Jackmonkey Games and Media

Tag: Fiction Fairy

  • Part 1: Anna

    Part 1: Anna

    There is no other way to begin except where it started for me, with my grandparents in their youth.

    Please understand that this is their story, as well as my own, because, if not for their decisions, I would not have been born into the Brethren of Judas. I am recording this account in the dormitory of the only home I have ever known, the Manse Judas, where I have spent my whole 19 years of life. I am called Kaye18July, as I was born on the 18th of July. We do not earn our names until we have borne the Prophet a child, and I hope to be known as Anna. 

    Our Prophet, John Brayshawe Reborn, was gifted with a vision by an angel of the Lord. The message was that the original John Brayshawe Kaye, had spoken the truth about Judas and that his message needed to be passed to a new Family of believers. This was written in 1909 as a warning before the first World War, but his brilliance was not recognised at the time, and the writings were lost. 

    Until, that is, the angel came to our Prophet. He had been partaking in the sacred herb Maria and was led to a store that held lost tomes of great knowledge, all discarded by their owners, and there he came across the writings. As I have lived at the Manse all my life, I cannot believe the Godless Romans are so wasteful with their possessions that they have enough to give away, especially books. That is where our Prophet found these glorious truths: he read them and the word sang to him and that night, the angel visited. 

    I can almost see it now, as I describe it to you, because our Prophet has never wavered from the retelling, and we are not allowed to change the words when we repeat them. The angel appeared through a haze of the Maria smoke and told him, “Tell the chosen, John Brayshawe Reborn, that Judas was no traitor. He did only as he was told. Fill the world with the believers who will come from your seed and know that you are this great man, reborn. In your hands, you have the words you wrote before and now you must complete the mission, great Prophet John.”

    When I was younger, I was almost moved to tears by the beauty of this vision and wanted more than anything else to see an angel for myself. I often thought of this during the times the Prophet lay with me and it took all my fear and doubt away. 

    My grandparents met the Prophet very soon after the message of the angel, at what has been described as a great gathering for lovers of music. Music is very beautiful. I have heard Brother James play his guitar many times during Devotion, so I can easily imagine music lovers like my grandparents coming together to hear it. They explained adorning themselves with flowers and spreading the message of joy and peace, while the sacred smoke of the Maria billowed around them like a beautiful cloak. Through that, the smoke parted and the Prophet found them and lay with them amongst other Believers. It was the First Miracle of the Prophet, as they were sustained by nothing more than the mud beneath them and the message of the misunderstood Judas of the Bible. The Truth resonated with beauty and meaning to my grandparents, who were divinely blessed to have their eyes opened by the Prophet himself. They followed the Prophet to his parent’s farm, and renamed it Manse Judas, and here I am. 

    I repeat this to you as it was told to me, so you can understand that our Prophet is not a bad person and I would never wish to hurt him, or the others who are Blessed. But a feeling has set in me, a conviction down to my bones that I must leave the Manse and see the world beyond and this urge is impossible to ignore. I am planning it with great care, as I have no wish to become a traitorous Roman. 

    We live in a beautiful place and I have lived well, with no mistreatment, except for punishments for when I have stepped out of the lines of obedience so clearly outlined to me, so I am not running away. All of the women of bleeding age have the sacred duty to produce more children for the Prophet, as it was decreed by the angel himself in the vision, but Kaye8May always resented this. She began to bleed sooner than me, possibly because she was plump and bonny, so she had to begin the Laying ceremony before me. Although it is sinful to speak of others without their knowledge, she told all of us in the dormitory when she returned. We were meant to be asleep, but curiosity had made us rebels, and in our nightgowns we listened with wide eyes.  

    She moved strangely, with an odd walk, as if in pain. She did not lie on her back but rather on her side, as if to alleviate pressure on her rump. Kaye12November went straight over and demanded to know everything, claiming she was a traitorous Roman if she didn’t share. 

    “It was, well, it was not quick. The Prophet had to look at me for a long time before he was ready and Esther used her hands and mouth on his organ,” she relayed. She gazed off to the distance, remembering, and continued as more of us approached to hear. I was mortified to be hearing about the male organs but also wickedly inquisitive at that moment, like Eve must have been about the fruit of the tree. “Then he turned me over and put me on all fours and Esther stood in front of me, so he could see her. He put my rump in the air and looked at Esther. She took off her clothes!”

    “What?!” A younger Kaye looked horrified at that, she practically screeched. “Yes, she played with her chest and he was watching when he put his organ in me and it hurt a lot. It was so unexpected, I screamed. It was like, it was like… remember that time you ate three bananas and had trouble going to the bathroom, and it was hard and horrible? It was like having one of those, sort of, but going into you.” 

    We gazed in horror at each other and at Kaye8May, but urged her to go on. “It still hurt, but he had to keep going, and he was looking at Esther the whole time so it was as if I was not there. I saw all of Esther, she has a lot of hair on her….place.” At that, we laughed. All the Kaye’s bathed together and so did the older women. We were unfamiliar with the older female body until we would begin to see ourselves changing into it. The Prophet did not like us to know too much, or feel too much like we owned ourselves. We had been born for the glory of the Prophet’s message, not to be looked at. 

    As she finished her story, Kaye2September walked over, looking sad. She knew all about this, she was 6 months into her pregnancy and as soon as she gave birth, she would be in the other dormitory with the mothers. She had already chosen the name Jemima but had not been bestowed it yet. With care, she sat on the bed as we made room for her, an honoured space for one already carrying a new member of our Glorious Family. For someone so blessed, she did not look pleased. 

    Jemima, though she was not yet called that, rubbed her stomach and said, “And when he finished, he said, Glory to Judas and you had to leave?” Not moving, Kaye8May nodded and frowned. “It hurt when he bit me, but he said I should make no sound, so he hit my rump. Then there was a strange, wet feeling and he said, Glory to Judas, and I had to leave.”

    “I remember,” Jemima said. She was lucky to be carrying the seed of the Prophet, but she did not look especially happy. During gardening, a few days later, I tried to tell her to think of the vision of the angel, but she snapped at me to return to my work. 

    Having heard what we wanted, the others went to their beds but I remained with my dear friend, Kaye8May, who loved copying bird calls and once wove me a crown of daisies. My friend seemed so sad and pained. I asked if there was anything I could do. She thought for a moment then said, “Can you lie behind me, so I don’t roll over? My whole rump area hurts and we have washing to do tomorrow.” I was only too happy to help and she let me press myself right behind her, so my face was in her hair, and she could not turn. I stayed there all night. 

    I shared that moment from my memory to explain that I was Kaye8May’s friend until the very end. She had to continue visiting the Prophet until she would come away carrying his child, but something kept going wrong inside her. Other Kaye’s visited him and were found pregnant in weeks, but not my dear friend. It was taking her a long time to fall, and it was clearly her fault as the Prophet is without blame. It was that, I believe, that made her escape. That, and what she heard.

    There are a lot of jobs to do for the Family and the Kaye’s must earn their plate of food and shelter like anyone else. There was always gardening, regardless of the season, or washing, or cleaning, always something to benefit the Family so that in the afternoon, we could gather after dinner and listen to the Prophet speak and read from the Bible. The Lord made me fidgety and restless, so I am often running here or there doing errands or filling in where more help is needed, but Kaye8May was not impatient, she was a dedicated gardener and helped in the fields. 

    That is how she saw, must have seen, the truck that drops off the supplies. I know what a truck is, our Family has two that we use to sell some of what we grow and make, but this truck was from the Godless Roman world beyond the gates and it always frightened me just a little. It would come up to the gate playing Godless music that sounded like a machine. And the men who drove were constantly transfixed by small, flat items in their hands that showed them images. We knew the outside world had machines, but they were Idols and we were forbidden to touch them. Still, when these men came to drop off boxes of supplies for us, or take boxes from us, Kaye8May always found a way to observe them. 

    She had always wanted to ask people from outside the Family questions and this seemed to be her best way to get information. Not content with being told that the world was made as the Lord willed it, and only the Prophet spoke to the Lord, she arrogantly wanted answers for herself. It was prideful, but she had always been curious. Naarah, who has blessed the Prophet with three children, always laughed at Kaye8May with her questions and called her Little Eve, warning her that thinking too much is very bad for women. I agree with this, as I now have problems caused by too much thinking, but that is another matter. 

    So it was more “Little Eve” than Kaye8May who followed a strange girl into the truck that came one day. There had never been other children with the man in the truck and it was repeated that he said something like “Skoolhorriday” to explain her presence, but he largely ignored her. I heard from witnesses that this girl was completely different to us in every way and obviously walked with pride down the path of the Damned.

    The girl was dressed in trousers, to begin with, and her hair was short and uncovered. It was a strange shade of pink, like a rose, and she had jewels in her eyebrow and nose. She, the stranger, was also transfixed by the strange, flat box machine that the Godless all carried, but she seemed cheerful when Kaye8May spoke to her. Only the Lord and the Prophet know what passed between them, because the next time I saw my dear friend, she was running past us to where the older women were cooking and raised her voice at her mother Leah. 

    “YOU LIED TO ME MOTHER! YOU LIED TO ME! HOW COULD YOU LIE TO ME?! IS IT TRUE? AM I TOO YOUNG TO HAVE A BABY? WHAT IS…”

    We were understandably distressed at the horrid way her voice came streaming out of her, so it was no surprise that Leah and my own mother Delilah clamped their hands over her mouth and led her away. She had lost control of herself, as the Bible says happens to women when they are given too much knowledge. I was transfixed by the sight of her shoes, kicking air as she struggled. 

    She returned only briefly, my dear friend, and I think it was only to speak to me. We were all going to bed after dinner and she arrived late and was put straight in between the covers by Leah. I slept next to her, which often allowed us to whisper conversations, but that night I pretended to be asleep. I clamped my eyes shut tightly, facing away from them. When I turned to look, I saw Kaye8May was asleep and limp as a ragdoll. But the peace did not last. 

    I woke with a hand over my mouth and Kaye8May next to me, urgently whispering to be quiet. She was in her work clothes and I felt her feet had boots on, in my bed.

    “Don’t make a noise! You’ll wake the others and I think there’s someone outside!” Her hiss pierced my mind with fear and I felt tears welling.

    “They’ve been lying to us! The girl told me! They know what happens in here, the girl wanted to meet someone from the Family and tell them! They called us something, a cult? It rhymes with adult. Did you know we’re ….” 

    Then in the darkness a voice called out, “She’s awake!” 

    Seconds later, Leah, Delilah, Esther, Deborah and Sarah and a few others I could not see clearly were pulling Kaye8May away from me. My own mother pressed her face to mine and hissed urgently, painfully, “Don’t listen to her my dearest, she’s very confused. This is the power the Godless have! They are trying to hurt us! Pray with me, pray with me my darling, we can pray the evil away!” 

    And as I had done since learning to speak, I repeated the prayer of Judas. 

    “Praise to Judas, Judas the brave

    Only to him, was the mystery explained 

    Praise to the one who turned from the world

    Praise to one who’s grace we will earn

    Praise to the Prophet, blessed to know all

    Ever our shepherd, never to fall

    May we listen

    May we obey

    May we remain

    Humble, his Family, blessed every day

    Faithful to Judas and his Holy Name”

    Always, the words had brought me comfort, but this night, as Kaye8May was taken from our room, my peace did not last. My mother remained a while and left me repeating the words of the prayer as she comforted other girls who were woken suddenly. They went to sleep easily, not knowing what had happened. 

    It was not until morning that they saw she was gone and a week later, we were told she would not be returning. 

  • The Witch Delivers: A New Tale of Horror

    The Witch Delivers: A New Tale of Horror

    I was sewing the strings of the rabbit heart so carelessly, that I did not notice when I laced my own thumb through the fabric. Into the sticks of the doll, blood pooled and the white feather rapidly drunk the red into it, rendering it useless. White, it had to be WHITE for the innocence of the babe… white, a hundred curses, I would need another dove.  Maybe a goose? No, a dove to abort.

    In my left ear, the voice of the singing girl child continues, and it soothes me as I rummage through my collection of magical components. A focusing stone clatters to the ground, as if it trying to leap off the table would mean I’d let it escape.

    You won’t be going back to the river, stone, you’ll be crushed and drunk by a maiden. 

    I will return to the river, the stubborn rock replies. 

    Of course, it talks back to me, it’s a naughty river stone, I think to myself, as I scoop it back into my pocket and silence its voice. 

    On the table, the maple leaves rustle urgently beneath my fingers, wanting to be rolled into a crown for the Summer King. I rummage further, past leaf and fur and feeling for the dried, soft tips of the dead birds’ feathers. If my eyes had the strength of my youth, this would be a lot easier. 

    There, the child sings, beneath the tusk of the boar, and accordingly, my nail brushes it. 

    Yes, thank you child.

    With the new, white feather strung into place and no blood to distract the spell, I start again to hum the song of Death and I feel its magic pouring out of me. The words will soar through the night and travel to the belly of Sara, pious and young, and loosen the embrace of her womb to the babe.  My vision varies between my home and her bedroom, a cottage near the town square where her family lives. Father, mother, brother, and grandfather.

    I see her sleeping and a handprint on her wall glows with life. The outline of the mans hand glows with the ghost of his seed, and I realise the Mother is showing me he continues to visit her in the night, even when she carries his child.

    Louder, I sing to the Mother the song of mortality and trade, life for life and I feel as Sara feels for a moment. Her deep, rhythmic, sleeping breaths fill me as I stand in my home, singing death.

    Inside, her walls will tremble, and the cord will tighten and the babe will struggle. 

    Between her legs, blood seeps as fluid builds, rushing onto the sheets. Now, the babe twists.

    Wakening now, the pain burns and leaks at the same time as she confusedly reaches for something to help her see the sticky moisture in the darkness and the babe wrenches free. She is so young; she has only felt him enter her in the silence of the night and now something that feels a similar size is trying to slide out.

    Now, her hips rise as my voice soars, fire, and fury through the night, involuntarily thrusting and arching as the babe passes through the mesh of life and death so easily, too easily. 

    Then I hear the scream as sound mixes, her fear, and my song.  Life is traded, given over to my hungry Moon Mother and Sara, a child herself, delivers with a wet sound. Between her bloodstained legs there lies a dead baby boy.

    He is red headed like Grand Sergeant Jarvis, the only man whose hair burns like the sun, the only one to have lain with Sara, his grandchild. A lying hypocrite tasked with enforcing the laws of man by day, while at night he seeks the flesh of his own kin and tells her she is beautiful for allowing him to caress her. The connection to Sara is broken but I feel with lingering disbelief that she blames herself for his violation of her innocent body. When he was between her legs, the atrocity of his attention made her feel special. I feel ill.

    My vision returns to my home, but the handprint of his seed on her bedroom wall remains in my mind.

    No more do I sing, nor does breathe the child of incest and they should thank me, but I know they won’t. 

    No, they won’t, replies the child on my shoulder. They don’t appreciate us, she hisses. 

    No, they don’t, I feel, as I roll my head, the magic heat leaving me with a headache as always, and I almost blindly reach out for the jug to put out the fire. When the channelled energy leaves I am old again, feeling every moment of my life in a diaspora of pain throughout my body.

    I pour the jug out, almost unseeing as the exhaustion hits me, with the last traces of Mother’s power leaving my wretched old body and my damned ancient knees almost give way. I reach for my cot and throw myself at it. 

    I fixed it, I think, as the sleep begins to take me, and with a whisper the child reminds me that I left the branches of the charm on the bowl, over the fire on a dish instead of burning it. 

    Burn it, the child urges. 

    Too tired, I groggily think. 

    Damn you Magatha, you burn it now, you fool. 

    Sleep, my brain replies, as the last of the traces of the spell leave my cottage, along with my waking awareness. 

    -*-

     The next morning, I did not awaken until they threw the water on me, and I realised I was bound to a chair and could not move. 

    It seemed the village was in my hovel, but then I realised I was in a God-fearing house when I saw the image of the Jesus man on a painting next to a cross. There were also a lot of rows of benches, and I realised the fools had taken me to their meeting hall. I tried to speak but there was a gag between my remaining teeth and all I could do was drool like a mastiff.

    “The witch awakens! Not a word from you, foul witch, or we’ll string you up without a trial!”

    I heard someone speaking next to me, but my left side is age-blind and the rope around my neck meant I could barely turn my head. It was one of the Mary’s, the one with the harelip because her mother was a liar. 

    “This is so awful,” I heard her weep. Weeping! Like I meant something to her. She looked down at me and I felt in a rush that she pitied me.  What had I done to inspire these feelings? Maybe she was kinder than I gave her credit for being. Her lips were trembling and she burbled in a thick voice, “Gentle sirs, please spare her, she is so old and confused. Just leave her alone, please, she is no witch.”

    She placed a cold, small hand on my shoulder and I saw she had bitten her nails to almost nothing and had gnawed some of the skin away. “Mercy, have mercy for the poor old dear.”

    “FOOL!” The deep male voice from ahead of me boomed and I saw Stephan the Just loom into my failing vision looking like a fat woman in his robe and wig. “Move her away, the witch must have none standing by her, now MOVE her I say.” His voice boomed as if projecting a spell to the treetops and I was envious of his volume, his youthful power. Such power and vitality was wasted on zealots but the crowd around him loved it. Their collective energy screamed with enough power to summon a forest fire, but it was being lost as they misdirected it to me, the fools.

    Mary was suddenly wrenched away and something hard and wooden was slapped against my shoulder, which flowered instantly into a dark rose of sharp pain down my whole right side. My head lolled forward for a moment, and I watched my feet come into focus and then become dark blurs again. Ha, I thought, I’d fallen asleep with my shoes on, yet again. 

    “Magatha Thorpencroft, you are accused of the crime of witchcraft.” Stephan the Just boomed, hand raised as he read from something. I could barely see him ahead of me, but he had on my table a few of my things, like my precious boar tusk and a pelt I had skinned. A hand pulled down my gag and with it, a mouthful of drool dripped down. “Do you have a reply to this charge, daughter of Satan?”

    “That’s MY tusk, I’ll be needing it when this is done,” I replied. 

    For a moment, there was no reply, and then Stephan the Just exploded in a bluster of noise and pomposity. “She does not deny it! She wishes the return of her…. her TOOLS of the DEVIL! Did you all hear that?!” 

    Around me, murmured assent rumbled from the company of fools they had gathered. If I could turn and see in focus, I knew I would see all the hypocrites gathered: Will Wheeler, married but cheating with his best friend Phillip. I would see Mary-Martha Grantly, who steals things from the homes of her neighbours and then burns them in her fire. Maybe I would even see little Simon Porter, only seven, who has a fascination with breaking the necks of small animals.

    These are the people brought to judge me, what a joke. 

    My mind’s eye throbbed for a moment as a Vision was granted. I saw the silver moon of the Mother appearing before me, like a pool or a window and I saw my feet hanging. The shoes I had gone to bed wearing were hanging in the air, like the rest of me, and it would happen later this day. Well, if that was to be, it was the will of the Mother, and as the vision faded the child’s voice said all will be well. 

    I repeated it softly, no more than a whisper, but I realised my mistake a second later.

    They did not hear my, “All will be well”, but they panicked at the spell I might have cast. I heard someone collapse. It was a woman who gasped and as she fell, Thomas Welling tried to catch her by the breasts. My sighted eyes did not see, but the sight of the Mother granted me a snippet of the future, like light reflecting in water. His hands touch her breasts more in the future, and they would need to hide their forbidden love that started today, as she fainted. 

    There is panic and from behind, someone pulls my hair and takes advantage of my upturned chin to pull rope across my mouth. If I had more teeth I could bite it, it was so tight, but instead it itched and pulled against my mostly bare, red gums. My mouth filled with saliva but the rope was too large, too dry for spit to soften it. 

    “Take her away, take her now, before she hexes us again!” 

    “Someone please help, she’s fainted!”

    “Magatha Thorpencroft, I sentence you to be hung by your neck until you are dead. If you have one, may God have mercy on your soul.”

    The voices of the villagers suddenly intermingled with my own internal whispers as their thoughts also came to me, as they sometimes do. 

    Another hanging! How exciting! 

    Ah, better stand to the side, I do not know why the damn sight of a woman hanging hardens me, but none will notice. 

    Why does father cheer when we’re going to hang the witch? Is magic real?

    Ridiculous behaviour from these ridiculous people, but a small part of me was amused that they had taken so long to find me, the real witch, among so many they had hung before me. Like Elizabeth Greely, whose only crime was being so beautiful that all the women in the town hated her. Or like Constance Doyle-Frig, who was too simple to realise her sister was setting up accusers so she could be an only child.  Poor, simple fools.

    In the seconds since the announcement that I would die, my hands and feet had been untied and we were moving. I was carried along by my blurry captors, who smelt like donkey shit and practically threw me like a bag of flour. A whole procession of gasping idiots was parading towards the gallows they had erected in the town square. I realised they meant to hang me immediately, no time in a cell or to talk to Father Markely, just the noose. Unless they removed the gag, they’d never know I saved them all. 

    Well, saved is an exaggeration, came the voice of the Mother. It HAD to be done, she reminded me, as I was dragged along. The future vision I was granted showed a time without the child, but also with, and left it to me to choose.

    If Sara had given birth to the incestuous child of her own grandfather, the town would have been in turmoil. Her father would have left and with it, the last miller we have. The people would have strung up Grand Sergeant Jarvis for lying with his grandchild, and he would never have a chance to pass on his lands to his nephew Percival, the only clever man in the village. Percival would then never build the shining, tube with the magic eye to see the stars, a contraption with glass that the Mother had shown me, a thick rod that makes stars larger in the eyes of those who use it. The Mother willed and wanted the cylinder of unimaginable genius, it would show the face of the moon to the world. It would bring dangerous knowledge and tempt humans into flying into the blackness beyond, where magic comes from. 

    These events would not happen if not for me, and of course, for the loss of one child. 

    There was no sense of proportion, no chance of an apology, and as I walked up the wooden steps, I hoped the Mother had kind parents in mind for my soul’s next birth. 

    I listen, and amidst the chaos I hear some blather being repeated. It was something about punishing my wicked soul and divine justice, as they remind themselves how righteous they are for my obvious sin. At the same time, they pray their hidden sins are never revealed. 

    I did not accept a hood to be placed over my face, but I realised that the blurred sea of villager’s faces would be the last things I see with these tired old eyes. I sighed and tried to cough but the rope just burned, gagging me. An off-colour joke is shouted, I can tell more from tone than the words, as they begin to secure the noose. The crowd laughs despite the fact I am soon to die. Of course, I am a wicked daughter of Satan, so that makes it all honourable and divine. 

    I have never thought of the Mother’s magic as coming from Satan, I think to myself, and it is one of my last thoughts before my feet are kicked away from something. All the weight of my weary body is suddenly pushed into my thin, old throat. I am too heavy for myself.

    Death is black, like I’m returning to the womb with its warmth and lack of light. 

    -*-

    In 100 years, when a girl-child is born to a fisherman and his wife by the sea, the parents will wonder how their first born came to be holding the tusk of a boar, small, shiny and curved. Was it the first thing she grasped as she was taken from her mother’s passage and laid tenderly at her breast? Or is there the chance, no matter how slight, that the excessive pain and bleeding that came with this girl, happened because she was born holding it?