Androshorts: The Village Witch

She wiped her face against the real tears coming down, "I had someone go to the next village and contact my Grandmother, begging her to help me as I lay alone in my cell waiting to be taken out at dawn to be hanged the next morning, just out there." She pointed across the village green just across from his place, "The villagers wanted to burn me but the squire said that he would be merciful. The village constable brought me my last meal and left my cell unlocked, it was just there," she pointed to some rough ground with a few stones protruding from the green carpet. "I ate my bread and cheese and drank my beer then stood to watch the sun go down for the last time and saw that the door was open. I pushed it open a bit more - just to talk to my jailer, but there was no one there.

The door to the lock-up was unlocked so I walked out, taking my shawl from the pile of my possessions he would sell once I was dead. I walked further down through the village, the unseasonal rain keeping everyone indoors, or so I thought.

I almost managed to get home but I was spotted by my spotty neighbour and she tried to raise a hue and cry after me but no one seemed interested. I got to my house and found her family moving in, the mother wearing my clothes, the father making ready to kill my brood sow. The Squire had already sold my house, the one we just drank a glass of wine in... my bloody house!" she snarled at the injustice as if it was only the day before.

"The father saw me and came at me with his slaughtering knife, and was soon joined by the spotty daughter, still screaming that I was a condemned witch while her father said if I ever came back to 'his' house he would slaughter me and hang my traitorous witch's heart from the gate post..." Her bottom lip trembled, "I'd never known such hatred Stevie, not once. So I ran, ran for my life and ended up at the Holborrow house screaming for the squire that had tried to rape me and had sold my property before I was even dead. I screamed at him to come out. He didn't and I screamed that he should burn in hell and in my impotence threw a stone at his window. Just in time my Grandmother arrived on a horse she'd borrowed.

We went back to Vine Cottage and the other family had gone, and I waited; waited for the village men to come after me but they didn't. Grandmother had made something, one of her potions, and put in the well that afternoon that would make everyone forget, hence the constable leaving my cell door unlocked, no one wanting to be involved in the hue and cry -- except for my spotty neighbour, something to do with gold that had changed hands.

Grandmother had planned it all and was coming at midnight to get me from my condemned cell and take me off to Oxford to work for a parson she knew there. I ruined it all by throwing that bloody stone "

"How?" he said, aware that he had sat transfixed through her story and wanting to get a word in, but to hear the next part.

"It knocked over a candle and set fire to the house. That damned squire died in his drunken stupor after fucking one of his equally drunken maidservants while the house burned around them.

To my shame his three children died in their beds as well. The squire's wife had been to a nearby friend's house, hadn't drunk the water from the well and got back in time to find her house well and truly ablaze, and her husband, children and two of her maids dead; it was smoke inhalation as they call it these days. They never rebuilt the house, you just saw the ruins." Ella walked across and stared out of the window to the village green again, visualising the tree whose shade she had rested in as a child and the rope that had been strung from its tallest limb an hour after the magistrate, the same squire, had condemned her to death.

"Grandmother tried to sneak me out of town on the horse but it wouldn't leave the confines of the village with me on its back." She walked back towards the sofa, "Whatever happened I just ended up here again. The Squire's wife had cast a curse on whoever had killed her children... Never to know love but to be tortured by it, to stay in sight of the village church but not to enter it, to live 100 years for the life of each child and a few extra for her unfaithful rapist husband. If she threw in, 'and be scorned by the community for all that time', that bit worked too; and her curse was so powerful, here I stayed, Imprisoned in a peaceful country village.

I've lived for three and a half centuries but have never gone more than a three hundred yards from the church where she cursed me. No matter how far I walk I always end up walking into the village from the other side." She broke down at last, "I've been alone for so long Steve, it's been a living hell and I lose count of the number of times I've wished that I hadn't checked that damned door, wished that I'd let them take me out and hang me, just waited for Grandmother."

Her delivery was perfect, Oscar winning in fact, and only the fact that it was all completely fucking impossible made him doubt her.

Perhaps this was some kind of village plot to save their school by making everyone think the county's educational hit man was mad, or they could actually burn him in a giant wicker man, or someone would leap out with a camera and start laughing at him. After all mad Doctor Proctor just HAD to be made up.

"So in this story line you can't kill yourself?"

"Nope, I just find myself back doing what I was doing before I thought of it, so after several painful attempts I stopped trying. Have you seen 'Groundhog Day?"

"Right," he said picking up his tea mug, "on the evidence of some beautifully written diaries and the ruins of any old building, I'm supposed to believe that you are 350 years old, and Witch Rose the traitor's daughter, the girl that killed Squire Holborrow that your mate the mad professor so very conveniently told me about yesterday?"

"You've dreamt about me three times so far haven't you."

"What?"

"You've dreamt about me, first time I was in black lacy underwear, this black lacy underwear in fact," she stood and undid the buttons on her dark blue cotton shift dress, shrugging it from her shoulders to rest on her forearms, and there she was in her gorgeous semi-naked perfection, just as he remembered her from his dream. "Did you enjoy your wank Steve?"

His mouth flapped open a few times, and she took a step towards him dropping at her knees to curtsey before him, her dress still hanging from her arms. "I can't quite pull off that much of a quick change but the Jane Austen curtsey made you think twice about me again didn't it; no wanking that time though." She raised her shapely leg and placed her foot on his thigh and started to undo the suspender strap and roll her stocking down to her knee, "Remember last night's pissed dream yet Stevie?"

"How..." he struggled to look the beautiful half naked woman in the eye and drag his eyes from her crotch eighteen inches from his face.

"l see men`s dreams when they dream of me, I see all of the things they want to do to me, you prefer shaven girls don't you?" His mouth bobbed open again stupidly, "DON'T YOU!" she screamed at him.

"Yes," he nodded, "yes, deep down I suppose I do."

In response she yanked the front of her black lace string briefs down to show a perfectly clean shaven groin with just the hint of the crest of her labia hidden below. "I had a full growth of pubic hair there this morning," she sighed, "My curse Stevie," she dropped her foot down, folded her arms and began to cry, "my fucking curse..."

She pulled her dress back over her, almost as if she suddenly felt shame for her situation, she slumped down on his sofa, completely distraught. He stood and walked across and put an arm around her.

She smiled, "Thanks;" he wiped her eyes with a tissue from an adjacent box, "simple things Stevie, being able to sit and chat with another woman that isn't growling at me because her husband or son keeps looking at me; or the single ones and their jealously, lecturing me about looking like a slut when I was dressed in a shapeless mass like this!" She pulled the dress over her and fastened a couple of the buttons, "remember what Dorothy always used to say?"

The landlady's statement about Ella's dressing like a tart and making goo-goo eyes came back to him.

"Just to sit and chat with a man for more than five minutes, to talk about everything and anything, without it ending with him wanting to run away from the big lad that just arrived to scare him off, just to walk out of this FUCKING VILLAGE," her eyes filled with tears and she squeezed her eyes shut against them, "to sleep one night, ONE FUCKING NIGHT," she wailed, "without nightmares of Henry beating me up then fucking me, Or nice old Pete from the 7/11 shop fucking me anally... raping me." She struggled to catch her breath, "Father Donald making me blow him and... coming on face..." she hugged herself, then ran a hand down her face as if she was trying to wipe away the memory of her regular dream, "or any number of postmen, even local teenage boys fucking me!" she cried out, "one night Stevie, just one night!" she broke down and collapsed against him, exhausted.

"Christ Ella," he said "I..." he stopped talking and just put both arms around her and held her until her breathing regulated.

"Don't worry Stevie," she said sitting up straight still in his arms, "By tomorrow morning you'll have forgotten this entire conversation. You aren't my first!"

"Like I was supposed to have forgotten our date?"

"OK, I give you that one, you were the first in three hundred years don't forget."

"But... three hundred years?"

"Yep, and then a few." She snuggled into his arms evidently enjoying the new feeling, touching her face to his, "this is so lovely Stevie, do you mind if I sit here for a minute?"

"Of course not," he looked at closed eyes and how comfortable she seemed, "would you like another drink? Wine?"

She grabbed him, "No!" she snapped, "No, thank you, just hold me for a bit longer?"

"Of course," after all, it wasn't that tough a job, "so tell me about Grandmother."

"I lived with her for the first fifty years, she stayed with me until she was 100 and eventually said that she had to go, as her life force was almost done and her potion would eventually stop working. She gave me that bloody cat that likes you so much, he's a mere kitten at a little over 270. Grandmother was the local midwife, that's what I became and was on and off until after the war and the birth of the NHS, that stopped it of course and that particular torture ended."

"Torture?" he looked confused, "children?"

"Never had sex, so never had a child, always wanted one though."

Steve still didn't know what to think and clutched at straws, "Why did you have to stop being a midwife? Was it because of..."

"Certificates Steve? Had to be qualified and to get trained you have to go to a college or a school, not that I hadn't had plenty of experience. Hated as I was, for twenty five years between 1826 and 1851 I was the only person in the village I hadn't actually delivered." Again, she looked angered by this. "Ain't no one in this village that gives away certificates for anything."

"You have collected some great antiques mind you."

"Do you include me in that list?" She grinned at him letting him know it was OK, "At home l have a copy of Shakespeare's works, given to me by David Garrick himself. He stopped in the pub on his way to Stratford from Oxford, slept in the room next to the one you had in fact. Fell in love with me of course, but left when half of the farm boys threatened to lynch him. Heartbroken when I wouldn't go with him, so left me his folio of the bard to remember him by."

Her tears were still coursing down her pretty face now pressed against his, "I've watched the world go by Steve, I remember boys leaving and going to fight the French and the Germans at Blenheim, the French during the Peninsula War, saw the boys come back after Waterloo -- not as many as left mind you, I saw everything. All of those names on the war memorial?" he nodded, "watched every single one of them grow up and leave. Like I said, I delivered most of them. I still have letters from young Davey Pullen at home somewhere."

"Never forgotten?"

"You checked?"

"Yeah, sorry. You were still an enigma wrapped in a mystery at that point."

"Hold me tight some more and I`ll forgive you," she smiled closing her eyes, "Davey Pullen... wrote to me once a week from wherever he was, he had just the most massive crush on me." Her smile left her face for a moment, "killed at the second battle of Ypres. I promised him that if he died I would go and lay flowers on his grave, thinking he'd be back by Christmas of course. I leave a poppy cross for him every November; I've since found out that he has no known grave and is inscribed on a big memorial over there."

She looked at his bookshelves and closed her eyes again.

"I read every book in the village library, and I mean EVERY BOOK. When it closed I read every book off of the mobile library. Tried the Open University, but the exams were always in neighbouring towns and I couldn't get to them. Hence I run a shop and don't teach history at your school."

"History?"

"I've seen so much of it Stevie."

"And your shop?"

"Signed the lease on that little place in 1874, and I ran it pretty well, bought it for twenty pounds and six shillings just before the great war, first mortgage in the village, back when we had a tiny bank. Had to stop the bush medicine when our doctor arrived a few years after. Kept delivering babies mind you. Old Mr Sharpe that did this place was my last home delivery, in the awful snow storms we had in the early fifties. "

"How come the women didn't hate you when you were knelt between their legs telling them to push?"

"Think it was just how the curse worked out. I got to hold hundreds and hundreds of new born babies until I handed them over to their real mothers." She grimaced, "exquisite torture, like I said. It's what my life was for all those years. Hated by everyone until I had to deliver their children then we were best mates for a few hours.

Child is born then twenty minutes later I'm getting the look when husband comes in to see the new-born. God forbid the baby died then I was back to being the witch AND a child murderer. Fortunately after so many births I was actually quite good at it."

"And no one ever noticed." She shook her head, "and you run the same shop since the late nineteenth century, and has the tax man ever caught up with you?"

"Most of the time he has," she said, "always legit and above board. After all, my neighbours would dib me in pretty soon."

"And you've always made enough money to live on in three hundred years?"

"Can say that I've never been hungry, but there's always been food in my cupboard, can't be tortured for three centuries if I starve to death now can I," she said, "and I did try -- once -- fucking painful, especially when nothing happened except for the pain."

"I suppose not," he said, still struggling to believe what she was telling him, "So you can't starve to death but you keep working."

"Still have to stay busy," she said, "and I do enjoy being successful. Believe it or not, thanks to Rosie's lotions and potions I'm almost a millionaire, and that's just surplus."

"I suppose you built up quite the nest egg over three hundred years."

"Fuck no, this is all within the last ten years. Thank God for phones and the internet, I can buy different stock and have it delivered, paying by card, ONLINE BANKING! Thank you Bill Gates!" She stirred a bit in his arms and became more animated. "alternative therapies only really became funky in the sixties and all of the cures and lotions and potions my Grandmother taught me to make became eminently saleable. I supply several expensive London masseurs and therapists, I make herbal remedies for stop diarrhoea and laxatives for the bloated, syrups to stop and start flatulence, you name it, I've made it - all natural ingredients of course."

"And you are... three hundred and fifty years old?"

"Yep." She looked closely at his face. "Because by my angrily thrown stone three innocents died and their mother lost those she loved most of all, I would never know such love, a child."

"And every man falls in love with you?" Steve looked confused.

"Yep, always do. I always become the girl they've always dreamed of."

"You look gorgeous, whoever looks at you?"

"Only men that I might find attractive. That's why Dan in the pub is always so nice to me. He's actually a great-great-great nephew of mine quite a few times over and I remember him being born, he was a bit of an arsehole up until his forties now I come to think of it. And the mad professor of course, mind you he is as camp as a boy scout's rucksack.

Any man will see what he wants to see; now if you fancied a girl in her twenties that's how old I would look to you." She looked at her reflection in the mirror over the fireplace, "Mind you, this is how I look when I'm on my own," she turned her head to look in his mirror, "I've had worse." She grinned. "Again, I guess I must look like the kind of girl you like, am I your type?"

"Don't know that I've ever had a type Ella," he said, "If this is what you look like without some curse making you look like I think you should..." he looked confused himself, even though he knew what he meant, "well... lucky old me, that's all I can say."

"What have your previous girlfriends looked like?"

"Last one was a skinny blonde, PE teacher I'd known since University. One before her was a blonde as well, nice boobs and a great arse, not a patch on yours mind."

"You like my arse?"

"What I've seen of it. You are a classic English hourglass, you're only the second brunette I've ever dated." She grinned.

"You thought my lips should be a tiny bit more pouty though didn't you?"

"Wow," he said, "you noticed?"

"After your third millennium you do become quite good at body language, but I actually just knew, the way I always do." She nodded her head, "But I'm surprised they didn't change when you thought it, that's what normally happened. And as soon as a nice boy gets up the nerve to talk to me, the big brave boys would arrive and scare them off. Kind of what you had with Henry, then the two policemen." She wiped her face again, "that's why I stopped talking to men altogether, only go to the pub when there's a match on, or a fete, or a fair -- but I have a curse, and men just keep appearing and falling in love with me."

"I see," said Steve, really not seeing at all. "But... did NO ONE notice?" he tried to hide his incredulity despite her mind reading.

"Nope," She stretched her legs out, "It just kind of worked out that people would only ever remember me as they saw me that day, everyone... every day." She ran a hand through her lustrous brown hair, "They always knew me, they just never remembered that they had known me their entire lives, and that I had often seen their christenings, their weddings and would go to their funerals, only from outside the church of course, can't get inside," she shuddered, "when I tried I just felt an all over burning sensation and I just find myself at Holborrow Park, where I threw the stone." She moved closer to him and her held her tighter, "and I have a horrible feeling that by tomorrow you'll have forgotten all this, like I said."

"But... pictures..."

"Ah, the birth of the camera! I just never have my picture taken. When people try, and hundreds have, I am probably on the edge, or the camera doesn't work, or my face or sometimes the whole picture is out of focus..."

"Yeah," he said with a grin, "but no one disappears from finance records."

"I don't know," she said with a slight smile, "you're the first that ever found me."