[ WP ] `` Witch hunts are rarely ever about witches . ''

Journal Entry 11/5/1690 
 
 Four walls aflame. 
 A broken window, spewing fountains of fire skyward. 
 Within, a little leather-brown haired girl squeezing to her chest three sheets of paper, inked to the brim with chicken-scratch. 
 `` She's still in there!'' 
 
 The door leading within the pluming smoke is opened, and in flies another lit bottle. 
 She screams and screams, but no one is there to truly hear her. 
 The wails fall upon the broken hearts and closed ears of her tormentors. 
 She hears the guttural grunts of the people outside, unwilling to extend a helping hand as her ears blacken. She sees the distant flames as the wisps of smoke blind her. She tastes no longer as the soot coats her tongue, suffocating her within. The last thing felt are the papers clutched tightly in her hands as she and the world she knows crashes forward against the dirt floor. 
 
 Hours pass. The torches alight slowly eat their way down to a slow burn, and the people leave. Most of them, anyway. 
 
 I stayed. 
 I did n't help her. 
 But, I did stay. 
 As the house billowed its smoke, and the hamlet gathered around her isolation, I sat and watched. 
 The soot covers everything now, except the footsteps where they stood. 
 Stepping forward, covering my nose and mouth with my blackened shirt, I lift quickly toss the remaining reddened wood to the side, covering it with the ashes of its fellow boards. 
 
 The soot gives way to dirt, the wood gave way to skin, the brittle skin gave way to the burning bone. 
 
 I sat in the hot ashes, enduring the pain. I know she did. 
 Fumbling through what remained, I found the flame-licked pages she clung to so desperately under her, smeared with what would have been her melted chest and clothing. 
 Smudged, but legible, there in thickened ink 
 
 `` -Titlement and Proof of Debts'' 
 I saw within my own name, as well as the towns people's. 
 I saw also the girl. What was a girl. 
 By clearing our debts, we washed away our pain. 
 By clearing our debts, we cleansed ourselves of burden. 
 By clearing out debts, we ended all grief. 
 And took hers with us. 
 
 Days passed. Nights came. No one except for me returned to the desolate grave. 
 I buried her, along with the papers, next to the pile of wood I had uncovered. 
 Using the remains to make a cross, I filled her grave with the dirt and soot that once coated her last moments. 
 This did not need to be. 
 In the name of all that is good, this was not. 
 To protect our way of life, I defiled hers. 
 

