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I Hear The Thudding Of Her Necklace Of Skulls Every Night.
I grew up in India, a land rife with superstitions and rituals.
I grew up in India, and yet I never believed in the myths and tales. I was a skeptic. A young theatre kid who was the product of one of my country's many growing metropolises, who was raised by 2010's YouTube and a few very indulging art teachers. And I soon grew into a young woman who was Indian in a foreign land, a college student armed with nothing but a European Visa and a backpack, hustling to fit into a strange foreign land.
Like I said, I did not believe in rituals. I never attempted to believe in rituals.
It is 2025. I'm a grown woman now. I live alone.
I was swamped in deadlines and on the first day of my period. My genitalia was throbbing and sending jolts of pain up my spine. My uterus was contracting and convulsing in white hot pain. And it wasn't anything new - it happened every month, I was used to it. But I still missed my mother and my grandmother.
It was perhaps due to a strange nostalgia for home that I found myself remembering my mother's stories. My mama had always been a devout woman. She had claimed to see spirits in her dreams when I was a child. I vividly remember a specific event from when I was eight. Mama hadn't been herself after my younger brother was born. I suppose a psychologist would have called it Post-Partum Depression, but 2000's India didn't really have psychologists or psychiatrists. Instead, they had mediums. One such medium was our cleaning lady.
It had been a sunny weekend. I had just returned from school and I'd seen mama talk to the walls. I'd asked her what she was doing, and she had asked me if I'd seen a woman in a white saree sprint towards me, screaming. I'd declined even as my mother's protests got more frantic. And finally, the cleaning lady, Jaya Ma, had rushed to stand between mama and I with a hot saucepan full of salt and ash in her right hand. She had waved the saucepan in rhythmic motion around mama's head. And slowly, mama had returned to normal while Jaya Ma had screamed like a feral wolf as she ran to throw away the burning remains of the salt mixture.
They had told me to stay far away from that salt mixture until the garbagemen took it away. But it was the early 2000's and ghost movies were all the rage and I was a kid, and so I'd snuck out to see the clumps in the middle of the night.
They were shaped like a young woman in mid-scream.
I saw her in my dreams for years until I started high school and decided that I was too cool to be scared of what could only have been a neurotic breakdown on mama's part. And sometime in high school I also chalked up the figure in the ashes to a trick of the eye.
And suddenly I was back in my apartment in Belgium, wondering why I was thinking of what had to be a skewed childhood memory. I laughed it off. I went out to dinner and went to classes the next day.
It was evening the next day, I was sitting on my couch, the cramps that I had suffered through all day the previous day having dulled into a throbbing pain in my abdomen and a hell lot of fatigue. And just as I wondered if I should take another painkiller to be able to go out gorcery shopping without collapsing on the streets or something, I heard a rustling near my door. I froze.
*Meow.*
I sighed in relief. It was my kitten, Mia. "You terrified me, baby!" I cried as I beckoned her over and groaned as I saw that she had left claw marks on my wallpaper.
*Meow.*
She scratched at my jeans and looked at me with eyes so slitted they were almost unnerving. Now, I found this a bit weird. Mia had never been very vocal or aggressive or prone to getting scared, especially since I'd gotten her neutered recently. But I wasn't too worried. After all, she was a cat. Cats acted weird all the time. I still remembered the time she'd freaked out because of a dead dragonfly on the windowpane.
"Do you want mama to give you a kiss?" I said in the baby voice that I hoped no one except Mia ever heard for the sake of my reputation in the office. I scooped her up and pressed a kiss onto her tufty orange fur. She stopped meowing and I relaxed, so much that I barely noticed a breeze blowing past me as I spoke.
*Probably just hungry again.* I thought to myself as I stood up to get some canned fish for Mia and a coffee and a painkiller for myself.
I paid no mind when I heard her hiss behind me as I walked to the kitchen island. *It's probably a bird at the window again.* I told myself. Although this time I hoped that there wasn't anything actually wrong with my cat. Who knew with all the horror stories about randomly triggered rabies or FIV virus you heard on the internet?
Looking back, I should have paid mind.
That night, I dreamed of *her* again. The woman I saw in that ratty saucepan in the dumpster. Her eyes were vacant and her scream guttural. And it was loud. Really LOUD. I looked at her and she seemed to look right through me even with no eyes. And then, the ashes crumbled. It crumbled and suddenly I was drowning in it. And maybe I was the ash woman or the ash woman was me. Because I was running for my life and I was wearing anklets that thrummed chaotically while I ran and I was dressed in white and the front of my saree was draped over my face and I couldn't see.
*MEOW.*
Cold sweat. Cold sweat everywhere. I woke up and I was cold and wet until I wasn't because there was warm, dry fur sticking onto the sweat on my forehead. I laughed a startled laugh as I hugged Mia tighter. I didn't know what had just happened. Maybe it was a premonition or maybe it was just my period-craving dinner of cheesy chicken risotto disagreeing with me. But either way, I knew subconsciously that staying in that dream wouldn't have done me any good.
I raised my hand and saw blood. I nearly screamed. I nearly screamed until I felt more blood trickle down my thighs and remembered that I was on my period. And I swore that I'd taken every precaution to stop a leak but somehow the bood was trickling down my thigh. And so, like any sane young woman who had just gotten the night terror to end all night terrors, I slept again. Knowing that I would regret it in the morning and dreading the amount of time and hydrogen peroxide I'd need to wash my sheets.
*It is morning in my grandparents' village. My grandmother pulled a veil over her hair and face as she bowed to the shrine of the ancestors and the shrine of Maa Parvati, the mother goddess. My mother drove out every week to visit the shrine of the goddess of fertility, the goddess of strength, the goddess of wealth, and so on. And finally, she held a prayer for the goddess of sacrifice, Sati. The Goddess who had killed herself in myth, who had inspired a horrific, now-banned ritual of burning widows alive in my country.*
I woke up in the morning and groaned as the sun rays fell directly in my eyes and I felt the cat fur stick to my still-sweaty forehead. And for what must have been the first time in my life, I remembered my dreams vividly despite them not being nightmares. I had not thought of the goddess of the nine forms in a decade.
Parvati, the wife of the Indian god Lord Shiva, the mythological god of destruction and death. She was rumored to be his other half, an Eve of sorts, fashioned by him to rule alongside him. She was a shape-shifter and tasked with maintaining balance in the worlds. And popular myth displayed her as the diety who took on the form of the nine goddesses who defeated the demons from the other realm during the festival of Navratri. I remembered my grandmother's lessons as I lay in bed recalling names I'd long forgotten how to pronounce.
*Chandraghanta, Skandamata, Kushmanda.* The warrior goddesses. They were the ones I'd idolised as a young girl, the fearless demon-slayers who wouldn't have been out of place in one of my animes.
And with a triumphant cheer at having retained those names after all the years, I thought of more.*Mahagauri, Siddhidhatri, Brahmacharini, Katyayani.* They represented sacrifice and youth and chastity. They were the 'safe' goddesses. The ones I was told to worship.
My stomach jolted.
I froze.
I was no stranger to suddenly getting cramps midway through my period, but this was not just a cramp. It felt like a tug. It felt like a pull.
*Shailaputri.* I spoke involuntarily. And as I did, my heart jolted to a stop and began to beat twenty times faster. Shailaputri was *Sati.* She was sacrifice. I knew I'd just done something wrong. *Think. THINK.* THINK.
Shit. Fuck. *Fucking Hell.*
The goddess Shailaputri wore white. She wore anklets. She veiled her face in widow's veils.
*"Your mother evaded me."*
She was standing in front of me. And she did not look happy. I could see her eyes senses at me from beneath her veils. Her fists were clenched and I could see red dripping out the corner. She was not tall. She stood several inches below me. But I remembered vividly that this was the goddess who had burnt herself to death over her husband's honor. She was *dangerous*. And I was in danger. I had been in danger ever since she had come to claim my mother all those years ago. And I was in danger when I'd touched that ash-filled saucepan. That saucepan had held a vengeful and burning spirit who had chosen me after my mother bested her. She had chosen me to bear the suffering that so many widows over the centuries had borne due to her choices.
I wondered what burning alive felt like. I wondered if I could cheat it.
I prayed for any saviour. Anyone. But no one came. I prayed again, I prayed for my mother. I prayed for Jaya Ma's spirit. I prayed for grandma to come and save me, but nobody did.
She reached for me. I expected scalding burns. I expected hellfire.
I saw a supernova of light instead. Just like in that dream. And then suddenly I was not myself anymore. I was in the year 1960 and I heard a strange figure call me my grandmother's name. And I was my grandmother as she fought for the right to go to school in an age where female children in small towns seldom did. And then I was nineteen and I was crying as I wore an intricate red saree and said my vows to a stranger who told my father that he'd treat me well. And I was at my husband's house and my mother-in-law was telling me that my face was too tempting. She instructed me to never step out of the house without a veil over my face. I was told I was sinful. I was told to only speak when I was spoken to and speak to naught but my husband. And I was being forced down and I was a mother and my son, my darling son, was born sickly. And I nearly lost him and I had a daughter. And she was my world but suddenly I was not myself anymore.
I blinked. I was in the void again, long having left my grandmother's being.
And then I was a child again. I was a young girl with big dreams and an even bigger voice in that same little town. And I grew up to hate my mother because she loved my dying brother more. And my father was my world and I was his little princess and he wanted me to become a doctor in an age where women rarely did so. And I was grown and I didn't become a doctor but I did get a college degree and my papa was proud of me still. And I met a man from the city who gave me the world but when I followed him to the city I realized that it wasn't what it seemed like. And he screamed at me every night and punched the walls and I cried myself to sleep and covered bruised with green cream and compact powder every morning. And I had a daughter and she was the only one who loved me.
I was in the void again. And then I was myself.
I was *me*. Not my grandma or my mama. And I was a child wondering why daddy screamed all day and I was a teenager crying myself to sleep and it hurt. *It hurt so bad.* And I was eight years old and I'd just gotten my period earlier than I was supposed to and *it was mere days after I saw those ashes.* I blinked awake and saw the woman in white's hands on mine and everything hurt. My hips were on fire and I was kneeling from period cramps. The pain that had haunted me since I was eight, the pain that no doctors could diagnose and no painkillers could fully cure hitting me at full force and I could feel my vision dulling as I tried to stare at the woman in white.
"You." I breathed. "It was you all along! *You* gave me endless pain and a body I hated by the time I was ten! *You* made me cry myself to sleep for a week every month for the last fifteen years! I can't believe it was all you!"
"You must suffer." she said. Eyes piercing into mine and hands gripping me tight. "You must suffer. You must suffer for *his* honour. You must suffer, for balance -"
*"AAAAAAAHHHHHH!"*
Well both looked up at the piercing shriek. Followed by my cat, my little baby, mercifully unharmed by the woman in white, jumping into my lap. The woman in white was frozen in shock and let my hands go as Mia attempted to climb over my shoulders. And I heard a rustling. A very familiar rustling. I'd heard that rustling countless times in the past few days. I'd dismissed it initially and then I'd thought it was the woman in white, the woman who had made my grandmothers before me suffer, the woman who had ruined my life.
But now, I knew it was a protector. "Kalaratri!" I whisper-screamed.
I heard the creaking of bones and the stench of blood filled my room. But I was not scared. It was ironic, really, how Kalaratri was portrayed as the demon-goddess in the myths of the nine goddesses. The blue-skinned goddess with ten arms, holding weapons and blood and dressed in tiger skins, wearing a necklace of skulls over a bare chest with her matter hair flowing in a halo around her. And she looked furious too, but I had an inkling that she would not harm me.
She extended a finger towards me. It was leathery and pointed and rough, but I did not flinch. "You have suffered enough."
Mia purred. The goddess looked at me and gave a faint smile. "Your mother was much more terrified of me."
"I - you saved her too?" I blinked. "But there's no ash ritual here -"
"No ritual would save you." she intoned, in a voice that sent chillds down my throat. "The more you rebel, the more Shailaputri finds you."
I gulped.
"But the more you endure, the more I find you." she smiled faintly again. "Resilience, sacrifice, they are two sides of a coin. You have borne so much. You have pained so much. She has followed you but you fought her long enough to let me reach you. You are a survivor, child."
"I-"
"I also like cats. I rode one when I was the patron goddess of fertility." she laughed breathily as she dissapeared. Mia screamed in goodbye.
In front of me, I could see the woman in white crumbling to ashes as the pain in my abdomen dulled and for the first time in fifteen years, I could not feel anything but the trickle of blood as my periods stopped hurting.
That night, I vowed that I would only ever have sons. The curse of the Goddess of Sacrifices ended with me. And I held Mia tighter to my chest as I woke up to a new day and wondered where I'd put that Hydrogen Peroxide solution.
I had a new life now. And I had the scariest goddess of them all to thank for it.
And sometimes when I sleep at nigjt, I hear the thudding of the skulls of her necklace and see the stench of blood, followed by my cat chasing the sounds and a laugh that makes me feel lighthearted once again. It is the laugh of a saviour.
#entertainment
source
I grew up in India, a land rife with superstitions and rituals.
I grew up in India, and yet I never believed in the myths and tales. I was a skeptic. A young theatre kid who was the product of one of my country's many growing metropolises, who was raised by 2010's YouTube and a few very indulging art teachers. And I soon grew into a young woman who was Indian in a foreign land, a college student armed with nothing but a European Visa and a backpack, hustling to fit into a strange foreign land.
Like I said, I did not believe in rituals. I never attempted to believe in rituals.
It is 2025. I'm a grown woman now. I live alone.
I was swamped in deadlines and on the first day of my period. My genitalia was throbbing and sending jolts of pain up my spine. My uterus was contracting and convulsing in white hot pain. And it wasn't anything new - it happened every month, I was used to it. But I still missed my mother and my grandmother.
It was perhaps due to a strange nostalgia for home that I found myself remembering my mother's stories. My mama had always been a devout woman. She had claimed to see spirits in her dreams when I was a child. I vividly remember a specific event from when I was eight. Mama hadn't been herself after my younger brother was born. I suppose a psychologist would have called it Post-Partum Depression, but 2000's India didn't really have psychologists or psychiatrists. Instead, they had mediums. One such medium was our cleaning lady.
It had been a sunny weekend. I had just returned from school and I'd seen mama talk to the walls. I'd asked her what she was doing, and she had asked me if I'd seen a woman in a white saree sprint towards me, screaming. I'd declined even as my mother's protests got more frantic. And finally, the cleaning lady, Jaya Ma, had rushed to stand between mama and I with a hot saucepan full of salt and ash in her right hand. She had waved the saucepan in rhythmic motion around mama's head. And slowly, mama had returned to normal while Jaya Ma had screamed like a feral wolf as she ran to throw away the burning remains of the salt mixture.
They had told me to stay far away from that salt mixture until the garbagemen took it away. But it was the early 2000's and ghost movies were all the rage and I was a kid, and so I'd snuck out to see the clumps in the middle of the night.
They were shaped like a young woman in mid-scream.
I saw her in my dreams for years until I started high school and decided that I was too cool to be scared of what could only have been a neurotic breakdown on mama's part. And sometime in high school I also chalked up the figure in the ashes to a trick of the eye.
And suddenly I was back in my apartment in Belgium, wondering why I was thinking of what had to be a skewed childhood memory. I laughed it off. I went out to dinner and went to classes the next day.
It was evening the next day, I was sitting on my couch, the cramps that I had suffered through all day the previous day having dulled into a throbbing pain in my abdomen and a hell lot of fatigue. And just as I wondered if I should take another painkiller to be able to go out gorcery shopping without collapsing on the streets or something, I heard a rustling near my door. I froze.
*Meow.*
I sighed in relief. It was my kitten, Mia. "You terrified me, baby!" I cried as I beckoned her over and groaned as I saw that she had left claw marks on my wallpaper.
*Meow.*
She scratched at my jeans and looked at me with eyes so slitted they were almost unnerving. Now, I found this a bit weird. Mia had never been very vocal or aggressive or prone to getting scared, especially since I'd gotten her neutered recently. But I wasn't too worried. After all, she was a cat. Cats acted weird all the time. I still remembered the time she'd freaked out because of a dead dragonfly on the windowpane.
"Do you want mama to give you a kiss?" I said in the baby voice that I hoped no one except Mia ever heard for the sake of my reputation in the office. I scooped her up and pressed a kiss onto her tufty orange fur. She stopped meowing and I relaxed, so much that I barely noticed a breeze blowing past me as I spoke.
*Probably just hungry again.* I thought to myself as I stood up to get some canned fish for Mia and a coffee and a painkiller for myself.
I paid no mind when I heard her hiss behind me as I walked to the kitchen island. *It's probably a bird at the window again.* I told myself. Although this time I hoped that there wasn't anything actually wrong with my cat. Who knew with all the horror stories about randomly triggered rabies or FIV virus you heard on the internet?
Looking back, I should have paid mind.
That night, I dreamed of *her* again. The woman I saw in that ratty saucepan in the dumpster. Her eyes were vacant and her scream guttural. And it was loud. Really LOUD. I looked at her and she seemed to look right through me even with no eyes. And then, the ashes crumbled. It crumbled and suddenly I was drowning in it. And maybe I was the ash woman or the ash woman was me. Because I was running for my life and I was wearing anklets that thrummed chaotically while I ran and I was dressed in white and the front of my saree was draped over my face and I couldn't see.
*MEOW.*
Cold sweat. Cold sweat everywhere. I woke up and I was cold and wet until I wasn't because there was warm, dry fur sticking onto the sweat on my forehead. I laughed a startled laugh as I hugged Mia tighter. I didn't know what had just happened. Maybe it was a premonition or maybe it was just my period-craving dinner of cheesy chicken risotto disagreeing with me. But either way, I knew subconsciously that staying in that dream wouldn't have done me any good.
I raised my hand and saw blood. I nearly screamed. I nearly screamed until I felt more blood trickle down my thighs and remembered that I was on my period. And I swore that I'd taken every precaution to stop a leak but somehow the bood was trickling down my thigh. And so, like any sane young woman who had just gotten the night terror to end all night terrors, I slept again. Knowing that I would regret it in the morning and dreading the amount of time and hydrogen peroxide I'd need to wash my sheets.
*It is morning in my grandparents' village. My grandmother pulled a veil over her hair and face as she bowed to the shrine of the ancestors and the shrine of Maa Parvati, the mother goddess. My mother drove out every week to visit the shrine of the goddess of fertility, the goddess of strength, the goddess of wealth, and so on. And finally, she held a prayer for the goddess of sacrifice, Sati. The Goddess who had killed herself in myth, who had inspired a horrific, now-banned ritual of burning widows alive in my country.*
I woke up in the morning and groaned as the sun rays fell directly in my eyes and I felt the cat fur stick to my still-sweaty forehead. And for what must have been the first time in my life, I remembered my dreams vividly despite them not being nightmares. I had not thought of the goddess of the nine forms in a decade.
Parvati, the wife of the Indian god Lord Shiva, the mythological god of destruction and death. She was rumored to be his other half, an Eve of sorts, fashioned by him to rule alongside him. She was a shape-shifter and tasked with maintaining balance in the worlds. And popular myth displayed her as the diety who took on the form of the nine goddesses who defeated the demons from the other realm during the festival of Navratri. I remembered my grandmother's lessons as I lay in bed recalling names I'd long forgotten how to pronounce.
*Chandraghanta, Skandamata, Kushmanda.* The warrior goddesses. They were the ones I'd idolised as a young girl, the fearless demon-slayers who wouldn't have been out of place in one of my animes.
And with a triumphant cheer at having retained those names after all the years, I thought of more.*Mahagauri, Siddhidhatri, Brahmacharini, Katyayani.* They represented sacrifice and youth and chastity. They were the 'safe' goddesses. The ones I was told to worship.
My stomach jolted.
I froze.
I was no stranger to suddenly getting cramps midway through my period, but this was not just a cramp. It felt like a tug. It felt like a pull.
*Shailaputri.* I spoke involuntarily. And as I did, my heart jolted to a stop and began to beat twenty times faster. Shailaputri was *Sati.* She was sacrifice. I knew I'd just done something wrong. *Think. THINK.* THINK.
Shit. Fuck. *Fucking Hell.*
The goddess Shailaputri wore white. She wore anklets. She veiled her face in widow's veils.
*"Your mother evaded me."*
She was standing in front of me. And she did not look happy. I could see her eyes senses at me from beneath her veils. Her fists were clenched and I could see red dripping out the corner. She was not tall. She stood several inches below me. But I remembered vividly that this was the goddess who had burnt herself to death over her husband's honor. She was *dangerous*. And I was in danger. I had been in danger ever since she had come to claim my mother all those years ago. And I was in danger when I'd touched that ash-filled saucepan. That saucepan had held a vengeful and burning spirit who had chosen me after my mother bested her. She had chosen me to bear the suffering that so many widows over the centuries had borne due to her choices.
I wondered what burning alive felt like. I wondered if I could cheat it.
I prayed for any saviour. Anyone. But no one came. I prayed again, I prayed for my mother. I prayed for Jaya Ma's spirit. I prayed for grandma to come and save me, but nobody did.
She reached for me. I expected scalding burns. I expected hellfire.
I saw a supernova of light instead. Just like in that dream. And then suddenly I was not myself anymore. I was in the year 1960 and I heard a strange figure call me my grandmother's name. And I was my grandmother as she fought for the right to go to school in an age where female children in small towns seldom did. And then I was nineteen and I was crying as I wore an intricate red saree and said my vows to a stranger who told my father that he'd treat me well. And I was at my husband's house and my mother-in-law was telling me that my face was too tempting. She instructed me to never step out of the house without a veil over my face. I was told I was sinful. I was told to only speak when I was spoken to and speak to naught but my husband. And I was being forced down and I was a mother and my son, my darling son, was born sickly. And I nearly lost him and I had a daughter. And she was my world but suddenly I was not myself anymore.
I blinked. I was in the void again, long having left my grandmother's being.
And then I was a child again. I was a young girl with big dreams and an even bigger voice in that same little town. And I grew up to hate my mother because she loved my dying brother more. And my father was my world and I was his little princess and he wanted me to become a doctor in an age where women rarely did so. And I was grown and I didn't become a doctor but I did get a college degree and my papa was proud of me still. And I met a man from the city who gave me the world but when I followed him to the city I realized that it wasn't what it seemed like. And he screamed at me every night and punched the walls and I cried myself to sleep and covered bruised with green cream and compact powder every morning. And I had a daughter and she was the only one who loved me.
I was in the void again. And then I was myself.
I was *me*. Not my grandma or my mama. And I was a child wondering why daddy screamed all day and I was a teenager crying myself to sleep and it hurt. *It hurt so bad.* And I was eight years old and I'd just gotten my period earlier than I was supposed to and *it was mere days after I saw those ashes.* I blinked awake and saw the woman in white's hands on mine and everything hurt. My hips were on fire and I was kneeling from period cramps. The pain that had haunted me since I was eight, the pain that no doctors could diagnose and no painkillers could fully cure hitting me at full force and I could feel my vision dulling as I tried to stare at the woman in white.
"You." I breathed. "It was you all along! *You* gave me endless pain and a body I hated by the time I was ten! *You* made me cry myself to sleep for a week every month for the last fifteen years! I can't believe it was all you!"
"You must suffer." she said. Eyes piercing into mine and hands gripping me tight. "You must suffer. You must suffer for *his* honour. You must suffer, for balance -"
*"AAAAAAAHHHHHH!"*
Well both looked up at the piercing shriek. Followed by my cat, my little baby, mercifully unharmed by the woman in white, jumping into my lap. The woman in white was frozen in shock and let my hands go as Mia attempted to climb over my shoulders. And I heard a rustling. A very familiar rustling. I'd heard that rustling countless times in the past few days. I'd dismissed it initially and then I'd thought it was the woman in white, the woman who had made my grandmothers before me suffer, the woman who had ruined my life.
But now, I knew it was a protector. "Kalaratri!" I whisper-screamed.
I heard the creaking of bones and the stench of blood filled my room. But I was not scared. It was ironic, really, how Kalaratri was portrayed as the demon-goddess in the myths of the nine goddesses. The blue-skinned goddess with ten arms, holding weapons and blood and dressed in tiger skins, wearing a necklace of skulls over a bare chest with her matter hair flowing in a halo around her. And she looked furious too, but I had an inkling that she would not harm me.
She extended a finger towards me. It was leathery and pointed and rough, but I did not flinch. "You have suffered enough."
Mia purred. The goddess looked at me and gave a faint smile. "Your mother was much more terrified of me."
"I - you saved her too?" I blinked. "But there's no ash ritual here -"
"No ritual would save you." she intoned, in a voice that sent chillds down my throat. "The more you rebel, the more Shailaputri finds you."
I gulped.
"But the more you endure, the more I find you." she smiled faintly again. "Resilience, sacrifice, they are two sides of a coin. You have borne so much. You have pained so much. She has followed you but you fought her long enough to let me reach you. You are a survivor, child."
"I-"
"I also like cats. I rode one when I was the patron goddess of fertility." she laughed breathily as she dissapeared. Mia screamed in goodbye.
In front of me, I could see the woman in white crumbling to ashes as the pain in my abdomen dulled and for the first time in fifteen years, I could not feel anything but the trickle of blood as my periods stopped hurting.
That night, I vowed that I would only ever have sons. The curse of the Goddess of Sacrifices ended with me. And I held Mia tighter to my chest as I woke up to a new day and wondered where I'd put that Hydrogen Peroxide solution.
I had a new life now. And I had the scariest goddess of them all to thank for it.
And sometimes when I sleep at nigjt, I hear the thudding of the skulls of her necklace and see the stench of blood, followed by my cat chasing the sounds and a laugh that makes me feel lighthearted once again. It is the laugh of a saviour.
#entertainment
source
| 14,000 mlx | |
| 11 | |
| 9 |