Swamp Hag walked into the general store and the cascade of whispers that accompanied her up the road came through the door. She had the appearance of a vomitous burlap sack that was full of dead flesh. Her teeth, when she grimaced at passersby were horrible green pebbles.
The men by the feed barrels stopped playing strip poker and tried so hard not to blush, as the lumpy, lichenous, saddled curves of her body, under her rotten frock went back towards the ice chest. She undid the latch and grabbed two cases of beer. She grabbed some saltwater taffy and some pemmican, a free copy of Horse-coach Trader and took it up towards Dillard, the shop-keeper.
"Dillard," she croaked with her decayed breath, "you will charge this to my account."
Dillard frowned. The other items looked like pathetic little accessories to the two wooden crates of beer. It would be less conspicuous if she just bought the beer.
"Swamp Hag," Dillard said, "You have never paid your tab. I don't know why you persist in this vanity."
Such pert things were never said to the Swamp Hag. If she came into town, the people knew to placate her, to hasten her departure back to her accursed home.
The Swamp Hag looked him in the eye. Slime dripped from her hair. Dillard had wandered near her fence when he was a little sapling of a near-man and she had done for him what she had done for many of these miserable sucks of men. They would come back for further trysts, the ones that had been obviously marked and could not marry (they called this "Hagitis"), and to trade for Swamp Grog, the dangerous psychoactive liquor made from mold, bugs and swamp-water.
"Listen," the Swamp Hag said, "I am curdled and disgusting and I live in a goddamn swamp. And I drink a lot and I never asked anyone's pity."
Dillard started to wave his hands, that she should just leave.
The Swamp Hag continued. "But you know I relieved you of your boyhood and at that time, I put a hex on your precious little piece of flesh and if you or anyone else wants to deny I had them and show me disrespect, I will collect on that hex and it'll make that Hagitis you all chirp about look like a steak and a show at a ten-dollar whore house."
Dillard busied himself straightening out the counter. The men playing strip poker looked down at the table. The Swamp Hag snatched the cases of beer from under the other sundries, which landed on the floor. She walked out the door.
