The Promise

"It was time for it to goddamn end for you! Everyone would have been better off. Your mother could have gone back to California and sold real estate. Your fiancée could have boned some other guy and gotten pregnant. And I wouldn't have had to listen to your whimpering as I cleaned up your shit!

"Evan, it's true. That night I wanted you dead! If you told me to tell the doctor you were giving up, I would have given you a shot of a pain killer or hung a morphine drip and when I got back to my apartment, I would have poured myself a glass of wine, said, "To Evan!" and then drank it and never given you another fucking thought!"

He turns the handle on the vise one more time, tightening the jaws on my ankle. I was helpless. He no longer needed me to confess. This was punishment. And he could make it last as long as he wanted.

"OWWWWWW!"

"How many others were there?"

"I confess! There were others! Oh please make the pain stop! I'll never do it again! Oh Great Lord, make him stop! It is only You who gives life. Make him stop! I'll never again extinguish the spark You place in our hearts if you make him stop! Oh Great Lord, it hurts so much! Oh mother, forgive me! Oh Great Lord, save me!"

The jaws relax. I sigh with relief. Evan retrieves a bottle of wine and pours some onto a washcloth. He places the rag to my lips and I suck on it.

"Feel better?" he asks.

I nod yes.

"That was probably about one hundredth of the pain I had every day for a year. It was goddamn hard to wake up every morning and face it."

He takes the rag out of my mouth.

"What now, Evan?"

"The fire; the fire that will cleanse your soul awaits you. But you will not die in pain as I may have for not the miracle you helped bring about. I owe you that much."

He produces a vial of Dilaudid and a hypodermic syringe. I watch as he unsheathes the needle and plunges it through the rubber stopper into the vial. He draws back the plunger and I watch the syringe fill half way.

"This is two milligrams of Dilaudid, as you know, the strongest legal pain medication in America. When I thought I might need something to end it all, I purloined this so that my journey to the Great Beyond would at least be pleasant.

"But I am no longer in need of this wondrous substance. So that my eardrums will not be damaged from the volume of the blood curdling shrieks you will certainly utter as your body is consumed by the flames, I shall inject you with the contents of this syringe, so that you may experience the peaceful end that I had contemplated for myself."

"I don't want the narcotic. Evan, I just want your love. Forgive me, Evan! Have mercy on me! I'm so sorry. I'm so fucking sorry!"

"You're not begging for forgiveness. You're begging not to suffer. It's a little disappointing actually."

"Oh Great Lord, forgive me! It is You, not he, who must forgive me for extinguishing the spark of life with which You animate every living creature! Please forgive me so that I may dwell for Eternity in your Realm!"

"So you're looking forward to death?"

"Oh Evan, I don't want to forsake your love!"

I struggle against the bonds that hold me to the table, to no avail. He soaks the rag with wine again and places it in my mouth. I suck hard, attempting to liberate the alcohol as fast as possible.

"You're terrified. I now can see why they strangled witches before they burned them. But you'll have no such luck. You're going to be alive as you burn.

"This is the culmination of my life. This is the reward for my struggles. And my largesse extends to you.

"I was going to make you tell me the story of every goddamn patient of yours that you killed. But I'm going to eschew that satisfaction."

He holds the syringe of Dilaudid in front of my face. I turn away and shut my eyes and think about better times, and remember climaxing as Evan spilled his seed into me last night.

He pulls the rag out of my mouth.

"Any last words before you get zonked?"

"Is this really the end?"

"I'm afraid so. After the Dilaudid takes effect, you're going out there and I'm going to light that pyre while you're chained to the stake. If you're lucky the wind will blow in your direction and the carbon monoxide in the smoke will get you. I'm sure you won't feel a thing that way."

"Oh Evan, I love you! I don't want it to end this way!"

"You can pray to your Great Lord for a miracle. But you can't stop me. This is the way it's got to end."

He plunges the needle into the muscles of my right arm just below my shoulder. I watch as the plunger goes down, pushing the narcotic into my body. He soaks the rag with wine again and pushes it into my mouth. He then holds the wine bottle to his mouth and takes a gulp himself.

"You must think I'm a monster now. Are you glad that you saved me? Are you glad you made the promise that you came here to fulfill?"

I nod yes.

"You could be lying. I know how to tell."

He turns the screw and the jaws of the vise begin to tighten around my ankle. I try to jerk away but the rope holds and pain shoots through my ankle as the metal crushes my tender flesh.

I spit out the rag.

"No, goddamn it, stop! I'll tell you anything you goddamn want!"

He loosens the screw and the jaws of the vise open, relieving the pressure on my ankle.

"Cursing isn't good to have on the resume of one who is hoping to enter Paradise."

"God in heaven, please forgive me! Oh Great Lord, forgive me! And forgive Evan, too. He's a good man. And if I can't love him in life, grant him passage to your Realm, so that we may be lovers in Paradise!"

He soaks the rag and red wine dribbles on the table, leaving a trail until the rag finds its way to my mouth.

"You deserve a little something to make you relax while that shot's taking effect."

When I spit out the rag, I begin my confession.

"Rita Jones-on the last day of her life she was on the call light every five minutes wondering when her daughter was coming. Rita had colon cancer and was no code blue; nothing was to be done if she stopped breathing or her heart stopped. She weighed eighty pounds and was in the hospital because she had fallen out of bed at home and broken her hip.

"No surgeon would operate on her hip because she only had a few weeks at most to live. And the pain medicine wasn't working. It was if she wouldn't let it work. She fought to stay awake. She thought her daughter was going to come and see her.

"I knew that her daughter, her only child, was living in California. She was a photographer and was shooting in the Sierras. The day her mother was admitted, we had tried to reach her all day and finally got her on her cell phone to tell her how bad her mother was.

"She said her shoot was going to last two more days and asked me if it would be all right to wait. I said I didn't know and she told me she would do her best.

"Well, no one had heard anything from the bitch for three days after that and her mother is just going down hill. This daughter was all the woman fucking had. Not a single visitor came to see her. And she made so goddamn much noise-just screaming for her daughter.

"I was in charge, sitting at the desk, and I couldn't stand it any more. I called her doctor and told him she was ready and we needed a morphine drip. A half hour later I hung the fucker and in ten minutes she was gone.

"The woman was stone cold dead. The floor was quiet. My realm was now at peace. I didn't feel a bit bad about what I had done; even though I had lied to the doctor to put an end to that poor woman's suffering.

"Fifteen minutes after her mother was gone, Jo Ellen, the daughter, arrives. She is breathless from running up the stairs. She had gone to a room with almost the same number in a different wing of the hospital and was now relieved that she had finally found her mother's floor.

"The calm was spoiled when we told her that her mother was gone. She had called her mother when she landed but got stuck in traffic and took an hour and a half to get to the hospital from the airport.

"Rita wasn't deliriously awaiting the arrival of a daughter who had no intention of seeing her; she was anticipating an event that was about to happen. And I prevented mother and daughter from meeting one last time. That was the last time I ever played god."

"So when did this happen?"

"She died the day I came back to work after you went to California."

He finds a rag, a box of matches and a jug of kerosene and then exits the cabin. I watch as he soaks the rag with kerosene, wraps it around a wooden pole to create a torch, and then plunges the other end into the ground. He strikes a match on a rock, kindling a tiny flame, and holds it to the torch. From the rag explodes a yellow flame and thick black smoke billows toward my pyre.

He returns to the cabin and unties my right wrist, which I allow to hang limply at the corner of the table. As he repeats the process with my other three limbs, I stare at the bare wooden rafters, overtaken by a wave of serenity as I descend into the grip of the narcotic.

He takes my right hand and yanks my torso upright. I balance myself with my left hand when he lets go, staring blankly beyond him through the window onto the distant mountains, their peaks blurred in purple haze.

Evan disappears into the bedroom, emerging momentarily holding a pair of shackles, clad only in sandals, black loin cloth, and a black hood with two eye slits. He takes my right hand and beckons me to descend from the table.

"Do I still look pretty?" I ask as he pulls my hands behind my back, wincing when the cold steel of the manacles touches my skin as he applies the shackles to my wrists.

"It's time to go," a gruff voice commands from beneath the hood; the executioner having ignored his victim's query.

I remember the tales my mother told me of brave women who went to their immolations praying to the pagan gods and goddesses for an easy passage into paradise, smiling as the flames consumed them as they contemplated their passage to a happier new realm. But as the wind shifts and the smell of burning kerosene wafts toward me, I realize that she was a victim of her own deception, that the victims of immolation suffered horribly, and the only smiles at the scene were on the faces of those who had come to see the fear in the victim's eyes before they were sent into oblivion.

He prods me to move forward. I walk to the doorway, step across the threshold out into the clearing, and then stop to survey the scene. As I am consumed by the flames, in the background will be the grand mountains, their beauty juxtaposed against the heinous act being perpetrated on a young woman whose only fault was her zeal to prevent the suffering of those in her care. The chains beckon me. I know my place is to be the incarnation of my lover's fantasy, my purpose on earth for him to decide if I live or die.

I stride neither haltingly nor eagerly to the pyre, betraying neither fear nor the ennui of someone who has been coerced into an unnatural ordeal. Evan guides me with his meaty hand around my left arm. I halt at the stepladder and beg with my eyes to be spared this ordeal.

My executioner gives me a nudge and I mount the ladder. He removes the shackles from my wrists and I rub the tender flesh into which the metal has bitten as I stand on my pyre, staring at the post that ascends from the ground to at least a yard above my head. The faceless figure next to me soon seizes my arms, his grip as firm as a vice, and at his behest I pirouette. My back now to the stake, I feel like his toy as he pushes me until I am pinned by his torso against the wood.

My right arm is limp like a rag doll's as he raises it above my head and clamps one of the shackles dangling above me around my wrist. I stare at the flaming torch, knowing that it is soon to be inserted into the pyre in the midst of which I will stand helplessly, and then wince as he raises my left arm and clamps the other manacle around my wrist. I try to free my arms but find my fetters to be secure.

I suck in my gut as he pulls the waist chain taut around my midriff and inserts the arm of a padlock to join two links from opposite ends. I then hear a crisp metallic click as he buries the bolt into the body of the lock to complete the first step in the task of securing me to the stake. Next, he takes the ends of the chain dangling behind my neck and pulls them across my torso, crossing them in front of my breasts and then crisscrossing them behind me, pulling them tight before wrapping them around the wooden pillar and attaching the two ends together with another padlock. Stooping over, he pushes my ankles together. I shiver as the cold metal touches my skin and then hear the latches snap shut as he closes the pair of manacles about my ankles.

He steps back to inspect his work, and deciding that the preparation are now complete for me to be burned alive, turns away and descends the ladder. I look from side to side and gaze at the top of the mountain behind the house and enjoy the music of the songbirds, hoping to fill what may be the last moments of my life with beauty. I test my restraints and frown with the realization I have put myself at a man's mercy.

I now realize that I will soon cease to be a person, instead becoming just an object of his lust, standing in the midst of a burning pyre, imploring supernatural powers, the existence of which I had always been skeptical, to be spared a horrid death.

He seizes the torch, raises it into the air, and walks to the pyre. Standing beneath me, he addresses his victim.

"Winona Hawkins," a booming voice cries out. "Having been judged guilty of sorcery, the sentence of death by burning shall now be carried out. Have you any last words?"

"Hear your servant, O Great Lord! The one who has condemned me is drunk with lust for Your servant. But during his great travail, it was his desire for me that kept alive the spark of life You breathed into him when he was conceived. Since he is a good and decent man who will give glory to Your earthly Realm, I pray that You not subject him to the threefold curse!"

"It is Satan whom you have invoked! It from His darkness that sprung the arrogance with which you toyed with the spark of life! So you are a witch!"

"But I only petitioned the Great Lord to be merciful to you!"

"I regret that one so beautiful must die, but all who invoke the Evil One are subject to the same judgment. You are a witch. Those such as you may not dwell among the servants of light. May the Almighty have mercy on your soul!

"Don't burn me! I don't want to die! The Great Lord is not the enemy of your Almighty. He is the One who gives rain to make the crops grow and blesses men so that the seed in their loins is healthy. He makes women's wombs fertile so that they may bear your children.

"If you spare me, through Him we can gain great riches. I will learn to weave the spells of which my mother spoke when I was a child.

"The powers the Great Lord bestows on those who serve him can make a desert green. Where the winters are cold and bitter, His magic can make them gentle. In lands parched by the summer heat, His servant can summon gentle rains to bathe the earth so crops will grow. Once good hardworking people are reaping the Great Lord's bounty through the intercession of His servant, great riches will flow to us, but only if you release me from these chains!"

"Temptress, do not try to avoid the judgment of the Almighty! It is His will that those in league with the Evil One must not be allowed to live. The judgment that you be burnt shall be carried out forthwith!

"Turn away from darkness! Repent! Pray to be forgiven and thus be spared the eternal agony of Hell, where the One to whom you pray dwells!"

The hooded figure seizes the torch and strides to the pyre. Standing before his victim, he touches the flame to the end of the log at the bottom of the pyre. A puff of smoke rises into the air as the kerosene ignites. He stares at the flame and a few seconds later holds the torch to the end of a log in the next layer of my pyre. It too ignites and a tongue of flame pops into my view. The end of the log on the top layer ignites next. The flame rushes along the log, consuming the accelerant. A wall of fire arises before me and my executioner jerks the ladder away, preventing it too from being set afire.

Soaked in accelerant, the logs alongside and in back of me ignite and I am soon surrounded by flames on all four sides. A breeze wafts black smoke into my face. My eyes tear, making me grimace. I hold my breath, but overcome by hunger for oxygen, then involuntarily draw some of the acrid smoke into my chest and cough so violently that I become dizzy. I panic, fearing that I will suffocate if the wind doesn't change direction.

"O Great Lord! Save your servant!" I wail with desperation, having drawn in a breath of fresh air after the wind shifted.

Seemingly in answer to my plea, a peel of thunder rumbles in the distance.

"The Great Lord is answering my pleas!" I cry out, giving thanks to an entity in whose existence I had never believed.

"He has no power here! Renounce Satan and save your soul! The Almighty may still show you His mercy!" the hooded figure counters.

"I will not lie about who I am. I will die as a good witch who only summoned the power of nature to help others!"

I feel the heat radiating from the flames surrounding me. Frightened, I try to free my wrists.

"Admit the evil you have done!"

"I have done nothing to harm a soul!"

"You know that is a lie! Repent before you are consumed by the flames!"

I hear a pop and sparks emerge from beneath me. One lands on my thigh. I try to shake it off but it stays on the fabric of my dress until it burns out. For an instant I feel a searing pain where the heat from the cinder has been transmitted to my skin through the layers of clothing.

"The power of the Great Lord is never used for harm. The magic worked by those who know His ways is used for the good of all."

I survey the flames surrounding me. Only the outer edges of the logs are burning but the flames are rising two feet in the air. My perch becomes hotter. Beads of sweat arise on my forehead. Straining against my ankle shackles, I grimace with pain as the metal digs into my flesh.

"Renounce Satan and I shall pierce your heart so that your agony may come to an end!"

"It's so hot! Mercy! Have mercy on me!" I shriek. "Oh God in heaven, have mercy on me! Oh Great Lord, don't let me burn!"

The wind picks up and again wafts smoke into my face. My eyes burn and I stifle the urge to breathe, and when I can suppress the urge no longer, I draw in a breath. When the hot acrid fumes hit my throat, I cough and rasp.

"Your Devil is answering your prayers! You may choke to death before you are consumed by the flames!"

"My body will pleasure you in ways known only in other worlds if you extinguish this fire!"

"You are beautiful, temptress. But how do I not know that your beauty is not an illusion from a spell you've cast? Might you be instead a hag?"

"Were you not soothed by my presence when the cancer was eating your body? Only those who serve evil become ugly. No spell can disguise who we really are."

"It is only through Satan that one acquires the powers of which you speak. You must renounce the One who gives you power or suffer eternal damnation, for the One you serve is evil!"

"My Great Lord is not your Satan! He is not evil. It was I who made mistakes. Does your Satan do good things for mankind?"

"The One you serve is a trickster! He has deceived you! Someday He will make you carry out His evil plan. One who promises their soul to the devil becomes His slave. Renounce the Evil One you serve!"

"I can't renounce Him! Please save me! We can each serve our own god!"