Eight

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"I don't want you choking, do I? That would be no good at all. Not at all."

She whispered something and touched their foreheads.

"There," she said. "You can look around now - or at least move your eyes. I wouldn't normally allow that, but I must be getting soft in my old age. A century ago, you'd have no chance. I might even have blinded you."

From where the siblings were sitting, they could see each other if they looked out of the corners of their eyes. The witch pulled their chairs around so they were facing each other.

"Better?" she asked. She paused, but neither child was able to utter a sound. She began to pace around the table, talking to the air but directing her comments at her prisoners. "Ignore me then. It's fine. I don't expect thanks, not from children. You're all the same. Selfish. Ignorant. Not interested in the thoughts and feelings of others. I'm used to it. Oh, well, we'll soon change that, won't we?"

She lifted a large bowl from the corner of the room and carefully placed it in the centre of the table. It was filled with a dark liquid that seemed to slide rather than move freely as water might.

"This, my sweets, is the blood of all the silly, awful children who have passed by over the years. So many."

She dipped her finger into the bowl and then sucked it.

"See? It even tastes bitter."

She moved in front of Adam and crouched down. Sarah couldn't see past the witch's head to see what she was doing. Desperately she tried to scream, but her chest felt frozen and her mouth was numb. The witch stood and moved away from the girl's brother. She had something in her hands and Sarah watched her to see what it was. The witch turned to face the table and plunged her hands into the blood giving Sarah a fleeting glimpse of... What...? Was it...?

Her eyes whipped back to her brother. She wanted to cry out. She needed to vomit. She needed to empty her bowels and her bladder. Adam stared back at her, terror in his eyes. He couldn't see his body but he had seen what Rose had lifted away from him. Though she wished she could close her eyes, Sarah could see her brother's body very well. It had been cut from the neck down past his navel. The skin had been peeled back and the rib cage removed to be balanced on his knees.

There was a gap where his right lung should have been.

The witch was humming to herself. She took the removed lung back to the boy and pushed it back into place, whispering something as she did. The lung reattached itself to Adam's innards and his heart dropped out into Rose's hand. She returned to the bowl of blood and repeated the submersion and reinsertion into his chest.

Methodically, she removed each organ in turn, including the intestines which trailed along the floor as the witch walked, thrust it into the bowl and replaced it in Adam's torso. When she was finished, she picked up his ribcage, held it in place and muttered a spell. Sarah could hear the bones crack and snap as they joined back together. The skin was next, Rose folding it back and running her finger up the join to melt it back together.

She walked behind Adam and placed her hands on his head. After speaking her enchantment, she made a slight twisting motion and lifted off the top of his skull. Sarah would have fainted if she'd been able to. The witch reached in and removed the brain. She stood for a moment with it in her hands, examining it. She brought it to her face and sniffed and then made to lick its surface, though stopped short.

"No," she said to herself. "Don't do that. You'll spoil it. It does smell delectable, though."

She took the brain to the bowl of blood and immersed it, chanted her spell and dropped it back into the cavity of Adam's head. Carefully replacing the section of skull, Rose clapped her hands together.

"All done," she said. "Now for you, missy. You won't feel a thing, I promise."

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