CURSED

Once upon a time, there was a man who lived in a hidden village in the woods. All the people in the village knew this man's name to be Shelly, and everyone in the village knew the man's story. Some times Shelly would come out of his house to watch the sun begin to set; and in the last moments before the sun is gone Shelly would cry.

His home, aggressively and maliciously decorated by the neighborhood children who knew Shelly's past, still sits on the top of a hill at the edge of the woods overlooking the village. Today the dwelling is a reminder of what happens when ignorance gives way to hostility.

Thirty years ago, when Shelly was beginning to go through the change, Shelly noticed that he wasn't changing like the other children of the neighborhood. Shelly began to grow breasts and became more slender. Instead of growing muscles and a beard, his chest grew larger and voice grew more effeminate. It grew to the point so that the other little ones of the neighborhood started to belittle and ridicule him. His father even cast Shelly out of his own home, like the runt of a litter.

The village Elders of the time knew of these happenings, but decided that these problems would work themselves out. However, the problem persisted. When the eldest of the elders passed on and his successor came to power, Shelly had finally had his chance to plead a case before them, but being fifteen years passed the change, there was little hope that the problem would be resolved. The new leader brought many things into question to help determine why these things began to happen to Shelly. He discovered that the Birth Shaman had cursed Shelly's bloodline for the wicked transgressions of his diseased mother.

"...A wicked deed foretold, and carved unto your crest,
May your daughters always suffer your beauty and your breast.
Those men which you have led to their premature demise
Shall rise and haunt your daughters with reddened hateful eyes..."

But Shelly's mother didn't give birth to a daughter and died during labor with Shelly. So this could hardly explain what was happening to him. The New Elder pondered this part of the curse over several times. A light dawned in the Elders mind. Shelly's curse was to be a woman. The curse placed upon him caused him to suffer his mothers beauty. The elder sprang from his seat. The elder rushed out and up the path to Shelly's home.

Along the way the Elder passed two figures, one bald and the other with scraggly grey hair. Both appeared to be withering away. The bald man looked into the elders eyes. Eyes locked; emeralds staring into a deep sea of blood. The other figure, appeared to be a woman, slave to the man. A chain connected to an iron collar and cuffs. The two figures continued on their path towards the burial lands, the man dragging the woman across the earthen stone pathway. The elder shook himself and continued for the last length of the path.

The Elder began to notice a dead silence surrounding him and the home. The sound of birds and woodland creatures had ceased. Not even the wind whistled while passing through the trees. The Elder stepped inside and called out for Shelly without answer. Shelly was no where to be found. While searching for Shelly the elder came upon a locked room. The elder pried the door away.

The sight before the Elder was one that he would never forget. It was the room of a young, modern woman; many things in the room foreign. The former Elder Leader. being the last of the original village elders, would have been the only one able to explain all of the things in the room. A silver handheld mirror, a larger silvered wall length mirror, a woodened wardrobe containing party dresses and a wedding dress; and the most mysterious thing that could possibly be in the room, an unlabled bottle of purple pills.
On the bed was an indentation of a body, as if someone had lain there but had merely disappeared. There were no traces of a person rising and stepping out of the bed. The red sheets of the bed were all in place save for the one five foot long depression in the bedding. The elder got closer to look under the bed, he grabbed the red bed skirt and recoiled. The bed skirt was red with nearly dried blood. The rest of the bedding was red linen, but the bed skirt was darker and left a line of red wear it made contact with the floor. Under the bed was a clean knife, placed as if it was ready for someone laying on the bed to reach down and grab it. The Elder, suddenly overcome with a strong fear for the foreign room, stood and briskly left the house.

And there the home has stood for forty-five years, serving as a reminder to the Third Council of the Elders of the mistakes made by the First and Second. And to this day, no one knows what became of Shelly. All that remains of him are the sounds of his womanly voice crying out in the night, coming from a locked room which seems to betray time. And still no animal dares to go near the site for fear of being swallowed by silence, engulfed in the deep gloom of the house.