I submitted this in 2021 and it was rejected. I thought it was finished and pretty good when I submitted. In rereading, I see it was fraught, FRAUGHT with mistakes. Pacing, brevity, tone. I believe there was a word restriction and I remember trying to make it sound more like a tale. I can also tell that I was in an MS fog when I wrote it. I would have caught a lot of the fails. But my writing is also stronger now than two years ago. I cleaned this up quickly. Plucked extra words here and there. A line here, there. It is better than it was. I am not planning on submitting it again, so I’m posting it. With whatever cracks that remain. Just a warning, this is about Perchta, who IN SHORT, was kind to the good kids, and brutal, with the bad. So if this is not your cup of tea, please place your hand over it, and grab a biscuit instead. (I did remove one word that though fitting with the lore, didn’t sit as well with me today as when I wrote it, so I deleted it. And this may not be scary or weird to anyone at all but we all have our softness, so I try to respect that.) Perchta It was a wonder how 12 nights had flown by so quickly this year. Perhaps it was because she’d decided to switch up things a bit, start with the good children first. No ebbs and flows—just the steady ring of a single coin at the bottom of a pail or thud in an old shoe—She wanted to be more forgiving when an otherwise good child dared to peek. Head drawing up from pillow, for she too was once a curious child. But also knew curiosity also led to devilment, want. This was the curse of man. So sometimes she’d have to show her other face. Hooked nose, tickling the palette. Warped face shifting, shifting like dark clouds across milk moon. She also knew this tiny, night terror would be absorbed like sunlight in a bough of golden trees when their eyes caught silver— But tonight was 12th night. What she’d been waiting for—the bad children. Those who spent their last months in idleness, forgoing even the smallest chore. Dust collecting in the corners, fruit dying on the vines like the dishonest hearts that shriveled in their bony little chests. Entering the first room she paused and looked down at a small, white face. Its eyes closed, breathing slowed, smiling in content. Same as all the good children she’d visited. She noticed the nightshirt pulled up just above the navel in preparation. Did this child know? Clearly not or it would be raised in bed like a headstone or hiding beneath it, making extra work for her. This child had no idea its end was here but the parents did. She knew because though it’d been many years since Perchta had been here, she did remember a boy and a girl. Twins. They also had sweet, smiling faces, but she’d collected what she must. Though quick with her cu and even quicker when filling their bellies with golden straw and smooth pebbles. Children’s laughter hadn’t filled these rooms in years. She pulled the nightshirt down and dropped two coins into the child’s shoe. Entering the next room, she set a large basket over the chest of the sleeping mother. The basket twitched/throbbed in wait as she drew a knife from a darkness in her breast, pulled the nightgown over the mother’s belly, and smiled. “It all begins with the mother my dear!” Slicing at the loose flesh before the screams began.
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