Levi struggled to open his eyes, desperate to know where he was, but his eyelids were crusted and glued together, sealing him in his own personal hell. He tried to wipe his face, to rub away the foul smelling grime that coated his cracked lips and clogged his nostrils. But his arms lay unmoving at his sides like shriveled, winter twigs, alive but useless. Insects scuttled across his skin, twitching and scurrying into the warm crevices of his body. A shiver of revulsion ran down his spine. The panic he had so carefully pushed down began to well up in his chest, threatening to strangle him with his own scream if ever it got free.

He forced himself to breathe the stale air, one rotten lungful at a time. Frantic thoughts, like runaway locomotives, charged

Playing with a new opening:
Option 2

“The Lord shall not suffer a witch to live!” Levi’s voice thundered through the cabin. The girls sat in a row, heads bowed like penitents, eyes on their scuffed boots instead of their father’s contorted face. Only Mary stood defiant, hands on her hips, chin lifted, her anger palpable.

He couldn’t back down now. He should have taken a stand years ago, when they’d first married, before she’d drawn their daughters into her damned sorcery. “I won’t let you sell their souls to the devil as you have yours.”

She spit at his feet. Her spittle flecked the floorboards he’d laid down, proud his wife didn’t live on dirt floors. “Ignorant fool,” she said. “How do you plan to stop me? Would you burn me as a witch? Drown me in the pond until my life bubbles to ...

I want to know what happened to Levi.