Who's next?
Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 175
The mask was uncomfortable, just a curved piece of rough-hewed wood, really. The mouth opening was a sinister slit that turned her voice into a reedy thread of malcontent, the eye holes, tiny pin points that Felecia had to try and widen on three separate occasions until they allowed her to see well enough to do what she came to do. She hadn’t really known what she was doing when she first made it, she still told herself that lie and sounded convincing, most of the time.
One of the first men in the village she went after grabbed at it as they struggled and tore a chunk of the straw mane that she had woven in with crow feathers and sea shells. The man almost had the upper hand after that as he grabbed at the mask again, that was until he sunk his hand into the beard made from quills that Felecia had fixed to the bottom with a twine, a strip of belt leather and tar. Another row of quills got woven into the mane after that and now the whole mask was a weapon.
The rest it all, Felecia’s first foray back into Jacqueline’s forbidden arts had been a disaster, the man got red in the face and coughed, his eyes watered and then he wheezed at her to get out of his hut before he beat her bloody. The second attempt was better but there wasn’t enough. Worms and little insects and mushrooms and molds, a few pinches were enough to make them all stand still for an hour or so. Felecia had to make the stuff by the pound to stop a man and as it turned out the materials required to make the rest it all where hard to come by and labor intensive to make.
Examples had to be made first.
After a lot of sleepless nights watching the relative lunacy of everyday life in the village come and go that was the one thought that kept coming back as Felecia considered how best to make an impression on the drunken louts and miserable luddites there.
The abuses were legion and going on unchecked but Felecia bid her time, the hanging tree had remained empty since she came along and cut all the little sisters down to let them rest. Felecia waited out in the weeds, letting the insects have their fill, letting the witch grass dig in and drag across her skin like ground glass. The bastards had gathered together to hang girls and women before, they would do it again.
A young woman started shouting, that certainly wasn’t a strange sound but it was earlier than usual and the sound didn’t stay within the confines of the hut like usual or end with the sounds of a beating. Others took notice, sure, but they began that night like normal, a head peering out from behind a drawn curtain here, a stray look up from their chores there.
A man was pulling a young woman away from his tar paper shack and out into the area where villagers tended to clean fish, when there was still fish to catch. He was shouting, howling really, something about some matter of infidelity, real or imagined. The young woman wasn’t claiming innocence of shouting affirmations, she was busy grabbing at her hair as he drug her along by it and the direction he was heading became obvious.
Soon enough others started putting down their tools and stopped bothering to hide behind their curtains. “Stupid bitch went around on me. We agreed, fuck the swamp witch!”
The man was howling and dragging the woman up the slight rise to the hanging tree and Felecia saw them coming out, saw one of them go into one of the boat sheds coming out with a length of old hemp rope.
Examples had to be made, first.
Felecia let the little drama unfold, to a point, she laid in the weeds and waited until there was a stubborn knot of about ten men who were committing themselves to the act in some direct way.
The young woman was laying at the foot of the tree, begging for her life, trying to assure the angry man that he was wrong. She was faithful, and had always been. Felecia had been watching the village for days, she knew better, at least one of the other men in that little knot knew better as well but he wasn’t going to say anything.
Felecia didn’t care. The woman could have slept with every man in that village, she could have slept with them all and drowned their ill begotten gets in the sea one by one. Women didn’t deserve to die in the village, not anymore.
The rope got tied into a sloppy noose and the posse took up their positions. Felecia waited until the angry man pushed the rope over the young woman’s neck and yanked it tight and then she got up and took a knee and fired an arrow. The shot went right through the meat of his left arm and lodged there, sticking about half a foot out of his arm on either side. The man stopped shouting and looked down and yelled in a much, much higher register.
The rest of the posse started looking around but Felecia was already skirting the edges of the village, moving to another, closer stand of trees that put her between most of the men on the hill and the rest of the village.
The next man got shot through the knee, one of the ones who had been holding the rope, waiting to pull on it. The shot hit him with the same desired effect, the arrow lodged there and the man landed on the ground screaming and grabbing at the newly offending object.
Some of the rest of them started running for their huts then and Felecia was careful to count, some had women in their huts, most didn’t. This was about examples and the making of them. Felecia shot another one of the ones who had been running and put an arrow right through his good hand. Another after than got shot in the thigh, a dangerous shot but still a likely survivable wound.
All in all, Felecia moved three different times making a semi-circle around and practically into the center of the village. Seven men were laid out in the spot they were shot or were hobbling or crawling along to the supposed safety of their homes.
The rest of the village were all out of their homes and all looked on numb beyond surprise or cowering in fear of the still unseen assailant that was busy driving spikes through the remaining men of the village.
Women and girls, black eyed and bruised, were walking out into the night and Felecia saw the moonlight glint off their eyes and scales. This show wasn’t for them but it was good to have them all see. This show was for the wicked men of the village. The recalcitrant, drunken brutes who thought the world was there’s and that they were owed by the virtue of their sex alone.
Felecia, wearing the mask she had made for just this sort of moment walked out of the shadows and came among the men crawling and hobbling, refusing to be ignored as she traded her trusty bow for a rusty corn knife. She held the long knife out at her side and waited until the majority of the shouting, moaning, wailing men took notice of her. She waited until the women and girls started to come off the stoops and out from under the eaves of the shacks and huts.
“The women of this village are not your property!”
Felecia waited for those words to sink in among the men as they grabbed at the arrows protruding from their extremities. She waited for one of the louts to shout or curse. She waited to be released. Examples simply had to be made.
“You can live civil, or you can die like sick animals. The choice is yours!”
The drunk who had started the nights festivities yelled and it was kismet. “Fuck you, witch! You and your arrows. We’ll come find you…”
There was more, there was always more but Felecia stopped listening to what the sick animal had to say. She stalked up the hill, past men who shrunk away, past one who thought he would be sly and try to grab out at her. The man came away howling about more than just the arrow in his knee.
Felecia got closer and the lout started shouting even louder, she was on him and he was nearly howling out his disgust and trying to draw a knife at his side with hands that were slick with his own blood.
The kill could have been quick, a nice sideways swing that could have opened up the morons mouth nice and wide, comically so even. No, examples had to be made.
An example the rest would close their eyes and see for a good long time.
Felecia brought the corn knife up over her head and swung it down crudely, the meat of the louts left calf flopped open and leaned out making a sick, red flap. The lout screamed and threw his hands up over his head and Felecia brought the corn knife around and nearly severed his left arm at the elbow, another blow cut ineffectively at his chest and another blow drug along his right leg splashing Felecia’s leg in warm wetness.
Felecia kept swinging on the man until his screams of pain and indignation turned to animalistic howls and then weak moans. She kept swinging the corn knife around and over, up and down, until the only answer was the thick wet, schick sound of steel splitting meat. Felecia kept swinging the corn knife until her arms grew numb and there was nothing but a pile of disarticulated humanity splayed out before her. Her clothes were wet, her hands were sticky.
Felecia turned to the rest of the men who were laying on the ground, their eyes wide, she looked out beyond at the huts and shacks and the narrow eyes that peeked out from behind their curtains.
“Who’s next?”