Chapter 6: The Washer-Woman
His answer trickled through my head like water through a sieve
Lewis Carroll
Simon had been walking for hours. That wasn't actually quite true, if he still understood the natural order of things he would have called it hours, but there was nothing ostensibly changed about the atmosphere to indicate the passage of time. The sun neither rolled over the open plain of the sky, nor did the clouds chase each other merrily along. Simon had the strangest sensation of being stuck in a photograph. As if her were the only thing that moved. It was unsettling. Yet, there was the dandelion he'd paused to scoop up in his palm several hours ago.
Presently, as Simon lost hope, he sat down in the middle of the road, contemplating the strange woman who had woken him from a sound sleep. She had said nothing that made sense, but so far she was the only life form he'd encountered other than himself. Well, half-life form, he grimaced. He was tired. Bone weary despite his super strength. He rubbed absently at the rune. Cain's rune. There was something special abouti t. He should know something about it. What was special about Cain's rune? Why couldn't he remember?
"Oh, very bad-bad-bad. Some things we can't wash off. Like oil in a terry cloth. Nothing but bleach will take an oil-based stain out," a voice clucked near his left side. He jumped, and bared his fangs. So, he was on edge too. Perfect. A woman with a hump on her back was stooped low, inspecting him intensely through a single glass eye that was busily humming with foggy activity. It was the first real movement he'd seen in awhile and it nearly sickened him that he could be so excited.
"Hey, look, I don't know what's going on. Where am I?"
The woman clucked through her teeth and used her gnarled fingers to pry open a nut-shaped object before tearing out it's meat with one abnormally long index fingernail.
"Alas, Alas. The dirty one's always ask the wrong questions," she clucked to herself angrily.
"Ma'am. Let's start over. I'm Simon. You are?" he said trying to inject authority in his voice. Instead of sounding dutifully impressed, the woman broke into cackles, "Look at that stain on you, boy, you're not Simon. You'll never wash that off of you will you boy? You're not Simon. You'll never wash that off will you, boy? Not with soap. Not with lye or the stinking clean of acid. Some spots don't wash off, do they Cain?" the woman said hissing as she spoke of that cursed brother.
"Me, I'm just the poor old washer-woman. I'll scrub out your darkness. I'll scourge away your filth. I'm the washer-woman, Cain. You know me from the old days, from the time I came to you and laved the blood from your fingertips." the woman chortled with delight.
"No, ma'am you've got it all wrong. I'm not Cain. I'm Simon, he said softly chilled by her blood-thirsty laughter.
"Oh Cain, you have not embraced it yet. Perhaps you still cling to that foolish slip of a girl who does not know herself. She won't make it out without a purpose. She's covered in the muck. Little temptress should scrub until it bleeds, but oh, Cain, some stains are deeper than skin. We know that, don't we Cain?" the woman paused to dance provocatively on the road side.
"Wait. You're talking about Izzy, aren't you?" Simon said desperately, "Do you know where she is? Is she alone? Is she hurt?"
"Can't you hear, boy?" the woman snapped.
"Dear God, I'm so exhausted with losing the people I love. Don't take Simon. He did not deserve the mark, surely you, Dear God can undo the damage. Heal my brother, Heal my friend because I think, I think,..." Isabelle's voice was creeping between the blades of grass, still and haunted as the unstirring landscape.
"Oh Izzy," Simon moaned softly, "Washer-woman, am I in hell?" He could not completely quell the note of fear in his voice.
"Dirty things always ask the wrong questions," she spit angrily. "This is a room. A room of waiting. See how nothing changes. This is not yet hell," she said glaring at him from the boiling marble she used for an eye.
"Washer-woman, Izzy's not really here though, right? I mean that voice, praying, that's like a hologram or something right?"
"What a foolish filthy creature," she hissed, "Do you think that because she cannot see the room, she does not dwell here too?"
"But Washer-Woman that doesn't make any sense! We are sitting in the middle of the open road. There are no walls. This can't be a room." Simon said logically, pushing up glasses that were no longer there in frustration.
The Washer-Woman cackled and stooped low to get her already unsteady balance and to readjust the staring orb.
"Didn't you know, Cain? All the world's a cage,"