Kate Hex, easing back in her seat, regarded them with an air of superiority and she spoke too and said "long have I sought conflict. Conflict-seeking is my nature, for all conflicts contain something for me to solve by my hand, and my hand alone." "I worry!" Shouted Liberty. "I am a nervous soul wracked with bad memories. I attain to higher powers because I feel every day that I am alone, unheard, unappreciated. I crave the authority that others seem to wield - how lucky they are!" "I'm happy." Said Valorie. "No you're not!" Interjected Liberty. "I know you and you're not happy at all." "I'm happy all the damn time. I love my life and I love living." Everybody was pissed off at this statement, both in character and out of character. "What a load of bullshit," Kate said. "Goddamn load of bullshit from a stupid liar." But Valorie was beaming and all the negativity only seemed to affirm her personal happiness. It was terrible to see. Thankfully Racocula spoke up, "I'm the girl from Ipanema!" She shouted over the disapproving murmur. "Wow!" They were amazed. Everyone was amazed. Amazement prevailed over the crowd. She continued, "I was murdered in 1962 in Brazil by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Three weeks later he composed the music in order to relive the killing again and again." "I love your song!" Someone shouted. "Huge fan of your murder!" "I was murdered by Barry Manilow!" Banshee shouted, and this was met by objections of all sorts. "No you weren't you fucking liar!" A voice peaked over the booing. "You never met Barry Manilow in your life nor any other lives you ever lived! Piece of shit!" They grabbed banshee and raised her over their heads and took her outside and threw her on the burn pile and strapped her to it and asked her if she had any last words. "I just want to say I'm sorry for the harm I have caused," she cried, but only her character. It was all an act. They spilled out gasoline over her and the burn pile and Heathcliff sparked the flames to life and the flames carried over Banshee and Banshee, her character, screamed and struggled, screamed and struggled, until the character and the person's motives narrowed like sine waves, until they met and both were one, and the Nightjars watched her white hot suffering, and blinked in the heat. When it was done they all agreed it was the most incredible performance they ever seen. They were lucky to have witnessed it. She had maintained character to the very end. It was just the kind of thing to bring the coven together and beat back the cynicism that had prevailed since the night that everyone was kept awake by Heathcliff and Mistrial having some sort of animal sex culminating in frenzied screams of terror. They all hugged. Some wept. Some laughed. Some did not know how to act. They left her dust and pieces out over the charred pile and every now and then a Nightjar would pass by and see her remains and say to herself "now that was a woman." And they'd kiss her bones and the ash would salt their lips. Anywho. Soon after, the Rubber Band Game had taken taken hold in Spider Heaven. It involved tensioning a rubber band on an unassuming victim and snapping it, preferably in a place where the skin were most delicate. Mistrial, naturally preferring her affections to be equal parts love and sadism, took to this game with unfettered spirit but made the mistake of playing it on a sleeping Kate Hex who had been snoozing on her belly on the old corduroy sofa in the parlor that left ziggy lines across your face if you slept too deeply on it. Kate responded to the playful snap by twisting around wildly and ramming a finger up into Mistrial’s eye, shoving the globe back into its socket, tapping her brain, so Mistrial's vision burst with fried star-patterns. Mistrial wore an eyepatch after this encounter. She wasn’t sure if the eye were broken or cursed, but Kate’s touch had given it a new sort of vision swimming in vivid colors and crazy patterns and soft lava forms bubbling over her vision. This extreme retaliation did not, however, affect Mistrial’s esteem, as it left her equally in grievance, and, just as Kate had in her seat of anger resolved to “solve” Mistrial in the moment, Mistrial took it upon herself instead to be the one to solve Kate instead, with the understanding that although two wrongs don’t make a right but and yet at some point along an intensive string of wrongs the maths open up to new, strange possibilities. Another slight hiccup in the otherwise blissful record of housekeeping that ensued the banshee bonfire occurred where, while in town selling produce, Heathcliff had broken a bottle on someone’s head and stabbed them in the face with the jagged edges. Nobody could really judge the matter as there were no witnesses. It was known that something had been said, some verbal exchange, between the two parties earlier in the day, but no witness had come forth with any sorts of outlined expression. In their hearts, the coven stuck with their own kind over the weak testimony of the townsfolk. Townfolk, they were convinced, were possessed of a stunted and mean spirit - if any soul at all. Like chattel, townspeople were domesticated, and domestication was antithetical to the spirit of witchcraft whose glorious spirit is to go beyond the ordinary, the known: to snap the pathetic killing jar of a social order unaware, or worse, accepting, of the closed system it recycled its shallow ideations in. After some reflection, Mistrial felt the face-stabbing was a wholly good thing, and merited no further speculation. She was glad of it, and clung harder to the object of her affection, who in turn was deeply ingratiated by the infamy of stabbing someone in a cold-blooded fit of rage and finding strong support for it. The next incident was somewhat more dubious, though, more embarrassing than anything, and they only heard of it because the Canary had whispered it into a tree hollow. The tree then snitched, all things being equal to a tree, to Valorie who was starved for any ounce of attention whether it be from trees or bees or hermits of the forest, cats, bats, raccoons, babbling brooks, bears, mutants, maniacs, and really anyone who would give her the time of day. According to the rumor, a few days back Heathcliff had excused herself in a hurry and the Canary, against all words of caution, had pursued at a distance to spy over this person she still considered a stranger and interloper in the household. When, at some distance from the house, she heard a loud wailing and there saw Heathcliff laid out upon the earth, clawing at her clothes, and there, emerging from her VA-GI-NA (these words the Canary apparently enunciated clearly and loudly,) was some sort of fanged intestinal snake that began yelling at Heath about returning to the Red Devils and how ungrateful she was, and how awful, how difficult it had been bearing her burden all this time, and the whole time Heathcliff pleaded and cried and ended up in such hysterics that the snake snapped and started biting her up and down her body and that’s when the Canary turned away and thought that other people ought to deal with their problems and not let them get out of hand like that and it was really no business of her’s anyhow. Mistrial asked Heath about the episode and Heath said it was a regular snake attack and she must have squatted over it to take a piss and was so surprised she collapsed on top of the poor thing and in trying to escape must have aggravated the assault beyond ordinary and the Canary spied this and invented a fanciful story around it. Kids these days. Mistrial preferred believing that to the horrible mysteries of the crotch snake. The whole affair came to a head for poor Canary when Heath casually let slip around Kate that the Canary was blabbing secrets into the hollows of trees again and Kate's eyes lit up the way they do when someone runs afoul of her constantly shifting and semi-mystical Non-Aggression Principle. The Canary, who happened to be rounding the corner with a bowl of hot soup, and hearing that her game had been revealed, threw the scalding soup down Heath’s back and ran out the house, leaving Kate to deal with Heath who was understandably fit to be tied. After some wrestling, Kate convinced her to let the kid be. That this was her house, her rules, no one would override her metering adjudications, and as the matriarch she would see justice prevail between the two parties. So Heath and Mistrial snooped endlessly to find out what punishment might fit the crime and saw Kate Hex talking down to the kid who was wringing her decrepit little hands over and over like she were trying to scrub something out. Kate was really laying into her and gave some direction for her to stick out her tongue and the Canary stuck it out, and Kate grabbed hold of a sudden and yanked like she expected to come away with it. The Canary slapped her hands around her mouth dumbstruck and Kate walked away. The kid clutched her granny hands tight over her mouth, and picked her way over the sodden leaves plastered to the garden walk. Then ran up to the edge of the pond and stuck out her tongue to catch a glimpse of the reflection, observing it from every angle. Totally normal. But it was the last time they’d ever hear her speak. All parties were pacified, but in a dismal sort of way. And that is sometimes the way of justice, I suppose. In this great future, we can't find restoration, but we might at least all be equally aggrieved.
