These are only the first two pages (double-spaced). There will be 8-10 once I am finished. It’s a Historical Fiction piece, taking place in 1641, in Salem, Massachusetts, about a woman named Mary Latham who was executed for adultery, along with the man she had “relations” with, James Britton.

Tarrynn Williamson
The Afflicted Ones

Within even the deepest, least shallow end of my heart, I could not find any fondness for the man whom I had just married. We’ve only just begun, and already, look at us. We’re absolutely miserable being under the same roof. Regretfully, I write in my diary as the elderly man drones on and on about his love for our town, for our theology…the importance of this and of that. I swear to you, it’s nothing short of being married to my grandfather. And I could say I meant that with love, but that would be a bloody lie.
A lie is a sin. A sin is something unspeakable in this Puritan town. But I tell you…last night, oh what a night! You can try and try to stop a gal from being the broad she was meant to be, but I swear of one thing and perhaps it may be the one and only thing from these lips which shall ever be declared as absolute truth, and that is that you cannot change me. By all that is good in this world, I swear. You just simply cannot put on a fool’s face and expect for something deeper within to change. I believe it cannot change and it never will, for I wear that fool’s face daily, yet nothing within me changes. I pretend to love this man, to whom I swore my eternal faithfulness, but in this town of Salem piety is honestly more important than truly righteous moral character.
I am and always will be a woman who enjoys a good drink, a good time and I enjoy spending it with a good man. Father convinced me to marry this old man, who we all knew I hadn’t any liking for. He was supposed to intervene, to calm me down, to destruct all my old habits. “He’ll make an honest woman of you. Edgar is a strong foundation for your unsteady life, my daughter,” Father said to me when he and Mother presented the idea. According to them, I enjoyed myself too much, and as I approached the age of nineteen-years-old, I needed to “pace myself slow and steady”.
“Perhaps a man like Edgar will do well by your heart,” Mother had told me the morning we were wedded. But alas, we were not meant to be. Mr. Britton, however, was the man of my dreams. I was pleasantly fond of him, although being with him didn’t do either of our reputations any justice. Like a lie, adultery is a sin. Yet time and time again, I’ve committed it. James Britton had a wife and children though. I just hadn’t expected that I, a mere young woman, could have had any power over this man. But the answer was quite simple. Attraction. Despite all the fatalities, what some men are willing to do, are willing to risk, all in the name of attraction, of sex appeal, just blows me away. What will come of it? I haven’t an idea in the slightest bit. What I do know is that it shan’t be good or just.

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