(№6.4)

Her husband grew into the shape from an esteemed and worshipped figure in their village (mostly for the impulse of vast friction and the burning desire to flee where he went) to a lone and left-aloof outsider, since the dacians committed all kinds of immoral and brutal crimes days in and days out, but killing such a life-sprawling, magnificent wife for a woman, not even for the reasoning of her looks being despicable, which they clearly were not, was deemed unofficially unforgivable by his fellow countrymen and he paid this with complete isolation in dismaying solitude, his anger which made him strong had turned him weak, as society, companionship was strength, a strength boarded up and concealed to him.

He stole many wives from many other towns, like the awful disgusting cheating swindler he was and his wrongdoings were never discovered, for he was perpetually careful to not stir a crowd of routs beckoning at the door of his forfeited cabin, barely not swinging in the rhythm of the wind whenever a breeze came spiralling.

The women were always unwilling to stay, yet being his prisoners forced to serve him had not much of a say in this matter. To all their astonishments, disregarding whatever precautions he had taken to have them caged, they always got away, they were normally apt enough to run and flee, not without shattering grands of his belongings and cutting his nets, all driven by vicious female ferocity and rage that not usually didn't seem to be stemmed of them, but another empowering power, a spirit nearby gladly sustaining the downfall of the women's captor.

And for those not profusely meticulously able to escape, the ones he mutilated too soon in fits of anger, there was always a rope and a stool nearby, a helping knife or a metal rod conveniently rolling around.

Two hung themselves, three slit their throats and five felt possessed to hit themselves over and over again till the blood dripping and sizzling to the ground was a mortal quantity and yet another gloomy pit of blood had stained the grounds of his home.

If this thick-boned lout learned any lesson of value, it was to not err the same as his daughter grew and rather let her have her partial freedom: He parented as she was a dog with chains on her ankles, so she might run and jolly around, but boomeranged also back to him, as the da would mature into night.

When she was younger, he taught her a few things to strengthen their bond, he could pretend to be warm and soft with her, even held her hand when she killed her first rabbit at the age of six and ushered her with mean eyes to skin it still moving in its muscular spasm. If he taught her one thing over the years, it was to be ruthless. And that was all influence she could grasp from, the only ideal pictures in her eyes to be attainable, over the years. 

The women he stole in the beginning were not too eager to tend to the spawn of the brute who'd detain them.

And in other aspects, she grew up exactly as one might think of a motherless child;

The stench of salt and kelp bound to her skin for as long as she would live, for there was no one to remind her of scrubbing or cleaning her face, her skirts and gowns of muslin, damp and clinging to her body from the sprawling water echoing of the cliff sides where she usually played, almost never out of eyesight of the grave of the mother she knew nothing about. Skirts in defiant cracks and fissures, for there was no quick and talented hand to patch them. Her extremities enlarged in size, her statue began to fill out, her hair having lost zest of beginning curls was as straight as the turned horizon line of the sea and darkened a stab in colour, from precious gold to a slightly dulled brown-gold, muddied how it was firstly dug out of the soil, needing handsome polish and heinous care-taking to glitter anew. Though no hand remained to polish such crude beauty.

And just like any half-orphaned child that might as well be assumed a whole orphan already, thinking how little her father cared really for her growing up, except for staying the delicate, pretty girl she was, she always had a heart-breaking sensation in her chest how something was surreptitiously missing in her life, a constant, the warm fog of being hugged and kissed and loved with a fierce energy she felt when regarding her own anguish, the longing bred, crystal-clear simmering, bulking and expanding the dimensions equivalent to what the Sea occupied, sometimes having her breathless, at the edge of tears, missing something but unknowing of what exactly, the idea given slightly whenever she observed mothers of her village tending to their children, radiating an intangible essence, of something she could never touch.

She'd sit high in a pine tree, plucking pine combs and attempting to throw them as far as she could, while the rough bark pinched her skin, the salt burned her nostrils and the wind blew her long hair, never before cut with shears, in her face, resulting in her almost toppling down in her death. She was an untaught child, not knowing anything other beyond the bay and the village she hovered, and only great emotions resumed with that warm sense of calm when she brought herself in danger. Feelings of utter melancholy flushing through all her body, grieving, while she grinned herself a fool, for wanting something so out of her reach, word failed to express exactly, what.

Perhaps that must be the struggles mankind needed to endure for the short span of time they spent on this earth back then, always yearning for more things to have, to think of things not meeting expectations.

She didn't have much and was desperate and hurt to not at least have this small fragment distributed to others.

She'd slide off said tree, scratching the thin skin of her thighs horribly, as she wandered moreover to the forest, an principle forming in her head over time, how maybe there was no one dispensing things the fair way out and if you wanted something you had to fetch it yourself.

Such this was pure blasphemy, so there would be nobody wanting to have her thoughts confined, for their god would bestow woes and scourges, and yet she was never acquainted to that god, never learned to worship and love him.

Her father, after a decade of pointless bride-stealing of either opining a void or there mutilated bodies and as many graves to dig, gave up and accepted his fate of secluded solicit and stopped working and fishing to nourish his two-headed family, only sitting at the table of their epitome home, drinking wine and liquor, going to bed early and waking up late to have it repeated all over again.

His daughter loathed the taste of his pungent liquids and particularly was convinced he wouldn't be opted to share even if she did ask, so she became independent over time, roaming the night in the safety of shadows, stealing from gardens and gigantic apple pastures, eating so starved as if every meal would be her last, supposing she was to get caught, which she evaded by storming of the crime scene, to enjoy her meal in a safe place void of curious eyes..

She'd munch sweet apples until the sticky juices would run down her chin and her stomach protested and growled to have her stop. She'd take the water of their fountains, borrowing (not really) the delicious striped balls of meat the Dacians were popular for and frankly stored in awfully convenient places for small hands to get a hold of.

She broke into the houses they were so convinced to be spared and protected against evil spirits of the wood, rummaging through the toys and gear of children close to her ages, not sparing any hard feelings when she took the ones she fancied. Perhaps having a father to inherit her bad, swindling genes had their perks and upsides after all .

Other specimens her age were another issue to tackle: The other girls were afraid of her and her father, advised by the foul and treacherous lies their mothers feed them, women who actually witnessed the occasion and circumstances of her birth and the glints of brutal evil reflected in the eyes of the man, fascinating and abhorrent in the same breath. Circumstances of her birth of which she was kept in the dark; Her father, when he'd respond without lifting his hand, told her she murdered her mother, taking account of the strain she had put on her bearer under, during the months of carrying, so she used to not think much of how she apparently had killed half of her parents, for the very first deed she performed which would set the tone for the ongoing nuances and shades of her live's working.

It wasn't true actually, proclaiming all the girls would fear her, but rather the distance between those two parties was put on the girl's behalf quite personally, as a precaution, of a small event creating a split path of how everything would turn out, twisting time the wrong way, for at the age she counted eleven, she was almost put on death by two other lasses, prodigies of vindictive trials and almost-murder as it appears. She never even knew how to actively hate and loathe others, expressing it in deeds and words alike, ere this instance proved a confession of her naiveté.

For her father was rumoured to be a soulless demon killing his own human wife he claimed and infected with his disease to bear the likeness of him, so the lineage of hungering, pestering monsters would assume and pursue the ends of all villagers one day, hence the two brave, but foolish girl-sisters decided, where the adults would not intervene with the motioning beacon for demons and other creatures of hell, they'd interfere and be blessed by heaven, by their god, avenging those past and previous to them. Their mother witnessed the night the demon hatched and revelled in its true colours, yet since they were barely any older than his bifurcated monstrosity, it was out of question they could take on a matured devil, so what better preventative vengeance than to pick his very daughter, to murder her and thus dispel and rid their fragrant soil once and for all of nefarious progeny? A plan of deceivement and betrayal was put in motion and much, much unwarranted heartache.

Once when her father slurred and hampered out of the cabin, one deemed fateful october afternoon, they ran up and rang for the much prodigal daughter not expecting company and even less the one of two elder girls even, smirking sweetly and complimenting her lewd dresses and blouses, proceeded to braid her golden hair in tight plaits and played with her dolls, grinning honey-toothed delicate lies of fantasy and wretched falsity of the places they would visit, the games they'd play and the lives they'd pursue. They shaped the demonic spawn and formed her even deeper than they could have guessed, for the girl longed for lingering touches and delectable laughter, for the grey world to turn into a lustre of colour and miracle, for the days to dwindle to mere hours and for life to be lived and embraced, for life to be enjoyed. They wandered the forest with fern sweeping their ankles and robes flying behind when they hid and sought each other out, every battle committed at the shores of the beach was a festive celebration and a decorum to welcome the weekends.

Her friends whose both names would rhyme, became her thickest companions and she thought to herself everything her father had spun and spit out was either wrong or hopelessly turned, for the world beheld seldom ills and people were mostly good, so the world must be inherently good. The two conniving girls applauded each other when winter struck, how wickedly elegant they had convinced the demon no threat was poised by them and how decent actresses such as them assumed the role of such darning, benevolent girls, skilful to charm and eddy her around their fingers, the little, innocent heart of a poor girl, falling for their ravishing farce.

The girl would always remember on that grey and dull afternoon, how her father, a mass of fat and jaunt and huffed, hit her for seemingly no coherent reason, leaving the cabin once anew to attend some business and hence the spirits to clinch her destiny, if she was to survive or not.

How perfectly curried and titivated those two girls with smug grins, bearing the impertinent likeness of greek revenge goddesses and the means and opportunity aspiring to carry out the most baleful act there is, concealed by the convenience of chaste inquiry there visit, by asking  if the girl would like to go for a walk as consolation, before first snow would distemper such known scenery in refreshing white and ivory, in those matching grey wool coats, two bonnets dauntedly draping at the sides. She couldn't refuse the artless demand of her two best friends of course, so she grabbed her coat, put on those neat leather shoes, creased in fur with a unique hem line she had discovered in an old bag cautiously tugged away.

The air smelled like impending dismay and tension when the chattering girls walked the earth of frozen ground right to the forest, browned old leaves crunching satisfyingly beneath their winter boots, congealed in retention. The scenery, as far as human eye ventured, seemed impossibly still and halted, as if the Earth had lost its spin around the axe and now would keep quiet, for what was about to happen, the treachery supposed to hatch out of the egg of evil, was truly dreadful, the air she breathed impossibly suffocating.  

How stupid she had giggled and how daft she had smiled at the proposed jokes and pleasant anecdotes of those foul girls smirking behind their backs, leading the fat, gullible goose that was her at once to the slaughter. She might as well have beheaded herself around these times, eagerly doing it to prove their friendship and to ensure the other girls would not abandon her, for their bond was deeply interwoven and crafted around solicitude and addiction, exploited by those so called demon slayers and only made possible because she believed, she had believed there was good to be found on Earth. True camaraderie at its peak.

The air was bitter cold and stiff, but her heart was warmed and her laughter white mist in those inanimate terrains. The girls led her to a small old well no one used to obtain water anymore, for the poison ivy that thickly scrounged inside and lead even the heaviest lad to death in other times, thus it was deemed cursed, and for the girl destined her tomb.

"What are we doing here?", the smaller girl asked zealously, to prove herself in a new test and learn something curious from these two elder girls, her mentors. They smiled politely, barely able to conceal the wickedness away in their eyes.

"Haven't you heard about the legend?", one cooed with a daring glint in her eyes, laying her bare hand on the cracked, old cover dusted with thin frost. The girl shook her head slowly, wind arising behind her in a sudden burst, murmuring of deeds of dread in a warning she didn't listen to, naked branches grazing against each other like loads and loads of bone in the soil, deeply buried in a cemetery. A sense of calamity and caution blossomed deep in her, hinting at the wrong that might have been prevented. Her heart exhilarated to her throat and she swallowed.

The other girl chimed in, unbeknownst of her suspicion: "Come, come, it is a tale as old as time and even more difficult to elucidate. It will be clearer all the sooner, if we just show you now, this painful tale",.

The connotation around the word 'painful' didn't please the girl the slightest, but her ambition and curiosity was stroked, and naturally, in the countenance of the more experienced children, all younger kids desperately committed to folly to belong finally somewhere, even more enhanced, if the last one of your family standing didn't give a damn about you in the slightest.

She nodded, and her two counterparts shared portentous glances.

"Help us there with the heavy lid", the left one demanded and the three pushed and toiled around for a great deal, until the wooden coverage ached and shrieked and at last allowed to be pushed out open the day. Sky had drastically darkened along their little stroll, as if it had binded its eyes for the foulest of treachery: The betrayal enforced amongst friends.

The little girl peaked cautiously over the edge of the circular mouth, only darkness staring back at her, dried vines spread around the near wall, as if they attempted to crawl out from whatever resided in the bottomless pit and a terrible, smelly stench reeking, penetrated the place where the air mingled, as proof from beneath. The girls walked around her treading in caution, countenances held in perfect equanimity with a tad of worry, they had come too far to mess up now the most essential part of their schemings: The actual part involving the kill.

"What about the story?", the girl asked, turning around to immediately bump into the forms of her elders, standing too close to her and also appearing duly grander than she remembered.

"As we have stated before", one began, grabbing her shoulder roughly and locking the fist like a bench vice, as the other resumed: "It's better to see for yourself". More vicious than any viper, faster than the flies in summer and the dolphins in spring, they mounted her body over the edge and pushed her into the gaping, screaming hole that was the terrifying well, cackling yet more sinister than any witch. It happened so fast. Too fast. There was nothing that could have been done, whilst the trap clicked shut. Her naked hands loosely grasped the outer edge of the moss-overgrown well, but she was devoured already, before she could get a hold of the only possible window to the outer world. It was bitterly cold and even more so when these treacherous hands had grabbed and shoved her, sacrificed her down the throat of hell.

Firstly tumbling and just in through the gap, the cold ceased to have a hold of her. It darkened significantly and all the asphyxiating, impossible cold of the early winter released her, as if only the living may be grazed by such forces and her hours were counted from now on. Blackness crawled over her field of vision, rendering the outer world smaller and smaller, the more she tumbled helplessly, numb fingers grazing the ancient stones and gallant leaves of the poison ivy her only companion, the laughing and mocking taunts from the two monsters above mixing and slurring all together with the wind of the fall. Shock and surprise shacked and cuddled her, so she could scream no more, could not mutter a syllable as if already silenced forever. That was, until she collided with the pungent, black water surface dispelling all drowsiness and warmth, ripping open another wound for the terrible, chaotic world to be exposed to her, as she hit her head on a daring stone and dived under a great deal. And with that the impossible coldness returned brutally and claiming gasping more than ever, as fists and feet formed of ice crystals would punch her in turns, knock out all the breath left in her lungs and have her shaking and bitterly suffering. Well, if she thought hell was personated in the cool broth she was thrown in, it became her personal captivator when she shuffled back to the surface, gasping and burning, feeling as if she was on fire, whilst the cold was that intense, that painful, that unbearingly agonising, anguish drenched on top of that in this pot of poison, her punishment for a crime she could not imagine to have committed. Yet.

In reality, she had fallen not that far and the water was not as bitter, tantalising cold as she made it, but all these occurrences were only the symptoms of a terminal, potent disease that might defeat us all:

Her head hurt not for releasing bloody droplets, her heart did not stutter and her hair did not frail for the overbearing, ever-present frigidity she was plunged in, but because her friends had betrayed her, had played all decent and demure, relieved the burden her father proposed, all a means to an end to break her heart.

Her sight was blurry and still shaking from the violent eruptions of hot-blazing pain that radiated off her temple, the reason why she could not clearly see the faces of the false snakes, leaning in closer with glowing eyes, probably taking in her defeated, pathetic form one last time, before leaving her to rot in her tomb, forever.

They ducked their heads, the girl heard some shuffling and motioning as both their grinning faces came back into view, sliding the hefty lid halfway back before running back to the village, into the waiting and warm arms of their mother with red-tinted cheeks and slightly muddied jackets, mothers, caregivers, who'd brush their hair and tend their skin with special oils obviating skin droughts, perfuming their hair and dressing them in the finest nightgowns to kiss them to sleep.

The image conjured in her mind brought tears to the surface, warm and comforting, whilst her soul felt like being crushed. Her numb, cold hands brushed against the stones while she was threatened to dive back under to drown in the water with her heavily drenched clothes designed not to take a swim, pulling her only more under, soaked with this broth. She clung to the thick vines of the ivy scattered all across the half-lit dark walls, begging the lid to topple down and fall on her head to end all this misery, mute screams and sobs stiffening her, for her two bestest of friends condemned her to a slow and painful death perhaps as a part of being only a game, a childish dare to prove themselves, but deep down she knew that they had viciously lured her in exactly leading to this greater purpose, befriended her and all in intent to have her perish in a nameless grave, devoid of all dignity and honour. 

Her right hand shot out and hit the wall with breaking, erupting ire, a scream of pain, vengeance and sadness produced in her tethering away without ever having lived. Without ever being truly loved.

Her body was shaking with uninterruptible convulsions and spasm tethering through every fibre and every muscle, while the coldness only furthermore seeped in and made any thought of rationality useless. She was going to shiver to death down here, and no one would ever know.

"Hello? Is somebody out there?", she whispered meekly, her stiff fingers formed to trembling coils desperately clinging to the thick twines while only dripping droplets connecting with the surface answered, as well as terrible, ever silence, whereas her heavy gown soaked with slick and slime hungrily attempted to pull her back to the water, in her sure drowning. What was a better death, a quick drowning for a few minutes or the devastating cold furthermore ignited and made unbearable with her drenched clothes? In the end, a mixture of both would possibly take her.

"Can, ... somebody hear ... me?", her breath came in irregular quickening puffs, anguish overtaking for the futility of this question.

Of course nobody would hear her cries. Tombs were designated to not disturb the living.

The stones felt rough under her numb finger tips, old and weathered, slick and forgotten in this rotten eclipse. All those having the fond honour of representing her head stone.

Her heart leapt in hurt and riveting agony and she cried out in desperation, her pained cries hollowing and echoing as those of a wounded, dying animal. No, no. She was to get out of here. Alive. Well. She would crawl out of this hell to survive. To live.

Her fists clenched and she groaned, even so emergent familiar with the truth that there was not much to live for.

The stench of decaying plants and the hint of toxin stemming from the ivy turned her only the dizzier, her state deteriorating, whilst she pleaded and compelled herself not to die, in that icy grave, night breaking in with all the creatures feasting on her woes. She breathed in and out, resolution flowing in a steady stream of delicious, fueling, warm appetite for revenge. She had not yet known this feeling of great resentfulness spinning its threads through her mind and tearing through her heart this vindictive yearning to harm others in response to what they had done to her, making them pay, seeing them at their lowest and being the one to twist the knife around and around until they could feel no pain no more. Upon experiencing the rapid loss of hope and joy. 

She put one foot in front of the other clawing and tugging at the vines and desperately held on to them as she rose and rose with each chunky stone more and more, the wonderful, beautiful grey indeed greeting her pleasantly like an old acquaintance. More than one time, she was sure to misstep and fall back into the bottomless, gaping, quite disappointed pool of the abysm, the lowest of the lowest to devour her pain and relish in her despair, albeit if this could not be enough motivation, nothing was. Vine for one, slick brick for slick sharp rock she ascended, quivering more and more in coldness, though also in exhilaration, to be this close for sure survival. The stones morphed from impossible wet and damp to slightly drier, the tendrils firstly caging her like a bird clipped of its wings, were leading her out as well, fervently guiding her out of that bottomless, destructive grave awaiting her yet still, for she was not safe yet. Grey, darkened light hit her eyes in the most beautiful colour she had ever seen, when she closed up to the half-shut lid, quicking and throbbing in the beat of her heart, her throat trenched and incredible dry, her skin prickling and itching from the mush she was tossed in to wither away, muscles contracted to the most condensed form, yet they opened up, when she hung on to dear life on the outer edge, drizzled and dried ivy floating down lightly, much like her garnered strength tilted to a lethal minimum and she halted, the outer world feasible, tangible, a hair away just like death patiently fumbled below her, letting go and slumbering peacefully forever sounded perfect to her, for life was aware of not much save pain and suffering for all those that lived it. Her open palm rested on the lid, hesitantly, vacillating carefully.

She laughed then quite roughly and meanly, shaking her trembling head in disbelief, connecting her shoulder and shoving with all might the heavy coverage away, a satisfying jolt streaming through her body as it reverberated on the forest floor. A mystical grey sky welcomed her home with open arms, wind softly brushing her drenched hair and a sickly crescent moon peeking behind clouds.

She was home, she was alive, she had survived, she was revived.

She swung herself over the edge, tumbling down on the frozen soil and coming to a halt right next to the lid, dripping and wet, exhausted and freezing, small stones pecking in those bare crevices, blood numbly gushing through veins. A faint grin escaped her volition as she just lay there, breathing and sound, repaired and refreshed by life itself. If Death was easy, she didn't want it. She wanted it to be difficult, intricate and complicated.

For life was awful and pretty in equal parts, it matters just which one you favour.

She got up, violently shaking and uneasy on her wobbly knees, running and half crawling back home, whilst vowing to never trust someone again.

As she ran there though the lenient darkness, wind brushing her dripping hair and bushes caressing her in felicitation, she felt reborn, risen from the dead and united back to the living. The one thing which did concern her though, was what she had brought along with her rising.