Thick smoke clouded around her emitted from a burning substance. She coughed and gasped as she took an intake of the foul smoke. A bright raging fire thrived all around the small wooden platform she stood upon, with her hands and feet bound as if she were an animal. she felt the scorching heat of the fire as it slowly began searing and blistering her flesh. The smoke burned her lungs and stung her eyes. Breathing became so hard, she felt as if her lungs would burst before the flames could reach her. She screamed blood curdling screams as the agonizing pain settle over her. Her face glistened in the light of the fire as tears soaked her cheeks. Her skin turned red and bubbly as the flames incinerated it. She shrieked and howled in pain. The pain was so intensifying she felt as if nothing in the world could feel as horrible as this. Her skin split open and she could see the muscles that should be covered by smooth skin. Her body hurt so much and fear and dread settled over her. She turned her tear stained face upward towards the heavens and silently screamed prayers to god. She begged for god to render her mercy and put an end to this unbearable pain. She wanted so badly to be free. Deep down in her heart she knew it was pointless praying because god never answered her prayers before, why would he answer her now. Soon the fire will consume her and there won't be anything left of to be saved. The fire will die down and her body will be nothing but black ashes and the wind will slowly carry her ashes away. She closed her eyes and let the fire take her. She knew there was no use fighting against this. She was going to die one way or another. The fire swallowed her up eagerly. The last thing she saw was one final glance at the beautiful starry sky and the glowing full moon shining bright along with those gorgeous stars. Villagers stood all around shouting insults and cursing her name. Here in this small town, if you were accused of witchcraft, there was no mercy. As her soul left her body she took one last look down upon her townspeople. Everyone she loved and cared about stood on the sides and watched in sorrow as their beloved daughter, Katherine Osworth, took her final breath. Her dear old mother kneeled in the earth's dirt and cried in despair. Her four younger sisters stood by their mother clutching at her clothes and sobbing into her shoulders. Her father on the other hand stood near his burning daughter, holding the torch that had ignited the hay bales stacked around the platform. Katherine had never felt such betrayal until the day her own father turned her in as a witch. He had stolen her out of her bed one early morning and beaten her before her family. Her mother had jumped in front of him begging him to stop but he pushed her away. She hadn’t understood what was happening then but she pieced it together when her father brought her to the town's courthouse and brought her before the elders. The elders listened to my father bring forth the evidence that she had been practicing witchcraft and the elders gasped in horror. She sobbed and begged for the elders to listen to her. She tried to tell them the truth, tell them that her father was lying, but they all stared down at her as if she were satan himself. She screamed and cried as she was dragged off to a place where witches were tortured until they confessed to their crimes. She was burned with searing metal rods, had her bones broken in her fingers, had a priest piece a small dagger through her side while reciting from the holy book of the church, and many other horrific torturing methods till one day she could live another day awaiting another torture.
She fell to her knees before the elders and confessed to false accusations and prayed that they would have mercy on her soul. The elders deemed her forgiven but sentenced her to death at the stake. Her heart and hope fell. “Death by fire will cleanse your soul and free you from the chains by which you are bound by Satan himself. He the almighty God will be your judge and he will decide whether you are worthy to enter the sacred gates of heaven. I pray that you will be saved dearest child but the word of God is the laws by which we live by. You must be punished for your sins.” Said the eldest of the elders. Katherine was then thereafter, taken away and strung up in the towns square for everyone to see. She was stripped of her clothes and had a crown of thorns placed upon her head. Her sheer nakedness was to show that she was ready to be cleansed and the crown of thorns was to show that she had sinned but wanted to be reborn as a child of the almighty God. As the sun set and night cloaked over the town, the fire was ignited by her father. The fire burned till morning and when their was nothing left but dieing red embers, her body could be seen. It was nothing but a black form of a body. Her mother walked up on the platform and looked down upon what was left of her first born child. Tears brimmed her eyes and she lightly touched her daughter's cheek. The brush of her fingers shattered the ashes and the wind picked them up and carried them off. She cried in soft sobs. Her beautiful, beloved daughter had suffered at the hands of man. As a mother, she wanted nothing more than to protect her children from any harm but she had failed. She had let one of her daughters be dragged off and burned before her eyes. She fell to her knees and scooped up some of the ashes that had fell into a pile at her feet. She held them close and closed her eyes. All beings are due to die sometime but some die to soon. Those who die to soon, their souls are known as the restless. They are the ones who suffered by man's cruel hands and thus seek peace in the world where all the souls of the dead wonder. If you are silent and just listen, somewhere, far off in the distance, you may hear their voices whispering in their despair.