Forsaken
My interpretation of being burned at the state in the point of view of an accused witch.
Forsaken
I was not sure where I had been taken, where I'd woken up. The mossy aroma of earth and compost seized my nostrils forthwith. I nearly felt as if I might sneeze with the pungent potency of it. My dubious sight fought to focus fruitlessly, agony shattered and throbbed within the dungeon of my skull. I reached back hesitantly to touch the sticky, metallic fluid caked in my hair which fell mangled and matted about my trembling shoulders. Darkness surrounded me and I crawled, and I slunk along the cracked and dirtied ground, unsure and disoriented, creeping like the worms beneath me. I could decipher the sounds of tiny creatures scrambling about my body as I moved, like tiny pebbles down a cliff, tittering and scattering nervously. Dizziness invaded my thoughts and I stilled myself abruptly, my blind eyes closing for what felt like only a minuscule second, but what must have been in reality many minutes, possibly hours even, for when I opened them once more, hundreds maybe thousands of mud-streaked, sun-damaged faces stared back at me.
I struggled, my hands seemingly bound about my back, my ankles too, my legs becoming scratched as I fought against my trappings futilely. I squinted down, catching sight of bundled twigs, kindling at my beaten feet. I glanced in horror at the faces below me, their felonious, heinous screams falling like thunder on my tired ears. I swallowed down rancid bile as nausea swept throughout my form, my head pounding angrily. I groaned, the incessant, malicious chanting of the mob running rampant through my muddled mind. Why were they calling me that? Witch. Demon. Enchantress. Was that what I was to them? Tears welled beneath my dusty, sooty eyelashes as I quarreled with my own trepidation. They spat putrid, abashed curses and stringy saliva upon me. I grit my teeth in my utter humiliation as the death dealer lit the kindling that would inaugurate my slow demise. My religion became my condemnation.
I wailed as the heat of the flames became unbearable, singeing my hair and scalding my flesh, blistering and melting and destroying. I cried, my tears never reaching my flesh, burning into air instantaneously. The murky faces soon blurred as my head sank against my own chest and the wretched steam and soot choked the oxygen from my very lungs. I shut my stinging eyes once more, the lids gluing themselves shut sickeningly. Then there was nothing more, just impenetrable silence as my melancholy ashes were swept carelessly and remorselessly out into the streets to be trampled and forever forgotten just like the many other innocent who'd suffered before me.
Copy-written to Xander Bradeshaw.