Page 15 of Curses and Cornstalks
If they come, they will be dealt with. The way it’s always been.
My eyes drag over the woman, who's shaking like a leaf as my vines slither their way up her legs. She’s tall, close to my height, and has supple curves beneath her ill-fitting clothes. She’d look much better draped in flowing fabrics than the bootcut jeans she’s wearing.
Her skin is pale as moonlight, smattered with copper-colored freckles, and long, fiery hair falls down her back in messy waves.
She’s pretty in a reckless way. Lacking the sophistication of a socialite, but radiating raw and untamed beauty nevertheless.
Too bad she has to die.
“Do you still believe she has no cause to fear me?” I ask, my voice gravelly from disuse. It isn’t often that I have conversations with anyone other than myself, and even those don’t last very long. A few words at most.
She trembles against the vines slowly crushing her to death; it won’t be long before they wring the life from her completely. Still, she doesn’t scream or cry like the hundreds who’ve come before her. They all come looking for the Watcher, but none of them leave.
Not a single one.
“N-no,” her cracked reply hits my ears. She’s no longer looking at me, her eyes squeezed shut in anticipation of what comes next.
The vine around her throat tightens at my silent command, but she does nothing more than wince. Not even a single tear falls.
I'm disappointed.
“You’re as evil as they say. Is that what you want to hear?” she asks, gasping for breath. Anger burns through me, and I don’t hear the rest of her words.
She thinksI'mthe evil one.
Of course, she does. They all do.
My origin story has been distorted, forgotten over the decades I've been trapped inside this cornstalk hell. The truth of how I became the Watcher lost to lies and fanciful tales.
They all paint me as the villain.
Sure, I've slaughtered countless men over the years, but it wasn't without cause. They show up to torture and mame me. To try and rid this town of the curse they think I am.
Little do they know, I'm the one cursed, and I’ll be here long after all their corpses are rotting in the ground.
“Theyare the evil ones,” I correct through gritted teeth—teeth I’m fairly certain no longer resemble my own. I’m a whisper of the man I once was, my current form a mockery of the life I left behind. The life that was stolen from me. “So eager to point fingers whentheyhad the chance to save me and left me to rot instead.Theyturned my curse into a twisted game of torture and expected me not to retaliate. Tell me, girl, how amIthe monster?”
“What did they do to you?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
The question fills the space between us, and my vines still. More of her is encased in foliage than not at this point, her face one of the only things I can see. Her eyes have popped open again, vibrant as the bright blue sky, and they're glaring at me, shimmering with desperation.
Does she really care about what happened to me? How I became what I am?
Or is she trying to buy herself time? To figure out a way to escape?
I chuckle. It would be a vain effort at best.
No one escapes unless I allow it.
And I never allow it.
“You wish to know what happened to me?” I inquire with a skeptical lilt to my voice. “It’s not a tale for the faint of heart.”
She narrows her eyes on me. “Now you think I’m dumbandsqueamish. I'm flattered.”
I fight the upward twitch of my lips, and my nose brushes against the burlap sack covering my head. Apparently, in the face of danger, her stubbornness runs thick.
A dry chuckle escapes me.
