Title: Circumstance
Rating: PG-13
Part: Introduction
Date develop: 7 October 2001
Date revised: 23 October 2001

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Introduction – Better Left Forgotten

I do not know why I am writing this. I do not know how I managed to continue to live this long. Things seem so different now; we used to be a part of such a close-knit town where everyone knew everyone else. People could walk by one another with a smile on their face and a gesture of a greeting and such. The children would work in the farms with young Hailey, and later would spend time on their own.

Everyone did their part to keep our little town alive. John Proctor would go out hunting with several of the other men in town, including my husband and his friends. The women would tend to the children with Rebecca Nurse. Everything seemed to be in place, and there wasn’t anything that could possibly throw our lives off course… or so we believed.

At first I thought that it was terrible that the children might have made contact with Satan. I prayed for the children day after day, night after night. But when they accused those poor souls of practicing witchcraft I was shocked. I knew that young Hailey was a part of the girls that were supposedly possessed by these witches, but since then she stayed at home with her foster mother Susannah. What am I saying… I shouldn’t even be talking about such things, after all, anyone could be eavesdropping and an accusation of being – being – well let us just keep it at that. It is strange, how everything seemed to have started with an accusation.

I have often wondered that if I had not allowed my friend to defend their friendship with me, justify why I was able to do things that others could not… then perhaps, perhaps, they would still be with me and everyone left today.

Now I would sleep with the screams echoing through my head, the voice of my friend talking while I attempt to continue with my life. Most night falls, some of our friends would come by and we would talk about what could have been. Since my friend’s death nothing was the same anymore, no more laugher, no more freedom. It is as if everything we had come here for was in vain.

I look back and I wonder, I knew whom it was that accused me of taking part in witchcraft, it was she – which I later found out – that influenced young Abigail Parris to accuse the Proctors of witchcraft as well. What others close to me and myself, do not understand is whom was it that sealed the fate of my friend. What puzzles us more was what the accusation was based upon, for we were not permitted to attend my friend’s trial. Alas, perhaps that is one thing we shall never have the chance to learn…