Elegia, Remembered

The following is an attempt at horror writing for the Wordsmiths monthly challenge. It contains depictions of violence, sex, violent sex, nudity, death, revenge, and more death. The faint of heart or the easily offended should stop reading right now and come back tomorrow.

For the rest of you, read on.

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Elegia, Remembered.


(Photo courtesy of www.Opacity.us)


Elegia, once called Caoimhe, remembered it all. She remembered the knock on the door in the middle of the night. She remembered the shouted “witch” and her wrists being bound behind her and the Our Fathers her terrified mother whispered. She remembered the damp cold of the fall night as the moon shone on the frosty Scottish highlands.

Elegia remembered being shoved through the chapel door by the butcher and the leer of the priest as she fell, skirts rising to her knees. She remembered being hauled to her feet as the priest loomed near, his fingers tearing at her bodice and blouse. She remembered how the cold air made her nipples hard, and how her breasts shook as he slapped them, exhorting her to call out her sins in repentance.

She remembered his anger when she did not seek the Lord’s succor. The holy water he threw at her belly chilled as he made her kneel on the stone cobbles of the chapel floor. He raised her skirts over her haunches and pressed her forward; his stiffness pushed into her unwilling virginity as the butcher filled her mouth. The slap of priestly skin against her thighs and the bulk of butcher in her throat as they grunted and thrust shocked her silent, until the priest pulled free, re-entering her most rudely, ripping screams of pain and outrage out around the gag of the butcher’s thick flesh.

Elegia remembered the butcher throwing the rope over the rafter. They stripped her skirts away; she was naked in the chapel with her hands fixed behind her. They bound her to the rope, slapping her naked flanks and shouting “whore” and “witch.” The butcher yanked, the rope pulled her arms up behind her, each vicious tug tearing sinew from bone. Her feet left the floor, her body’s weight tore armbones from shoulders. Elegia howled and kicked; tears, snot, and sweat comingling as she struggled against the final awful wrench. When it was finished she hung high from the rafters; broken and sobbing as blood and the priest’s seed dripped down her legs.

She remembered dying, her last bitter exhalation accompanied by a vengeful prayer, a final secret marking of the murderous pair.

The ascension, the forgiveness, the charge, the permission, the return, she remembered.

Clearest of all, she remembered the haunting. The butcher, caught in self-abuse, falling backward in terror onto a long knife when she appeared, blazing, before him. The ghastly whiteness of the priest’s shocked face as she materialized through the confessional door, her hair blowing in the wind stirred by her blood-red wings. His begging for mercy, her acid laugh, his long years of torture at her unexpected apparitions. Watching him fade over the years, his own guilt killing him as sure as her haunting did.

The funerals she remembered, knowing she’d escorted their souls to Hell after dipping a wingtip in their still-warm blood.

Elegia remembered all of it as she flew through the crumbling chapel walls, and smiled.

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My heartfelt thanks to Q for valuable insights and opinions. Your input made this story far better than it would have otherwise been.