Excerpt:

--They would have called her The Martyr had anyone known about her;

But in any case that wouldn’t be entirely accurate.

Martyrs generally die for their causes, but the lady Angelene, she lives in the half-place.

She exists where death cannot find her, and she herself cannot lose life.--

--

Outside, the rain fell dark and slow.

It was night again, fortunately; the rain was cool, but not freezing. The day before had been warmer than most on the slope, the drops relatively warm as they hit her skin and settled in little domes across her face as she had walked today. She had made sure, over the course of many years that she moved without leaving a trace of her presence behind her. The rain almost flowed through her.

There was a small fire she had built in a sheltered alcove made from a boulder and some tall trees. It crackled and sputtered, but was still comfortingly warm. Next to it, soaking in rainwater, was a small, foldable frying pan which she was using to gather rainwater.

Angelene lay on her back, on the moderately dry ground, looking up at the grey sky through the forest canopy. One arm was reclined behind her head as a sort of pillow, the other she kept folded across her chest, her hand on her neck. She’d read once about soldiers sleeping that way in case someone tried to slice their throats in the middle of the night, and wished that was her case.

Occasionally, a drop of rain slid down pine needle chutes and wide, tiered leaves enough to land somewhere on her face like a pearl down from the sky. She stared past one as it fell from the tip of a long, green pine needle, and didn’t even blink as it landed on her cheek like a tear.
-

“Give it back!”

The man in front of her just laughed, tossing his head back absurdly and seemed to nod at himself. “What’s this? Is it from your loverboy?”

The room was hot and damp, moistened by the pounding rain on the tin roof that made little drum beats as it fell.

“What do you care if it is? You’re going to kill me anyway!” She fumed, and knew, as she said it, that it sounded childish and stupid. She didn’t care. At the moment, he couldn’t seem to see that she was struggling furiously at the ropes that bound her hands behind her back, and could feel them giving away little by little. Her fingers were raw as they clutched the small blade of glass which she had found to try and free herself with, but she ignored that too.

He swayed slightly, swaggered as his intoxicated body fought against gravity. Angelene’s heart gave a terrible shiver of fear for the precious thing he held in his thick fist. He was taller than her by almost a foot, and there was a little dribble of spit, mixed with other things, down the side of his face and his messy shirt.

The ropes behind her arms snapped and fell limp and useless behind her. Before she knew what she was doing, Angelene surged forward, making a grab for the tiny, delicate object he held so firmly between his clumsy fingers.

He stepped aside and almost lost his footing- his free hand, which had until now, been dangling from the side of his body and twitching as he tried to keep his balance, caught the very corner of the irregular dresser behind him, which rocked on its three uneven legs.

She tried to push him and grab it from his hand, knowing that if he fell backwards, then he would have to use both hands to catch himself. As she collided with him, he flung his other arm-the one holding the thing- out in front of him. It slammed into her chest like a wrecking ball, first with a horrible thud and then, with the mortifying chime of breaking glass.

She staggered back and brought her hands to her chest, which had only been protected by a thin camisole because of the heat. Her knees buckled and she screamed as she clutched at her chest, which was now bleeding from the jagged cuts that still had some glass in them. She could already feel, as she fell backwards and tried to catch herself, the stinging pain push warm, red blood to her fingertips.

The man, unphased, seemed not to notice his hand, which resembled her chest in terms of jagged cuts on it. He didn’t seem to realize that even now he was leaning precariously to one side.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him move for her, his placid, plastered grin turned into a grimace.

“Look wha’ you made me do…” His voice seemed to sway as much as his body did, but his tone was now deeper and more angry than it had been before. He waved his hand at her, with the various cuts from where the glass trinket shattered; marks similar but not as bad as the ones on her chest. Even now there were pieces of glass on her shirt, but they were the chunks that weren’t stuck in her skin; she tried not to hug her arms to close to her because they pushed the glass deeper.

She backed away, bumping up against the edge of the bed, with one of her hands.
Angelene was scared- so terrified of his strength, and his drunken temper which was only a continuation of it’s normal state- he was the embodiment of everything she had heard about the lowland people, and precisely what she had set out to avoid at the start of this. She was sweating bullets down her neck and back.

He advanced on her still, hands reached out slightly at neck height, fingers flexing.

She’d tried to back away, her legs shuffling back, but had forgotten the bed was there and hindered her retreat. He was getting closer, and it seemed that his anger had sobered him some; he no longer teetered on both feet like he was going to fall over at any second. She tried to duck, but he caught her arm as she dove for safety over the edge of the bed.

Her chest may have hurt, but it didn’t hurt as much as her arm did when she tried to turn with it still in his grasp.

He hauled her up before him by her captured arm, watching her dangling by it and squirming for a long moment, the grimace of pain growing on her face as he pulled the muscles across her chest.

With her free hand, she tried to claw at his face and arm, but there was no way to release her frantic body without pulling her arm off. Even then, she imagined for a brief second, he would still kill her before the loss of blood would. He grabbed her hair and pulled her head back in one dreadful, ripping motion that she was sure should have pulled it out, so that she was looking up, looking back.

She thought he was going to slam her head into the wall.
There was one long, terrible, sudden moment before she felt the hands around her throat, tight. She kicked and screamed, but the scream was strangled in her throat and came out as a pathetic croak. As she closed her eyes she remembered his determined visage slowly being dissolved by dizzy, eating blackness, everywhere and then-

Something in her head clicked, almost audibly like the sound of a trigger. There was one massive sensation of pressure in her head all around her brain- her eyes were still closed, and her ears were filled with rushing blood so loud that she couldn’t hear anything else.

Her face… hurt… a lot… face… throat most of all… on the front of it… all over. And she knew: She knew she’d done it, and it was terrible…

Angelene tried to open her eyes at the sound of breaking glass, assuming somewhere in the back of her mind, that she was now reliving her life going by backwards past the moment where he smashed the heart on her chest.

The light was vivid, bright, when she opened her eyes. Her throat, which still felt like there were hands around it, was not on fire like it had been before. Her vision was blurry, which made everything look made up fuzzy, bleeding splotches.

Her heart was working overtime to beat the life back into her skin. Her lungs, which had also been screaming at her, now realized that they could probably do their jobs again, and she took a quick draw of the muggy air as if it were her first breath.

As her vision cleared up, she looked down.

The man, whose name she could not, would not remember, was lying on the ground with his eyes open and glassy. His face, normally an angered reddish tint had gone sheet white, his mouth gaping at the open air like he had seen a ghost. For a minute, she suspected trickery, a final, sick, twisted drunkards prank before he put a messy end to her.

Several long seconds went by before she felt comfortable, nay, confident enough to walk halfway across the room and grab a candlestick off the top of the dresser.

It felt too big for her in her thin hands. It’s cheap, molded metal was cold, but strangely reassuring as she clutched it with white knuckles to her still painful chest.

Somehow, it seemed her legs still thought she was dying, and they moved very stiffly under her. She couldn’t blame them. Everything was still blurry, and the only reason she could make him out from everything else in the room was because he was the only pale color in a world of grimy greys and greens. His mouth was a black hole dark from filth, and his eyes were just two dark dots which she couldn’t see very well at the moment.

With the candlestick in one hand, she bent down carefully by his head but took care to avoid the reach of his hands, which were still stuck in a rigid, absolute stance of being around her neck; yet this time they were squeezing the life out of the air.

There was no warm breath coming from his lips, which were slowly turning blue.

Deliberately, she waved the candlestick over his empty eyes, and saw what had been odd to her before. There was blood running down the side of his face, like tears.

Unable to stand much longer, she allowed her body to droop against the floor, using the candlestick as a crutch to make sure she didn’t collapse completely. Her breathing was heavily- she concentrated on each breath in her lungs to keep the nausea at bay.

Outside, the rain continued to fall, but the heavy drops were slanting in through a now open window. The glass, which was there before, was now… not. Save for a few straggler shards still stuck in the frame, the window gaped open and let the rain slop in onto the floor.

The organic silence of the room was laced only by her slow, uneven breathing which could hardly be heard over the persistent patter-patter-patter of the lumbering, uncoordinated drops through the open window-frame.

Without much conviction, Angelene put the candlestick down, and looked to the broken window. The glass was simply gone- part of her assumed it had fallen out to the swamp outside, but she knew also she was lying to herself.

The mirror over the dresser was broken as well, with its glass all cracked and distorted.

She looked to the door, which was now open and moving awkwardly on its thin hinges. The dull grey half-light of overcast noon took the trouble to shine through the opening to the outside. Beyond that, there was only the small boardwalk that connected to dry land on one end, and a boat in the other. The uneven wooden panels were the only protection from the muddy-green water, leech reeds growing from black sludge banks and the gnarled roots of rotting trees. Most importantly, from her place on the floor she watched the muddy water outside the crack in a door.

Angelene remembered how ridiculously fast her possessions had sank into its innumerable depths, remembered how he smiled while throwing them in one by one- all of the things she had on her when she was taken, all of her clothes, everything except the trinket he had smashed disappeared into the swamp. Anger welled up inside her, and shame at the fact that she was now lying there on the floor, having won the battle but lost the war against herself. Finding strength in that sort of primal anger, she pushed herself up to her knees and fashioned herself a sort of dress out of what could have once been a blanket.

She also remembered the swamp monsters, the vicious carrion monsters that slithered and swam on scaly stomachs, or scuttled onto the shore and quickly darted back again.

There was no one around for miles. She didn’t even know why she was here, anymore- Oh, she knew he took her here for his own twisted reasons, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember why she’d come to the region in the first place. Why had she let this happen? It was foolish, the worst thing she’d ever done! And now look at what her own folly had gotten her into…

It was just her here, just Angelene.

His body was slowly cooling, and he looked as if he were sleeping with his murderous eyes still halfway open.

She began to drag the body towards the door.
-

Angelene blinked. The rain had fallen on her face in many places, and one had just landed near her eye. It was getting colder, or maybe she was just giving into it. She didn’t know. Her mind saw the raindrops as if they were glittering like glass on her cheek.

She breathed in. The clouds were becoming thinner, and there was even a patch of black over parts of the forest, even though it was so late at night. There were even some feebly glittering stars. It was suddenly cold. There was a snap to that cold that set over her suddenly, and Angelene guessed that as she had been thinking, her mind had tricked her body into feeling the humid marshland heat again.

Quietly, she fiddled with something under her fingers, and pulled the pendant from the center of her choker up to her eye’s level. They focused immidiately, as if the tiny glass heart in her hand was the only thing in the world.

In her hand, the glass had glittered in the pale moonlight like a revelation; as a cloud peeled back and revealed the night’s cold eye the heart gleamed cold. Angelene watched it for a while, like she always did, turning the bundle slowly with her hands, and watched the light play off the different, tiny cracks in its surface.

It was a heart. Not a childish looking heart that was scrawled on everything for Valentines Day; not an innocent heart at all. The trinket was a glass model of a human heart, diminished to the size of a quarter dollar, and looked as if it could have been ripped from the chest of a glass man. The cracks, which hadn’t been there when she’d first received it, still showed up. As she ran her finger across it, they jutted out from the smooth surface like little blades.

She sat up, cursing herself for lying on the flat bed of dirt and pine needles as she picked them off her back and legs.

She could have buried it, or thrown it in the swamp to let it rest with the man who tried so desperately to get rid of it and had died because of it. If it was gone, it would never have bothered her again. No one would have bothered her again; she could have rested if it were gone from her life. Its tiny, fragile weight was a burden; she was always worrying about it, even back in the Women’s Boarding House when she saw the girl captured.

She should have done something with it.

Angry, she pulled the choker free from her neck and threw both it and the heart down by her side where it would be invisible if she unfocused her eyes. She’d only momentarily contemplated hurling the damn thing deep down into the forest, and had settled with only throwing it down.

As her fingers let go, she felt the warmth leave her.

It was like an addiction. Immidiately, she wanted it back, but stopped her trembling fingers from reaching down and shamefully curling around it again. Her mind forced her into a stoic state and folded her hands across her stomach so they couldn’t make a grab for the heart.

Her head was humming again, buzzing with ringing in her ears with the all-too-familiar way she had almost become accustomed to.

She would have a couple days off, a few days, maybe even a week. She would stroll leisurely through the forest like she used to, and stare longingly at the sky. There could be a storm coming in- Angelene liked it when the weather was bad… She could find a place up where no one would find her…

The next one-the next girl- wasn’t far off this time. Angelene was glad for that. If… god forbid, she had been far away, her head would have been screaming at her; howling in absolute madness; and she wouldn’t be able to breathe; her throat would be dry, scratchy. Her stomach would feel like she’d swallowed knives that were expanding, down into her bones, down and out and burning because she’d agreed to it even though it was a damn fool decision- her brain wouldn’t let her sleep because she would be too focused on narrowing the distance between her and the girl.

A damn fool decision, and now she had to deal with it.

But it wasn’t like that now. That was the simple fact of it. She had a while to think before moving on. It was a sacrifice she knew she had to make, because she was the only one who could make it.

Ah, but she was getting ahead of herself. She would be fine for now, as she lay in the quiet solitude under the cold night sky; as long as she tried not to think about the past, or the future. In fact, as long as she kept her thoughts off anything personal, she would be completely fine, maybe even almost normal. Her ears strained as she listened in a vain hope for the distant flutter of the birds as a welcome distraction.

But there was nothing.

Things she hoped for would never happen again, and she knew it. Her mind stuttered- it was an unpleasant feeling. The time before the glass heart- the time before the whole mess even started the time when she was young- was as unattainable as the stars.

Young and alive, carefree and stupid like the poor, unsuspecting people she now tracked down and so graciously ended; as per her job description.

Angelene sighed and wished she had some mediocre physical routine like smoking a cigarette, or chewing gum, or even drinking to keep her hands busy as her mind withdrew into the confused dreams of the past.

II
The Bone Woman

When she was 'awake' again, her pack was gone.

It wasn’t the pack that she was worried about specifically- that was just full of useless items, tiny things that she took upon herself to carry around- that could have easily been replaced. At the sight of the theft, Angelene began to feel a terrible sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach at the thought of what else they could have taken. She reached up to her neck, and touched the empty skin that was normally covered by her choker.

'Stupid, stubborn woman!' Her body said to her, as she felt the cold creeping back into her limbs. She had been ignoring it while she fed the deer, thinking she was far too displaced from the main road that no one would stumble upon her camp, and look what happened!

'You couldn’t just indulge yourself?' Her body roared, the psychological manifestation of her addiction turning into an ugly monster throwing a tantrum. 'You couldn’t just let yourself wear it again while you thought about the past? What would it have hurt- I’ll tell you what, it would have hurt a lot less than it will now that the thing is gone! What were you thinking- Get it back, NOW!'

Perhaps she had simply misplaced her pack. It could happen.

Frantically, she began to search around the camp; under the rocks and heaps of undisturbed pine needles, under the blanket that lay flat on the ground that she had slept on with her pack in the crook of her arm. She searched around the immediate area, with the same sense of urgency that causes a man to turn out his pockets over and over again in search for a lost wallet; the fever of a man hoping against hope that the wallet would turn up, that everything would be ok in the end if he just kept looking. It was like that.

But the small, horrible swathe of leather was nowhere to be found among the trees.

She returned back, her head suddenly more alert for the nearby sounds of an unwanted intruder, perhaps the unlucky thief, returning to look for anything he’d missed in his initial sweep.

But there was nothing save the heavy flapping of a bird taking flight from the upper boughs of a tree- Angelene breathed in heavily and tried to calm herself down, even though the breathing didn’t do anything to her anymore. It was all up to her mind, which was still besieged by the monster of cravings.

By her campsite, there was the heavy rock that had sheltered her from the rain well into the night, but no pack. There was the blanket, under which was nothing but the soft mattress of dirt she’d slept on, but no necklace. There was the firepot, coals dully glowing red and crumbling into grey ash; but not even the clumsily hidden signs of the burnt remnants of her belongings there. Though she couldn’t think of a reason why someone would burn it, it was as good a place as any to look in her desperation.

Angelene swore in her head, but only just.

Whoever, whatever had taken it would have to face hell to pay. It would be an intentional hell, a pointed hell where they would know what they had done wrong; they’d face it and they’d burn- she told herself, and for a moment, the demon was satiated. It ceased it’s onslaught on her mind. Angelene took the moment of peace to look up at the sky in exasperation, and forced herself to lean against a nearby tree to get a hold of herself. Carefully, she smoothed her black headscarf to her head and made sure that no strands of hair were falling out of the bundle, sighed quietly, and shuddered a little bit as another cold wind blew through the trees. It smelled of rain.

She swore out loud this time, but only to herself- and really not very loud at all.

'I told you, Angelene. Didn’t I warn you that if you carried that damn glued together piece of useless glass around-' The monster said, now speaking bitterly, it’s voice virulent, as she stared out from underneath the tree’s branches. 'I told you, I told you, I told you, I told you so. You should have listened to your own body like I told you to do, I told you!'

She spun around in anger-back to the boulder and the slope down into the valley where a thin layer of fog lay in between the trees.

'I told you so.'

“Shut up.”

'You knew it was stupid, and you couldn’t even control your anger. That was stupid too. You were proud of your pitiful ‘self control’ and now you’re going to die.'

“Shut up. I know. But I’m not going to die.”

'I know that too. It’ll be worse than death- you’ll just keep existing and existing and existing until the world falls down around you, then you’ll keep on living in the void that’s left. Who knows, you may even like me then, because I’ll be the only one you can talk to…'

Angelene didn’t say anything.

'You knew it. You knew it, you knew it, you knew it and I told you so and you didn’t believe yourself when yourself told you so but I did and I was right and you knew it, didn’t you? Right? Yes.'

She made a noise that was a little bit like a cross between a snort and a bitter laugh as she rolled up her blanket, and covered the dying coals of the fire with dirt and water that the frying pan had gathered the other night.

'And you know what? It’s going to rain again. You know that, don’t you? Good luck following the tracks in the rain.'

The area around the fire still smelled slightly of smoke, and even that reminded her of the past, but not the good part of the past. She found herself wondering why she didn’t just kill one of the deer and eat it, but that wouldn’t have worked anyway. She couldn’t keep any food down these days, and if she’d indulged herself in that manner, she would have to be copiously sick later. She had to remind herself that the deer were too innocent to eat; they’d trusted her, and it wouldn’t be right.

'Since when have you cared about what was right? You’re a murd-'

Nevertheless, it was the principle of the thing.

'Ah, feeling a little self-righteous today, are we? Pathetic. Anyway, I told you so.'

She climbed on top of the rock, gaining a better viewpoint of the forest pathways, and sniffed the wind. In the stiff ground, there were soft indentations here and there; bent grass and crushed twigs, but they were almost identical in every direction.

Almost.

Sloping down into the mist, the marks on the soft ground could be footprints, paw prints, or could just be marks in the dirt like everything else. She was off and following them before she could think anything more, the rain welling up behind her in preparation for the chase.