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, 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
a 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 other 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 bore a hue of sickly green. The once
warm and loving smile gone replaced by a grimace of broken
teeth and torn gums that leers beneath a battered disfigured
nose. The dishevelled 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. 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 honour
her courage and listen to her warnings of the dark side of man. Each
year I shed tears of respect when the mundane exhibit their symbol
of Christian love.

Author: ~Unknown