They Came for Me at Dusk
by J. S. Watts
Art by Arnold T. Blumberg
They came for me at dusk, before the tired light had fully faded from the sky. Before I could finally sleep. Before I could wake.
I wasn’t yet dead, was as weak—no, weaker—than them. There were twelve of them, all men, and I a woman, alone, dying.
They stripped away my clothes, exposing my nakedness and my shame, and pounded a pointed wooden stake through my breast straight into my chest. My sorry remains were carried to a pit they had prepared. They threw me in, pinning down my feet, hands, and heart with sharpened iron rods in mockery of their blessed crucifixion. Who, I ask you, were the transgressors? They fastened silver chains across me, anchored by the rods, and shoveled back in the heavy, dark soil.
In their indelicate haste to dispose of me, they hastened the ending of my breath before its time and while blood still struggled through my veins, achieving, had they known it, what they most feared. The dense, silent weight of earth hid their secret well.
The silence lasted a long time. I yearned for the music of life.
They came for me at dusk. Their shovels found the silver first. They clawed at it in anticipation of a further treasure trove. The rusting iron they pulled in haste, tossing each piece aside for later consideration as valueless antiquities, and they, supposed historians.
A final shovel-cut into the hard, packed loam. The last light of day found its way through the dark onto a pale, tender patch of suddenly exposed skin. For an instant it was a beloved remembrance, a dream within the long nightmare. Then it burned me fully awake, but the liminal light was already fading. The agony dissipated with the fleeing day, leaving only hungry, yearning memories of the old world above the soil.
It was then I clawed my way out of my long-despised prison, and the beautiful, melodious screaming began.
