by Abe Moss
The witch paused. Those yellow eyes rolled up in their dark sockets.
“What’s that?” she asked. Her eyes narrowed. “You say something?”
“I’m… thirsty,” Maria said pathetically. Though it was in service of an idea, she felt pathetic all the same. And now being the third time to say it, her idea felt much less promising all of a sudden. Hopeless. More than anything, she would only earn herself further abuse, she thought.
“Thirsty?” Hiltrude asked. “You’re thirsty?”
Maria nodded. “Please.”
Hiltrude lifted the bucket in both hands, a sinister smile forming on her lips.
“You want some of this?”
Maria held her breath. Her skin crawled with regret.
“Or…” Hiltrude set the bucket down. She gritted her teeth as she got to her feet. She bent to the bowl still sitting on the ground nearby, full of blood. She placed both hands on it, prepared to pick it up if need be. “Why not this, then? Is this what you want?”
Maria shook her head.
“No? Not thirsty?”
The witch wrapped her arms around the bowl and lifted it with a groan. Some blood spilled over the rim against her chest, down her naked body, but she didn’t seem to mind, never mind the fact she was meant to be cleaning it from the floor. She waddled closer. Maria sighed, beginning to reach the limit of her tolerance for punishment. As Hiltrude approached, lowering the bowl toward her, to let her see it, Maria turned away, shutting her eyes.
“Don’t be ungrateful,” Hiltrude said. Maria cringed, the blood audibly washing back and forth inside the bowl as the witch stirred it round and round in her arms. “You asked, and I’ve provided. Now you aren’t thirsty?”
There was a tense silence. As the silence stretched on, Maria feared the worst. Just as she was about to open her eyes, she heard the slide of Hiltrude’s hands on the bowl, the blood splashing toward its rim. A playful, taunting gesture.
Maria squeezed her eyes shut tighter, afraid looking into the witch’s spiteful stare would only encourage her. How wrong she was.
“Oh!” Hiltrude gasped naughtily.
Cold blood splashed into Maria’s lap. She recoiled against the wall, knocked the same tender spot on the back of her head. She felt it through her shorts, below her naval, clammy and thick against her crotch. Hiltrude shrieked with giddy laughter. She bent toward Maria, cocked her head, watching her, relishing whatever she saw in Maria’s eyes.
As the immediate shock wore off, and Maria glanced from the blood in her lap to the ugly, crooked face before her, she felt a shift. Beneath the shock, something else ignited. Hot and seething. Something besides survival, besides fear, besides shame. She felt all those as well, a potion of thoughts boiling in her beaten mind all at once. But the added ingredient—tossed into the potion Hiltrude had been brewing all this time without knowing it—flared up above the rest, so that it blinded her to them. She clenched her jaw, enough that her teeth might crack. Had her hands not been chained behind her back, she thought…
With the only other weapon at her disposal—her fury bubbling out of her like lava—she let loose her thrashing legs and kicked the bowl out from Hiltrude’s hands. It launched from her arms and clattered to the ground beside the ritual space, splattering blood there with a loud, wet clap. The bowl circled on its rim once, wobbled noisily upside-down, then stilled.
Hiltrude looked from the bowl to Maria. For a fleeting moment, Maria recognized what appeared to be true surprise on her piggish face.
“You stupid… cunt!” Flecks of spittle left her mouth. Her yellow eyes peeled wide. “You filthy, troublesome little cunt…”
“Fuck you,” Maria said, breathing heavily, chest on the verge of exploding.
“Hiltrude?” Talma called from the curtain. “What’s going on out there?”
Without further warning, Hiltrude moved on her. Claws spread, she pounced with all her crushing, slippery weight. The putrid scent of her unbathed body gagged Maria, overwhelmed her. She could do little to defend herself. She felt those sharp claws against her scalp as the witch tore out her hair. She kicked her legs, pulled them back in, tried to get a knee or two between them, to force the blubbery creature off. There was blood spilled on the stone between her legs, her feet. Hiltrude, in her passionate barrage, slipped in it, feet slapping and sliding out from under herself.
“Get off me!”
Maria kicked Hiltrude’s foot out from under her. The witch stumbled, fell to her knee. She placed her free hand upon Maria’s breast to support herself, tore her shirt at the collar, pulling, sticking her tongue out cartoonishly in her struggle to right herself, to find footing in the spilled blood, to climb up off Maria’s squirming body. In that moment, Maria brought her leg back to herself, brought her knee up between them as hard as she could. Her knee met the underside of the witch’s chin.
“Oh!” Hiltrude cried, and shoved herself off. As she did, Maria caught a glimpse of blood in the witch’s teeth.
Hiltrude backed off, lips closed but jaws apart, careful of her bit tongue inside her mouth. As she reared back on her hands and knees, distracted and stunned by the blow, Maria gave her another. Her heel connected to the witch’s forehead with a meaty thump. Hiltrude collapsed instantly.
And there she lay, still as a corpse.
Maria watched her for a moment, a bit stunned herself. Hiltrude lay on her belly in a mound of naked flesh, arms at her sides, face turned against the bloodied cave floor. She breathed but didn’t move. The pouch around her neck lay visible. Maria’s eyes snapped to it almost immediately.
“What’s happening out there?” Talma called from behind the curtain. “Annora? Hiltrude?”
Thinking quickly, Maria reached for the pouch with her feet. She managed to get the necklace between her toes. She pulled at it, manipulated it up the witch’s neck toward her head, where it quickly caught below her swollen gullet. With the string between her second and big toe, Maria simply jerked and tugged, until she got it over the witch’s chin. She pulled it farther and farther up Hiltrude’s face, catching here and there along the back of her mostly-bald head.
“Shit, shit, shit….” Maria muttered under her breath. “Please, please…”
With the necklace pinched between her toes, she did a strange kind of kick toward herself, swinging the pouch and lashing it around her own body toward her hands behind her back. She grabbed hold of it. She was shaking. As she worked the pouch with her fingers, she nearly dropped it. Clumsy. Jittery. She uncinched the opening and dug around blindly. There were many things inside. Bizarre to the touch. She craned her neck, peered over her own shoulder, and spilled the contents to the floor…
She turned as far as she could, swiveling on her butt, sticky with blood, to see the contents on the floor. Teeth. Several of them. Human ones, pulled cleanly. Small gemstones. Tufts of hair. And something shiny and gold…
She slouched and, by touch alone, felt her hands over the key and pinched it in her fingers.
She shuddered with mounting panic.
“Please, please, please…”
She bit her lip as she shimmied up the wall, sitting straight, and began searching for the keyhole in the cuffs around her wrists. It was awkward, unable to separate herself from the wall with what little length of chain she had, and also to work her fingers in such a direction toward her own wrists.
She watched the unconscious creature on the floor before her, unchanged. She would wake soon, Maria thought. Any moment, really, unless she was lucky…
“I’m not lucky…” she whispered through her teeth as she drew the key aimlessly around the cuffs. They scratched, scratched, scratched—metal on metal. “I’m not lucky…”
The tip of the key caught part of cuff which wasn’t smooth. The keyhole. She fit it inside. Her fingers trembled and she feared she would drop it. Hiltrude twitched on the floor. She opened her mouth dumbly, lips lined with her own blood.
“Please,” Maria begged, working the
key, though she wasn’t sure who she spoke to. God? The universe? The Pale Mother?
—Pale Mother’s heart—
The key clicked. The cuffs loosened, opening. In that split second, Maria felt the world rush up around her. Adrenaline. She pulled one hand out from the metal cuffs. Then the other. She rose to her feet, hands held in front of her for a change.
She looked at Hiltrude on the floor at her feet, gnashing her teeth as she seemed to be coming around. Maria thought she should stomp her head in then. Finish her before—
Sounds nearby. Shuffling. Knocking. Something knocking along cave walls, down the dark passage. Annora, returning from her task.
“Annora?” Talma called again from behind the curtain. Worry in her voice. “Hiltrude?”
Maria froze. She didn’t have time.
Nowhere to run. They’ll catch me. Cut off my legs so I can’t do it again. My only chance.
She swept the floor with her eyes, stepped over Hiltrude’s twitching body, searching for something. A weapon. Anything. The dark cave passage loomed across the room, left of the table against the wall. The table, cluttered with ingredients. Perhaps a knife. She hurried to it, nearly slipped in the spilled blood along the way. She saw no such thing on the table. She could hardly breathe over the thumping of her heart. She stepped back, observed the ground once more. Overwhelmed. Annora was returning, the noises getting louder. A metallic knocking on the walls. A shovel. Was that the sound she heard? A shovel in Annora’s hands scraping against the walls. Why was she back so soon?
“Annora, is that you?” Talma called from that hidden room.
Maria’s mind spiraled feverishly, thinking… thinking…
“Talma?” Annora called from within the passage. Her voice carried through hollowly, echoing between those narrow walls, out of the dark. “You calling for me?”
Maria went to the curtain. She wasn’t thinking any longer. She was acting. Moving. Doing something. Anything. Without a second’s consideration, Annora’s footsteps getting closer, she tore the curtain aside, tore it so forcefully it ripped from the line drawn across the small alcove within, letting the cave’s dim torchlight inside.
Talma gasped, and so did Maria.
Within the small space beyond the curtain, there was a makeshift bed on the floor. Mounds of fresh hay, squashed flat by Talma’s resting. She lay on her back there now, naked as ever, and her body heaved at the sight of the young girl appearing through the curtain. Beside her was another bed—a basket turned into a bed, at least, stuffed with more hay and a blanket, which held the newborn child, sleeping soundly. The witch’s eyes—more orange than yellow—grew large and her breasts jiggled from the crooks of her armpits as she shuddered in surprise to see Maria free.
“What?” Talma croaked. “You—what are you… Hiltrude? Hiltrude!?”
Maria ignored her. She cast her eyes over the small space and they fell upon a wide blade resting on the floor beside Talma’s bed. As Maria stepped toward her, Talma must have remembered it there. She turned toward the knife, rolling her bloated body toward that side of her hay nest, but Maria was faster. She lunged for it, grabbed it by the blade in her hurry, slicing her hand quite badly. That was all right. She snatched it up as Talma’s fingers scratched the ground in chase of it. She turned it around, held it by the handle.
“You sneaky bitch,” Talma said. She appeared furious but there was also a twinkle of fear there. Her eyes darted toward the edge of the alcove, where the cave was invisible to her around the corner. “Hiltrude? Where are you? Annora?”
“I’m here,” Annora said, finally arriving.
Maria spun on her heel, blade held in Annora’s direction. Annora hadn’t noticed her yet, however. She froze, her attention instead drawn to the far wall where Maria currently wasn’t, and the unconscious witch lying there. Except Hiltrude was awake now, by the looks of it. Maria shivered with tension as Hiltrude rolled over, pushing up on her hands and knees. She turned her head this way and that, confused. It was then Annora looked to the alcove. Her eyes snapped to Maria, flicked to the curtain on the floor, to Talma lying useless in bed, and the baby next to her.
Another impulsive idea.
Maria dashed toward the baby’s bed. Talma rolled toward her, hissing. Maria slashed the knife, drew it along the witch’s reaching hands. Talma cried out. Maria reached into the basket and scooped the bare-bottomed baby into her arms. There were footsteps behind her. Feet scraping the stone. She whirled in place.
“Stay back!” She pointed the knife toward Annora, now five steps closer than she’d been a moment prior. The knife wobbled unimpressively at the end of her arm. She exhaled—a thin, tremulous whimper. “Don’t come any closer.”
Hiltrude was standing now. She rubbed her forehead where she’d been met by Maria’s heel.
“How the fuck did this happen, Hiltrude?” Annora snarled from the side of her mouth.
“I… I don’t—”
“Put it down,” Annora ordered, nodding to the baby. “You’re making things much worse for yourself.”
“Move,” Maria said. “Get out of the way.”
“The hell I will, you little bitch—”
“Move or I swear to god I’ll cut this baby’s fucking throat!” Maria’s voice cracked, shrill and loud against the cave’s low, domed ceiling. The baby awoke. A snivel. A cry. She laid the blade flat across its chest, the tip pointed toward its pink, rosy head, less than an inch from its now-wailing jaws. “Move!”
Annora did as she was told. Maria nodded in the direction she wanted her. Farther, she nodded. Farther.
“Both of you,” she said. “Against the wall. By the chains.”
As the witches stood together, huddled where she told them—they regarded her with the most smoldering, detesting stares Maria had ever been subjected to—she moved along the shelves, along the table, making her way toward the dark passage from where Annora had returned. With her back to it, Maria remained a moment longer, thinking, shaking uncontrollably like a scarecrow caught in fierce wind. The witches watched, waiting, calculating their own plans for when she turned her back.
“If I hear you,” Maria began, and her voice was choked with tears. For fuck’s sake, she thought, could she not cry at this moment? Wouldn’t that be all right? “If I hear you following me, coming after me… I’ll kill this fucking baby. I promise you I will…” Tears were spilling down her face. She could hardly look the witches in their eyes, she was so afraid. She jabbed the knife toward the ground. “I want you to sit. On the ground. Wait… no! Lie down. Lay on the floor, on your stomachs.”
The witches did nothing for a moment. Their own gears were turning. Could they say something to stop her, Maria wondered? A spell to immobilize her? To incapacitate her? What if she turned her back to them and they simply said one of their old, witchy incantations and her spine snapped in two, three, dozens of pieces? Did they have that power? Maybe. She couldn’t think about that now. If it happened, it happened.
Her only chance.
“Get on the ground!” she screamed.
The baby’s wailing pierced her ears like a siren. It rubbed its face with its tiny fists. As the witches finally began to do as they were told, Maria glanced quickly to the baby in her arms, and it was only then she noticed vaguely that it was a boy.
“On your stomachs, like I said.”
The witches glanced at each other, back to Maria, then gradually lowered themselves to the floor, arms splayed. Maria felt that swaying sensation again. Rocking. Like her body was floating in place. She took a step back, into the entrance of the narrow passage. The witches watched her closely. They’d come for her, she knew. As soon as she was out of sight. They’d climb back to their feet and come after her. After the baby. If they caught her… if she didn’t get away…
“Don’t come after me,” Maria said.
“What about the baby?” Annora asked, her ragged voice muffled against the stone. “You taking it home, then?”
It
was a joke to them. She wasn’t going anywhere, they thought. No, not thought. Knew. They knew she was going nowhere. She knew it, too. It was enough to make her mad all over again.
“Just stay where you are,” she instructed. “Just… don’t follow me.”
She took another step back. Then another. The narrow passage walls appeared on both sides of her. Another step. Her view of the cave, of the witches lying and waiting for their time to rise, growing smaller. Another step. She bumped into the wall as the passage curved. Darkness beyond. Another step, following the curve. One more and she’d lose sight of them. One more and she’d be on her way. One more step and she’d have to start running.
She turned and fled into the passage.
With the knife’s handle, she followed the wall beside her, navigating the tunnel, hurrying as quickly as her bare feet would take her in the pitch-black darkness. Over the baby’s continuous cries, she heard her own breath, quick and nervous. She wished the baby would be quiet. She contemplated dropping it now. In the dark. The witches were coming already, she figured. They were standing at the passage’s entrance, listening for her, deciding how far she’d already gotten, listening for the baby. If she dropped it now, left in in the middle of the passage floor, they could find it. Finding it would slow them, even if only for a moment. Or she could hold onto it a while longer, she thought. If they pursued her, caught up to her, she could threaten them away. The baby was leverage. It’d be dark, and she wouldn’t be able to see them, but she could threaten the baby’s life, and then… and then…
She had no idea what she was doing. Only that she needed to go faster.
The passage twisted and turned, and it was climbing. She bumped into many jutting rocks, skinning her elbows, her shoulders, on the cool stone. She smelled it, the minerals. She went faster, faster, climbing higher.
She paused once and only once, listening. She turned her head, held her breath, waiting for any sound between the baby’s shrieking—the air was still and quiet as it took in another breath, readying for the next bout. Either the witches were very quiet in their pursuit, or they weren’t coming. Not yet. Not even a rustle, or a whisper of their feet.
