Black Holes: A Narrative Fiction

The townspeople are gathering outside the front door. They carry ropes and torches and buckets of whale oil. Sarah and I are hiding in the attic. We peer out of the cracked, dusty window, bestirring the cobwebs that inhabit the corners of it. Sarah whimpers pathetically. I hold her close to me, telling her everything is going to be okay. But things won’t be okay. The townsfolk are relentless. They will never stop hunting us, and they will find us no matter where we go. We’ve been living in seclusion for four days, holed up in this attic, eating what food we can scavenge off the ground and around the outskirts of town at night. But they found us. Just a few hours ago. They’re waiting for us to come out. “What are we to do, Tilda?” Sarah asked.

You are sentenced to burn at the stake and stoned. Any last words?” The machine asked, but it didn’t really. It was rhetorical. I answered anyway. “You are a coward. You scorched my home and killed my mother. You are the true witches here!” I screamed at the engine, but it didn’t react. It wrapped me up in its web of twine and carried me away. I took one last look at the shrub. It rustled. I saw a face disappear from the leaves, and flee into the forest. The machine chugged along, swindling me from my freedom, taking me back to Salem, the place where nightmares are born. Salem, where I would breathe my last breath. The town was gray. It would make one think of disparity and sadness. The tudor houses were decrepit, as the townspeople hadn’t had the chance to rebuild their houses since the winter had come and gone just a month ago. The trees were beginning to reanimate, with buds sprouting from the limbs. The ground was ash. A single, solitary trunk of blackened wood was erected in the center of Salem. Chains slithered around it, rusted and charred from many a witch-burning. The angry machine propped me up against the stump, cloaking me in the chains that would escort me to heaven. I didn’t cry. I didn’t move. I didn’t resist. I let the machine bind me in the chains and stared straight