The Kindness of Mercy

By day, Granny Mercy was the village’s blessing.

Her bent back carried herbs and healing, her voice soothed restless babies, and her weathered hands stitched together the wounds of neighbors. Children skipped beside her, laughing at her silly humming, and mothers swore no kinder woman had ever lived.

But when night fell, Mercy became something else.

The smile slipped. Her eyes shifted — slits like a serpent’s, glistening, cold. In her hut, the air thickened with whispers that never belonged to human tongues. Candles burned without flame, shadows crawled without bodies. People said the earth itself seemed to hold its breath around her home.

She had not been born this way. She was forged.

Her father — cruel, violent, relentless — had broken her spirit long before she touched the dark. He struck her mother down in front of her, forced her to sleep on the dirt floor like a dog while he brought strange women into the bed. The sound of laughter echoing through the thin walls became Mercy’s lullaby. Her mother’s tears became her inheritance. And Mercy, watching with a child’s fury, made a vow that no one would ever grind her face into the dust again.

At seventeen, her vow led her to the witch of the hills.

The witch did not ask why Mercy had come.

She only opened the door, and the snakes slithered in first.

“You want power,” the witch said, her grin sharp as bone.

“I want to never kneel again,” Mercy replied.

The ritual scorched her clean of weakness. Her veins burned, her tongue split with whispers, and her eyes opened as something no longer entirely human. When she returned home, it was not Mercy who walked through the door. It was the serpent in her skin.

Her father died soon after. Twisted, blackened, unrecognizable. His scream was said to echo for days in the walls of the house.

Her siblings saw what she had done. They had known the same cruelty — the lash of their father’s hand, the humiliation of their mother’s suffering. Rage flared in them too, and when Mercy whispered of the witch’s power, they listened.

One by one, they followed her into the dark.

One by one, they spoke the words that should never have been spoken.

And power answered.

At first, they felt strong, untouchable. But when the fire in their veins cooled, only dread remained. They saw what had become of their father, and horror cracked their hearts. At night, they whispered to each other: What have we done? What curse have we brought upon ourselves?

But there was no undoing it.

The darkness had marked them, carved into their bones. They began to see things no human should see. Hear voices that clawed at their sanity. Their reflections no longer matched their faces.

Still, they lived. That was the curse: to endure.

To walk among the villagers by day, pretending to be normal, while by night their souls twisted in the same shadows that bound Mercy.

Mercy, though… Mercy thrived. She called herself their protector, their leader, their sister. But they all knew the truth: she had dragged them into this abyss, and now none of them could climb out.

By daylight, the village still praises her name.

But at night, her siblings weep in silence, haunted by the father they destroyed, chained to the serpent that whispers in their blood.

And Mercy? Mercy smiles.

Because kindness is the mask she wears.

And hunger is the truth she hides.