Something Wicked

If you must call her anything, call her a witch.

I find him where I find every man after my work is done, in his study, cradling alcohol, wrapped in fine fabrics, staring at the paintings picked by his wife, who, moments ago, departed this world. He didn’t seek her out, not even while she screamed herself raw. Twenty years of clasped hands and stolen kisses and shared childhoods weren’t enough to look upon her while the darkness swallowed her whole. She spent the last minutes in agony, not just in body, but in the thought of her greatest love not being capable of descending twenty-two steps. This is where men stay. Up and away. Among their pretty little things. Tending to their violent little fires. Leaning pensively in crooked wooden chairs. A glass held to the temple.

I sit opposite him, shrouded in his wife’s flesh. I flick my hand, and skin flies across the room, landing in the round center of a crystal glass. He stares at it, considers something, then lets the thought die with an exhale. Something catches his attention out the window. He turns to me, chin coming to rest in his smooth, clean palm.

“It is done?”

My body tightens. “She has passed.”

He takes a sip from his glass. Chokes on it. “I heard it. The screams.”

I shake my other hand free of sludge. “Hearing and seeing are not the same.”

He eyes me, head to foot, foot to head. “Tell me: are you what they say? All these years we have been friends, I have wondered.”

I shrug. “What do they say?”

He tilts forward, gaze coming over his glasses. “Come now.”

“Aye. Witch.” Sun slices through the window pane, drenching me in light.

He offers me his glass. I refuse it.

“Nay?” His eyes turn to slits. “Your peace is troublesome.”

“Nay.”

“Hmm?”

“Acquiescence. You’ve confused it with peace. But they are not the same thing. They do not sit in the same place in the chest. Do not confuse the two. Else you look foolish.”

He shakes his head. “Shame.”

He stands, though not quite straight, eyes on the floor, and fiddles with the fire. Stokes it for an unreasonable amount of time. The flames paint his face a deep shade of orange.

“What is the shame? And who holds it?” I blurt out.

He slumps back into his chair.

I cross my legs. Exhale.

“Reverend Parris will be…curious…of today’s happenings.”

I look at him. Really look at him. How could anyone love anything this ugly?

Through my smock, I touch the knife in my pocket. Just this morning, I used it to butterfly a freshly slaughtered chicken. Moments later, the skin of his wife. The experience tears through my thoughts. Suddenly, I find myself drifting to the belly of the manor, running to the bed, standing between Goody Taylor’s quivering legs. The maid holds her firmly in place before I make the first incision. Goody Taylor stops me so she can set her eyes on the blade. I don’t fight her. Every woman should have the chance to see the terror before it comes. To hold it in her hand before it holds her.

She pushed the blade back into my palm. “May God save us all.”

Her top lip was soaked with sweat, her body layered in salt and odor from the work. Every fleck of color in her eyes fled, leaving creamy white pools. I’d come to appreciate this wildness with each of the women I encountered, how they crossed over from personhood to animal.

I brought the blade down, just above her pubis, and pushed the tip into her skin. Her blood shot past me. I sawed against her tightly swollen belly, her skin hitching on the grooves in the knife before snapping open. Goody Taylor howled, hands clutching the soft white fabric beneath her. I stretched the skin further apart. The scene was blood and skin and bone and sweat. The initial incision complete, I dove in again for that tiny bit of flesh—a thin white membrane—and made one long slice.

“She’s everywhere,” her maid said, pointing to the rusty red at our feet. “Shall I call for a Pastor?”

“Nay,” I said.

“Prithee. She needs her absolution,” the maid pressed.

“A Pastor need not give it to her. She is absolved,” I said.

Goody Taylor screeched, clutching the maid’s arm.

I pushed my hand inside her womb. At first, it was vast, wet emptiness. But when I met with the slimy head, I retracted my hand.

“Goody Strong?” The maid released her hold on Goody Taylor’s leg, letting it hang free on the edge of the bed. “You grow pale—”

“I forgive you for what he has asked of you,” I said.

Her face twisted.

Goody Taylor’s toes quivered and popped. A wave of energy moved from her foot, up her ankle, and into her thighs. She writhed, mysterious swells moving across her legs and traveling through her torso until it reverberated through her arms and into the tips of her fingers. The energy worked her until she floated off the bed. The maid retreated, curling into a ball. Goody Taylor’s feet, bloomed with water, met the floor until she was upright. Her spine arched at an impossible angle, head tilting back and toward the floor. From her womb came a full head, slender hands, and a body. Not man, not beast, not babe. Something of another world. The monstrous thing birthed itself until Goody Taylor was turned inside out. Until nothing of her remained.

“The window!” I yelled. “The window, now!”

The maid sprang up, throwing the drapery open and saturating the room in bright yellow light. The flash frightened the creature; It began to seize. Its joints exploded, spraying black muck across the walls and floors.

The sound of his voice brings me back to the room, back into my body.

“What?” I say.

“The burning.”

“What of it?”

“A horrendous idea.” He appears disgusted. “To burn a woman alive.”

“Better to be burned in the sun, in a courtyard of strangers, than to die in my bed, at the hand of a lover.”

He cocks his head, finger tapping on the edge of his empty glass. His eyes shift again, toward the window.

“You know you are one of my dearest friends?” Tears form in his eyes. The skin of his lids floods pink. His chin quivers. “You know, don’t you?”

I blink. “You are most ugly when you cry.” I lean forward. He backs up into his chair. “Did you know that? I knew it the day I met you. When I watched you cry over your mother’s grave. It was quite the fit you produced. Dragged on and on. Only to compose yourself moments later and set off for afternoon tea. Your eyes were red. That cannot be disputed. But your face was the color of porcelain.” I smile. “So. Very. Ugly.”

I stand, and he stands with me.

A terrible sound rings through the house.

Shouting.

Shuffling.

Grunting.

Vibration.

Silence.

I hold his gaze as the door of the study flies open. I’m dragged out of the room; they’ve assumed it is the only way I will go. The door is closing, the end nearing. But not before I see him reach for his pretty crystal glass, not before I see him swallow the last bit of her.