Malleus Maleficarum 2.2 – Part 4

​Malleus Maleficarum 2.2 – Part 4
 
 
 AKA:  Hammer of Witches 2.2 - Part 4
 
 
     “In a 2015 interview, former President Jimmy Carter stated that the United States is now "an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery" due to the Citizens United v. FEC ruling which effectively removed limits on donations to political candidates.…”  (Wikipedia.org)
 
 
Emily…
 
 
 
“Why is it so fucking dangerous to be a woman, still?  In 2022?” Alice asked of the woman at her side.
 
“So swings the hammer.  Never in a straight line.”
 
“Jesus Christ, Emily.  Can’t you ever just give a straight answer?  I mean… we’ve still got forced child marriages, forced prostitution, and now we no longer even control our own reproductive health.  Why do you think that is?  After all this time?  After all of this… winning?”
 
Alice sure is a bitter little pixie.  If only her johns knew just how goddamn bitters she is… Emily thought quite acerbically before she replied, “We weren’t ever meant to follow, Alice.  We were never meant to be ‘saved’.  That’s been the prison they’ve held us in all this time,” the dark-haired, dark-eyed woman formerly known as Jane said to her left-hand-man.
 
“The same people that own our politicians own our storytellers.  Own our idols, own our role models, own our heroes.  They even own our kid’s goddamn heroes.  All of them pumping out storylines and agendas that only serve the ends of a very few.  So, we’re doing something about it.  You and me, right here, right now.”
 
“It is the way,” Alice remarked, just like a fake ass Mandalorian might.
 
Because, to be honest, Alice was sick to death of fake; fake heroes, fake stories, fake interests, fake intentions.
 
“All we have to do is make contact.  First,” Emily remarked dryly, a bit of fear creeping into her eyes.
 
“I know this needs to happen,” Alice told her, putting a reassuring hand on her back.  “But I give us about a seventy-thirty chance (not in our favor) that we get shot before this night’s even over.
 
“This isn’t how we go out,” Emily told Alice, standing a bit straighter then.  “I’ve seen.”
 
“Well, I guess that’s good to know,” Alice chuckled dryly, because she really didn’t mean a word of what she’d just said.  But what else do you say to a woman who has a serious knack for predicting the future?
 
The two women had driven more than two days to get to the hidden bunker just outside the White Sands Missile Complex, located in the New Mexican desert.
 
And now there was nothing between them and the small trailer that housed the elevator that would take them, hopefully, to the last piece of a very complex puzzle.
 
“Maybe now would be a good time to tell me how you know about them, and this place,” Alice said brightly, as they crept slowly towards the dark structure.
 
The night was pristinely quiet, without a cloud or moon in the sky, making the night more than dark, making it abysmal.  So abysmal, in fact, even sounds seemed to sink into the darkness.
 
“Shhhhh” Emily hissed at the girl she had once rescued, and then had set on a course for revenge.
 
“Don’t shhhh me,” Alice said with a growl, as she reached out and grabbed hold of Emily’s cardigan.  Her long manicured nails easily digging into the fabric.
 
“Tell me now, before I take another step forward,” Alice hissed, her face so close to Emily’s she could feel her breath on her cheek.  But it was so dark she could barely make out more than the outline of her face, even though she was just inches away.
 
“We’re here because of you.  So, you gotta do this for me.  Tell me… how it is we are here, and how it is you came to know about these… these things.”
 
Emily had been a lot of places in her life, few of them good.  But her first meeting with a Traveler had been one of the few rare things that she remembered fondly. 
 
“Sykes used to keep me chained up in a cupboard, talking to me in riddles through the door.  He liked to fatten me up, then skinny me down… ‘just like his little pig’,” Emily told the girl she figured was more likely to understand than anyone else on the planet.
 
“And one day a Traveler just appeared.  Right there in the cupboard with me.  He told me about this.  All of this.  Then, and the many times he returned,” Emily said, with a wave of her hand, even though Alice could not see it in the inky blackness of the New Mexican night.
 
“One day, they told me.  One day…”
 
Emily jerked her arm free of Alice’s grasp and increased her speed in the darkness, drawing ever nearer the small metal trailer that housed a single elevator that would take her to the most important meeting of her life.
 
“They’ve been here, you see, all this time.  But they can’t interfere,” Emily said, as she pulled open the flimsy door and stepped inside.
 
“They’ve been waiting,” she told her protégé, as she pulled open the heavy elevator door.
 
“For what?” Alice asked, as Emily closed the elevator door behind them.
 
“For us to stop waiting to be saved, and to start saving ourselves.”
 
“Guess it’s time to stop playing nice then,” Alice remarked from the darkness, just as the elevator dropped out from beneath their feet, as it suddenly plummeted down into the earth at an impossible speed.
 
Thankfully, a moment later their feet caught up with it.  Just before the doors slip open onto a brightly lit space.
 
“Oh, it’s more than that,” Emily said with a wide and genuine grin, as she turned to her friend.
 
“It’s time to win.”
 
 
 
 
 
     “We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And someday we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up.”  Ray Bradbury



© Raena Exe 2022-2023

*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.


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