This is just a little creative writing to set off the month of October. (RatedPG)
Do witches exist? Some say yes, and others are too scared to admit that they know the truth. Yes, they do exist, but not in the way most people think. They don’t ride brooms and steal children out of their homes. This little story will take you back to the days when they burned anyone for being different. I don’t condone this, but I understand what mass hysteria can do after living through this pandemic.
Screams through the night as the fog filled the cobblestone grounds with a blanket of doom. Doors slammed shut, the lights turned down low, the night was always the most feared time of day. For the past week, four women had gone missing from their beds. Not a trace of their existence left behind. It was as they never were. Husbands without a wife, children without a mother, and yet, not one ever saw anything. Whispers in the air were that a witch was responsible. She was building a coven, and the local women were recruited to do the work of Satan. Well, that’s what the men of this missing girls forced themselves to believe.
“BROOKE,” he screamed.
The husband of a local housewife gone missing hours earlier. This week, his wife, the 5th woman, vanish, her clothing, phone, and wedding ring left behind. Every husband refused to believe that these tortured housewives would give up a dream and walk out on them. It had to be the work of witches being this close to Halloween.
The newspapers, airways, and even word of mouth fell silent as the days went by, but when the kidnapping stopped, they all breathed a sigh of relief. No more wives missing, nor children orphaned, but what happened to the women of that small Midwestern town?
In a small clearing in the woods, the truth would come out. These women all left on their own accord, all of them tired of the men who trained them to be the perfect wife. They cooked, cleaned, and submitted to sex that they hated. Why? Because that’s what society says a good wife does. She is subservient to her husband and children. All were giving up their identity the day a ring on their finger castrated their hopes and dreams. If she spoke, she was irrational, crazed, or god forbid, she was a witch. Yes, that’s what happened. The Devil was now inside of her, and the only way to rid the world of free-thinking women was to stone or burn them alive. If they silenced their tongues, the others would fear speaking out against society’s norm on women.
“You are all charged with witchcraft!” said the judge.
“Guilty of having a mind of your own, using your tongue to teach other women your acts of disobedience. I sentence you all to death by burning,” he added, his lips curling to the smirk of the Devil.
As they tied them to the stakes, brush placed under their feet. A husband holding a torch stood in front of his wife, begging her to give up her voice.
As smug as he was, she used the last words of her life to bring down the misogynistic men who held them in silence.
“Burn us, but you will never take away our minds. We are as human as you are, and though we might not look as you do, we carry the power behind us that will take down a country. You’ve asked us to give up our names on our wedding day, our right to make the same wage as a man, and now, our voice. I would rather die for my sisters than lie to the man who entrapped me. So if you feel the need to keep women quiet, burn us, because if you don’t, one day, I will show the world that without women, you are nothing.”
The fire burned, the soot filling the air from the flesh of the women who refused to allow their tongues to be silenced. Stand up for what you believe in and never allow the world to tell you that you are unimportant. They may burn one of us, but they won’t take us all.
Leave a Reply