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The question bashed into my head like a hammer. There had been a commotion before, side conversations, chattering amongst the crowd of she likes he, and he likes her, but this was it. All was silent as the spectators await their twist in the dramatic hysteria. I began to feel faint, like the hammer actually smashing into my skull, boring to my skull, plundering the mush in my head. Consciousness was being ripped from my grasps. My vision was blurred slightly and shortened. Colors were grey, but the whites of their eyes were ever so bright in contrast, radical colors in the painting. They were like rips in the dull grayness of existence. They were portals into nowhere land corked by the grayness of their irises and the blacks of their pupils. This was too much for a simple house wife to take. Everyone I’ve ever known turned against me like hungry, no, starving dogs awaiting fresh meat. I’ve always behaved, spoke when spoken to, and pray when I could, how could this happen to me? The answer never came to me, and it never would. The answer to the question in court, however, I couldn’t bear to conjure. It seems an eternity I was here, stuck with burning white eyes, rich in purity, pressing their hate into me, digging, sinking into my own eyes, making me half blind. My head, heavy, and my chest lower than the 7th layer of hell. I started to bend. My posture crooked. I retreated for the moment to stare at the girls flailing and screaming abruptly. That was me. I felt, ironically, comfortable looking at the possessed girls. That was my level, my crowed now, I was possessed to. I was possessed with authority and false judgment backed by false pretences. I panted like a caged animal would. The foundation for social behavior was crumbling. Then I felt moisture overflow my eyes. My son, what would be of him? A life without a mother, or one as a Devil’s advocate? My husband? No wife, or one tainted? My own life? Ridicule or the grave. No! Not like this! I screamed and scratched at the wood pew. Sinking them as deep as I could. I was either completely possessed now, or in the grips of insanity. It was like the paranoia of all these people gathered up in large mass and pushed itself into me. On to me. The audacity of it all caged me, and I, am very claustrophobic. “It’s not me! I’m not me! I am not me as he is not them!”. I ran into the guard grasping him, maybe my nails scratched into the poor man. “He is not them as I am not her!” He was trying to hold me and make sense of the words, but they were such a jumble. I could see his face contort in confusion. I was choking in my tears making it hard to protest. “I am her!” I pointed to the girls. They understood now. I wasn’t a witch, but rather bewitched. They sent me to prison and question me some more with no consequences attached to my responses. It was more like a study than anything, or maybe it was a form of mocking me. My answers were abstract and halfway indecisive. How could I deduce perfect answer? It’s impossible when you’re in the middle of a lunatic fringe. Two days later I was let free into the town. Nothing was more embarrassing, the stares, the judgment, it of course was continuous. Nine months later it was all forgotten and my title “Neighbor” and the afternoons “Greetings” came back into existence and easily drifted my way. However, for the most part I didn’t exist, but a witch did, in me, I felt her. She didn’t exist in the physical realm, and probably never will, or for that matter never has. It was my mind, and my sanity that was bewitched. Stuck in Salem Massachusetts, I lived, but I haven’t forgotten this, and I never will. It isn’t worth it.

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May 7, 2009 at 2:21 pm:
Very thoughtfull. Fantastic writing.
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