Strange Folk You'll Never Meet by A.A. Balaskovits

Author:A.A. Balaskovits
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Fantasy / Dark Fantasy
Publisher: Santa Fe Writer's Project
Published: 2021-05-12T13:06:01+00:00

When she asked about her grandmother, her father lowered his voice and told her the woman was a witch, made of woman’s cruel magic—poisons and childbirth. When she lived among people, the villagers spat on her doorstop for luck and overcharged her for bread and meat. What else but a witch’s heavy laughter made the udders on the herd overflow and run like piss? The villagers shivered at the noise and put their fingers deep in their children’s ears and bottled the milk. It tasted sweeter than honey. Unnatural. They ran Grandmother out of town by slapping her breasts until they bruised and bled. She shielded her tender daughter as best she could, but they caught the little one with short legs, cast her to the ground and marveled at the stones embedded in her face.

Grandmother and mother went to the next village over to try again.

When the daughter was grown and Grandmother dead, Father said her mother flogged herself with a whip of braided horsehair and dull nails. She put her jagged back on display in the square each morning, and the villagers wept at the sight. They made garlands of magnolia and lily of the valley for her hair. They commissioned a stronger whip of leather and glass. Madonna, they called her. Notre Dame. They bowed their heads and asked her blessings. They rolled loaded die to take her to their rooms each night and watch the vicious act with their belts undone. When she put on a child they gripped their hair and wailed and wondered how it could be. When her daughter was born her back convalesced to pink baby skin. The villagers could not look upon her without violent retching, so removed was their desire from her skin, and so she put on a shift of pale tulle and went into the woods alone.

Father said he took her into the swell of his own home because he was a kind man of means and because he did not like his own children, nor his wife’s narrowed eyes. He bounced her on his knees and lanced the round blisters on her hands from churning the daily butter. She grew quiet and beautiful and obedient, and he grew to love her.

When she asked, her father said it was the black-eyed devil come round to ask for her hand. Of course, her father did not give his favorite away. He gave his other daughters, the one with horse teeth, the one with the red birthmark, the one with a single eye, and tossed out his wife as well. Then he placed a heavy crucifix around his adopted daughter’s neck and on every wall so everywhere she looked there was suffering.

Father wept and said, “it’s because you’re tainted with your grandmother’s curse, your mother’s blight. It is on your hands and arms. Everyone who looks at you can see where you’ve come from. The devil has come to collect his own.” She cupped her hands to catch her father’s tears, and he used fresh soap and sandpaper to scrub her fingers and elbows raw.

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