Halloween Witch

Each year they parade her about, the traditional Halloween Witch.
Misshapen green face, stringy scraps of hair, a toothless mouth beneath
her deformed nose.  Gnarled knobby fingers twisted into a claw'
protracting from a bent and twisted torso that lurches about on wobbly
legs.

Most think this abject image to be the creation of a prejudiced mind or
merely a Halloween caricature. I disagree, I believe this to be how
Witches were really seen.

Consider that most Witches: were women who were abducted in the night
and smuggled into dungeons or prisons under the secrecy of darkness to
be presented by light of day as a confessed Witch. Few, if any, saw the
frightened normal looking woman being dragged into a secret room filled
with instruments of torture, to be questioned until she confessed to
anything  suggested to her and to give names or what ever would stop the
questions.

Crowds saw the aberration denounced to the world as a self-proclaimed
Witch. As the Witch was paraded through town en route to be burned,
hanged, drowned, stoned or disposed of in various forms of Christian
love, all created to free and save her soul from her depraved body.

The jeering crowds viewed the results of hours of torture. The face
bruised and broken by countless blows which bore  a hue of sickly green.
The once warm and loving smile was now gone, replaced by a grimace of
broken teeth and torn gums that leerd beneath a battered disfigured
nose. The disheveled hair conceals bleeding gaps of torn scalp from
whence cruel hands had torn away the lovely tresses. Broken twisted
hands clutched the wagon for support, fractured fingers with nails torn
away locked like groping claws to steady her broken body. With all
semblance of humanity gone, this was truly a demon, a bride of Satan, a
Witch.

I revere this Halloween Crone and hold her sacred above all.
I honor her courage and listen to her warnings of the dark side of man.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~