The smell of iron was prominent, his teeth stained the color of scarlet, dripping like rain as it poured from his mouth.
Leaking and emitting the stench of death, crumpled bones and torn out organs of hatred spitting from his dirty nails.
He licked the sides of his arms and legs, staring down at the lifeless eyes of his mush of a meal. Dried salt beating down the lifeless corpse as the wall of a man, closed their eyes in respect.
Something they didn't deserve but he still gave anyway, as he took a deep sigh, slouching down to the floor and scratching flesh off the side of his face.
His eyes darted to the side, and a ginger woman stood there with her hands to the side, horror in her eyes yet she didn't seem hostile.
He moved his eyes back to the front, staring blankly into the vast scenery as the slashing spree took just about everything out of him.
"Do you hate me?", he questioned, hands digging into his thighs.
"Surprisingly, not", she laughed dryly wiping tears from her face. "It's in your nature after all I don't know why I thought I could stop you."
"You could have but you knew what they were doing was wrong. They didn't have anything but hate in their hearts and they didn't even look out for their own kind. Even my village was better than them, yet I knew I couldn't stay there."
"Because of your destructive nature?"
"Yeah, and I think I would have eventually grown to hate them too, they were understanding but also had their ways. They would have eventually hunted me down in hopes of getting rid of the spirit inside me." He shook his head, "Even if we were all like family, they still couldn't leave a threat wandering around like that. Which is understandable, my mother had said, the spirit had grown attached to me, that it would be hard to separate."
The Ginger woman straightened out her dress and clicked her tongue, "She wasn't wrong, that spirit is attached to you like glue. It would be almost impossible to separate it without immense pain, you both sort of rely on each other. More of it on you, with that insatiable hungry."
Her shoulders fell to the side and she swallowed dryly, continuing, "If it weren't for your conscience you would probably eat everything in sight. But you manage to hold some of it down by your own internal strength, still it's not enough to withstand all internal prejudice pressure from the entire village. So, I don't blame you fully, even still all this carnage goes against everything I stand for. I wish to be better but in order to do that I have to choose a side and I don't want to do that."
The man licked his teeth, "But if you had to, would you choose me?"
The lady looked down, pulling her witch hat over her eyes, "Didn't I already? I sat by and watched as you torn these people apart. They were neighbors to my village."
"Yeah, and what does that village treat you like? Not a doctor, or a healer or even one of their own, they treat you like property. Something that is owned, like they are doing you a favor and not the other way around. Did they teach you that when becoming a witch?"
"They told us, that not everyone was going to be kind and that we needed to choose who we would be, what we would become with the skills that we have. I thought that healing the broken would mend hearts, but instead it push them further apart. Drove them to insanity, fear, and jealously. They were never looking for a healer, at the end of the day they were looking for bait."
That realization pained the witch's chest and she felt her heart beat in her brain, dizziness from the rotten smell around her and sickness bubbling in her stomach. She nearly toppled over from the dry heaving that began to start, clutching her stomach tightly hoping it would help.
"You need to get out of here, you look peakish."
"Oh yeah, well, what about you? What are you going to do to clean this up?" She responded with a bit of a tone in her voice.
"That's for me to figure out, can you let me do that or are you going to stay and babysit?"
The witch stood up and eyed the man with her hand on her hip, "Excuse me?"
He went quiet, avoiding eye- contact as she started to walk over to him, tilting his chin up, "Don't be smart with me, I'm trying to protect you."
He lightly grabbed her hand, and squeezed it, "I know but if something happens to you because of me, I'll never be able to forgive myself."
She caught her breath and yanked her hand away, "Nothing, is going to happen, I can protect myself too."
"You have an empathic heart, you care for people and let them get close, they can always take advantage of that."
"I know that, and that's why I try to be careful."
"What about me?"
"What about you?"
He picked some meat out of his teeth and shook his head, "I'm cursed with an evil spirit inside me, that thrives off of anger and hatred how do you know it won't get to you? How can you be sure you can protect yourself from me, if I couldn't even stop myself from falling into this spirit's clutches."
"Clutches? That's an odd way of putting almost mauled to death, I mean it didn't exactly give you a choice. It stalked and attacked you hoping for an easy meal and in turn you both ended up badly wounded. So it gave you its life force in turn of saving yours. None of that was chosen and as a healer I want to give cursed ones the ability to choose. They shouldn't be stuck with something they don't want, so I will start with you no matter what it takes. I believe I can cure this and that I'll be okay."