Byron: The Dark Witch

Prompt the Tenth - The End

He hears the key. Turns once in the door and once only it turns. It confirms his prison. Little ceiling remains overhead but the walls are steel, the door heavy and firm. In the early days, he counted the remaining beams on the roof. There are eighteen and he is neatly tucked just under them, away from the sun. Not that there is sun. His physique, faded to hard angles, drips with the rain. The thunder crashes, lights up the bones of his unit and of his body, each one a prominent shadow.

The throb of blood his skull echoes like a drum between mountains, rumbling with the thunder. He is sure that someone is nearby but his eyes don’t want to focus and find out which captor it is today. He sits there, breaths rasping in his throat, the taste of iron on his tongue. Iron and blood. And then he feels hands on him again; he winces because they are gentler than before. Words, soft, horrible words in a velveteen voice. Something small and round on his tongue that tasted bitter against the metallic warmth of his blood. A pill then. As usual, they will attempt to stitch him back together, then break him and burn him, drown him and dissolve him... but always put him back together because that’s what this is isn’t it? Church monsters tearing him apart to discover all the impurities within him, the cycles of his ancient soul, the power of his blood. He doesn’t know why they care now or why they do the things they do. The whole world lurches, his head whips to the side.

Facing him, a faceless man is grinning, eyes flashing with excitement as he seeks the black notebook containing a detailed history of this particular specimen. It is a notebook that will one day end up in Aoife’s hands and she will sob in a way that no one should ever sob, with her heart pouring into her hands, faith in the world splintering and spilling from her eyes. This man will go home pleased tonight, the witch has proven a useful test subject but his use is almost at an end.

Green eyes. Bloodied lips. Delectable. He looks terribly young and terribly old, wrists and ankles bound, drooping like a tired child on the oversized, metal chair. Almost naked, blood trickling from those pretty lips, rain still glistening on alabaster skin, the red hair darkened with blood and water, stark crisscrossing lines against skin, such pale brutal scars... it is a tantalising sight for this captor. But he waits for the witch to feel the effects completely, for his Will to become malleable, supple to his desires. He is a connoisseur of good witches, good for juice that was, for power, and he leers over the frail figure as he succumbs to the drug.

Once under, there is no character left in the body, just an acquiescent puppet of whom he becomes master. He reaches one hand out to stroke the blooming bruises on an otherwise ashen face, knowing that it hurts for him to touch them but relishing how the boy barely reacts. He is completely his.

Thus begins an hour full of screaming. When the question is answered, he is lashed for being a witch. When he cannot answer, electricity wrangles his limbs and snaps his bones. When he answers incorrectly, new lines are cut into his flesh, shallow and painful and hot.

Somewhere in his head, the witch recites mantras. He never thought this could be his ending. He secretly hoped to reach old age, to grow ancient in the warmth of someone else’s love, perhaps to die walking to the top of their favourite hill, in the quiet, at peace. He knows he will die here though. In many ways death is already in him.

It is the last scream that gives him away. Face caught in a rictus of pain. Utter silence. The body convulses without the usual tightening of agony. The shredded skin no longer trembles, exposed flesh grows coolers. The man grabs a fist full of red hair, shakes him. Bellows at him. Slaps him. Beneath the red hair is a cracked skull from the force of his electrocution. The man roars, screams profanity after profanity.

The witch soars. He forgets the details, they drop away. Things like the robes his captors wore, the black energy that curled around them, the way a templar stood before him and asked if he’d repent in exchange for a merciful death and the way his sobs had broken the air when that templar laughed at his appeals for mercy, for forgiveness. He forgets them as he flies. He thinks, if he looks back he might see himself, the wretched half-thing trapped and dying. He knows he is dying. His dreams trickle by him. Faces. His parents and sister... the one that betrayed him. He whispers the name in his dreamspace, this safe space.

His body has sagged, lifeless, breathless. He is alone in a container. The door is open. The man will not return. But then, nor will Byron.

His heart stops. It is over for the witch

*

In the future, Byron sits at his desk whilst his guests talk quietly amongst themselves. He is writing to his coven, explaining their theory on the destruction of witch souls, the fundamental aberration that this represents, the way this will impact the fabric of nature. He taps his pen against the page, jots a few more words.

Jack is talking to Edward but his eyes keep darting over to check on his flame-haired junior. Edward’s body sags into the sofa, still full of heart-wearying darkness and feeling each second that the black gnaws at his own essence. Aoife is trying to explain what magick is, in more detail, reflecting on the philosophical elements of free will, wildness and control.

“All magick was neutral until it’s used by a witch,” she says, “And their blood magick is pretty much neutral too. But then once Will utilises the magick, it is given purpose, direction, it falls into light and dark. That much is all common knowledge. But then you’re arguing... that God made the magick and thus us bogeymen are also ‘natural’?” She is listening to Jude’s theories too. There is something going on there.

But Byron isn’t concerned with that right now. All this revives in him, memories of his own black stain. He had died once but chosen to come back, to live and do better. Or perhaps chose was the wrong word. Magick had chosen for him. The rain had stopped but the wind remained wild under a cold morning sun. It had breathed life back into him after so long in isolation. He still had no idea how. He still had no idea how Aoife then found him, moments after he awoke, nor how she cut him free and scurried him away. He’d rarely remained aware of himself for long enough to remember details other than excruciating fear from those first few weeks of freedom. He’d been a prisoner so long. He’d recovered only after his small coven of misfits interfused him with their spirit...

Sighing, he sets the pen down and stares out across the distance comprised of orange half-hills and rolling forest; he feels almost at peace. But he knows this is the beginning of the end. Whether he can survive the same blackness twice, he doesn’t know. Nor does he know why something niggles at his consciousness.

Sooner or later, he decides, every individual story contains an unfortunate event, be that a less-than-happy accident or a terrible tragedy. Such is life. If it were possible to stay separate from the world, quite far away from the act of living, then perhaps those incidences might be avoidable, or at least ignorable. But he wasn’t sure that could ever be desirable. He had loved once, though that love had broken him. He had suffered once, but that suffering had rebuilt him. He had died once, and he would do so again.

He comes back to the room, thoughts full, mind heavy, knowing the end of his semi-peaceful existence lies on the horizon, but enjoying the rush of it all the same. An awfully good adventure, he murmurs.

Word count: 1,388