The Hounding

by Xenobe Purvis

Last summer a great rumour spread to us that some young girls … in the Oxfordshire countryside had been seized with frequent barking in the manner of dogs.

Wild, inhuman—not girls at all. Five drifts of snow. Five fallen moons.

That was the cunning power of girls, he thought. They turned a strong man weak. They made a good man penitent.

They were greedy for everything, even for her. Pinching, probing fingers found their way under her apron, stinking mouths pressed towards hers. It disturbed her, what the drink did to them.

Some of them were God-fearing, but their main god, the one at whose temple they worshipped most frequently, was violence.