We Burn Her

 

   We Burn Her 

                                                 By E. J. Gwynne

                                               

 

My hands are covered in sticky hot blood. It is beginning to cool now on my fingertips, the steam rising before my eyes. Hannah’s hands are at least as covered as mine, almost certainly more so. Some weird part of my brain thinks of pictures I’ve seen of Preworld wet strawberry jam. Her hands and long delicate fingers, and her spindly rings appear to be encased in a slick red glove. My fingers must look the same, but I don’t want to see them. I avert my gaze, gliding my eyes to Hannah’s.

We stare at each other, kneeling on the chilly ground, the body lying between us. I don’t want to look at the smashed-in face of the body, a live-grown woman just a few minutes before. Had that only been a few minutes before?

            She’d been screaming at us. Spit flying out of her mouth illuminated from the backyard’s porchlight, like a deranged psychotic patient. She’d been standing just the right way so that the light enhanced her enraged face. The deep wrinkles around her mouth were glaringly offensive, the curve of her frown wrathful.

Obscenities that should never be uttered by a mother slithered off her tongue striking Hannah and me, leaving deep gashes on our psyche. Names. Evil names that women have had to endure even before the Collapse crashed violently against us. There was no logic there only righteous loathing, in what I suspect was a hidden suppression of the true self. Pity burbled in my heart, although only for a microsecond.

            At first, the shock had rooted us. The shock one gets when found out or when surprised by hurtful things people can say to each other. Things usually inflicted on them by someone they’d once had respect for, but that was before. Before someone showed their true nature. The narcissistic and malicious woman before us should never have been a mother. She didn’t deserve Hannah. She didn’t deserve the strong and beautiful woman before me. Her dark cascading curls had been at that moment lusciously resting on my shoulder. My lips were still warm from hers. The memory pressed there forever with her kiss.

            The older woman had panted, momentarily resting from her onslaught. She had moved down from the porch, her bare feet standing in the frost. In the transitory silence, Hannah finally had an in. She had screamed out at her mother, tears falling down her cheeks like gutters in a rainstorm, “I hate you! I hate you! I’m leaving you! Just like how dad left you! You drive everyone away you evil twisted spider!”

            That had caused another onslaught of abusive rage hurtling like stones. The older woman’s eyes had gone so bright, round, and unblinking that they appeared paranormal. Madness lived there.

I felt my first inklings of fear. The older woman was shivering either from the winter chill or from virtuous anger. A little of both, the effect was terrifying. She was a woman possessed, standing in a worn plaid nightgown. Pointing a finger at us. And stupidly in the back of my mind, I heard a whispered word: witch. Was this how all witch hunts began in the Preworld, with the pointing of a finger? If we lived in a different time, would we too have been burned because of a delusion?

Hannah took my hand and pulled me away from her mother. She had said over her shoulder, “I don’t have to listen to you. We’re leaving.”

           Hannah turning her back was like the release of a trigger. Shaking with moral wrath, the older woman finally lunged at her daughter. She roughly grabbed Hannah’s hair jerking her back around. A slap landed on Hannah’s cheek, already red from the cold. Hannah gasped and froze, taking the next few slaps before she fought back.

I screamed, “Stop it! Get off her!” and tried to pull the older woman away from Hannah. The old woman hadn’t even noticed me yanking at her salt and pepper hair. At this point, her hands had gone around Hannah’s throat. A real terror vibrated up my spine.

Hannah’s nails scraped across her mother’s wrinkled face, although it was still halfhearted, I could see that. I could see she didn’t want to hurt her. Her mother, instead, showed no restraint. Her teeth bared as she strangled her own daughter.

 There is a small shed in the backyard. It sat in shadow behind the two fighting women. A formless lump that my eyes then focused on. I ran for it, slipping over the frosted grass of the backyard. Desperate, I ripped open the shed door, grabbed the first thing I saw. It was heavy and hard to lift. An antique, really. The handle is smooth and solid. I dragged it back towards Hannah and her mother.

Hannah was choking, trying to pry her mother’s hands from her throat, while the older woman shrieked, “I will cleanse your body in fire! Like in the Preworld, like they did to women like you!”

I hefted the antique and swung it at the older woman’s back. It didn’t stick. Glazed off might be a better term. She’d gasped and loosened her hold allowing Hannah to slip out. She turned and blinked at me. The insanity in her eyes wiped away.

That was when Hannah, coughing, took the ax out of my shaking hands. She'd stumbled over to me. I mutely watched as she heaved the ax up and, gritting her teeth, swung it at her mother’s head screaming her hate into the night air. The blade had sunk deep. Hannah unstuck the ax. The body collapsed.

Hannah hit twice more. We were both crouched over the body. Hannah breathing hard, massaging her throat, gazing down at what she’d done. I didn’t have to. I knew she was dead, but I reached into the blood and checked for a pulse. Nothing. The skin was still and slippery under my touch, the blood sticky. I think I’ll forever feel the texture on my hands. It will stay there eternally showing everyone what we’d done. Slippery on my fingers, in the creases of my palm, red and red and sticky, forever—

I gaze at Hannah, and for a moment she appears to me a warrior, a dark goddess of old, beautiful, and awe-inspiring, and terrifying to behold.

Our eyes lock onto each other. I hold my bloody hand out to her. She takes it like a promise, sticky wet squishing between our enclosed fingers.

“Come with me,” I say, standing. The dampness of the cold muddy ground was suddenly noticeable on the knees of my jeans. She doesn’t move, just stares up at me. I move around the body to be in front of her and kneel back down. Our breaths’ fug swirls together until I can’t tell which is which.

I can’t help but ask aloud, “What now?”

It takes her a few seconds to answer me.

 Hannah says, her voice flat, and just as cold as the frosted night air around us. “We burn her.”