Can you hear me down there as I call to you with this fresh, screeching voice your stolen Death Whistle has given me? I hope you’re able to appreciate what the Death Whistle has done for me…and what it made me do to you.

[Police were summoned to Professor Somner’s private beach house on the morning of 31st March, after the hired groundskeeper discovered the shorefront door of sliding glass had been shattered and the white sheers were flecked with dark stains. Detectives entered the homestead to face a grisly scene; the entire study was coated in blood, a glass case containing many rare Aztec artefacts was smashed and the relics destroyed beyond repair, and numerous papers were torn and left to fester in the pooled blood around the study. Police are reluctant to confirm that the blood was that of Professor Somner. Though presumed dead, his body has yet to be found.]

Headsman’s Trust: A Murder Ballad

Headsman’s Trust: A Murder Ballad

“Life is flesh on bone convulsing above the ground.”

— E. Elias Merhige, Begotten

Just how the Headsman trapped divinity within His axe blade is a riddle I am not destined to solve. But I have borne witness to the Cut-Lord’s miracles. They evidence the power of both the blade and the hand that wields it. This is sufficient to keep me in servitude to Him.

Once I shared a stout daub house with my Mother and Father. There was stew in my bowl daily and mown hay to bed down on nightly. If such an arrangement constitutes happiness, then for a brief time I was happy. But then Father abandoned us, forcing Mother and I to till the land and re-wattle our drooping roof and lay shivering in our cistern, hiding from the bands of highwaymen that stalked the trails near our land.

Mother seldom showed emotion, but I was not afraid to cry or curse my Father; which I did often at first, more rarely as the seasons passed.

It was on the very night when the Moon first pulled blood out of my body to stain my nightdress and thighs that the Headsman darkened our door.

The moment Mother spotted His monumental frame plodding toward our house she began to plead. Mother’s fear of death ran deep. I see now that she could never have let go, could never have properly received the Headsman’s lesson.

So instead she struck a bargain with Him: her life would be spared and in exchange I would become His charge, His Trust. With horrifying ease, He wrenched me from Mother’s ankles where I clung, screaming. He whisked me off and chained me to His wagon. I have been at His side in the many Moons since that night.

*