by JP Relph
TRIGGER WARNING: Implications of sexual assault
Papa hurt Mama bad this time, ruptured something inside her. Purple-black roses, dewy with fever-sweat, are blossoming across her shivering belly. I wipe her forehead and kiss a burning cheek. It’s time. Papa will be out numbing or stoking his rage with whisky ‘til dawn. I have to go now.
I take money from the rusty tea caddy that’s hidden on a crowded shelf. The scruffy notes, which should smell of deceit, instead release a bergamot-leaf perfume when scrunched deep in my coat pocket. I close the door on Mama and go to get the Witch.
Behind an innocuous cottage – buff brick with mossy tiled roof – is a tilting glasshouse that stretches the length of a cloaking garden. Its produce is masked by shrubbery gone feral and veils of moisture. The Witch emerges from behind a blood-berried pyracanthas, her long strides bringing a potent wash of moist vegetation and something acrid. She is tall and solid in a man’s suit, her sage-ash hair cropped short. Her eyes like sloe berries in a bone sharp face. I meet them tentatively.
My words spill like a chitinous river of beetles and she catches them with a stiffening of jawbone. Taking the scented money from my damp palm, she disappears into the cottage. I shuffle, tensing and untensing for agonising minutes before she returns, accompanied by a boy gripping her elbow. Taller than her, older than me, he wears dark eyeglasses and a rough cotton robe. A necklace of tiny skulls, wizened fungi and misshapen pearls blazes against his damson skin. The Witch and the boy follow me through the dusky streets and I try not to run.
The boy is so close to Mama, they share breath. His strange eyes uncovered are roiling flames, suffusing her sickly skin with the pretence of wellbeing. From a leather bag the Witch is gathering tincture bottles and squat square jars. None are labelled, dark glass conceals the contents. She opens parchment paper to reveal dried botanicals. I move closer, my nose teased by dusty-floral smells. Into a scarred pestle the Witch crushes windflower, mandrake and yarrow. Other leaves I can’t identify. She adds wet-black nightshade berries and a decoction of oily tinctures, forming a muddy paste the colour of verdigris. I watch this mysterious alchemy with something like curiosity, my eyes stinging from rising fumes. Then the Witch takes a waxed-leather string from around her neck. On the end is a large pendant: a carved bone, crudely heart-shaped, tapered to a wicked point. Her eyes just as razor-sharp pierce me. Her voice is quiet but spiky with menace.
‘Sit there child. Silent and still as the lake at Midnight, you hear?’
I drop into the chair by the door. The Witch takes Mama’s arm, strokes down the inside then presses bone to the taut blue inside the elbow. Cutting fast and deep. Blood boils over, stripes Mama’s skin, pools on the bedsheet. I feel the strain of my stillness, my stomach coils inward. Only my heart races. The Witch crams the malodorous poultice into the wound, Mama writhes, cries weakly. When the blood’s frothing and fizzing audibly, the boy speaks.
His words spilled into the room are in a language so unusual, so musical, it’s hypnotising: my eyelids droop. His tongue forms mellifluous tones like lavender-honey. Eventually the fever-stuffy room; the melange of smells; the deep damson-wine voice – swaddle me to a dreamless slumber.
When I wake, the boy is standing by the door, drinking from a flask. Mama is sleeping soundly, her face flushed like summer clouds. The fever, the bruises, are all gone. The Witch is carefully packing her apothecary away.
‘Thank you.’ My voice is husky.
The Witch’s sloe-blue eyes interrogate before she replies, ‘That germinating seed inside you there – would that be a blessing or a curse? I’ve remedies for both.’
I fill with heat, my hands hovering over my belly for a thousand minutes. My own blossoming gift from Papa. ‘It’s a blessing,’ I reply. ‘Regardless of what made it.’
‘But you want something else fixing, yes, before we take our leave?’
I glance at Mama, renewed and peaceful. The rage that will bring forth, whiskey-stinking and brutal.
‘Yes.’
The Witch nods, delves back into her bag – glass clinks, paper whispers, oily-green smells ooze. The boy removes his glasses, fixes me with twin flames. My heart thuds with the promise of it.
‘Something to hurt, or something worse?’ The Witch holds two dark bottles. Her smile like a viper: she already knows.
My smile is equally venomous. ‘Something much worse.’
JP Relph is a working-class writer from northwest England, mostly hindered by four cats and aided by copious tea. She volunteers in a charity shop where she can source haunted objects. A forensic science degree and passion for microbes, insects and botany often influence her words. JP writes about apocalypses quite a lot (but hasn’t the knees for one) and her post-apoc flash collection was published in June 2023. Find her on Twitter @RelphJp.
