31 Stories of Halloween

Day 10: Flames of the Past

prompt: flames

The crumbs of the old city sit in the shadows of the city. The city has a common problem; fire. Two brothers sit on the wall of the crumbling past and one crust of bread in their hands. They remember the town how it used to be, what happened to their mother. What the people were like and how they still were.

It happened 7 years ago the eldest boy was 10 and feared nothing and went out of his way to protect his widowed mother. His brother was 8 and nothing made him feel safe. One day girls cause more trouble than what was wanted. "Mrs. Smith is a witch!" the room shouted as the teen girls giggled with the fun they had, accusing the young widow that was these brothers' mother. "We the court sentence you Mrs. Smith to be burned as a witch! You even hid it from your own children!" they dragged her out to the streets as the town came to watch the whole scene.

Kill her! Burn her! Hang her body then burn it. It was all the same to the two brothers. They were taken in by the mayor and preacher of the town, the day they watched the fire consume their mother. The giggling teens enjoyed going through their mother's things when the eldest brother gained an idea. One day at church he ran up to the preacher crying, and with tears running down his eyes, buried his face into preacher's leg, with a sob he said, "Those girls I saw them when I was in the forest hunting for our dinner they were dancing around a fire and killed one of the missing pigs from the village!" the congregation was in an uproar.

The boy's evil smile plastered itself onto his face, as the girls who killed their mother quiver and shake as they are thrown in jail until their trial. The boy spoke out against the teen on multiple accounts, "They were shouting in a different tongue it was a dangerous one that was not like ours." The court listened to the boy every day in the courtroom, "They removed their clothes and dance naken' like a babe!" the last day condemned the teens forever. "Lastly, they shouted, hail Satan, hail Satan! For three hours straight!" the room burst into uproars, "Burn them, kill them, and let them suffer for killing the innocent!"

They were dragged at the worse end of the carriage to the burning site each girl was tied tightly to the pole, as they allowed the older brother to light the fire, he wished to speak one last thing to the girls beforehand. "It's too bad you went after our mother when she was just a normal human." He threw the torch on the stacks of hay and watched the fire burn them and as the fire spread across the town leaving rubble and corpses, the two ghosts slowly fade as the night began to leave the city's shadow.