Burn Them All | Microfiction

Burn Them All

I remember the screams most of all, the great flames licking her flesh with a thousand orange tongues. She was sweating from the heat. A gift brought forth by Bloody Mary herself. The wretched spawn from King Henry VIII and Queen Catherine of Aragon, the poisonous womb that nurtured the foul ruler.

"Burn all the protestants," Bloody Mary ordered. "Every last one."

I did the dirty work. The dirty work needed doing. But when it was my sister's face I saw at the stake, I wanted to be someplace else. Someplace far away. But I was a coward. I dared not say I knew her or throw myself to the flames. I dared not say I loved her, for she was not their way. So I burned them, as ordered. I burned them all. I was not a protestant that day, and as far as anyone knew, I never was.

There are some things you do not forget: the sight of her charred flesh and the sound that came shrilling from her throat. I sometimes wonder if I will find her sleeping in the hearth between the stone, face shuffling out from the embers, jaw creaking open to scream. But what frightens me most would be the look on her face knowing the one that killed her was me.