I was six years old when I first saw the witch.
I'm a child again now, pushing open the door to where she lives. I'm the same child who was taken from that liminal space between dream and waking, who was dragged here against her will night after night after night by a raggedy woman with a moon-yellow grin.
The room looks different, and it takes me a moment to work out why. I'm entering it through the door, not through the window, so the opening into the kitchen is to my right. I can see the window to my left and through the dirty glass I can see my bedroom, I can see a girl sitting on my bed with headphones on and her computer on her lap and her face hollowed out and lined with meat. She must sense me because she twists her empty skull and stares back for a moment before returning to her work.
I swallow, my mind empty too, everything good scooped out of it and slopped to the floor. I'm nothing, I'm nobody, I'm scattered and lost and I'm not even sure what I'm doing as I tread the bare boards, as I walk into the middle of that big, empty room, the knife held out in front of me and my head turned to the side to see the kitchen, filthy, empty, seared into sharp lines by a single bare, swinging bulb.
There's a table there, sliding into view with every step. There's a table there and it's covered in meat, a butcher shop's worth. There's a stove, saucepan bubbling.
Thump.
She's there. She's there. She's there.
I can't see her past the wall but I can hear her I can hear her I can hear her I can hear her moving toward the door. She can't move quickly, she's far too old for that. But she's coming, her bare feet scuffing the floor, the lump of her hand knocking against the wall.
Thump.
She's grinning. I can't see her but I know she's grinning. I can feel it through the wall, as bright as the bulb. She's grinning because she knows I'm not going anywhere.
She's right, I might as well be wrapped in duct tape. I cannot move, I cannot breathe. I just stare at that door, seeing her shadow flood the floor like dirty water, see the eclipse of her head push itself around the sill, twisted and bent, her face buried in clumps of matted hair but one eye sliding up in its socket, one blistered, boiling eye and beneath it one arm, too long and broomstick thin, sliding out to touch me.
And I know, I know, that if those crackboned fingers touch me I'll never be able to leave this place.
So I fight it, I fight it like there was somebody on top of me, pinning me down. I fight it like there was a hand over my mouth and nose and I was out of air. I kick against the broken shell of my body, I punch, I open my mouth and scream and scream and scream silently until suddenly my body responds and I'm screaming for real, I'm kicking, I'm hitting, I'm thrusting with the knife but there's no force grabbing me and pulling me out the window, there's no waking, I'm here and she's still coming, still coming.
I stagger back into the window. She's halfway across the room, broken-backed and bent almost in two, moving like a puppet moves, jerking her way toward me. Her feet barely touch the ground, her downward pointing toes scuffing the bare floor, clacking together like they're made of wood. Her arms are six feet long and sliding from the rags of her shawl, her hands too big, they're like the hands of the statue in the forest and they're getting bigger, they look like they could pick me up and fold around me and cup me like a songbird and that's exactly what they do because she touches me, she's picking me up and I'm skylark small, caught in the sweaty filth of her hands as her giant face looms in toward me, her eye a blister of rage, her mouth a nest of horse's teeth opening to reveal a slab of tongue and a throat red raw and hungry, so hungry.
"No!"
I thrust the knife into the meat of her hand and she screams, the noise loud enough to shake the room to dust, to scatter my bones. I feel myself fall and I hit the floor hard, watching as she staggers, her hand clamped to her breast. She's normal, she's just a woman. I find my feet, running at her, and I don't hesitate, thrusting the knife into the dusty sack of her stomach and pulling, wrenching, sawing up through her ribcage, her sternum. I'm screaming at her but even I don't understand what I'm saying, I can't make sense of it. Only when the knife has reached her throat do I pull it free, dropping it to the floor and stumbling away.
She doesn't fall. She doesn't even sway. The witch looks down at herself, her hair falling over her face as she pulls the remains of her shawl apart. Beneath is a body that's more dead than alive, a birdnest with a gaping wound from her stomach to her neck. There's no blood, there's just a fine powder that might be sawdust or sand, spilling loose and puddling at her feet.
I retreat until I hit the window again, but I can't take my eyes off her. I can only watch as she reaches inside herself and pulls something free, something white and square and folded tight. She throws it to the floor and pulls out another, and another, casting them into the room until she pulls out one that she keeps, that she holds out to me with a bone-thin arm.
It's paper, I understand.
It's a story.
She drops this one too, then shuffles back to the kitchen, to that table full of meat. I watch as she picks a handful up, as she shovels it inside the wound I made, then another, then another, filling herself up again.
I don't think I can walk, so I drop to my hands and knees, crawling across the room, seeing story after story discarded there, all computer printouts, all in neat, black type on pristine white paper. The one she dropped last lies face down and I pick it up with shaking hands, I turn it over, and because I don't know what else to do, I start to read.
hey took my tong e
They took my tong e
tongue
Because I dared to speak.
They took my eyes,
eca se I dared to look.
because
They to k my hand,
because I dared to write.
and
They called me witch.
So witch I became.
itch I became I became I ca e.
They to k my story
hey told my story, they told it, they told it wrong
and they told it wrong and they told me wro g and they
broke me
roke me
They broke everyth ng.
I have my tongue
I took it back
I have my hand I
took it back I
have my e es I have my tongue I have my hand I have my story back I wrote it all again and nobody els can take it.
They took my story and now my story kills them kills them kills th m ki ls t mmmmmmm. I am a disease. I am your disease.
You only have to think of me and I see you.
You only have to think of me an I see yo .
You o y ave to t n f you see you see you.
I
See
You
Ther is no game.
There are no rules.
There is only a story.
An this sto y has killed you.
I don't understand, I think, and I say, "I don't understand." I say it again, and again, and again, and I look over my shoulder to see my faceless self sitting on the bed and I look into the kitchen to see the witch sewing up her ragdoll belly with thick twine and I look at the knife and know that there's only one person left I can use it on to end this, to end it once and for all.
It's three feet away, but it feels like a million miles. Just being here has drained me of everything. Madness has emptied me, I'm a ragdoll and there's nothing holding me up any more. I push myself across the floor, the weight of the air above me too much to bear. I can't reach it. I just can't.
A shadow hanging over me, the witch's face. She rolls me over and she's pushing something inside my mouth, a lozenge of folded paper. Then she's pouring something after it, a liquid that boils against my tongue, that sears its way down my throat. I gag, spitting, but there's a hand over my mouth driving my lips into my teeth and I have no choice but to swallow. The paper jams and I have to work it down because I can't breathe past it, it's too big. I can hear the witch, her voice is a thousand voices all chanting as one, drowned out by the agony in my mouth, in my throat. I kick, I punch, I fight, and then she pulls her hand away and I'm catapulted up toward the ceiling, through it, my hands in front of my face as I accelerate into darkness, into someplace that isn't here.
I see her, the witch. I see her as a young woman, her trial, her torment, her torture, and finally the horror of her burning—one boiling, blistering eye raging through the flames, a broomstick-thin arm reaching out, curling into itself, fat crackling—her ashes buried deep beneath an old, black, desiccated oak tree.
.sǝɥɔʇᴉʍ ǝɹǝʍ ǝʍ sn pๅoʇ ʎǝɥꓕ"
".ʇɥɓᴉɹ ǝɹǝʍ ʎǝɥʇ puⱯ
Her voice is inside me now, riding on the pain, it's the sound of a hundred screaming voices, unbearably wrong.
Even here I have to clamp my hands to my ears to hold the shattered pieces of my skull in place.
"·sɹǝʇsuoɯ sn ǝpɐɯ ʎǝɥʇ ๅᴉʇun sɹǝʇsuoɯ ʇou ǝɹǝʍ ǝʍ ʇnꓭ"
I'm crying out for her to stop, but she does not. I see her ashes sprout like seeds, I see the ground grow her back from the dead things and the decay and the defecated dirt, weaving the shape of her until she is whole enough to walk away. I see the way she isn't part of this world any more, the way she knots herself into the in between, into the liminal.
·ʞɐǝds ʇou pๅnoɔ ǝʍ os sǝɔᴉoʌ ɹno ʞooʇ ʎǝɥꓕ"
"·ɓuᴉɯɐǝɹp ɯoɹɟ sn doʇs ʇouuɐɔ ʎǝɥʇ ʇnꓭ
I see her vomiting stories, sending them into the world like birds. I see the way they spread, like a virus. If you read one, if you so much as hear a whispered mention of them, you are hers.
"We turned our voices into weapons," she says, and this time her voice is her own. I realise I've closed my eyes, and I peel them open to see her shuffling away, back to the kitchen. I manage to turn, gagging, retching, trying to bring up what she made me drink. But it is lodged inside me, I can feel it there, a sheet of paper unfolding inside me. The witch is at her table, sawing meat, slinging it into a bowl. The saucepan bubbles, spitting fat.
"I don't understand," I say again, and there's something wrong with my voice, my face feels numb.
"You do not need to understand," she says. "You only have to speak."
"Speak?" I say in my not-voice, taking a step toward the kitchen.
"You only have to tell your story, the way I tell mine."
And I spit out a laugh, because I know now why I'm here. I came to kill a witch before she rotted my life, but the truth is she was never my enemy. I see it now, my dream. I see her grin, I see her shadow flood the floor like dirty water, see the eclipse of her head push itself around the sill, twisted and bent, her face buried in clumps of matted hair but one eye sliding up in its socket, one blistered, boiling eye and beneath it one arm, too long and broomstick thin, sliding out to touch me.
Not to touch me.
To beckon me.
Her fingers twitch and I stumble into her, feel her broomstick arms crack and curl around me. I press my face into the nest of her hair. She led me to her, the stories were her map. She wants me here. She wants me. She's wanted me since I sat down and shared her story with the world.
"Why?" I croak into her, the word burning up the ruin of my throat, echoing from something that used to be my mouth.
"Why not?" she replies in a voice made of dust, a voice that has lived through centuries. "You have many stories to tell, child, but only one that will make a difference, only one that will be heard in every home, whispered in quiet corners, spread from person to person to person. Are you not a writer? A storyteller?"
A writer, I think. Wasn't this what I always wanted, wasn't this why I wrote her story in the first place?
"They all have a story to tell," she says, her fingers in my hair, plucking the knots from it, smoothing it.
Tubby, I think. Pinch. How many more? Were they all like me? Did she call them too? Did she open their lips and push a sliver of magic down their throats, wash it down with boiled fat? They are deadthings too, they are her deadthings and they will spread her disease, her curse, until there is nobody left to infect.
"You made them monsters?" I say.
"Men made us monsters," she replies. "I made us powerful. I can make you powerful too. I can make it so your stories sting, I can make it so they rot. Your voice is your weapon. Do you accept my gift?"
I don't think I have a choice, it sits inside my hollow chest and sings to me. I don't think I have a choice because what the witch wants the witch gets, and she has wanted me for so long. I don't think I have a choice because I have no life to return to. I am here, I belong here. I think I always have.
I nod, and I hear a purr deep inside her throat, a cooing-pigeon call.
"Then eat," she says. I look at the table, at that table full of meat, at that table littered with breadcrumbs. There are bowls there, empty heads. I know that one is Flint's, its hair shorn to the bone. The other belonged to Tanner, I'm sure of it.
There are no rules, she always wins.
The witch uses her hawthorn fingers, scoops up what lies there. And she feeds it to me, she presses the meat to the inside of my head and I know that I don't have a face any more, I don't have a mouth to eat with, I don't have eyes to see. There's a hollow where my brain once sat and yet I can still think, I can still see, I can still breathe, I can still speak.
"Thank you," I say.
There are no rules, she always wins.
"You can go anywhere, child," she says, tamping the flesh down inside me. "You are me. Tell your story, and know that every time you do you draw blood, you spread my disease, you push the rot a little bit deeper until there is nobody left but us. You are me, and you are the world, my world."
She lets go of me, busies herself at her stove, at her saucepan of bubbling fat.
"Tell your story, and spread our curse a little further," she says.
And I smile with the mouth I no longer have. I reach up and feel inside the empty shell of my head and I laugh, because she's right, I can go anywhere.
There are no rules, she always wins.
There are no rules, she always wins.
I was six years old when I first saw the witch.
I was sixteen when I became her.
There are no rules, I always win.
There are no rules, I always win.
And I'm laughing, laughing within the broken shell of my body, screaming and screaming and screaming with it until suddenly my body responds and I'm screaming out loud, I'm kicking, I'm hitting, and that same force suddenly sweeps me up like a pair of arms around my middle and pulls me back out the window and back through the city and