Lady, You Don't Need to See

Just a Soul Crying

"Misty?" Cordelia entered the greenhouse with her cane sweeping the floor in front of her. Heavy, fast breaths gasped from across the room. She's hyperventilating. Cordelia followed the sound hesitantly. She swept the floor with every step. She didn't want to risk stepping on Misty or bumping into her and making things worse. "Misty?" Misty didn't answer her, but the sound of her breath was familiar. Her cane bumped something. It moved in response. Pawing around clumsily, Cordelia bent over, feeling the edge of a table. Her hand landed on Misty's ankle. Misty retreated back into herself. "Misty, it's alright."

Bracing her hands against the glass top of the table, Cordelia slid back beside Misty. Misty curled up away from her. "Misty, I'm here." Why should that mean anything? A broken, gasping sob broke from Misty's chest and wrenched from her, an anguished cry. Cordelia extended a hand and pressed it to the small of her back. At the first touch, Misty flinched, but she didn't shake Cordelia's hand off of her body. The vision flashed before her, bright firelight.

A man dragged Misty by the hair of her head through the dirt. She writhed and shrieked. Several men followed bearing tall torches, each separate flame dancing like stars in the navy sky. She kicked through the dirt as the man hoisted her up onto the stake. "No, no, no!" She jerked at her bounds, chafing the rope back and forth. It dug into her wrists and made them raw, but maybe if she rubbed it back and forth, she could whittle down the rope and break free.

The soil clung to her feet. All of her weight dangled from her wrists. They threatened to break in the strain. A man approached her. She kicked out at him with a screech. "Don't touch me!" The fire kept her from making out any faces. "Don't touch me, don't come any closer!" The flames glowed too bright and cast all of their facial features into shadow.

A hand threatened around her mouth with a rag. He grabbed her lower jaw to wrench her mouth open. Misty snapped her teeth down on his fingers. He stumbled back, sputtering, "Crazy bitch," and dropped the rag to the ground. Misty kicked off of the stake. Splinters dug into the soles of her bare feet and into her hands. "This will all be over soon." Perhaps it was meant to comfort her, but she thrashed, trying anything to free herself. The reassurance guaranteed only one thing: She was about to die.

Several people hurled gasoline at her. The acrid, chemical stench splashed into her mouth. She choked on it when she tried to inhale. Saliva poured from her mouth. Like a rabid animal, she howled, foaming and unable to wipe it away. "It's you who'll end in fire!" She slurred like a drunk as the gasoline made her tongue swell. She tried to spit. She tried not to swallow. Gas covered her from head to toe and streamed into her eyes from her sodden hair. "I swear it!" Behind them, a black-clad figure lingered, an elderly woman dressed in mourning lace and wearing a sad smile. Misty knew she was the only one who could see her.

Misty twisted again in one final futile attempt to free herself. Her shoulder strained until it nearly dislocated. The gasoline fumes caused huge black blots to appear in her vision, but the mourning woman remained clear, somehow drawing nearer, not yet reaching her, not yet touching her. A torch fell to the stream of gasoline leading to the stake, and Misty ignited.

The agony coursed all over her body. Every nerve ending sizzled. She screamed into the blackness of the night. The smoke curled off of her, away from this chimney, from this camping ground, and as she drank in a second breath to shriek again, she could smell—could taste—the stench of her own flesh cooking like meat on a grill. This scream died faster for its pain in her chest. She could not cry. When she breathed again, the carbon monoxide in her blood overtook her, and she fell out of consciousness, into a blissful blackness. Death swallowed her.

Then it spat her up. Skin blackened with burns and melted off, the crispy shell of Misty's body reanimated at the foot of the stake where they had committed their grand sacrifice. Bald and destroyed and naked, her magic pulsed around her, shoveling her under the earth. Mother Nature would heal the wounds mankind had placed upon her flesh. The agony of healing—Misty wished she wouldn't have come back so quickly.