There's a woman on our farm that scares crows away.

  The Scarewoman they call her, and they tell you not to look into her white beaded eyes for long. Three seconds and you'd lose all you loved. Four and you'd drop dead at her feet, and the insects and earth livings will crawl over your body and turn you into something she feeds on.

  The Scarewoman has curtains of coal black hair, and at night she burns up so bright people whisper it's the strands of her hair, rubbing together and making the fire flare.

  My mother warned me every time I went out. She said, take the furthest road and let it curve with you til you reach the chickens. Don't stop and look back. Don't stare at the woman with her pale almost white arm as it thrusts up to the sky. My mother used to say, never hear the pleadings of a cursed woman.

  But what is a cursed woman, Mother? And why is it the one in our farm, with her hair braided into two and curved into a heart? With her seafoam eyes and transparent skin and fingers craning towards a far sky?

  The farm was a small block of square. It had as much green as it had yellow, and it carried the smell of animal and dirt like a blanket overhead.

  The Scarewoman stood in the middle of the farm, somewhere between the corn kernels, a bit behind the fig trees. She wore nothing but the skin of her bones, and even though I was warned to steer my eyes away, I always found myself drawing on the moles on her jaw. Three dotted ones, closing in a triangle. The first one sat at the corner of her lips, sunk open and bled red. The second one sat towards the high point of her cheek, and a blue vein cut right through it, bulging and throbbing underneath. The third was close to the lobe of her ear, on which a simple pearl was pierced. The Scarewoman looked to be just a woman, if you disregarded the voidness of her eyes and the burning of her hair and the wails ringing at night, as if the fire was burning her alive.

  Pressing my ears into the pillow does nothing to stop the wounded cries, and something inside me responds, again and again, cries alongside the woman whose fingertips never reach the sky.

  On nights where my dreams are filled with soap white and the scent of burnt wood, I leave the warmth of my room and tread the hallways of our little house. At the end of the hallway, my mother rests, and I imagine dragging myself to her bed, sinking below her covers, and digging myself into the flesh of her breasts.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Why, Mother, is the Scarewoman crying? Why is she burning? Why must we not look at her and why are the crows escaping?

  But her palm would meet my thigh faster than I would finish. Never listen to the pleadings of a cursed woman. She would repeat, fingers digging into the softness of my cheeks and shaking me as if to bury her words in my brain. But why is she cursed? I ache to cry.

  But I know there is no answer amidst the wideness of your eyes. My questions are a sin you have tried endlessly to rid me of. You say, That's how it is. You say, Stop asking. You say, The woman is cursed because she didn’t stop asking.

  So is that what becomes of our curiosity, Mother? Do we turn into monster-like creatures, whose appearance is gastly and desperate, whose dream is forever kept away?

  Was the Scarewoman one who dreamed? One who asked? Was that her sin? Is that mine?

  Must I be silent to escape the curse of our bloodline?

  Was the Scarewoman not one of ours? Of our blood and flesh, of our suffering and trials? Was she not the tears my great-grandmother shed as she was shipped to a house with a stranger set to own her life? Was she not the sobs and shouts my grandmother vomited as she was forced to bear the seed of a man who polluted her flesh? Was she not the illness that pales your face every time you stare at a bedside left cold?

  Mother, are we not the cursed ones?

  The Scarewoman is nothing but the wishes we let go of; let sink into dry wells and unmoving rivers. The ones we let be carried away, knowing they had no place in our present. Didn't my great-grandmother stand in the middle of the house as it lit into flames? Didn't the neighbours hear her wails? Didn't my grandmother let her breath escape on a little cot on which she grew ever so pale? Weren't you the child born from her white emptied body? Didn't you take the last of her blood?

  Mother, how long must she cry? How long must we ignore? You have lived a thousand lives too young. I know that if I sink into your ribs, I'd see the fluttering caged bird of a heart you keep dead.

  I'd turn one with your blood and stream through the paleness of your flesh, taste your tears as they fall, tangle into your hair as it lies still on your pillow, push and pull at your muscles and bones until you get up.

  I'd watch you glide over the tiles in your birth suit, only focused on getting out. I'd feel the tips of your hair as they tickled the back of my knees. I'd feel the dirt underneath my feet, and watch the branches of the fig tree loom ahead, the figs fat and bruised and easily falling to your feet.

  You'd raise your hand towards the sky and your lips would open to let your cries free. Please forgive me. Please forgive this child. Please protect her and keep her away from us.

  I'd open my eyes and find myself in my room. Looking out the window, I see the Scarewoman with her whole body leaning above as if she was tethered by a chain. Her fingers are curving water out of the sky and around her, the redness of ripe figs circles her as if she bled on the altar. It is night and her hair is a red flame. I close my eyes and whisper into my open palms.

  Please forgive us. Please let us become more than the ghosts of our pasts.