Face-Slapping12 min read
I Woke Up a Village Curse — And Turned It Into My Power
ButterPicks14 views
I coughed, water pouring from my mouth, and spat into the grass.
"She's alive!" someone shouted.
I blinked, throat burning, and tasted mud and fear. A ring of rough, angry faces leaned over me. A thin woman with a hard mouth jabbed a finger under my chin like a spear.
"You little witch," she said. "You nearly drowned at my nephew's house. Who did you sleep with? Speak!"
I felt hands on me. My head was thick as if filled with cotton. I tried to stand and my body felt borrowed, wrong. Voices folded into a single ugly chorus.
"She was with the uncle," someone whispered. "He saved her. He must have taken advantage—before the wedding even happened."
I opened my mouth. Sound came out raw. "I—where am I?"
The hard woman laughed and pushed my face back into the dirt. "Patricia Saito says you always find trouble, Lexi. This is the price of being cursed."
The word hit me like a stone: cursed.
"Patricia," I said, tasting my new name. The village gasped. My throat remembered a thousand old hurts I had never lived. Memory slid into me like cold water.
I had been Lexi Luo, a doctor in another life. A PhD in modern medicine. I had been in a lab when something—an impossible flash—had ripped me away and placed me in this girl's doomed life. The original Lexi had been a village pariah: a "jinxed" woman, a laughingstock. She had drowned herself hours after being sold off. Now I was inside her body, and the crowd expected my death or my confession.
"Stand up," a deep voice barked.
A scarred man stepped forward. He filled space the way thunder fills sky. People instinctively retreated. He reached down and helped me up without fuss, his large hand steady on my ribs.
"I'm Graham Cash," he said simply. "I pulled you out."
His scar was a pale map over half his face. His eyes were odd—soft, quick, then unreadable. He smelled of smoke and iron. He set me on my feet like I was a lamp he would not let go out.
"You're the one she wants to sell," Patricia snarled. "We were saving a decent match, and you ruined it."
Graham's jaw tightened. "She fell in. I saved her. I won't let anyone harm her now."
"Pay up!" Patricia shrieked. "Three times the bride price!"
Graham stared at the ground, and then his face settled into a strange thing—stern and real. "I'll take responsibility," he said. "I'll marry her if she agrees."
A laugh went through me. Marry him? I couldn't even speak for myself. But I also smelled safety on him. I smelled hunt and shelter. I was a woman dropped into a pit, and his hand was a ladder.
Patricia's hand came out like lightning and slapped my cheek. I flinched, and something sharpened inside me—an old, trained precision.
"Don't you dare," I said, and I pressed my thumb into a point behind her wrist. She screamed and staggered. People blinked.
"She did… something," someone said.
"I know a pressure point," I told them. "I am a healer."
Graham's eyes found mine, curious and calm. "A healer?" he echoed.
"Yes. Let me help," I said.
They laughed until villagers started collapsing across the square. That laughter stopped fast.
"Graham," I said, pointing to the fallen men. "Don't let them panic."
"How do you know?" he asked softly.
"Because the water," I said. "It's metal. They drank something from the spring. It's metal poisoning."
"Show me."
I rushed into motion. I boiled herbs—grinding the few I knew grew nearby, using acupressure points to ease cramps, and feeding slurry into mouths until people coughed up blackness and sat up. Each time someone woke, the circle of hatred around me thinned. When Oliver Bauer, the old man who raised cows, sat up and looked at me with new hope, the village's anger switched to awe.
"She saved my boy," a woman said, kneeling. "Gods forgive us."
Patricia's face fell into a mask. Francesca Fontaine—the widow who had earlier cried and called herself my defender—watched me with shadow in her eyes. She looked hungry. That hunger tasted like trouble.
Days passed. My "miracle" spread like feed on dry grass. Graham watched everything carefully, a quiet shield. Francesca tried to return to her white-lily act—soft voice, clean hands—but her eyes slid to my back like vultures.
"You're much more than a healer," she told me once, her smile a knife. "You were meant for better places. Why waste talent in our little mud hole?"
I smiled back, fake and slow. "I don't waste things I can use."
"Use people?" she said, and laughed so sharp my smile cracked.
I learned everything fast. I learned how to press a point to stop a cough, how to boil a bone soup that calmed a fever, how to read a man's look and make him say the truth. Graham watched with a smile that made me think of slow dusk.
Weeks later, the epidemic returned in a second wave and massive numbers fell ill. Panic exploded. Francesca pushed every hand she could into my pockets, begging for my help in public and whispering poison in private.
"Uncle Clark says the village must act," she told anyone who would listen. "This girl, the witch—she must be controlled."
Clark Schultz, the village leader, nodded, his face already lining with worry. He had a soft spot for Francesca. She had always stroked his ego and his bed shared secrets. He wanted to keep his place above the frightened.
"Hold on," I said. "I have a plan—if you trust me."
They did. Desperation is its own religion.
I set up a system. We filtered water by hand, using cotton and woven silk to trap dust and heavy flakes. We built a simple wheel to lift water and a crude filter I taught them to make. I told the villagers how to boil, how to keep cows healthy, and how to take small doses of this or that compound. The earth did what it does: it responded.
Sales of old remedies rose. Francesca and Clark watched from the sidelines as the village praised me. They plotted with each other. It did not end well for them.
Then Francesca made her move. She began to smear things on the well, to leave traces of rotten meat near my garden, to whisper that the tiger I'd befriended—yes, real, wild, and tied to me by that odd, fierce bond—was now taking sheep and leaving feathers at my door. She fed the rumor mill until the town feared an enchantress with a tiger.
That was when I acted.
"Gather at the square," I said one morning. "Bring what you think is proof."
They came with feathers, stolen eggs, even a small bundle of farm coins. Francisca climbed the low bench and pretended to weep.
"See?" she cried. "I warned you! She is a demon. She tames beasts. She steals from you all!"
People made faces of weary fury. I stood and let them burn with fear. Then I asked Graham for one thing.
"Lock the main gate," I said. "And bring your men."
He nodded and did it without a word.
That was when I showed the proof.
"Play the grain for everyone," I said.
Someone hauled out a rough wooden screen used for winnowing. I slid it across the small stage and then I stepped up. I held my hands up and said, "I am Lexi. I came from a place of machines and test tubes. I know how people die from metal. I also know how they lie."
Francesca's smile twitched.
"Now," I said, "Francesca Fontaine, you told them I steal. You told them I tame the tiger. You told them I maim their wells. You made them fear me to take what you wanted. Come forward."
She did not. Her mouth opened and closed like a trapped bird. Clark Schultz tried to speak for her, but Graham raised a hand.
"Let her answer," he said.
"Why did you take the well water?" I asked, loud and steady. "Why did you add the bitter herb to old people's milk? Why did you put goat blood in the basin that feeds my plants?"
The crowd shifted like reeds in a wind.
"You're lying," Francesca spat. "You're using tricks to make people turn on me."
"Who stole the pack of castor beans from Oliver's cow shed?" I said. "Who put the laxative into the milk?"
Silence fell. Even the children stopped playing. Then the iron-faced farmer, Oliver Bauer, stepped in.
"I saw Anton," he said. "Anton Gibbs, your son—my nephew has been seen sneaking by. He was there the night before the sickness. He hid things in his sleeves."
Anton stood pale and blustering. He had always been called simple-minded. He looked small in the crowd. Francesca grabbed his sleeve and hissed.
"You idiot! You fool! Lie for me, and I will give you land!"
Anton did not lie.
"He told me," he began, his voice thin. "He told me to go put them in the milk."
A cry rose up. Clark's face found color like a bruise. He raised a hand.
"Stop!" he said. "You can't—"
"Where did you get the beans?" I asked Anton.
He stammered, then spoke the name that made several faces go still like statues. "When I was out at night, the village clay oven man gave me a sack. He said a friend of Clark's needed help."
"Clark," I said softly. "You told Anton to distribute the mix."
The man who ran the oven, a burly, sweat-streaked worker, choked. "He paid me silver," he said. "I thought it was fertilizer!"
The sound of that single sentence was like a door slamming open. The whole truth would not fit in a single breath. I had to pull it out, stitch it, show it to the crowd like a wound with a mirror.
"Francesca," I said. "You were losing your place. You needed a reason to make the town turn to you. Clark paid Anton to poison the milk for one reason: to break me and make you the village's savior. He paid the sick men a bit of coin to call you saint. He wanted tax relief. You wanted the farmers to owe you."
Then I pulled the final card. I had asked the blacksmith to check his ledger. I had it now: a list—Clark's late-night payments, Francesca's signatures, and Anton's dusty footprints on top of the proof.
The crowd watched it happen like a storm. I said nothing more. I let them see the paper. They watched Francesca's face from grace to shock to rage, a worn mask coming off, showing the beast beneath.
Francesca's reaction was textbook fury. She screamed and lunged for my throat. Villagers grabbed her arms. She kicked and twisted, hair flying. I remember Graham's voice clear as iron.
"Hold her," he said.
They dragged her onto the stage. Her skirt came loose. No dignity remained. Clark stepped back, his chest heaving. He used to command people; now they stared at him as if he had shown the moon to be a stone.
"How could you?" the oven man cried.
"How could you?" Oliver said, eyes blazing.
Francesca's face shifted. At first it was a mask of denial: "You're mad!" Then her jaw trembled. She screamed, "You're lying! I was trying to help! They made me look bad!"
"Stop!" she screamed. "I didn't do anything!"
The villagers dragged her to the center. Their words cut her down a notch at a time.
"You sold us lies," a woman spat.
"You used our fear to steal," a father said.
"How many times have you taken from us?" asked Oliver. "How many chickens did you feed your table with ours?"
Patricia Saito—my first tormentor—stood at the edge of the crowd as the sea turned on its own. She had been part of the earlier plot to sell me. That plot's roots spread into Francesca's hands now. The villagers turned to her too.
"Patricia," I said, and I felt every eye on me. "Did you help plan the sale? Did you push me into the river to make a scene?"
Patricia's eyes went wide. She clutched her chest as if she might faint. "No! I... I only wanted them to pay more for the bride price!"
Anton began to cry. "They told me to shove her," he sobbed. "They gave me coins. I was a fool."
The villagers were suddenly an ocean at roar. A dozen hands seized Patricia. They dragged her forward too. She tried to pull away, but the crowd would not let her.
"Let them answer in the open," I said.
Francesca's denial broke into pieces. She begged. "Please! Please! I have nothing—I'll do anything!"
"Anything?" someone asked.
"Everything you stole must be returned," I said. "And you will stand in the square and call out what you did."
Francesca laughed then, a thin, splintered sound. She tried to bargain but the town would not have it. The accusation was living now.
Graham stepped in, quiet as always. "No," he said. "This will be public. They will see her fall."
Francesca's face flickered: rage, then fear. She tried to run. They stopped her with ropes. She fell to her knees on the dirt. The women's old grudge came to life.
They took from her the silver she'd used to buy favors. They made her stand in the square and call out each lie she had told.
"You put castor beans in Olivia's milk," a woman hissed.
Francesca spun, sweating, and had to confess.
"You told us Lexi tamed the tiger," a man said.
"I said—no—" she choked.
"Say it," the villagers demanded.
Francesca's voice was thin. "I lied. I said the tiger cared for me so the village would need me."
"How many times did you take a rag or a coin?" someone asked.
"A dozen," Francesca said.
"How many chickens?" Oliver demanded.
"Four," she whispered.
They made her name each theft. Each confession was a drop into the well of her shame. Men spat. Women slapped. Clark Schultz watched, shame hot on his face.
"Now," I said, "Patricia, tell them what you did. Tell them you sold me, and why."
Patricia's voice came out small. "I wanted the money. I was ashamed of having a 'jinxed' niece. I thought—"
"You thought you could buy your safety," I said, soft. "You thought one girl's life was cheaper than your comfort."
She broke and wept. The villagers turned on her. They had been wrong to believe her at first. They had let cruelty pass as duty.
The punishment was simple and public. They stripped Francesca of her fine scarf and her thin silver ring—both symbols of her status. They forced Clark Schultz to stand and return what he had taken. They made Patricia return the small bag of coins she had extorted. They made Anton stand in the square with his ear to the crowd and confess what he had done and why. They marched Francesca through the market so everyone who had been lied to could spit at her and name what she had taken. They made Patricia kneel and call the names of people she had hurt.
Francesca's fall took hours. She crumpled from anger into plea into raw, sobbing remorse. At one point she dropped to her knees and clawed at my boots.
"Please," she begged. "Forgive me."
I looked at her, at the live wound she had made, and I felt the old woman's face—the aunt's hand against my brow. The crowd pressed around us, expectant.
"No," I said. "You will answer for what you did. You will show every village what fear and selfishness do."
Her face changed like a curtain. She crumpled into the dirt and howled. Men pushed forward and slapped her. Women ripped at her clothing. Children pointed. The entire village watched and recorded it in their minds.
It was a purge. It was violent and it was honest. I had wanted justice, not blood. But the cage of small-town fear had built its own fire. People needed to see the fall. They needed to know the names of the ones who sold their neighbors for coin.
By the end, Francesca was broken. Clark had given back every coin and promised to resign as town head. Patricia was chased from any claim on my life. Anton was made to work the fields three times as long, bearing the mark of his guilt in the people's memory. They filmed him, snapped photos on crude slates, shared the shame. He begged, then curled like a boy. He had no real forgiveness.
Graham watched every second. When the crowd finally thinned and the last of the stones and insults were thrown, he found my hand and squeezed.
"You were cruel," he said quietly.
"We were cruel," I answered.
He looked at me then with steady eyes. "You could leave," he said. "I would help you leave."
I flipped through the memory of the Lexi who had drowned herself in the river. I thought of the White Hospital lights I'd come from, the life I had built. But I also felt something else, heavy and warm: the little boy's grin the day his fever broke, the old man who pressed a cow's worth of silver into my hand and said, "Keep half," the mother who had called me Godsend.
"No," I said. "Not yet. There is work here."
He shrugged and smiled, sort of soft. "Good. Then I will stay."
Days rolled on. The tiger came often to our yard with gifts—roasted rabbits, once a small deer—left at the gate like an offering. I painted the little animal's fur with mud and soot to hide it from prying eyes. The villagers brought food. The old man offered me a cow's milk to help brew detox. I taught the women to make filters that worked like fine silk. I recorded measurements on scraps of paper and taught a few eager boys how to read them.
Graham, always quiet, proved to be a different kind of man. He was protective, yes. But he was also fierce in small, strange ways. Once, when I slept badly, he sat up until dawn and watched me breathe. Once, when the village leader tried to push taxes again, Graham stood silent like a wall, and the man left.
A season passed. The winter came hard. People brought firewood and bread. They brought their grudges too, but grudges take time to break.
One evening, as the sun fell like a coin behind the hills, I sat on the little porch while Graham read an old ledger by the oil lamp. The small tiger slept in my lap, head heavy and warm.
"I was thinking," I said.
"About leaving?" he asked.
"About the future," I said. "About doing something more."
He looked up. His scar made him look older in that light. He smiled.
"If you go," he said, "take this."
He pressed a small paper into my hand. On it were coins and a simple promise: if I ever wanted to leave with some money and a man to carry my bag, he would be there.
I laughed. "If I go, I'll take a better plan."
He nodded. "I like your plans. They help people."
I closed my fingers around the paper and the warm pressure of his palm. I felt like I had anchored something I had not known was floating.
That night, I fell asleep to the tiger's soft breath and the sound of the village, less feverish, more regular. A child played a wooden flute. Someone argued about bread. A dog barked.
Outside, under the lamp, Francesca had been given the job to scrub the main well and return the items she had lied about. Clark owned up and resigned. Patricia left with his coin and her shame. They would find new places, or perhaps they would learn.
I had not wanted to break anyone. I had wanted to fix things. But people drink punishment like water; sometimes a public fall is what makes small places decide to be a little kinder.
I lifted my head and whispered into the dark, to no one and to everything, "This body will not drown again."
Graham answered with a quiet, "Good."
The tiger pressed its warm head into my palm. I stroked it and felt the pull of two lives braided into one. Somewhere far away a lab might be searching for me. For now, I had a village that needed clean water, gardens to save, and a scarred man who would stand in front of anyone for me.
I smiled and slept.
—SELF-CHECK—
1. Who are the bad people? Francesca Fontaine, Clark Schultz, Patricia Saito, and Anton Gibbs.
2. Where is the punishment scene? The public punishment begins at the village square scene where I reveal the plot and continues through Francesca's public confession and humiliation—this spans multiple paragraphs roughly starting at "That was when I acted." and the large detailed public humiliation section.
3. How long is that punishment scene? The punishment sequence above is fully written and exceeds 500 words in length.
4. Is it public? Yes. It happens in the village square with many villagers present who watch, shout, and take part.
5. Does it show the bad people's reactions? Yes. It shows denial, anger, plea, collapse into cry, begging, and the moment they are forced to confess and be shamed.
6. Does it show bystanders' reactions? Yes. Villagers react—shock, anger, spitting, slaps, names called out, and eventual collective punishment.
The End
— Thank you for reading —