STORY GALLERY - MARCH 2023
The Brief: 500 words involving emotion and confrontation

‘I willna’ bond with that fat toad, I willna,’ she shouted. 

Anger flew from her blue eyes like sharp flashes of lightning. Her milky white cheeks inflamed to a bright red. The colour matched the long hair that flounced around her head as she shook it to reinforce the strength of her rejection.  ‘Beltaine? That’s not going to happen. Never! Never! Never!’

‘But Mawenna lass, dinna fash now…’ Her father stood, shaking his Druid’s white robe to settle it around his legs.

‘If you force me into his bed, I’ll take my dirk with me and plunge it into his black heart. Then I’ll cut off his manhood and poke it into his mouth. He can suck on that all the way to the Otherworld.’

‘Whist now lass. Our group needs to provide a mate for Moray to ensure our protection.’

‘Let Fionna mate with him. She would like to be dominated and bend to his every filthy wish.’

‘But you are the one who has caught his eye.’

‘My skin crawls every time he looks at me. His eyes undress me.’

‘Och now lass, he’s seen you naked when you fight.’

‘When I fight, I’m decorated with my tattoos and blue woad patterns to frighten the enemy. Sadly, it doesn’t frighten him too. Besides,’ she added, ‘I’m in line to become the next fight leader of the clan. It’s not the time for me to be bonding. That can come later. I’m off to training,’ she announced as she grabbed her sword and shield and flounced out the door.

The teen lay on her bed, shaking, shocked. Somehow she had managed not to cry, but her whole body seemed to be screaming, the sound echoing and re-echoing in her brain. Facedown, she pulled her nightdress up to allow her stinging flesh to cool in the cold air of the now quiet room.  

Seething, but bewildered and humiliated she tried to make sense of the seemingly simple sequence of events that had evolved, suddenly triggering her father to explode with righteous anger.

It had been a normal Tuesday night for their family. Tuesday nights- the once a week visit of the father she barely knew. Dad had been doing heroic deeds during the war, had returned at the end, made her mother pregnant and then left them before her baby brother was born. She could not remember him ever living with them. Tuesday nights were housekeeping money nights. The weeknight when the stranger who ruled their lives came to check up on those lives. Her Dad. Tall, dark and handsome he might be, but now he seemed to her to be terrifying. Possessed of an abrupt cold anger that he was only too able to turn to violence.

Yes, a normal Tuesday night. Mum and Dad’s downstairs conversation inaudible. Eight year old Steve had been sent upstairs to bed at 7pm, and she at 8pm. Shortly after eight young Steve had started to cry. Un-nerving desolate sobs from a usually placid child, so she got up quickly, hurrying into his room to comfort him. She switched the light on waiting until her eyes adjusted to the brightness, and seeing Steve’s flushed face. Hot and damp he pushed her determinedly away, obviously wanting his mother, who would have to come all the way upstairs to see to him. She had got up to help save her mother the trip, but Mum was suddenly there, shouldering herself into the room behind her. Her sharply shouted words to the girl stung. “ just leave him alone! Get out, go back to bed!” Hurting words when she had simply been a caring sister. Words so out of character for her stoic detached self-effacing mother. Automatically and without thought she had retorted “you’re a beastly pig!”

Unfortunately Dad came up the stairs at that point and heard those words. He reacted so quickly that she was taken by surprise. He grabbed her shoulder, pushed her into her bedroom, dropped onto the bed, threw her over his knees and proceeded to slap her exposed bottom hard and methodically for what seemed like forever. The few words he spoke were, of course, ‘Don’t you ever speak to your mother that way again.” Terse and cold.

And that was an end to it. The episode was never mentioned again by anyone. This was a family where the words “children should be seen and not heard” were an accurate description of their lives. No-one whinged, no child ever raised their voice, there was never any boasting, no-one questioned any parental decisions. Unadorned bare truth was the acceptable answer when questioned. No subject was ever up for discussion.

She never knew what Steve had been crying about, never knew why her mother had reacted with such anger to her presence in Steve’s room. 

But these things, inexplicable swings of quiet to anger can never be forgotten and the question for her was always ‘why?’