Bloodletting - An American Horror Story: Coven fanfiction by applythepressure
Author: applythepressure
Summary: But she didn’t stop, the torrent of his thoughts kept coming, careening wildly around in her brain, and she just kept speaking, her mouth revealing his deepest fears and secrets, and she felt power running through her like hot lightening and she liked it.
Triggers: Mentions of incest and sexual abuse.
A/N: I am back with my response to the second prompt, focusing on how Nan discovered her powers. Bloodletting is an old medical practice where doctors would take out some blood from a sick patient. Disease was thought to be caused by an imbalance in a person’s humors – four distinct bodily fluids (phlegm, black bile, yellow bile, and blood) that corresponded to the four elements. Removing the humor in excess – blood – was thought to bring these humors back into harmony and alleviate illness. I will probably continue this prompt with Queenie and Madison further when I have time.
Bloodletting
She was thirteen years old when she first heard someone else in her head.
She already knew she was going to hate it there as she stepped out of her mother’s car the first day. The building was square and drab, the windows shuttered even in the September heat holding over from summer, and wherever there was paint was painted dark. The front metal doors loomed ominously in front of her and all she wanted to do was run back into the car, but as she turned around, she saw her mother wave and drive off down the street to start her errands for the day.
As she walked into her new classroom and found her desk, she already heard the questions and hurtful commentary she unfortunately was already used to breaking out among her new classmates.
“Who’s that weirdo sitting over there?”
“She’s probably retarded. I bet she can’t even read yet.”
“Why does she look so ugly?”
She tried to tune them out as best she could, but as her teacher started to write her name – Sister Mary Jude – in elegant cursive on the blackboard, she couldn’t stop one tear from sliding down her cheek, but she hastily wiped it away before the nun introduced her to the class.
“Settle down, everyone. I’m Sister Mary Jude and I will be your teacher this year. I would like you all to welcome Nan, who just moved to this neighborhood from the big city of Boston. I expect all of you to make her feel at home.”
As the nun turned back to the board to write the week’s schedule, she felt a spitball collide with the back of head.
Make her feel welcome.
Yeah, right.
It was Friday of her first week and she couldn’t wait for the weekend. Despite the nun’s instructions, no one volunteered to show her around, no one let her sit at their lunch table, and definitely no one tried to befriend her. She had been eating lunch in the library, rifling through the books of saints and martyrs, in awe of their stories that sounded more soap opera than history.
-------
She would never forget the last saint she read about before her awakening, or whatever Headmistress Cordelia had called it.
Saint Dymphna, the saint for which this wretched school was named after.
She was the daughter of a pagan chieftain and his Christian wife. After the death of her mother, her father went batshit insane with grief and wanted to take Dymphna as his wife since she was a lot like her mother. Dymphna escaped and started up a hospital, but her father found her. When she refused to go back with him, he killed her. Now she is the patron saint of those with mental and emotional illness.
How ironic.
It was recess time, a time that all the kids looked forward to except for her. When most kids were playing tag or foursquare or shooting hoops at the lone basketball net, she was off by the one lone picnic table, the book of saints open in her lap, when she heard them approach her.
“Hey, freak.”
She ignored them, calmly turning the page.
“I said hey, freak.”
She concentrated on the page, staring resolutely down at the painting of Saint Dymphna, who looked so serene and beautiful despite the horror that her life must have been. How did she really feel? Was she really so peaceful? Or did she just do a good job of hiding her sadness?
Then the rock hit her.
“Pay attention to who’s talking to you. Or are you too stupid to even do that?”
Her tormentors – three boys that she recognized from her class, who already had the seeds of hate and arrogance required for becoming bullies, whose parents gave them everything and thought they were God’s gift to this Earth and would never even believe that their angel boys would ever hurt someone else – laughed at her cruelly.
She tried to temper her anger, as her parents had told her to do since she was young and which she had always done faithfully since when people made fun of her, but the combination of moving to a new place and being beaten down all week was too much. So she jumped up, the book falling to the ground with a soft thud, and gave them the meanest look she could muster.
“Shut up.”
The laughter stopped. The boys looked confused, then angry, and the biggest one – his name was Zach, if she remembered correctly, with blonde hair and freckles that made the rest of the girls giggle as he walked by – stepped towards her menacingly, his dull brown eyes flashing with rage that she had dared to fight back.
“Excuse me?”
“I said shut up. Or did you not hear me?”
“You little –”
He pushed her down to the ground, and that’s when she heard it.
It was like a stream, mumbles and jumbles of words and thoughts, racing, racing, racing through her so fast she would have gasped if not for the dirt in her mouth. What is this? What was going on? What was she hearing?
She didn’t know it then, but the Headmistress, or Miss Cordelia as she was called by her pupils, had later taught her that clairvoyants can differentiate thoughts by the unique feelings and sensations they evoke, like a barcode or a fingerprint. She could feel that his thoughts were foreign – they smelled like fresh mud, tasted acrid and smoky, showed up as forest fires and racing rapids, felt like fine ash and broken glass. Her own thoughts smelled like lavender and incense, tasted like strawberries, reminded her of open meadows and brilliant flowers. She just knew the difference, like her and his thoughts were two rivers running in parallel and she was on an island in the middle, able to see both.
She spat out the dirt and looked at Zach, unblinking, and suddenly the thoughts began to coalesce, the words became intelligible, and she suddenly understood what she was seeing, hearing, thinking, feeling.
“Beating up on me won’t change anything.”
“What?”
“You’re taking out your anger on me because you feel guilty.”
His face suddenly turned white, his eyes growing as big as saucers. His thoughts kept racing faster, but she saw them clearly now.
“Your uncle hurt your sister. You saw it happen. You didn’t understand then, but now you do. And you hate yourself for not saying anything.”
His two cronies shot him questioning looks, confused as to what she meant and why he was getting so flustered about it.
“I said shut up!”
Faster, faster, faster.
“You wonder if it still happens. She doesn’t laugh as much as she used to. You can tell she’s afraid when he comes over. But you still don’t have to courage to tell anyone. So you bully other people to make the pain go away, to feel powerful and in control. But it never lasts.”
“SHUT UP!”
And he struck her across the face, his breath coming in short, rapid pants, his eyes bulging with fury, his friends looking at him in utter bewilderment, and by now the nuns had noticed the kerfuffle and were running towards them, their habits flying out behind them. She could hear the beads of their rosaries smacking into their thighs.
But she didn’t stop, the torrent of his thoughts kept coming, careening wildly around in her brain, and she just kept speaking, her mouth revealing his deepest fears and secrets, and she felt power running through her like hot lightening and she liked it.
“You hate yourself because you’re weak.”
“I’M NOT WEAK!”
“You’re nothing but a coward.”
“NO!”
As the nuns finally reached them, frantically restraining the now crying and screaming boy, she brushed the dirt off her uniform and walked back into the school. She grabbed her bag, hastily shoving everything she had in her desk into it, and sneaked out a side door, darting quickly for the wooded park next to the school so the nuns would not see her. She raced home, scaring the shit out of her mother when she arrived in the kitchen, breathless and disheveled at 11 AM, uniform covered in needles and gravel and hair a windswept mess, demanding to know what happened.
Her parents withdrew her the next day.
--------
They didn’t really know what to make of her “affliction,” as it became known around the house. They at first didn’t believe her, chalking it up to her vivid imagination, but when she started telling them their own thoughts, that was when they looked at her in a whole new light.
“Mom, stop screaming that Dad forgot to get eggs again and that he needs to write a fucking list, you’re giving me a headache.”
“Dad, stop thinking about your secretary at work.”
“Mom, Dad is mad at you because you didn’t make dinner tonight.”
“Dad, Mom is angry because you forgot to put in the load of laundry last night after she reminded you twice about it.”
To say the house was tension-filled was an understatement.
They shipped her off to Miss Robichaux’s soon after, once they found out what the school actually catered to. Miss Cordelia came to visit her, to explain what she would be learning and assuage any fears that she may have about moving away from home.
“Nan, I know you must be confused. It’s very difficult when a witch first awakens to her gift.”
“Did you have a difficult awakening?”
Cordelia looked taken aback by her question, but as she answered, her face grew earnest.
“No, my mother was a witch, so I knew what to expect. My job is find girls like you and guide you as you learn the old arts. It is my responsibility to keep you safe and protect you. We witches are hunted, Nan. People don’t like what they don’t understand and are quick to demonize those that don’t fit into their worldview. They will seek us out and hurt us if we don’t know how to control our gifts.”
“Can I tell you a secret, Miss Cordelia?”
“Of course, Nan.”
So she leaned in close and cupped her hands around her ear, absolutely giddy to share her newfound realization from the schoolyard, to whisper aloud the words that she had thought to herself every night in bed since.
“I don’t need protection. I know people’s secrets. They are the ones who should be afraid.”
Rowan - An American Horror Story: Coven fanfiction by Applythepressure
Title: Rowan
Summary: So as she felt the fire lick her feet, she stared into those terrible faces and swore to herself that she would live and she would make them pay.
Triggers: None.
A/N: I have decided to respond to the first prompt by focusing on Misty since I feel the Lovecraft quote really describes her community. I can’t wait to see how she is going to tie into Zyle and the overarching storyline. It is short, and I apologize, but I am working on another Zyle fic and my cat is just having all the medical problems, so I’ve been busy. The rowan tree was said to ward off witches.
Rowan
She never wanted to be born into this.
Her family was batshit crazy. Her whole community, shacked up in old trailers and dilapidated houses in the middle of nowhere in the bayou, was nuts. The Lord this, the Lord that, all day, every fucking day, sermons that went for hours, promising hellfire and brimstone to those who sin and don’t repent, who deeply offend the Lord in their wicked ways of sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll.
She had bought into it, at one time, when she was young and malleable, not yet fully grown into the courage and stubbornness that would come in full force during her teenage years. She would dutifully dress up in her Sunday best for the morning service, stick by her mother chatting with the other women during the coffee break even though she secretly wanted to play tag and hide and go seek with the boys, and then follow her family back to their seats for the afternoon prayer-dance-shindig-whatever-they-called-it. She just copied what her family did, literally going through the motions without understanding at all what they meant.
Once she got older, though, things started to happen.
When she was about nine or ten, one of the squirrels in their yard had died. There was no obvious cause of death – no bleeding wounds or telltale ribs to show emaciation from the winter – but she could tell it was as dead as a doornail, could feel its cold lifelessness running through her veins like ice water. Her brothers had told her to leave it be and ran off to get help since her father was off running errands and her mother was squeamish around dead animals. She alone was standing guard over this poor dead little thing, and it just broke her heart. She just wished there was something she could do. Maybe she could just lightly pet it, to comfort it, and herself if she was being honest, even though she knew it was dead. It wouldn’t hurt to show it some kindness to it, to let its soul, wherever it was, know that someone cared and someone mourned. So despite her brothers’ explicit instructions not to touch it, and the temper tantrum she knew her mother would have over scary zoonotic diseases and the like, she reached out and stroked it from head to tail, just once.
And suddenly, it twitched.
She stared, dumbfounded, as its hind legs started to move, its eyes rolled forward again, and then it was up, off like a shot to the nearest tree and soon it had climbed up the branches and was gone from her sight.
What had just happened?
Did she do that?
But she couldn’t have, no one had the power to bring back something from the dead, only the Lord could do that.
So was it a miracle? It must have been.
She had witnessed her own miracle. God had made His power manifest through her to bring back this squirrel.
She couldn’t wait to tell her brothers once they returned, but as she began telling her story, how she had touched the squirrel and it was alive again, something changed in their faces. It was subtle at first, but she could see it – fear, disbelief, and the worst, something that looked a lot like malevolence.
So she changed her story, saying that it must not have been dead at all, that maybe it was just taking a rest and her touch had only awakened him from a deep sleep, and those faces went away, the light and love she had been so accustomed to seeing in her brothers’ faces flowing back like a river refilling an empty pool.
As they turned around and went back to give their mother the good news, she looked back at the spot where the dead squirrel had laid.
Maybe she had dreamt it all.
But when she lay awake that night with nothing to shield her from her thoughts, she was confronted with the truth. She knew that she was the one, not God. That power came from her.
She stopped believing then.
When she was thirteen, her cat had died giving birth to kittens in the backyard. No veterinarians were nearby, and no one really believed in medicine. Her mother would never give her Advil even when in the worst throes of her headaches because “the Lord will heal and provide.”
So there she was again, back next to the shed where Esther had given birth to three beautiful kittens, helplessly mewling for milk and love. She had to do something. So she reached out and put her hands on Esther’s soft white belly, concentrating.
Maybe it will happen again. She had made it a point to stay away from dead things because she didn’t understand how it worked and she didn’t know how to explain it away if it happened again. People might believe the tale from a ten year old full of wild musings and churning imagination, but not from a thirteen year old. She should know by then not to tell lies.
And her body and fur grew warm again, her tail flicked, and milk flowed through to her hungry kittens, falling over each other for the best spot at the meal table.
She gasped, but quickly stifled it with a hand over her mouth.
Nobody could know.
It was her secret with the devil.
She was so fucking stupid, reviving that bird during their dance. She just didn’t know what came over her. She just saw it on the ground and she rushed to it, afraid that people would crush it with their stomping feet. And then as soon as she touched it, it revived and flew away.
And the head pastor saw. She saw his face, how it twisted in horror at his recognition of what she had done, and she knew as soon as he knocked on her family’s door after the ceremony, as soon as she heard her mother scream, the loud bang as she fell to the floor, her father’s cries insisting it isn’t true, that his baby girl is not, is not, IS NOT, a witch!
She knew it was over for her.
They sentenced her the next day.
She stood in the middle of their church, surrounded by all those people who boldly preached their devotion to the Lord, who battled over who was the most humble and graceful and blessed, who proclaimed how much love they held in their hearts for each other and for all God’s creation. These people looked at her with so much hatred that she couldn’t believe they could call themselves good.
“And hereby we find the accused, Misty Day, guilty of witchcraft and consorting with the devil, for which we recommend the punishment of burning at the stake at midnight tonight.”
So she was dragged out, kicking and screaming, to the makeshift pyre they had hastily prepared for her.
And as they lit the match, their depravity and godlessness no longer hidden behind hours of prayer and outstretched arms beseeching blessings, she laughed inside, because they really had no idea what she was capable of.
If she could bring back a squirrel or a cat, who was to say she couldn’t bring back a human? Who was to say that she couldn’t bring back herself?
So as she felt the fire lick her feet, she stared into those terrible faces and swore to herself that she would live and she would make them pay.
“It is you who will die by the flames. I swear it!”
“Are you serious right now?”
She waited until everyone had left before reviving herself and she sincerely hoped she would never have to do anything like that ever again. Everything hurt and she was very happy that she didn’t have a mirror as she was regenerating her skin and eyes and hair. If she looked as bad as she felt, well, she shuddered to think about it.
She had dragged herself to an abandoned house about a mile where she had been killed. The house had been there for a while, but no one in her community went near there. They would say it was haunted because great sin had been committed there – sometimes they said that a wife had murdered her husband and then drowned her two young children in the swamp, sometimes they said that a man had gone insane there after trying to summon a demon. She didn’t care what had happened – as long as she would remain undetected until she could figure something out.
As she could clearly see by the girl with dirty blonde girl and the zombie boy she had dragged along, it seemed that the remaining anonymous plan was out the window.
“Yes, I am. Can you help me?”
“Help you?”
“Well, yeah, as you can see, I have a problem.” The girl gestured to the zombie Frankenstein boy she had propped against the rickety wall. He was slightly moving, but she could tell from his eyes that something had gone wrong with the reanimation spell. He was nothing at all like her work.
Her work. That had a nice ring to it.
“Ah, more like a tragedy. What the hell did you do to him?”
“Well, it’s a long story. I met him at a frat party a few days ago. Some of his brothers…well, they hurt my friend. Really bad. So she killed them, and him, by accident.”
“So?”
The girl gave her an angry glare before turning to check on zombie boy, who was still propped against the wall, his head lolled forward, his face still spotted with blood, but if that was from the, ah, surgery, or something else, she didn’t know.
“What do you mean, so?”
“So why did you go to all this trouble to revive him? I can see those sewing jobs, I know that is not his original body. You put a lot of work into him. Why?”
“I just couldn’t let him die. He had been kind to me.”
“Do you love him?”
The girl looked at her in disbelief.
“Excuse me?”
“Do you love him?”
The girl didn’t answer her, which was an answer in and of itself. She sighed as she turned to the boy, who was trying to make some sort of sound, but any words he was trying to say came out jumbled and twisted, so she couldn’t understand what he was trying to say. Whatever kind of witch this girl was, she definitely couldn’t do what she could.
She could see it in the girl’s eyes, the young new love burning like she had just a few nights ago.
She was desperate. She needed her.
It was nice to be needed, nothing at all like the callous disposal that her own community had done to her.
The girl looked at her, the pleading in her eyes unmistakable.
“Will you help me?”
She looked back at her, remembering how she swore vengeance and she smiled.
“I will, if you agree to help me in return.”
“Well, we are witches, we have to stick together.”
