Something Strange

Colin (part 8)

There was a carcass on the floor.

This carcass had, once upon a time, belonged to a terrifying witch of the forest, but now it was void of soul and life; merely the remains of what once had been Katherine the witch.

But to assume Colin would have simply let her die was an overestimation, a naive assumption based on the boy's childish, gentle demeanour. Instead, after destroying her body with the sharp daggers and axes, Colin had conjured her soul inside a broken stuffed animal that now sat on top of the bookshelf, immovable and unable to speak. But there she was, the great witch of the forest, trapped inside a broken teddy bear with one of its ears gnawed out by an animal long time ago, and its limbs and head only barely attached to its limp, torn body.

Soul binding had been the magic Colin had been learning so much in secret and why it had taken him this long to master magic - indeed, simply using magic to swing the weapons and kill the witch would have been easy, but Colin was already far too spiteful for a simple death like this. All these years had raised him bitter and cruel; the years spent on planning his revenge for forcing him out of his home and turned his body into something strange and pitiful.

"Do you like being on the shelf?" Colin asked unctuously. "Of course you don't. But be grateful I'm not making you work for me like you made me work for you."

He was cleaning the floor from all the blood, mopping it real good from the filth of a rotting corpse and the tea that had fallen, but he didn't touch the carcass - he couldn't; he was afraid. He was afraid it'd move or somehow curse him even further were he to as much as lay a finger on it, and so he cleaned from all around it.

It was still hard to understand what had happened; still hard to comprehend the fact the witch who had done him so much wrong was finally gone, her soul now forever trapped inside the wretched, broken teddy bear. She was now forced to look at her house from up high, unable to say or do anything; unable to scream for help or get a release from her pain in the form of death. She was now trapped, just like Colin had been, and it pleased him.

But even though the witch was gone and the magic she had attached to the cottage had disappeared, Colin's body remained the same: his flesh and bones had not returned and neither had his core. He was still an overgrown children toy, beautiful to look at, but ultimately useless and unnatural in existence. He had destroyed the witch, but how could he return to the outside world looking like this? Colin was sure he would be killed, or captured, and taken by some spoiled royalty who would make him his court jester or a toy for his children.

Colin grasped the wooden handle of the mop between his doll hands and bit his lip. He had thought the curse would be gone but it remained, and with it the hands of Katherine were still grasping around his throat, his lungs, his ribs, his arms and feet: he was not free from her, even if she was now merely a lost soul trapped inside a toy.

He wanted to cry, but no tears came out; he wanted to scream but there were no sound left of him as he stood there.

It didn't feel like he had finally won.