The Witch's Trial

“T-Jack One Actual we have you on radar. Coming up on your right wing.”

      Colonel Allbarian, sat with hands clasped. His head hanging low and his thigh heavy with the weight of his sidearm. The only weapon he’d brought on this night. However, he wouldn’t be doing any of the fighting. Allbarian was far too old now for that kind of thing. Weak knees, a bad back, and (he hated to admit it) a growing gut were only a few signs that his days of door kicking and gunfighting were behind him. He held some resentment in that fact. Especially for the young soldiers around him. But he saw intent and stoic eyes. The look of men and women who knew what they flew toward, and held confidence in their abilities. He knew they’d see it done, and done right. But he was still envious. None of these soldiers were old enough to know the woman they were after tonight. While they’d all seen combat against the Corporate Monarchy, they didn’t know Annabelle Molia as he did.

      “Target building in sight sir,” the pilot radioed.

      Allbarian raised a finger to his receiver.

      “Snipers are in position?”

      “Roger, Sir.”

      “Then send them in on your go Captain,” he answered.

      For a moment that feeling of resentment surged. He felt as though he was watching a dream he’d had since he was a child now be passed off to these young men and women around him. He felt he should be the one going to get her, to face her, to see this decades long hunt be done. But he quickly realized that these were the thoughts of a young man. He’d be more of a risk than anything. And his time with the King’s Witch would come.

      “Strike team at the ready. All units be prepared for infill, ETA 5 mins.”

      The soldiers stood around him and faced the back door that would soon open to their hunting ground. Allbarian bowed his head not wishing to watch them depart.

      He felt the dropship buck and the landing gear clamp down into the grassy plain and he closed his eyes.

      “Go, go, go!”

      He heard the stomps of their boots grow lesser and then the engines throttle up as the drop ship lifted. But for the longest time he continued to just listen, the radio chatter of the operation below drifting in like a distant conversation.

      “Team one, approaching the main door.”

      “Charges set…breaching.”

      When he heard the boom echo up to the dropship, he rose. Standing behind the door gunner who handed him a pair of ASVs and the world became as if it was daytime. Every detectable edge of any surface or terrain was being defined and sharpened. He could see the translucent white outlines of the soldiers entering the house below. Now all Allbarian wanted was for her to die. For her to wake up in fear and shivers as men and women stormed through her house ripping her life to the ground as she clawed to it. The hope only intensified as he suddenly was taken back to a time long ago, when he didn’t feel old, but scared.

      “Team two moving up to the second floor.”

      As the circling gunship flew over the house sending dust and bricks of the chimney flying off onto the plains, he remembered something his mother had said to him long ago in that fear.

      “You will be ok, it’s alright.”

      “Mom?” he’d asked. The lights of approaching ships similar to his own tonight were coming through the blinds of his childhood home. He remembered the fear he saw in her. It was the first time he saw his mother as human, that she couldn’t do anything to protect him.

      “Listen to me, Will. They’ll split us up when they come…but we’ll find each other again. I promise,” she’d sounded so sure and confident. Like fate wouldn’t let them be separated for long.

      The witch had made a liar of his mother that day. And as he watched the flashes and heard the booms of the operation below, he found himself sticking to that fact. How dare you put her in that position. Make anyone lie to their child.

      “Get on the ground now!”

      “Team one to Red Calendar, we have the target. No other targets, or hostiles.”

“It’s Annabelle Molia?” He radioed.

      “Affirmative.”

      Allbarian switched his hand to a different button and looked up into the cockpit.

      “Set us down.”

      The gunship passed over Allbarian’s head as he approached. His guard walked on his sides. The spotlight shined on the house front.

      “All units be advised Red Calendar is on sight, snipers, and gunship maintain perimeter,” the Lieutenant radioed as he passed by into the house.

      As he entered, there was a drive to see her. She was currently being blocked by one of the soldiers who was pulling the handcuffs from his back pouch.

      “That won’t be necessary,” Allbarian said.

      The soldier turned, and revealed her.

      “Are you sure? Plenty of things she could use in here as a weapon.”

      At that moment, there was a feeling of disappointment. The woman they had forced into a chair looked as though she was nearly ninety. Her body was hunched, and her limbs skinny with bright white hair. She looked fragile, her skin like a worn leather bag. It was almost infuriating to Allbarian, he’d wanted the proud smirk he remembered, the cocky wit.

      “I won’t hurt anyone…” she said. The voice was soft and quiet like a shy child.

      “Quiet!” a soldier behind her ordered.

      “It’s your call, sir.”

      “Leave us,” Allbarian said.

His eyes had yet to leave the woman. They wouldn’t even as the soldiers around him filed out with the crunch of broken glass and wood under their boots. Until finally, it was just them.

      Allbarian’s hand rested on his pistol. Annabelle glanced at it, before her back straightened and she looked at him. It had been so long since she had been The King's Witch that she wasn’t even sure what that meant anymore. But as she looked up at this man, a colonel by the rank on his arm, she found herself searching the faces of her past. Even with the effects age had done to him, she thought he looked familiar. The edge of the jawline, the softness to the eyes, and the cut on his right ear…

      “I remember you,” she said softly. The words escaped her like an exhale. “You may not believe it, but I do.”

      The searchlight of the gunship passed over the window behind her. She caught a full blast of the man’s face.

      “I believe you,” Allbarian said. His finger tapping the metal of his sidearm. “I’d hope you remember a lot from that time.”

      Annabelle chuckled and interlaced her fingers.

      “You have no idea.”

           Allbarian’s finger rubbed harder on the sidearm when he saw her smirk, but it wasn’t meant in the way he thought.

      It came timed with her blinks almost at this point that Annabelle would remember another victim of her past. They came so often and so strongly that she doubted they’d ever stop. After all, they hadn’t stopped all these years later. But it would be only moments. Not the people themselves. She’d remember the screaming, begging, the broken bones coming through exposed flesh as well as the endless images of gore that were as common to her as seeing clouds were to most others.

      “So…is this it? Have they sent you as some poetic justice?” she said with a smirk. But then it turned to shame as she saw the joke was not taken as one. Her head bowed back down, “Or did you win the lottery.”

      “I’m the only one who cared enough to see it done,” Allbarian said. It felt like a bitter lie on his lips. After all, there had been hundreds, thousands who could have been standing where he was with the same poetic justice to it. But the truth was…he’d been available. Their meeting was nothing more than a random coincidence. Albeit he was grateful, and had a hard time not chalking it up to fate.

      “That would be a dream come true,” she said.

      “Why’s that?”

      When she looked up now, Allbarian saw the welling of tears. Her mouth went tight and she sucked in a short quick breath.

      “Because…maybe… that means some of them have been able to move on.”

      She paused for a moment, in truth, she didn’t look at him because of the rage and drive he exhumed. But because every time she did, she heard the far-off screams of a ten-year-old boy. This boy…he’d been one of my firsts, she thought.

      “Maybe they’d forgotten me…and just be able to live…be able to love.”

      Her tears ran slowly down her wrinkled cheeks. She felt the flood of memories and pain come back to her like a dam had just broken. Closing her eyes, all she saw was faces like his. The wailing mothers, the desperate fathers… and the children. Her mind focused so hard on the children, burning them into her mind like a brand that grew hotter and hotter.

      “How dare you,” Allbarian growled. “You think this display will sway me in the slightest. Understand me, woman, you will not leave this place alive.”

      “It’s no display,” she sobbed. “You’ve no idea the agony I feel…the dreams I have…”

      When her head came up her tears were running like torrential rain down her cheeks. Her face turned a puffy red. All the while Allbarian’s face barely changed.

      “You think I fear death? You think I’ve come here because I wish to heal? You think you’re the first to try and kill me?!”

      The old woman suddenly yanked her sleeves up on her legs and arms to reveal what must have been a thousand scars. Her skin in some places blackened by the hot utensils she’d used to stab and tear at herself. Grotesquely healed flesh marked her thighs where she’d pulled it away in the shame of feeling some semblance of happiness. And he couldn’t even see what she’d done to her own feet.

      “I honor your restraint to bring only your sidearm with you. As you can see, I am no stranger to blades.”

      Allbarian’s first thought was that they were all fake. That she was trying to make some appeal to his humanity. But as he studied the scars, and the grotesque finesse many had to them, he began to see nothing about this was fake.

      A brief silence was held. Then Annabelle pointed to one blackened and gauged spot on her inner thigh.

      “You should know this one, I made this one the day I met my first grandchild. I felt this joy at getting to meet her, knowing she’d grow with a mother and father who love her. Only to remember that your mother would never meet her grandchildren. Your children…”

      She looked at her inner left bicep, where there was a noticeable amount of muscle missing beneath the skin. A long-jagged cut that had healed poorly sat on top of it.

      “This one was for your village shopkeeper. It’d been a peaceful afternoon down by the river when I slinked off to do it. I’d been watching my children swim in the river, holding my husband’s arm when I remembered what I’d done to the shopkeeper’s daughter. I wondered what god could ever be so cruel to let someone like me live while an innocent girl like her was raped and murdered.”

      Her eyes carried over her body again, and she found herself oddly hypnotized by the stories each scar carried. Despite their quantity, she remembered every one of them.

      “And this”-,

      “Enough,” Allbarian sighed shaking his head. “I don’t care. I don’t care how much you’ve tortured yourself. Whatever you’re trying to do,”-

      “I’m not trying to do anything,” Annabelle said. She was still looking at the scars, each one playing a movie she couldn’t stop whenever she remembered it.

      “I only want”-

      “I don’t care what you want. You didn’t care about a thing when you were having people tortured, killed, raped, and maimed. All for your sick and deranged King. Who you were less than a concubine and a mistress too. You could have turned yourself in and could have faced those people outside your mind. But you didn’t, and whatever conclusions you’ve come to don’t matter in the slightest. You. Did. Those. Things. And you ran from the punishment.”

      Her head bowed in shame.

      “And your right, I did show restraint by bringing only my weapon tonight,”- Allbarian drew his pistol and cocked the hammer, - “You should be thankful I didn’t bring dogs or mechs to have you torn apart as you did to my family.”

There was a tremble in his voice then that he didn’t intend. For a brief moment, he remembered seeing his mother flaying as the mechs pulled at her. He remembered how he pounded the ground trying with all his strength to rise and help her. And nearby was her, the witch she was standing off to the side with her hands on her hips. Staring with a smile as his mother fought and begged for the pain to stop.

      He raised the weapon to the woman’s head. Feeling overwhelming power start to course through him. He felt every fiber of his being telling him to pull the trigger. He knew what was coming. But as he held the sights on her, suddenly Allbarian looked past them. He saw that content, and a lack of fear come to the old woman’s face. She swallowed, and her hands relaxed on the chair as she closed her eyes.

      “I hope this brings something to you,” she suddenly said. Her face tensed like she was expecting the blow.

      Allbarian froze then, his mind flashing back to the moment of his mother’s death. He remembered how this very woman had been smiling when it happened. In his mind, Allbarian had pictured this day. From the moment he joined the resistance, to killing his first enemy, to the hanging of the very king this woman supported. This had been all he fought for. This moment had been what drove him to do anything in his life for the last forty years. It had allowed him to commit his murders, his executions. Every drop of blood, every bullet fired, had been for this moment. The sole purpose to find the woman who altered his life forever.

      But it didn’t feel as it should. He wanted to look down his sights to see that monster who’d smirked at his mother’s beheading and see fear. He wanted that sweet feeling of dread from her. But it was at that moment, as he listened to her slow breaths and looked at her scars of shame that he realized something, he wasn’t going to get it. It made him angry. Furious like she had somehow won another victory over him. Her eyes slowly opened then; she saw this conflict in him.

      “Do it…please….” she said, he detected the desperation.

      Please? He thought. And in that small word, was when Allbarian realized just how much she wanted this. How much pain she was feeling in her heart and mind. The torture that must be happening day in and day out. She’d been fearful looking at her scars. He saw the outer effects of the movies playing in her mind. But this…this was bringing relief; it was bringing peace. While all that played for him, was his mother’s death and her smile as it came.

      The gun dropped abruptly. He saw shock and surprise come to her face. It intensified when he holstered the weapon. Her hands tightened around the chair.

      Allbarian looked her up and down, seeing the misery building. In his chest now, he felt the sense of gratification he expected fill him. A dark sense of justice was slowly blotting out the rage he felt in his stomach for dropping the gun. He looked around the room for a moment. Questioned his decision one last time. Then he turned for the door.

      “No…” he heard her say. “No! No! No! You have to!” her voice turned to a wail of desperation.

      “Pull everyone out. We’re done here,” he said to the lieutenant outside.

      He could hear her wailing behind him. The screams turned blood-curdling and hiked in pitch like she was being ripped in half. The soldiers were filing back onto the dropship as it landed.

      Behind him, the witch came stumbling out. Her nightgown flapped in the exhaust of the dropship. Her face streaming with tears. Her exposed feet looked like they’d been flayed to the bone. Sores and burns covered them. The toes were bent and broken with unnatural angles to them.

      “No!” she screeched. She was trying to hurry after them, but her old bones stopped her. “You finish this! I killed your mother! I had her raped and torn apart!”

      Allbarian gave her one last look, he was standing on the ramp of the dropship. The spotlight made her whole body a ghostly white. She was alone, and would remain as such. Whatever family she had had learned of her doings, and left her to dwell with them. After all, that was how they found her after all these years.

      “Come back! Please! Come back!” she groaned her hand extending out to him in desperation. She suddenly fell on her front. Her hand raising as she screamed.

            Allbarian sighed, feeling the air kiss his face as all the sensations he’d wanted from this moment suddenly washed through him like water to a dried-up plant. A subtle smirk came to him and then he gave the order to lift off.