Guilty of Witchcraft

Alea woke to a terrible screaming, a yell from outside her cottage, and as she dropped her knitting and walked to the door, she heard what was being yelled by the villagers approaching her door.

“Witch! She's a witch! Burn her!”

The young girl had no idea what was going on, and she wasn't a witch, so someone had been accused. Another witch had been caught. Alea though well of it, for witches were evil, they were Satan worshipper who deserved everything given to them.

Opening the door though, any doubt that it was not her vanished. Surprise was her first thought, then dread. She was not a witch, yet they were taking her anyway.

The villagers and soldiers were at the door with their pitchforks and fists, grabbing for her and taking handfuls of her skirts. What came next was but a faint and unwanted memory.

They pushed her and she toppled over, only to feel someone grab for her hair, twisting it firmly around their hand and pulling, dragging her on the ground.

Alea could feel the hair being wrenched from her scalp, and she bit down on numerous yelps that would have only made them pull harder. The crowd took her to the castle, where the guards then manhandled her through the bailey as workers threw All sprts of rotten and stinking piles of muck at her.

Stinking, and covered in slime of all kinds, she was pulled through the back stairs of the castle, and down into the dungeons. The stench that Alea was taken into to was almost unbearable, and her eyes watered, and she involuntarily let out a scream as the brute of a man pulled harder on her hair, and pushed her up against a wall where cold iron shackles were attached to her limbs, too tight to come off yet loose enough to scrape several layers of skin off slowly over time.

And the guards left Alea hanging from the wall, left alone with her newly found misery. The young girl emerged from her shocked state as the hours passed, and began to think clearly enough to realised what had really happen, what she now faced.

She was accused as a witch, so what was next?

First they would torture her until she confessed.

She wasn't a witch. Alea was god loving girl.

But if she never confessed they'd kill her anyway, no one ever survived a trial.

Alea cried quietly as it dawned on her, her sobs echoing through the stone walls of the prison. And now the only comfort she could have were her thoughts, and even her imagination was little comfort.

She was innocent, she would go to heaven, surly. God would not be unkind.

And so she hung there, on the wall, waiting for the priests to come with their their instruments of torture.

-x-

Blood dripped down her legs, and tickled her feet sadistically. The spikes that had been plunged into her body had just missed her organs, as designed by the iron maiden. Alea knew she would not live through this one.

Missing fingers and toes that had been sawn off, she was covered in burns and cuts and bruises. The young girl knew she wouldn't last much longer, and she now begged for death. And now she would have it.

The witch-hunter opened the door of the Iron Maiden, and shackled her hands together, dragging her up the stairs of the dungeon and out into the open. After days of darkness, Alea's eyes burned with the sudden light, and she blinked furiously. She felt like she'd never seen something so beautiful as the sun, or smelled air to pure.

The pyre stood in the middle of the bailey, with a thick wooden stake erected in the middle, and at that moment she was glad – she would go to heaven.

She barely noticed when she was tied to the stake. Alea did her best to stay still, trying not to allow her burnt skin and open wounds to rub against the rough rope and wood. In the all the pain she already bore, she barely felt the flames lick the sides of the stake, and catch on the rag she wore. She closed her eyes against the light and over powering heat, slowly feeling it all float away. Alea was being wrapped in a blanket of cool conclusion. Her life ending.

It was over, all of it. The pain, the work, over, gone. Alea felt contented as darkness took over and she submitted into nothingness.

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I edited it! Yay! It's better now, and longer. :D Didn't take very long, I should've done it in the first place! Oh well, here it is!