[Mature themes for Death and implied occult practices]

It was cold. The water was cold on my skin; the mud was cold between my toes. It squelched in the most awful, sickening way and I didn't like it. I didn't like the rope biting my wrists, either. And everything was coated with a pallor, not bright and colorful like I was used to. I didn't like that either. My eyes scanned the world, head turning, and the heavy rope around my neck abraded my skin and left it raw. (With little splinters inside, so heavy was it.) Behind me, he pushed me ahead. I didn't want to go into the water any further. I did NOT want the mud between my toes anymore. (Which was starting to make my feet itch ,anyway. Louisiana swamp mud does that.) He said my penance was hinged on me walking on, that I would be saved when this all was over. I knew otherwise.

I knew I would die today.

To Them it was the only way to save me. I was something forbidden, you see. I was a great and terrible evil that needed to be saved from the devils inside me. Only I knew that I wasn't inhabited by devils, but nobody believed me. Nobody could look past the fact that I did things... weird things. Weird things like growing plants with kisses and making old men feel young again with something so simple as a hug. Momma always said that I was a borrowed miracle and a curse, because once I got old enough I wouldn't be there anymore. I would be just gone. When I was little I didn't know, but when I got older I learned what that meant.

I've known they were going to kill me since I was 12.

I'm 18 now.

Even though I am an adult, my Momma and Papa still trail behind me and he holds her cause she's crying. That noose around my neck tightens now and the guys have'ta lift me up on to that platform there in the swamp. The mud drips off my toes, but they're glad to be free of it. They burn, not like the feet safe in shoes that everyone else has. Those toes on my feet are all red too. Red like my hair. My hair that Momma brushed every day. She forgot to help me with it this morning, I think. It's ratty.

Maybe she didn't want to remember the daughter she was about to lose.

Cause I would be gone.

Just gone and no coming back.

I felt that board under my feet was loose. It was a door, I guess. The drone of the preacher man in the background repeated sermons I used to hear my Papa say every day at breakfast, hoping that THAT was the day I would be better, I guess. Maybe that day I would be healed of these horrible afflictions.

All I did was give life to them.

I even hugged that preacher man once.

He is really old now but doesn't act like it.

I've given a lot of things life and now they're taking mine.


The last things I saw were my parents crying on the little mound in that swamp. Papa made the sign of the cross and Momma collapsed as the door was opened beneath me: A door to Heaven, I think. Maybe it was a door to Hell though, cause that's where everyone said I would be going.