. It takes an hour from newspaper to ashes, from kiss to cremation, and that hour feels like all the hours of my life put together and multiplied. My mother pats my shoulder and leaves, everyone leaves, except for me, and when the moon comes out and the ashes are cool enough to touch, I crawl to where Connor used to be and touch them, wondering which ashes are his eyes, which are his smile and which are his freckles.I press his ashes to my lips and kiss them. They’re gritty and sticky and bitter. Witch ashes.The fog is back, wreathing the trees in the forest as I stumble toward the creek to wash Connor of my hands and lips, and it’s in the fog that I see my favorite hatchet buried in a nearby stump. Waiting like a choice. I could grab it and go back to the field and chop down every last stake. Or I could make sure wicked boys like Connor never suffer for lack of firewood.I lick my lips, still dusted with Connor, rub my palms together, and yank the hatchet out of the stump.____Bethany Hagen is the author of Landry Park and Jubilee Manor. A former librarian, she now spends her time writing romance under a pen name and playing with knives. You can find more here.Here’s the story I wrote for the ashes prompt, and since @nataliecparker made me watch The VVitch last week, it’s naturally about vvitches. VVicked October reading. -- source link
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