Fragments of wisdom or decay
Is it egotistical to answer your own sentence prompts? Four from me.1
A finger curled around the door, coy, suggestive. His way of announcing tonight he would be mine. Applewhite carnations erect in his fist, I gasped and by the time a knee nudged my chair I was drooling at his feet.
And I knew, which is the saddest part, from the start I knew how it would be. Somehow the reward was worth the punishment, to risk exposing my soft insides to his brutality for the briefest taste.
I woke to ruffled sheets, held by my own warmth. His wooing gift abandoned; my God the leaves had never looked so limp.
2
He was sure he heard the flowers scream when he cut the stem. A sharp short-lived burst of pain. The sound tore into his brain and sliced at his heart. An agony too great to acknowledge was surprisingly easy to ignore. From there negotiating manners and common decency became a question of how much of other people’s pain he could ignore. How much? A crisis in the car park was just an excuse to take his domination one step further. Blood dried darkly under his nails, his breath coming in painful gasps. He still had nowhere to park his bike.
3
Never trust a man with only half a smile. One eye twinkling, a hand on your thigh. Who knows how deep the danger runs when he has so much to hide he cannot let his heart display.
Wise words you needed last night, hips swaying in the doorway, a target painted in mascara. He made sure he caught your eye.
You should have run but took it from his hands. Dancing up the fretboard, insensible, copperwound steel tearing into the flesh of your unprepared fingertips. In blood and tears his guitar wasn’t weeping nearly as gently as it could’ve been.
4
The key lay in the grass. It had never been so lush, so green before. Dusky, dusty grey at the height of every other summer. In a world of repressed rage something being as it ought to be in normal people’s lives was a certain sign that everything was wrong.
Mother announced over breakfast. Father had a new life and couldn’t return. Newly defiant, her bruises fresh and unforgiving. The bread knife screaming in its absence. The turf an unconvincing wig if you chose to see.
‘Oh, Ma, there had to be another way, you didn’t have to do that.’
Jemima
And a sliver from Orange Anubis:
It was a week since the window smashed. But at least the cold air is keeping Mother's body from going off too quickly. I can't let her go before Christmas, she loves the lights and the colours and the children singing so much. It's not like I'm young any more myself, but if I can keep hold of her forever, one day we'll be the same age, I'd like that. Then she could be my sweetheart for real. Last night I started to feel guilty for the first time, so before our bedtime I offered her the first mulled wine and mince pies of the year, not that she touched anything. Still, manners cost nothing.
posted by Mimey @ 3:37 AM
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