Page 29 of Souls We Rip

Besides the candles, the rays of the morning sun lit up my steps towards the table. Advancing carefully, I kept my eyes on the Goat Man, who left its horse and prowled to one of the chairs.

“You’re impossibly late, peasant!” it admonished, its hooves digging in the ground.

A slight breeze cut through my garments, tickling over sensitive spots.

“You asked me to clean myself,” I retorted, my eyebrows up in defiance.

Its sigh created goosebumps on my skin, pulling me one step forward. My hands went slack near my body.

“Sit! I have a proposition for you,” the brute commanded, and I obeyed with my heart in my throat.

I took a seat on the wooden chair, splinters passing through my skirt. I winced, convinced there was blood again on my skirt.

“I see you like making people suffer, Goat Man,” I declared, watching what lay on the table. An envelope stood in the middle of it, calling my name to it.

“That I do, human.” I could feel its giddiness in the warmth of the breeze.

“My name is Ana, not peasant or human!” My voice took a graver turn, irked by the consistent name-calling.

Its laughter grated on my ears and my nerves. I grabbed the side of the table until my fingers turned white. With a whiff of air, my damp, drying hair hit my face; the strands hid me from him.

“But you are a peasant and a human, are you not?”

I was. And I was proud of that.

I was more than content in helping my mother and my sister. I loved going with the cows on the pasture, watching them eat the grass under the afternoon sun. In those moments, I saw the most breathtaking dusks. I liked waking up to the sound of the roosters and collecting fresh eggs or walking to the markets with my sister and mother, the scent of fresh pastries making us hungry.

That life was simpler to me. It couldn’t slip through my fingers as the unknown which stared at me.

“You, peasant, are nothing to me. Just a means to an end,” he echoed the ghost, his chest puffing.

His words hurt. It felt as if I was in my youth, my father belittling me for not wanting to clean the horses in the pouring rain or not clearing up his mess when he would stumble upon the little furniture we had.

“And what end would that be, Goat Man?” I tilted my head, trying not to show my fear, to hide the pulse that threatened to break my veins.

One of its hooves pushed the envelope to me, the crimson wax of the seal resembling the blood seeping through my skirt.

I broke the signet in half, the horns of a goat standing proudly on it. The paper felt harsh against my skin, the letters hard to read. I squinted, the yellow light provided by the candles not helping.

Hereby, there is a contract between The Notorious Goat Man and the peasant Ana Lazarov.

The peasant, sacrificing her own soul, accepts to be in the servitude of the Goat Man for at least one YEAR.

In this YEAR, the peasant will have to rip ten souls from the vile humans in this country, being them at sea or hill, being them on mountains or in their houses.

If the peasant, Ana, does not accept this treaty, then three souls from her family will have to join the eternity of the Goat Man.

I stopped reading, my palms’ sweat staining the paper.

“What is the meaning of this?” I requested, my voice trembling.

I reread the last sentence.

… three souls from her family will have to join the eternity of the Goat Man.

My eyes couldn’t focus further.

I ran my fingers through my long strands, my hair feeling clammy. “You cannot do this,” I whispered, my breathing shallow.