DEBORAH HUMPHREY

★ ★ ★ ★

FLASH FICTION

Image by Jack Gibson

‘Top Withens’

This woman is yet to know how she will die. The farm hands gossip that it will be at the hands of a man. Not that this was unusual. They accepted that women die. It was at the hands of this man that bothered them.

The labourers hadn’t consulted the moor; if they had turned their heads towards the crags, they may have been better informed. The moor looked on darkly; each night it plotted as to how the woman would die. The moor spoke to its spirits; a plan was finalised. They wouldn’t wait long.

The woman wanted to love and to be desired. She wanted some control and not to listen to the hands of a man who was weak. A man who was quiet, petty, pitiful. The type of man who keeps a woman locked in a house without windows. She often wondered how hands could love her and beat her in equal measure.

The moor watched the man. The man scorned the moor. The skies called to the moor and a harmony of revenge whispered through the trees. The moor would take the woman into the storm and lower her to the ground.

The elements would hold her and let the rain wash her, and the wind would gift her energy to roam at night. Each night when the conditions were right the woman would surface, silently, from the comfort of the dark peat. She would wander, fearless at last.

The woman would hold hands with the gale to avenge her past. She would tap lightly on the old creaky house and call his name. She would watch as the farm hands cowered and the man, tormented, paced the rooms of his house. She thrived when the weather lived in her.