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“Alexandra. Alexandra, wake up. Alexandra, please wake up!” Alexandra’s eyes fluttered open. There was screaming outside – shouting, people running, yelling, children crying. She could feel the heat of a fire burning around her, as she sweats and smiled.
“I’m awake, mother,” she responded in a monotonous, but cynical tone. She stood up slowly and gracefully.
“Then come on!” Her mother shouted. “There’s a burning this night. Miss Sarah Parker has been found guilty!” Alexandra’s smile faded. No. Not Sarah. Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open. It wasn’t supposed to be Sarah! It was supposed to be that spinster! No! This was all wrong! Nothing went according to plan! Alexandra pushed passed her mother and out onto the crowded street, running to the center of town – to Sarah.
The crowd was heavy in front of the building sticks, and straw, and even cloth that surrounded a large stake with Sarah Parker tied to it. She was crying. Her eyes were red and her cheeks were streaked with dirt and tears. Her neck was red, too, in a ring. They’d already tried to hang her. No! They’ll find out! Panic raised in Alexandra’s mind and voice as she shouted.
“Let her go! Please! Let her go! It is not what you think! Sarah!” Tears streamed down Alexandra’s cheeks and she sobbed and choked for air, pushing to the front of the crowd and falling several times. She finally reached the front where they were beginning to light the fire. She threw herself on the man with the torch, fighting to take it away.
“Stop it! Stop it! No!” She gasped for more air and thrashed about trying to pull the torch away. “Please! No!” Sarah’s cries quieted and she stared down at her friend fighting. She smiled faintly. When several village men came to pull Alexandra away, she started crying again.
“She’s with her!” A man cried from the back. Alexandra didn’t realize what she’d done until it was far too late. Her eyes widened and her hair fell in her face as she was pulled away by other men. They held her arms tightly to her body to keep her stable. Her hands started to bleed at the fingertips, incriminating her further, condemning her.
“Ah!” Alexandra screamed and started thrashing about more violently, now trying to get away. She screamed and cried and fought all in vain. Sarah’s sobs started again, loudly.
“No! Get away from her! She’s done nothing!” Sarah shouted through chokes of air. She struggled against the tight ropes around her wrists, burning at the skin they surrounded. She bled, staining the ropes and the cuffs of her sleeves. Alexandra fought harder, but was pinned by two men – one held her arms, the other her legs. She writhed on the ground and her eyes bled.
“Witch!” The crowd shouted accusingly. “Witch! Burn her! Burn her! Kill her with the other!” The angry voices rose, her mother’s included. It was undeniable, to them. Her bleeding and defending of the already accused proved it.
“No!” Sarah shouted again, but her voice was lost in the crowd. She stared down at her condemned friend, her sister, being tied up and cut. They were searching for the spot where she would not bleed. She bled everywhere. Alexandra cried out in pain at the burning metal on her skin. She writhed in pain beneath the strong arms of her captors. She hadn’t even looked up to see who it was until now. The familiar face made her cry harder and she found it was not her own tears that were solely wetting her cheeks – the young man that looked down on her cried, too.
“Jacob,” she whispered through a sob. “No, pl— ah!” Her plea was cut off by another deep sting from the knife. They’d found it.
“She is a witch!” The man who’d been cutting her called. Jacob shook his head and let go of her as a third party tied her arms back tightly and dragged her toward the stake, kicking and screaming as she went. Her arm wasn’t meant to be pulled the way it was and it fell out of its socket in the shoulder. Already bleeding, bruised and broken, Alexandra felt no sense in crying anymore. She was being burned, falsely accused of witchcraft. She was no witch. It really was the spinster that had caused the famine. Alexandra and Sarah weren’t witches. They were hunters. They weren’t witches.
“We’re not witches!” Alex called again. “Please, stop!” She was being tied to the stake beside Sarah. Sarah’s blood soaked onto Alexandra’s arm and Alexandra’s on hers.
“Sisters,” Sarah whispered with another tear.
“Sisters,” Alexandra responded in agreement after a moment’s passing. Her blood stained tears and hands and body fell limp. She couldn’t fight or cry any longer.
The torch lit the straw below Sarah and Alexandra. Sarah was still fighting to get the ropes off. Alexandra’s hands bled at the wrists, her skin falling away from the bone with every movement of her hands. Her cheeks streaked red and brown with blood and dirt and tears. She winced at the pain of her hands and then again at the feeling of the fire touching her feet.
“Ah!” Sarah screamed as the fire caught her first. Her skirt started to burn away, taking her legs with her. Alexandra sobbed at her friend’s agonized screams. Terrible screams and a reeking scent of burning skin. Then, the fire caught her skirt and she screamed as well, but only once. The fire caught faster, burning up her legs within seconds and then her waist hot and the heat moved to her neck. She was still alive. Sarah was, too. Their screams ceased, as they could scream no longer. The crowd watched in amazement and satisfaction as the two innocents burned away in a torturous death that no one should suffer.
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” A woman cried from the back of the crowd, quoting the sacred book, The Bible. It was the spinster who’d cried it, the real witch of Salem.
The girls continued to burn, their bodies reeking through the air. Each others’ blood had poured on themselves; they were dying sisters, as they’d always hoped. Jacob, Sarah’s brother, looked up at them with teary eyes. He couldn’t cry, though. He couldn’t show that he loved these “witches.” That would condemn him, too. He would be theirs and that would be a sin. He couldn’t show compassion for such evil, but he couldn’t help it. He wanted so badly to cut them down from the fire, or join in on their suffering. His sister and his love were being lost and he’d helped. He’d killed them.
“Why,” he whispered to himself as he turned away. Coward. Jacob walked quickly, toward the woods. Within the wood, there was the barn, and in the barn were memories, memories of his sister and her friend, his future. He’d killed his future, his wife, children, grandchildren, and whole lineage died there tonight. Why should he live?
In the distance the fire still burned, the girls dead now. He could hear the cracking wood still and cries of satisfaction from the town folk. It sickened him. Nauseous, he vomited in the grass in front of him and allowed himself to cry. He backed up against a tree and sank to the ground, sobbing. He killed her, killed them. Tied them up, held them down, and probed them like some foreign beings. The two people he loved most were dead on his account. They’re blood was on his hands. It was. He took his hands from his face and looked at them. They were stained red with Alexandra’s blood. He could have sworn they smelled like her, sweet. A memory passed through his mind – an unchaste night in that barn. He had to be there.
Jacob jumped to his feet and ran, holding back his tears, forcing himself to think about her and how he loved her and how he’d sworn to protect her and this night broken that promise. He hated himself. He’d die tonight, too.
The barn was not too old. It was from an older town before Salem was established, but not much older. He ran through the doors and screamed as loud as he could when he got inside. The straw was still there. He saw her face, remembered her touch, and the sound of her laugh. His sister ran in behind her, giggling. They were always giggling, the two of them. It was as if they really were sisters and they would have been, were it not for him this night. A smile curled up at the corners of his mouth, remembering everything that had happened here. Everything he could. He wanted her alive again, wanted them alive again. But that would not happen. What he’d done had killed them and they were not coming back, so he would go to them. He could not stand to live this out.
Sobbing again, Jacob sank to the ground with another scream. He cried and twirled his hand around a rope that lay beside him. He took it, stood up and threw it over the beam in the ceiling. He tied a noose, he’d tied one earlier this night. It was meant for his sister. He raised the rope and tied it down, stood on a wooden chair, where he and Alexandra would sit together, and wrapped the rope round his neck. It still didn’t seem fair, though. They’d suffered so much before their deaths. Being cut and then burned. It was horrible. He was getting off too easy, but he was a coward to himself. He couldn’t do anything more than just die. He kicked away the chair and hanged there.

I woke up.