Status: Short story, completed.
Dream's End
1/1
He lit the match, I can smell the fire.
My mouth is full of blood, I can remember the taste of the metal of the blade that they used to slash my tongue. They held my jaw open and sliced it right across, and they stomped it into the ground. I expected it to writhe like a worm on the ground, but the life had gone out of it already. I screamed, the only sound I could make, and the blood came running out, dripping down my chin and my neck and onto that tattered white dress.
It's slipping down my throat, gagging me. The splinters on the wood are pricking into my skin like the thorns on the rosebushes by the forest, beads of blood are melting down my arms and legs. I need to run, but the ropes are tied so tightly, my arms twisted behind me and against that prickling stake. I need to scream, scream that I am no witch, but I have no tongue.
I smell the flame getting closer. He's going to do it, I'm going to burn.
The sun is shining like it did on those days before whisps of smoke danced in the air above the square, and I was a girl who would lie in the warm grass and sing in those hours of solitude, in that reverie in meadows. But it is time to stop with my birdsongs. For I am no bird, I cannot fly away. I cannot sing.
Those dreams are over.
My mouth is full of blood, I can remember the taste of the metal of the blade that they used to slash my tongue. They held my jaw open and sliced it right across, and they stomped it into the ground. I expected it to writhe like a worm on the ground, but the life had gone out of it already. I screamed, the only sound I could make, and the blood came running out, dripping down my chin and my neck and onto that tattered white dress.
It's slipping down my throat, gagging me. The splinters on the wood are pricking into my skin like the thorns on the rosebushes by the forest, beads of blood are melting down my arms and legs. I need to run, but the ropes are tied so tightly, my arms twisted behind me and against that prickling stake. I need to scream, scream that I am no witch, but I have no tongue.
I smell the flame getting closer. He's going to do it, I'm going to burn.
The sun is shining like it did on those days before whisps of smoke danced in the air above the square, and I was a girl who would lie in the warm grass and sing in those hours of solitude, in that reverie in meadows. But it is time to stop with my birdsongs. For I am no bird, I cannot fly away. I cannot sing.
Those dreams are over.