Shitty Short Stories

11

     The author has returned. I know I can just speak in first person, but fuck it. I'm the storyteller, reading Reader. I do the talking.
Rumors of maidens returning to their homes, in exchange for Sofie and the Bard's disappearance, became a tale of tragic miracle that spread across the land. For the village saw how painful and bizarre it was for the once missing maidens.

     One had said to be a father duck. Always trying to go home with a carton of milk, swearing she'd come back to her ducklings. But that day never came. And she recalled to always pass by an old man in the middle of the road. And that it felt new and stranger every time. Looking back, the maiden felt dreadful at the utter absurdity. "What if the old man was already dead? What if we were both dead, and lived in a constant state of Purgatory?"
     One maiden claimed to be a wool-eating lamb. One who couldn't leave the others who would always ignore her, lest she experience her death repeatedly.
     One said to have "seen it all," even as a rock. That she tried to kill herself to forget, but only ended up underwater. Where more isolation and dreadful drowning chilled her to the core. Shortly after this maiden's return, her family supported her funeral.
     As another maiden said to have been a sun for thousands of years, she cried at all the deaths that came to her without the ability to move away, to speak, to even close her eyes, or shed tears; others similarly claimed to be in total darkness, unable to see light; unable to call out a voice; unable to breathe; unable to feel anything other than the emptiness of vast space.

From all this, the villagers thoughts led to Sofie the Witch. She was just a simple girl. It was by the time when her father disappeared into the woods, and her mother became ill and died, that Sofie grew rebellious and gothic against the village. Always cursing and wanting to sleep. The villagers tried to take her out of the house to enjoy nature and a circle of friends. But Sofie would relay her fascination with death that only left the other maidens avoidant and discouraged. Otherwise, Sofie would always be in her house, on a hill at the village cemetery.
     When the maidens began disappearing, the village needed someone to blame. Sofie, as the Witch who's brought her sorrows onto the village, was further accused of catching the eye of a devil in disguise. But then, families of missing maidens claimed to have spotted a mysterious bard. One little brother sneaked to see the faceless figure. He admitted the bard seemed as if a handsome young man with a "resonant" voice, then clarified, "but I'm not gay."
     He went silent for a bit.
Although the blame on Sofie was lifted, she was still even more of an outcast. And the villagers' atmosphere towards her neither changed, as she didn't. But following the disappearance of Sofie and Bard, was a fairy tale dedicated to her: The Macabre Maiden and the Faceless Bard. Which caught the attention of a gothic princess.