The courtroom was dark as I passed the entrance where a cartoon was posted that showed me being led off in chains. Confused, feeling betrayed, I made my way in and proceeded to sit next to my lawyer. Within moments, I was moved away from counsel and when I asked for a "program" so I could figure out what was happening, the woman just laughed and refused, holding the paper leaflets away from my outstreatched hands.
I felt tears pricking my eyes as the judge came in and smiled a rather wicked smile in my direction.
"Now, let us begin these proceedings," he said and, once again, with great pleasure in seeing my discomfort, grinned. "Young lady, you are being charged in the murder of one Aaron Lancing, a murder which was comitted the twentieth of August this year, when he was stabbed to death just outside of your own home."
***
I stared, aghast, my face draining of blood as I remembered. Yes. I had heard a noise, a scuffle, a strangled cry...and found the man bleeding. I didn't touch the knife at first, but laid my hand against his chest and told him to be very quiet. I close my eyes and sensed his injury...and made it heal.
My hand closed around the knife and I pulled it out, clean of blood. Then, something hit me on the back of my head, I fell. When I woke, it was to the sound of machines beeping, whirring; it was to a white hospital bed and the face of my lover hovering anxiously.
He told me that the man I thought I had healed had died...of a stab wound to the opposite side of his chest that I had tended to. And then the door to my room opened and the police came. From that moment on, the man I loved, the man I was going to marry, was forced away from my side. I saw his eyes wide, the shock in his face, the anger as they charged me with murder.
***
"...how do you plead?" The judge's voice brought me back to the dusty room. My face was utterly frozen, it was so cold, and my hands shook.
"Not guilty, Your Honor," I said quietly.
"LIES!" A voice screamed from my left. "She's a witch! I saw her! Burn her, burn her!"
"Is it true that you stabbed and mutilated this man?"
A slide of the deceased man flashed up on the screen. I wanted to burst into tears at the sight of the corpse, to run so I could rid myself of the false accusations, but I held myself together.
"It is not. I helped him, I healed him...he was going to be okay." I insisted, shaking from frustration and cold. "I heal things, not destroy...never destroy."
Somehow in the midst of all this commotion, I could sense the man I loved. I felt his fear, his own fury, and knew he was with me. They hammered on me endlessly, taunting me with images I knew were false. Insisting that I had murdered the man, they brought up incident after incident that displayed my gifts as something horrid...and returned to the witch issue until I felt tears run down my face.
"WITCH!" Hundred of voices screamed the chant and I fell backwards...and awake, shaking, sobbing, and clutching the pillow that would have been occupied had I been in Colorado.
