Concerning the Flaming-Fucking-Fury, a Foreshadowing of Something Yet to Come
In a market square with church towers rising high above the roofs of magnificent houses and a huge, ornately decorated town hall, people were strolling about, dressed in old-fashioned clothing-women in wide ankle-length skirts and white embroidered blouses with ruffs at the neck and puffed sleeves stitched with silk thread, and men in long trousers tucked into boots topped with silver buckles or in short breeches revealing stockings that clung tightly to their calves and festive shirts, waistcoats, and long colorful coats, with elegant hats on their heads. Along the winding streets paved with cobblestones, shaded by the wealthy burghers’ three-story townhouses that had Dutch-style granaries on the upper floors and beautiful red-tiled roofs on which pigeons and sparrows contentedly perched for hours on end, cats were sauntering lazily, heading toward the market to try to snatch some scraps from the butchers’ stalls.
The hustle and bustle in the market square and the constantly flowing waves of people transporting wares of all kinds in wooden carts – squawking fowl, patterned fabrics, dried cuts of meat, and jugs so full of milk that they sloshed around, splashing some of the passersby – gave no indication that, apart from all the activity at the market, there was anything extraordinary happening in the town.
But there was an increased number of guards in the square compared to a typical market day, and this sent a shiver of uneasiness through the crowds.
Suddenly, bells began to ring in all the churches. They tolled unevenly, which caused even more anxiety throughout the town, cutting as it did like a wedge through the safe everyday life of the place.
When the bells started ringing, the crowds, urged by mounted guards, began to part and line the streets. About a dozen women appeared, walking between the rows of onlookers. Despite the warm weather, they were chilled to the bone. They were completely naked, with huge penitential crosses hanging around their necks. With their heads shaved bald and sprinkled with ash, they looked like phantoms. Living corpses returning from war. They dragged their feet, walking very unsteadily because their toes had been crushed and broken. Their fingers looked similar – they were dangling limply, as if connected to their hands by nothing but skin smeared with blood. Some of the women were bleeding from their reproductive organs, while others had blood dripping from slashes on their breasts, their bodies having been lacerated with a sharp instrument.
The women were pelted with insults and horse shit, of which the town square was full, especially on market days. It was mainly men who targeted them because the women in the crowd were raising their eyes to the heavens, as if seeking help there, or casting their gazes toward the ground, whether out of shame, a sense of guilt, or some other reason.
An old woman touting homemade liqueurs made the sign of the cross on her forehead three times, while potters offering their wares – bowls, platters, and large clay spoons for scooping victuals – banged ladles on pots, which, accompanied by the cursing holier-than-thou men, created a charivari-like cacophony. Only the foreigners selling fragrances in richly ornamented silver boxes and exotic birds, such as canaries and parrots, stared at this dismal procession with incredulity and dread.
A group of bishops dressed in robes richly embroidered with gold thread and precious stones walked at the very end of the procession, keeping an eye on the women to make sure none of them tried to escape. The first two women were walking the most confidently, despite their wounds. Their heads were raised proudly.
Next to the Weigh House, a structure suddenly loomed in front of the women whose purpose they weren’t yet able to guess. It was eight feet high and built of red brick, with a brass door that one could enter only by bending nearly in half and stooping right to the ground. On top, instead of a roof, there was a layer of bundled straw stretched across it, covered with randomly scattered logs and wooden planks.
After the women had all been forced inside, they saw something that confirmed the rumors that had been spreading through the city for a long time: a grate under the ceiling.
Several of the women pleaded to be beheaded before the fire was lit and were granted this mercy. The executioner signaled for them to lay their heads on stumps. There were exactly as many stumps as there were women being herded into the furnace, but fewer than half took advantage of the privilege. The rest, led by the two women who walked at the front, preferred to be burned alive.
After the door of the structure had been closed and the grate ignited from above, the women, unseen from the outside, lay down on top of each other and created a pyre from their bodies, clinging to each other so tightly that not even a piece of straw could be squeezed between them.
Before the straw burst into flame, they began to move gently, one on top of another, their movements as slight as those of leaves in a spring breeze. And each movement aroused an urge to move in the woman lying above, as if an avalanche of imperceptible but palpable vibrations had been triggered. And from this subtle motion that contained stillness at its core – somewhere inside this dense organism, this single entity – an intense flame burst forth and the women were ignited by rapture.
They seemed to know what they were doing. When the flames began to lick at their feet and hair, the women were at peace, for they no longer belonged to the corporeal realm – they were completely separated from their bodies. Alive though dead in the flesh, turned to ash.
When the guards opened the door after three-quarters of an hour and confirmed that they were all deceased, a wind suddenly picked up, and it was so powerful that all the ashes from the furnace were blown outside.
Most of the witnesses in the town square covered their noses and mouths so as not to inhale the ashes of the women who had been cursed by the Catholic Church, but there were some who stood close to the furnace, inhaling the ash deliberately, as if wanting to absorb the entire event as deep within themselves as possible.
*
The year 2025.
Anna Frenza wakes up suddenly, suffocating from smoke and spitting ash. She puts a finger inside her mouth to see if any soot has settled in her throat, even though she knows it was just a dream. All day long she’ll have that foul taste in her mouth and acrid smoke in her nose. And the stench will haunt her. Of burnt human flesh …
In addition to the olfactory and gustatory sensations, her feet have started to feel like they are burning again. She hates these dreams that burn inside her like a torch. As if, for the rest of the day, there were a fire within her, impossible to extinguish. Not with an argument or a blowup. Neither at home nor at work. Nor at the post office, where she’ll go just so she can pull off her favorite stunt – namely, raising hell for whatever happened to someone else in her dream. She’ll give the bimbo in the customer service window a rough time. A quiet little fucking mouse wearing a synthetic blouse who sits behind the counter hoping to hide from the likes of Frenza. But she won’t be able to hide.
Frenza fantasizes about her visit to the post office, scene after scene, with unbridled delight. Whom would she pick first? Who would dance with her today? Would the young lady behind the counter be unable to stand it, once again, and break down in tears? Would she summon the manager for help? Let’s hope so! Then Frenza will have a chance to vent the rage building up inside her, because the manager gets on her nerves. With her meekness. With her compliance. By nodding and apologizing. Or as men call it – submission.
This is what Frenza hates the most. It knocks the flare out of her hand. The more submissive the manager is, the more Frenza will rip into her. Then somebody from the line will join in – Frenza knows this script by heart because she’s been rehearsing and performing it for years. He’ll have hell to pay too. She’ll leave, slamming the door, shouting at the top of her voice, “It’s the twenty-first century! Shove your nineteenth-century delivery notices up your ass!”
She’ll feel better after that. At least temporarily.
Fortunately, Bartek’s home. There’s an opportunity to rip into someone else that day. When he asks her to wash his ass, she’ll do it, in complete silence as usual, swallowing her rage because, after all, she can’t pummel a cripple. And then she’ll eventually reach for a knife or a fork, or at least a pencil with a very sharp point. And only when some blood has been spilled will she finally feel at home.
The rage flaring up inside her after such a dream is blood-red. It’s like a massive ball of fire rolling down a hill and gaining incredible momentum. A voracious fireball devouring all docility and tenderness.
“Yikes, must be that time of the month.” She’ll overhear remarks like that and wish she could immediately fire whoever said them – if only that were possible. It’s not, but she’ll get even some other way. After all, she’s the one who calls the shots around here. She’s always felt it – that all it takes is to touch a lit match inside her and she’ll flare up so intensely that the mountains will burn, the forests will burn. And anyone she encounters on her way will burn as well.
She loves this moment. And if it torments people … too bad! Dealing with other humans is a torment to her. It’s only when she’s consumed by this fire, blazing within her from head to toe, that she feels she’s not alone. It’s as if through this FLAMING-FUCKING-FURY she becomes one with the women in her dream, the women who were burned in the furnace.
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From Hexes of the Deadwood Forest by Agnieszka Szpila, translated by Scotia Gilroy. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2022 by Agnieszka Szpila. English translation copyright © 2026 by Scotia Gilroy.
