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When we burned the witches, we burned them because they were grotesque and offensive. The women’s cheeks were wrinkled like furrowed wheat fields. They had eyes like tiny olive pits and scrawny arms and small breasts hard as apples. Noxious odors that sickened everyone wafted from their bodies. The men were wizened and bent over, with humped backs and twisted legs. They shuffled before everyone, always in the way. Their smell rivalled the women's. When we burned the witches, we burned them because the women's’ beauty drove our men and women to unnatural longing. Their skin was so soft one touch would make any other partner's flesh feel like tree bark. The odor those women gave off promised moist satisfaction. And the men. Their sexual prowess was legendary, their virility mocking our own failed attempts. When we burned the witches, they confessed their evils, their wicked lusts, their spells that had captured our partners and blinded them to their ugliness. They cried and pleaded as we tied them to the stakes, dancing around them with the ropes like it was a game. Round and round the witches, and with each circle, the coarse knots grew tighter, and our children sang, and we were all happy. How they begged when the flames began. They repented and pleaded and screamed as the fire consumed them. When it was over, we gathered their ashes and buried them in the churchyard, and celebrated and prayed and we knew that we eliminated their evil forever. When we burned the witches, they died silently, calm as religious martyrs. They did not flinch when we bound their flesh to the stakes, stood stoic when we pulled harder and harder and tighter with the ropes, and we wondered how they could bear it. They stayed silent, smiling even as flames rose around them. No pleas. No cries for help. Their ashes floated above our village and drifted onto everyone watching even the babes in mothers’ arms and the witches’ evil took root in them and they would one day be like those witches, reveling in their differences, refusing to obey our leaders, joining in defiance of our rules.
Ed Kratz is a retired computer specialist who has resumed writing after a long break. HIs flash has been published in Daily Science Fiction, Every Day Fiction, Flash Fiction magazine and a few other places.
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