Microhorror Writing Contest

Hag. The Beginning. D.J. Jarvie

The rags around my head tightened with each twist of a wooden staff, while I lay on the rack, and it forced my head back. My fingernails dug into the gnarly oak beneath me but I did not cry out my agony then, nor while the restraints cut sharply into my arms.

‘Her mouth is forced wide, Sire,’ it was stated.

Witchfinder General nodded.

My accuser raised his hand and with the appearance and menacing descent of steel, my eyes grew wide and fear pooled its foul acid in my throat. My struggle was in vain, while my tongue was swiftly gripped by a cold hard vice. The slice of a hooked dagger was quick and, for a moment, I was unsure whether they had taken my tongue, until I began to drink my own blood.

They continued to torture me, encouraging me to confess to witchcraft.

‘Sign this! Hag.’

In that icy dungeon, just as shadows were born in the wake of the day, I cursed them.

I expired soon after. Yet, I found myself wandering the castle. I knew The Accusers sensed me within their spines as I passed through them and I found joy within that fear. It became food for me and I began to crave it.

As for the general. Without a tongue, I whispered curses and muttered woes in my head. And, he heard them. They all did, and madness took them in the end.

Upon the general’s death I appeared to him, like a rush of cold wind. Peeling away the rags from my head I pushed my face against his so that his last breath inhaled my rotting stench. While he beheld my true face, twisted, pulled and squashed out of shape, by the rags he had ordered to tightly bind it, I smiled. The men about his bed were shook to the bone by his fearful screams and I laughed. While he squirmed at my torn broken body, that plopped dead fat on his cheek, I cackled. While he looked into the bloody black hollows of my eyes and searched them for pity, he saw none.

And, so it was that I stayed within those walls. Upon the death of each of my torturers I confronted them with the face they had given me. While they wondered of their heaven, I whispered that the devil was awaiting their souls and I drank their hopelessness while they begged for life and God.

By the last of their deaths my soul was embittered. My thoughts were twisted, dark, and I could not hold back my ravenous thirst for fear, that mounted within my breast. I knew then that I would walk the night forever, and forever search for the fearful.

My mind, tortured, yet, powerful, gives me the means to follow the afraid now, on dark nights, on lonely streets, within shadows and, for a moment, they believe it is the gentle kiss of a breeze that touches their face… It is not.