Season of the Witch, conclusion
“I made a mistake.” Elizabeth whispered.
The maid nodded.
“This is what I have become.”
“It is not who you are.” The maid replied.
Elizabeth closed her eyes. She wished the maid away but, when she looked again, the woman hadn’t moved.
“Who am I, then?”
The maid smiled, said nothing.
“I used to believe.” Elizabeth started, her voice catching. She turned her head, as if listening for something. Then she took a breath she did not need and sighed, finding comfort in the action. “I used to believe… I used to go to church…pray… I thought I was blessed. Everything seemed so good. Once upon a time… Then they took it from me. Every good thing. Every scrap. They made me.”
“It was an unfortunate event. You were raped. Some people are hit by lightning. Some die in cars. Life is chance. Life is also what we make of it.”
Elizabeth gritted her teeth, clenched her fists. “They made me.”
“You were given a choice, were you not?”
“A choice? Who would have said no? It was a trap.”
“A temptation.”
“If he exists, then so must God.” Elizabeth turned to face the maid, who seemed surprised by the action and took two steps back. “Should I pray again? Now? After all this?”
The maid shook her head. “Those who truly walk in God’s light do not need to pray to hear the voice. I know who I am, I see the blessings I have received, and I do not need the simple words of men, or the rigors of religions so often brutal and cruel, to know that there is a design. There is something more, and someone to watch over me.”
“I’ve never felt that way.”
“It’s not so easy in a life so hard, a world so unforgiving.”
“Could I still feel that way? I mean, if…?” Elizabeth half turned away.
“Yes.”
“What do I do?”
“You must do what should be natural to all of our souls.”
Elizabeth turned back to the mirror, her eyes moving from the maid to her own impassive face. “And what is that?”
Elizabeth’s eyes flicked back to the maid as she stepped up close behind her. The maid’s breath tickled her throat, “Deny your master.”
***
She knew where to find him. Of course. He was her master. Her creator. And he was everywhere. You had simply to choose to meet him. She chose a wedding at an old house where she had worked as a teenager. A 40 acre nature preserve, lorded over by a historic mansion that lent itself out to parties every weekend. Hundreds of strangers drinking, dancing, meeting. She dressed up and fit right in, stepping out of woodland shadows to the outdoor bar on the portico, abandoned while the crowd gathered inside to watch the first dance. The bartender, bored, glanced at her body, but otherwise ignored her. Poured her a glass of wine at her request, then resumed texting someone on his phone. She retreated to the edge of the portico and waited for her master to come out. Five minutes, the first dance concluded, and the wedding guests poured back out to hit the bar. The bartender snapped into action, filling drink orders at a dizzying rate, and then two women parted and he emerged from between them, tall, blonde, in a snappy suit that screamed money. Yet no one even glanced his way. He took her arm and they stepped down off the portico onto the grass of the manicured lawns, dipping away into the night-shielded meadow and forest.
“Friends of mine,” he said, nodding back towards the crowd, indicating the bride and groom just visible inside, surrounded by a knot of friends and well-wishers. “Choices made, deals struck. Even on a Saturday night. And how can I help you, Elizabeth?”
“I killed a woman last night.”
“Yes. Unfortunate.”
“I want out.”
He laughed, “Because of one little mistake? She threw herself in front of you, Elizabeth. Again, a life of choice. She decided her fate. She made the life of a rapist more important than her own.”
“She was confused. She was abused. She didn’t know there could be another life.”
“You knew what you were getting into. You went out there, into this second life, as a killer. As an avenger. Did you think you could avoid the occasional collateral damage?”
“Yes. You gave me ultimate power. You gave me immortality. I should have known…I…”
“Should have known what?”
She looked at the party, the portico just a few feet from her, yet it all seemed a world away. “I should have known that it was wrong.”
“And how is wrong and right defined? By mortal, human law? Except for this unfortunate, have any of your victims been right? They had no one to judge them but you. You decided wrong and right for them without flinching. Now you say you were mistaken? Would you have me restore their lives?”
“Can you do that?”
He smiled and raised a finger, “Ah! No. Sorry. Death is death when dealt by you.”
“So I decide, now, that it is wrong. I want to stop. I’ve had my revenge.”
“You wanted to free the world of these men. You have only begun.”
“You are nothing but lies.”
He smiled, “Then I counter with an old question. One that has long plagued us all: What is truth?”
“Truth is what is right.”
“And what is right?”
“What I am doing is wrong. All of it.”
“I find no guilt in you. You don’t really mean this. You’re shaken. You’re confused. You’re realizing what you are, what you’ve become, and you’re simply afraid to release your last hold on your past life. You don’t want to cut the apron strings. You were free in your old life. Free to rot and die. Free to be consumed by paranoia and neuroses. Free to be a slave. To trudge through the motions, live paycheck to paycheck, struggle beneath the burning tide of debt and fear. Free to be preyed upon and destroyed by evil men while good men stood by and did nothing. It was easy. Part of the pack. Running with the herd. Free from thought and the cruel realities of independence and responsibility.
“Now you are a god among men. You must realize that you are no longer in that herd. You are…” He smiled, touched his nose with his index finger, “a shepherd.”
She shook her head, made to move away but his hand gently pulled her back.
“Your flock needs culling. I do not deny who I am, or what you believe I represent. But you benefit here, as well. If you are wrong, it changes nothing. There is much evil in people’s souls. You can cull the truly evil. Create utopia. And, when all evil is gone, then we can talk about your retirement. Deal?”
“Evil will never vanish.” She hissed. “Aren’t you seeding it? Isn’t it your business?”
He grinned, then pulled her up onto the portico and spun her around, laughing. People cleared the way, also laughing.
“My dear Elizabeth, you must think of me simply as a civil servant. I work for the people. I don’t have to try to make them evil.” He pointed at smiling faces, men and women, and she saw their crimes in flashes, shocks, screaming tornados in her brain. “All I have to do is be there, and your brothers and sisters do the rest. Tribes, clans, nations, greed, lust, fear, prejudice. Instinct. Deeply flawed creatures from the moment of creation. I am but a tool designed to be wielded against sloppy workmanship. And I, and my own tools, are here to correct things. To improve them. Who do you really think is the God and the Devil in this situation? The one who made it possible for this evil to exist, or the one who uses it to try and do good?” He put his hand to her chest, just above her heart. “My methods may be wrong, as you define them, but I assure you, you’ll improve at what you do. You’ll learn. You’ll not make mistakes like you did last night. The innocent need not die. I don’t care who you send to me. In my eyes, all men and all women are equal.”
She stepped away. “I still want out. I take back my decision. I don’t believe anything you say.”
Her arms itched, burned. She looked down and the scars down the length of each forearm opened, blood pouring out. She gasped and doubled over, but no one in the crowd reacted. Then he stepped forward and took her blood-slicked hands. He smiled sadly and dragged her into the house, and onto the dance floor – a swirling vortex of light and music, of beautiful couples laughing from behind Victorian masks. They all seemed turned to her, and then he spun her around as well, joining the fluid, surreal motion. Blood poured out of her wounds and covered the hardwood floor, her dress. She turned and tried to scream, but there was no sound over the music. There was nothing but the floor, and she knew that her life had been decided, that she had become a fixed point, that there were no more decisions to be made.
The party closed around them. The house absorbed them.
* * *
Somewhere out there a woman lies dying on the bathroom floor. Flashes of memory, of rape, as her life seeps across the tiles. Somewhere out there a woman screams and no one dares to look up. Somewhere out there a husband abuses a wife, a father his children.
Somewhere out there, she walks with us. Our avenging angel.