a dutiful son (lordling) wrote in flippedrpg, @ 2012-04-25 02:46:00 |
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At one point, he might have questioned the reality of what had happened. At another, he would have tried to make up an excuse for why it was all some terrible hallucination. At another, he would have tried to wake himself up. He had much to do. Countries don’t run themselves, after all. A scant few days ago, that might have been his answer to everything. He might have listened to the various voices of reason and decided that killing villagers and burning property was not a productive thing, since he might be dreaming. He just had to wait until it all ended.
Right now, Miles would have liked nothing more than for this whole horrible farce to end. Of course, it was not a farce to him. It was as real as the hard floor of the makeshift church, as real as the pastor’s voice, as real as the blood on his hands when he’d tried in desperate futility to convince himself that she was alive. He swore there were still some brown stains on his fingertips. It had been him, after all. The Lord was giving and loving. Miles had forgotten that love, and forgotten the sacrifice that had earned him that love. Thus, this was his punishment.
More than anything, he wished he had been in Temperance’s place. God could be cruel, but only against His enemies. Miles had made himself an enemy of God. It was his own anger, his own selfishness that had brought this tragedy upon himself. He had taken the Devil by the hand and followed him into the fires of Hell. He was not like Edward Smith...or perhaps he was not like any of the others. Perhaps they had all been under the influence of the Devil. Perhaps even Agnes Upson, unholy though she was, had just been a pawn of the Devil. But Miles had been angry enough to turn his back to God and spit on His gifts.
Temperance had been taken away from him for his sins. Miles knew that she was in Heaven, now. She was always so good, so devout. She was certainly more devout than he had ever been. He remembered her last days with a cruel clarity - she had seen the Devil’s hounds where he could not, faced the truth in his stead. That her time had come so early - he remembered thinking that she was merely hysterical, that God would not take her for a long time yet. How foolish he had been!
There was no denying it now. Not after two days, not with his last memory of her carved into his heart. He remembered Agnes Upson with her knife and with the evil magic gifted to her by Lucifer himself. He could not have caught her, for she had flown away. But what difference did it make? The merciful folk of Salem had captured her, since he did not have the power, and he could hardly bring his dear sister back to life. All he could do was repent, pray, bring himself back to God.
Such occupations had swallowed his last few days. He had not had any appetite for the food they brought him, nor the water. His only constant companion was the Bible and the hard floor of the makeshift church. Miles could not sleep, did not want to sleep. It would have only proved his lack of devotion. He wanted to be devoted. He wanted his Lord’s forgiveness. He wanted to be good, wanted to give himself to God once more. He could not let himself fall to sin once more. He had resolved to wait for a sign to tell him that he had regained his place in the ranks of God’s children.
In his prayers, he found himself visualizing his mother and father. They must have been there to greet Temperance at the gates of Heaven. However, he had found something strange - he could hardly remember their faces, or even their names. When he tried to think of them, he saw a regal couple in black and silver, fur and crystal. Something in his mind told him that they were the King and Queen of the winter’s night, though he did not know why. They could not have been his mother and father, however. They would not have arrived in this Promised Land if they had been so decadent. It was only then that he realized that he could just barely remember the manner of their deaths. Had it been disease? Fire? The chill of winter? He did not know. All he knew was that his fantasies could not have been reality.
Such fantasies only convinced Miles that he was far, far away from the light of the Lord. Even the daylight was cold and sterile, only good for reading scripture. The night was almost better, when he could think on what truths he had learned that day and how he should take them to heart. The Gospels spoke in Temperance’s voice, gently guiding him on the right path. But it was a long, hard way, and he could not stop until he could take the hand of the Son of God and stand tall once more.
It was only today that God had given him a sign. In his grief he was unaware of the trials and unaware of the justice that had been done in the name of his sister and so many others. He had prayed for it, and told Temperance over and over that it would come, that the people of Salem were truly possessed of God’s truth. It seemed futile in some hours and strong in others. Sometimes he was telling it to the living Temperance, with her bright eyes and her strong spirit, and sometimes he was telling it to Temperance’s corpse, pausing for a response spoken through the gash in her throat. But it had come, today it had come. It had come with the pastor’s voice, when he told Miles that Agnes Upson was to be hanged.
He ought not to have wished for such a thing, but it seemed only right. After all, if the Devil had taken her body and soul, then death was the kindest thing for her. She had seemed so passionate, so sure, but Miles supposed that servants of the Devil could masquerade servants of God in feeling as well as form. It was all a trick, after all. He knew the effectiveness of this trick all too well. Now there would be justice. Miles had nearly fainted when he stood up, and had held onto the kind pastor’s arm until they were outside and such contact would have been entirely indecent. From there, it was only his spirit that had kept him standing.
For all his praying and all his fantasies of justice, Miles still shut his eyes when they let Agnes Upson fall through the trap door. He tried to remind himself that this was a happy event. Goody Upson hardly seemed to care for her circumstances at all, and she certainly did not look to feel any remorse. Indeed, there was a certain pride about her, even in death. Miles knew that this was because the Devil had held onto her until the very end. When he looked at Goody Upson’s hanging form once more, he felt equal parts pity and justification. She had gone down a long, painful road that had lead her to this, but perhaps some small free fragment of her soul had repented. Miles hated to think that she had died the Devil’s woman, and not the good woman she had been before all of this madness.
Miles stood in front of the gallows for a long time after Agnes Upson was hanged. He listened to the charges brought against others, both from his small community and from Salem, and saw them all die. Some struggled for their last breath, and some merely accepted their fate. It was sad, so sad. At times Miles could feel himself swaying, at others he could feel tears running down his cheeks, but he collected himself and stood. Sometimes he said prayers. Figures passed in front of his vision sometimes, but he did not understand what they said. Miles could feel the bright sun beating down on his face and the dust collecting in his throat, but paid it no mind. Others had suffered worse to see God’s work done.
In the end, he was only a man. It was early evening when his legs finally gave out from under him, and he fell to his knees in the dirt, still entranced by the hanging figures. There were only a few present to see him fall.