The Witch’s Hovel

It’s impossible to describe the sheer terror we felt that night. We walked for hours, tied together with that coarse rope, sticky from the blood it slowly rubbed from our wrists as we ached to either find some kind of comfort or from trying to break free from it’s bind on us. Terror that lasted all night. Going from flight to fight, rinsing and repeating these animalistic impulses so ingrained in our DNA that we shed pride and dignity in a matter of moments to dawn meekness, doing anything we could to recede away in the hopes that this threat would move on and forget our existence. I would almost describe it as hopelessness. Were it not for our beating hearts. Our persistence to move forward. My urge to make my hand small enough to slip through the rope’s aggressive hold over it.

She cackled knowingly. Sweat building and racing down her craggy forehead, along the course of her jagged nose bridge and to the edge of her wet and mucus-y nose only to launch itself down into the bubbling cauldron below. Foul odors filled the room but we could not parse from whether they were coming from her, the potion she was stirring, or the slaughtered and rotting carcasses dangling above her horrible work station near the rear of this hovel.

“Enough!” She shrieked. Her horrible gaze was upon us cowering and shrinking away into a spot that could not be out of her range. Her bones moved like independent ancient machines. Almost audible as she jerked our way, and reaching out with that gnarled hand and yanked the rope towards the doom that awaited us.