Author Games: Salem

Task Four: The Exorcism - Female Entries

ROLE ACTIVATION TIMESLOT BEGINS NOW - In the next hour/half hour I will send to you infomation regarding your role. Should you need it.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sybil Josefina May - The Seamstress 

“Your future is filled with flames.” Sybil flinched as the words left her sister’s mouth but she hadn’t expected anything less.

This was all unreal.  Sybil knew that the exorcism must have caused her to either hallucinate in a panicked fear or to lose consciousness entirely.  In a way, she was grateful.  Sybil would prefer to live without the memories of an exorcism, because, possessed or not, the idea scared her. 

Of course she hadn’t told them that, because that would only have served to convince the townsfolk that Sybil was possessed. 

She had tried to convince them otherwise.  Sybil had tried as hard as she could to convince them that she was perfectly fine, just a bit tired, but they had remained certain from the moment she had walked through the door.  It had been Sybil’s own father who had convinced her to not fight it any more than she had. 

“Sybbie,” he had said, pulling out the old baby name that made Sybil’s stomach clench and her heart ache at the same time, “This can only bring you closer to God.  Please.  I know you think you are uninfluenced, but whether you are or not, this will not hurt you.  Please calm down and cooperate…just in case.”

Now Sybil wished her father had been correct in saying that the exorcism would not hurt.  It had hurt, a lot, to the point where Sybil had been grateful when she finally slipped away into unconsciousness.

Since Sybil was aware she was not conscious, she supposed that made her not entirely unconscious, but after what felt like hours of enduring her sister’s verbal abuse, she had concluded this was the closest she would get to the freedom of unconsciousness.

Oh the horrible things Primrose had said.  No one could ever have imagined Primrose saying such things while she was still alive. 

This, combined with other things, led Sybil to feel certain that everything she experienced was an illusion.  However, even this knowledge could not have prevented Primrose’s words from leaving their sting on Sybil. 

Now the illusion of Primrose faded away into the darkness, but Sybil felt anything but relieved.  Even though the hallucination had told Sybil she hated her more than once, the sight of Primrose gave Sybil a small sense of overwhelming comfort.    With the hallucination gone, so was the sense of comfort and familiarity.

Sybil was now emerged in the darkness alone, but it wasn’t frightening.  Instead, for the first time since the exorcism began, peace enveloped her.  If anything, the dark reminded her of what it felt like to have her eyes closed at night right before she fell asleep. 

When Sybil was little, she had imagined she was floating away in her bed when she had trouble falling asleep.  The image of herself floating through the stars came to Sybil’s mind now. 

The feeling that followed was undeniably similar to the cut of a rope.  It was if ropes had been tethering Sybil to something, and now someone had cut the ropes.

Ropes.  Or a string.

Sybil had once heard stories of Greek mythology, of Fates who cut someone’s life string when the person was about to die. 

A dizzying feeling overtook Sybil and a rush rose to her head.  Sybil thought one thing before the dizziness overtook her.

My string has been cut.