December 2022 Story (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

(This story is untitled for now. I caught covid...again...this time after traveling abroad. I guess it was inevitable. Anyway. I should wrap everything up hopefully by January 2nd but I just couldn't let 2022 go without posting for December. So here's the first chapter)

They called her “Baba Bosh”, which was a derogatory term from some long-forgotten language for “old ugly crazy lady”. Baba Bosh had been a prisoner of Castle Ludwig for some thirty years. Two dead kings and one Walchan civil war later and people had forgotten what she was originally there for, even the guards. Rumors of her dastardly deeds ranged wildly. Most people said that she dabbled in witchcraft, turning children into frogs and tempting men of the cloth. Others said she was serving time for killing the missing Prince Reginald II, though there was never any evidence of that. Then there were also rumors that she was a spy for the neighboring kingdom of Zavesh. And then very few, the really old folk who were so old they could barely see, claimed that they remembered the truth of it. Whatever the tale was, she was an outcast and seen as a symbol of all that was wrong with “the woman”. Mothers told their daughters that if they misbehaved, they would turn into “a baba bosh”. She was loud, untidy, unclean, loose, and wild.

Castle Ludwig stood on the hilltop overlooking the entire kingdom of Walcha. A stolid, centuries-old fortress with a lone tower, it had witnessed a thousand years of history. Prisoners came and went through its unforgiving and dark dungeon. Baba Bosh’s cell was on the lowest floor of the castle, alone in the furthest corner in the darkest depths where she had few to keep her company except rats and bugs.

Baba Bosh always had something to say to the guards. She claimed to know their sins and how each of them would die, always cackling afterwards. Then she would offend their friends and families with a slew of curses. She was never fond of the royal family either, spitting after saying their names. That drew the ire of the most recent king, Albanese XII.

The question of executing her for blasphemy and indecency was always on the table, but King Albanese XII never did anything about it. Rumor had it, he believed in her witchcraft and was afraid of supernatural retribution if he ever executed her. He thought it best to leave her be until she died of natural causes. She was too “dangerous” to be let out into the world, but also rumored to haunt you if you killed her.

So, the king instead subjected her to cruel and unusual punishment. However, she was a strong-willed woman. Whether they dunked her in ice cold water or stretched her on the rack, she only hooted and hollered obscenities and cackled at the guards. The last method of unusual punishment became force-feeding. The king order the guards to only give her scraps of food, but then had the idea to force-feed her the worst goulashes imaginable. The chefs made bowls filled with utter chaotic ingredients meshed together - mushrooms and brussels sprouts and beets with horseradish and malt vinegar and sauerkraut. It seemed that Baba Bosh had finally met her match, as she stopped cackling and cringed at the horrid taste. They stuffed her so much that she often could hardly move. They would leave her tied up against the wall a bloated mess with drool and crumbs falling from her mouth.

But…like all previous forms of cruel and unusual punishment, this eventually backfired.

The punishments stopped when a guard nearly died after she broke wind and nearly suffocated him to death with the noxious fumes that she emitted after being stuffed. His fellow guardsmen claimed that the entire dungeon was filled with green gas that suffocated everyone. She had emitted so much gas that she was thin again. And after she had broken wind so loudly, she cackled and heckled the guard who had nearly suffocated to death.

It seemed that through some hideous magic, Baba Bosh learned to terrify them with her farts. No matter what she ate and how little she ate, that noxious green gas spread across the dungeon, similar to a hideous sewer gas. Thus, feeding Baba Bosh became a chore that the guards hated. They drew straws to figure out who would be the next unlucky bastard to go down there and give her food. Sometimes she didn’t break wind. Sometimes the least she did was belch out loud. Other times, a guard had to drop the food and make a mad dash for the door once he heard her stomach grumble.

On a wintery day, a new member was installed in the castle guard. Pawel had dreamed of serving the king since he was a little boy. He was bright, tall, brown-haired, fair-skinned, and terribly innocent. The other guards immediately targeted him for their pranks. They would trip him in the hallway, give him the shortest lance to carry, and gave him the late night shift up on the tower in the freezing cold. Despite this, he took his duties with aplomb and kept smiling through it, treating his fellow guardsmen with such kindness that it annoyed them.

The day came when they drew straws to see who would serve Baba Bosh, and Pawel got the shortest stick. They all laughed and patted him on the back, handing him a tray of porridge and leftover meats with a mug of water.

“I don’t understand,” Pawel said. “Who is Baba Bosh?’

The guards slowly stopped laughing and eyed each other, shocked. The captain of the guard, Jacek, said, “Are you serious?”

Pawel stared blankly. Most people were afraid of Jacek’s tall and strong build, but Pawel never showed any hesitancy when asking seemingly stupid questions to his face. He then shrugged.

The guards exchanged, at first concerned, but then thin devious grins formed on their lips. Jacek cleared his throat and said, “She is the most important prisoner in our castle.”

Another guard, Moretz, the skinniest, nodded his head enthusiastically. “Yes! Very important.”

“How so?” Pawel asked.

“Err…” Moretz said.

Jacek barged in. “She used to be a spy for Zavesh, and might know about the missing prince Reginald. But she never fessed up.”

Moretz nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, yes, so we have to torture her by force feeding.”

“Force feeding?” Pawel said, raising a brow. He watched Moretz eagerly add more bowls of goulash to the tray.

“Yes, she HATES this food,” Moretz said. “She nearly confessed last week. We are so close to breaking her after all these years! Maybe you will be the one to do it. Go down now and force her to eat! No matter how much she complains. You must feed her.”

Pawel grimaced. He never tortured anyone before, much less even imagined torturing anybody. He hadn’t a single intrusive violent thought. But his duty and wish to serve his king and make him proud made him nod with confidence and walk downstairs in full stride.

“It shall be done!” he called out.

Pawel thought it was his imagination, but he thought he heard Jacek and his men burst into laughter once he turned the corner of the hallway.