"Think your life tough, do you? Think the fact you have to make a living by serving others, cleaning their homes or asking if they would like French fries with their order, makes you a warrior? That it proves you struggle through life and that you succeed? Please."
"Even the poor filth that litters the streets without a home to call their own, and who have to stand on the corner with a sign, begging for a few cents that they would most likely put toward a bottle of Vodka rather than an actual meal? Even by the comparison of yesteryear, their lives are a glorious standard."
"If you think you have it rough, why don't you try walking a mile in another's shoes? Hard shoes, leather in make cut high but with low heels and round toes, the top several inches above the ankle and brass buckles as a sense of style."
"Granted, the styles in those times was tiresome, with far more layers on your body, man or woman, than what was truly warranted. 'Modesty' they called it. And all in the name of their Lord. An inconvenience for men of the time, but for the women? Their lives were inconceivable."
"Women were little more than property in Puritan times. After all, Massachusetts Bay Colony, much like the rest of the globe, was a man’s world. Women could not take part in town meetings. And as religious a fervor as these times were, they were not allowed to make any decisions within the church. After all, women were seen as instruments of the Devil. Temptresses. Men had immortal souls in the eyes of God. Women, not so much. They were seen as weak, easily swayed to the ways of Satan. Able to use their lovely gift to tempt a man from the ways of the Lord and condemn his soul into the fiery pits of Tartarus. Their only duty was to care for her husband and home, and provide for him a family."
"In effect, women were breeding vessels in Puritan churches and homes. Nothing more, nothing less."
"After all, if it could happen to Adam at the sway of Eve, then why not any man after?"
"And if adult women found themselves restricted, life was more so full of woe for young ladies, children. Because even male children, while not as restricted as girls, still were considered the property of their parents. More so their father than their mother. After all, children then were taught they were born tainted with the sin of their parents, and they, not their parents, had to spend the remainder of their years making up for that sin."
"I imagine that makes it a blessing that the average life span for adults in the 1670 was thirty five to forty years, and most women and children died in childbirth."
"Children, especially girls, were severely restricted and harshly punished for straying from honoring thy mother and thy father. They were not given time to play with their friends or socialize, as toys and games were few. They were thought of as sinful distractions for the soul. And whereas boys could at times accompany their fathers in hunting and fishing, girls were not so lucky. Girls were simply future women and mothers, and all they were apt to do were the household chores. Not even a book that was not a Bible was to be had for simple enjoyment. Girls, were simply unable to express their creativity."
"And the fools wonder why things happened the way that they did."
The home of Samuel Parris, Puritan minister of Salem...
The woman knelt on her knees, on a tanned rug woven of cotton fabric. Contrary to popular reports, she was not African American, but originated from Central America, of the Carib nationality. Her name? Tituba. And she had been left in charge of two Puritan girls, one Elizabeth Parris, the child of Samuel, and her cousin, Abigail Williams.
Tituba: Okay, now place the water before my knees.
Excitedly, Elizabeth did as instructed, with eager glee on her face. It was risque, what they were doing. After all, they were told to help Tituba with the household chores while Samuel was out performing his own duties for the parish. But while they worked, Tituba had regaled the girls with tales of her life in Barbados, and how her mistress in that nation had taught her the Craft, the better to weave and knit protections against the coming darkness incarnate. Nothing more.
Nothing ... sinister.
And why would the girls resist? The excitement of the forbidden, and the chance to step aside from their expectations was a tease enough for them. They cried and begged Tituba to show them something special, until the slave woman finally relented.
Tituba: The candle?
Young Abigail held the pillar candle out to Tituba to take into her own hand. Tituba whispers soft words the girls were unable to hear truly or decipher. She then tilted the candle over the clay bowl and allowed the melted wax to drip into the cool water. Immediately the clay swirled and thickened, and quickly became hard. Elizabeth leaned over to look and gasped back a startled intake of breath, clapping her small hands over her lips. Tituba herself appeared unsettled at what she saw.
Only Abigail smiled.
The wax had taken a certain likeness of little Elizabeth.
William Stoughton: Do you deny these charges!?
William Stoughton, Chief Justice and Magistrate of the Salem Court, yelled as he stood before the town congregation, mindful that all eyes were not on him as some might wish were they in his shoes, but on the accused. The one that many an accusing eye and hateful glare focused on.
Tituba.
Her eyes wept open tears, leaving dust lined streaks on her cheeks as the tears pooled on her chin. Her body was hidden in these modest times, but her rigid movement and stiff posture indicated there were wounds or injuries hidden away from the eyes of the public, an indication there were other means to forcing a confession from this "witch."
William Stoughton: Do you deny you afflict these young girls!?
His arm swept, a dramatic effect with its intended purpose to sweep the eyes of everyone from her, to the victims.
Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams. And the moment Tituba's own eyes fell upon the very girls she had cared for as if they were her own, the girls fell to the floor in hysterics. Screaming the devils were clawing at their tender flesh. Screaming Tituba's specter haunted them at night and even now, in this the house of the Lord. Their bodies contorted into misshapen forms.
Indeed all eyes were upon them. Including two bright, almost translucent blue, eyes. from far back in the furthest row, Kedron Williams watched with an amused smile on his face.
A match was struck...
Kedron: Who is he?
Clad in simple black garb; a soft, long sleeve shirt loose enough to billow gently in the breeze from the open window, Kedron Williams held the match over the wick of the black candle until it came to life...
Kedron: Where is he from?
Kedron walked around the perimeter of the room, devoid of much furniture save for the altar in the center of the room; circular in shape, with a black altar cloth draped over it and an inverted pentagram drawn in ashes. A brass bell. A black statue of a winged angel looking downward. A small animal's skull. A pewter. A crystal chalice. And a double edged steel blade, known in the arts as an athame. And six other, unlit candles around the edges of the altar's surface.
Kedron: When is he from?
Kedron extended the lit candle to the first of the six unlit ones, and all six candles' wicks ignited as one, bathing the room in a soft glow.
Kedron: Why is he here?
Kedron smiled as he set the final candle in its place, before the fallen angel's statue.
Kedron: All questions I have heard time and again, from the moment that I set foot in SCW, and many times and places before that. But there here and now is where we are, and where we must focus. And I am tempted to answer your questions.
His pale, blue eyes flicker upward, seen past his luxuriously long lashes and the corner of his lips twist upward in a wisp of a smile.
Kedron: Perhaps. The fun is,, after all, in the mystery. or the telling of the tale. And believe me when I tell you that I have all the time in the world. The same can not be said, however, for one man. Griffin Hawkins. The first of many. oh yes.
He closed his eyes for a restful moment of relaxation.
Kedron: There are others. Those in my sights, one very important in fact, but as I said...
His eyes opened once again.
Kedron: The here and now. Griffin...
He tilted his head to the side, a cause and effect where his waist-length, jet black hair fell over his shoulder in a smoldering effect.
Kedron: Do you find it as fascinating as I, that you are the one who was put before me? My very first opponent, a rock and roll star. Or a past one, preferring to live his faded glory of past days in the present, pretending to still be anything but obsolete. I hope you find it as ironic as I do, that we have been paired together, considering there are those who believe your style of music, grand as it may be, is a tool of Satan. That if you play it backwards, you will hear the words of the Black Mass, instructing our young to venture out and do dark and twisted things!
Kedron's lips finally parted with a laugh as he clapped his palms together in a display of his merry glee.
Kedron: Oh please! If I know the human race, and I do, twisted pleasures and all, I dare say the young and old -- neither need any outside influences to push them to the brink of sin! They need no fallen idol or shitty music to cause them to taste each others flesh, to smoke or drink, do drugs or whatever hell else you might believe them capable of. They can do just fine on their own!
Kedron gently picked up the blade from his altar and idly twisted the pointed tip along the soft, tender flesh of this thumb. A drop of blood formed along the surface, and pooled at the blade all the while, Kedron seemed to not even notice.
Kedron: I prayed to my own Lord, for a willing sacrifice, to lend strength and speed to my own personal Hell. And Griffin, here you are! Like a lamb to the slaughter!
Kedron leaned closer, holding his thumb up and the blood dripped from it and the blade, onto the surface of the altar, and a trail of smoke gently started to swirl up from the outline of the pentagram.
Kedron: By the pricking of my thumb, something wicked this way comes!
