Maggie's Grave

by David Sodergren

Bind her wrists and ankles and throw her in the river. If she floats, she’s a witch. If she drowns…she’s innocent.

Justice, aye? There was no justice. Just men with a perverse pleasure in the destruction of women’s bodies.

People talked, and there was nothing more suspicious to small-town minds than a woman living alone.

Aside from drinking, fucking, and bowling, there wasn’t a whole lot else to do on a Friday

People just drifted away like fine grains of sand on an autumn breeze.

The town was ageing them prematurely, a decrepit vampire sucking their life-force with each dreary, wasteful day.

There was only so much you could say to the same people every day before staleness set in.

Things are different at night, when the sun goes down and the spirits come out.

Once you’ve seen a witch tear a man inside out from his arsehole, you’ve seen it all.

Perhaps one day she would forget it entirely, and lie alone in a care home, senile and forsaken and blissfully unencumbered by the burden of memory.

struck her that modern life was people talking, talking, talking, and no one really listening. She was as guilty of it as anyone.