Witchcraft

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

JUDAS

My actions are unknown to me. I have never had a girl in my home all throughout these seventeen years of being on my own.

It was as if I were possessed. 

I sat on the couch, staring at the unlit fireplace. I didn't comprehend her words. It has been so long since someone has spoken to me, that I struggled to understand what she was saying. Now that I sit here and think about it, it was making sense.

I think she was scared. I think I was too.

I pull out the piece of jewelry in my pocket. Man's depiction of a human heart molded in gold on a chain. I study it, and the sparkling jewel encrusted in the middle of the heart like a bullet wound. I have been shot in the heart before had it looked this pretty? I'm not sure because I was dead.

This necklace. This must be what she was after. Should I give it back to her? How would I go about doing that? I turn my head towards the staircase, and the door behind them. I have a human in my basement. A whole person who is not dead.

I have never been so exhilarated in my life.

If I go down there, she will try to hurt me, I expect it. I don't know how to not hurt her, while also keeping her here. I don't want her to die, that is the last thing I want. I would be satisfied if I didn't have to touch her. I would like to hear her voice again.

To have a person who can talk to me, always, no matter the day or the hour; that is my wish.

I stand and move to the dining table. I need consolation, because I don't know what to do next. I move towards my father who is in a position I do not remember him in previously.

The hunters must have touched him. They moved him and I didn't notice.

I frown, but do not dare correct his stance. Instead, I sit in the chair beside him, and I tell him my sin. "I stole this." I explain, laying the necklace on the table in front of the both of us, "And now I stole the girl who it belonged to as well."

There is silence, but not really.

"Yes," I answer my father's question, "Yes I know I'll have to take care of her. I certainly won't let her die."

A pinch of annoyance tugs at me as I grab the necklace, "I am no fool." I can not look at my father as I say, "I'm the lonely one, not you. Do not tell me to release her."

My want overtakes my morality, though I've been told morality has never been my most popular attribute, "I will not release her!" I yell at him, "Shut up." I stand, my chair scraping the floor as it is pushed back, "You know nothing about how I feel."

I try to leave the dining room, but his words gnaw at me, and I spin back to face him, "Have you forgotten you are dead?" I shove the necklace back in my coat pocket, "Your judgement has no meaning to me now."

I leave. That was not consoling at all.

In fact, I feel worse about my decision. My frown deepens, and instead of going back down the basement, I move up the staircase. I make my way to my own bedroom, a place I hate more than any other, but it's also my sanctuary.

I sit on my unmade bed and move over the pillow that has my own stained blood on it. I've stopped caring about washing things a few years after my father died. There is no point to cleaning a house that is so full of retched memories. This place will never be beautiful, it will never be clean of its past.

I watch the slow swaying of the noose in the corner, the October breeze running through the broken window making it move. I've hung myself there many times, it was a trustworthy rope. It is a companion to me.

I lay down, avoiding the left side of my pillow, because underneath it lays my father's pistol. I don't have many bullets left for it, and I save them for the days I'm too exhausted to suffocate. 

My room, ironically, is a place of rest, not only for sleeping, but for execution. It is my museum, a room packed full of all the many times I have caused my own death. Hanging, stabbing, shooting, I have done it all in here. I hate it here. I am stuck here. I am only at peace when I am unconscious, but not when I am asleep.

When I sleep, I only dream of my mother, I can see her dying and screaming while being engulfed my flames. I can feel the burns, I can feel each cell on my body burn to dust, and I have only relived it once.

I burned myself in my kitchen, I set myself on fire to see if that will rid me of the awful memories and it only made things worse. I don't sleep much anymore. I have no other way to comfort myself, than by dying. Again, and again, over, and over. I'm so fucking tired.

I hear my father yelling at me from downstairs, I hear him call me the worst of things. He thinks I am evil for keeping that girl. He thinks I made a mistake. He says I'm wrong. Why would I want to enslave yet another person to this imprisonment? I am a monster, a cruel man. I deserve this life. I deserve to live alone if this is what I do.

I block my father's taunts. I block him by wrapping my pillow around my head. I can not hear him, I won't listen. I'm not a monster, I'm not wrong. I am just so terribly alone.

I can not fall asleep, so I lay there, my head buried in my pillow, I wait until my father is quiet, but that is not for many, many hours. His silence is what helps me breathe, and the sharpness of the cold air swaying throughout the home from all the broken windows has reminded me that I should warm up the place. I should start a fire.

I am so used to being cold, I have forgotten that it is not normal. The girl could die. I should warm her. I should feed her.

This motivates me to get up, and when my feet hit the floor, my father starts up again, mocking me, hating me, but I don't listen. I move down the stairs and prepare myself to meet the girl once again.