Bela Talbot (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
enjoythe_ride) wrote2009-10-30 05:14 pm
enjoythe_ride) wrote2009-10-30 05:14 pm
[TM] Write about something you've outlived.
Everyone was appropriately sympathetic at the funeral.
That was just how things were done in England. Never show too much emotion, only just enough. Abby could admit that she didn’t feel particularly broken at this loss, so it wasn’t hard to manage the stiff upper lip that was stereotypically required of someone in her position. In fact, she wasn’t even sad he was gone. She’d miss her mother, that much was true, but as far as her father was concerned, it was good riddance to bad rubbish. Good riddance to a man who never caused her anything but pain where there should have been love. As they lowered the urns with her parents remains in them into the ground, she said good riddance to all the things her parents should have been and weren’t.
The day of the funeral itself was an endless series of pats on the shoulder and unsolicited “comforting” touches. She really didn’t want to be touched at all, simply wanted to be left alone with herself and her thoughts. She knew that these people weren’t truly sorry, not like they should be. If they were truly sorry, they wouldn’t be putting up this show of mourning for Walter Winters, the disgusting, lecherous, despicable man who had called himself her father. They would have thrown her a parade if they had known the real truth. They would have congratulated her for doing what she did. For being that desperate. For being that scared.
The sad part was, though, that for all the relief she felt at her father’s being gone, she wasn’t happy. In fact, while the physical being itself was gone, never to return, she still could feel him everywhere. She smelt him on her clothes, in her room, everywhere he’d been. It was an odd mix of cologne, cigar smoke and sweat that just caught in her nose and made her want to vomit, or cry or any odd mixture of the two. Her skin was still crawling from the way he would touch her, and the nightmares—she knew the nightmares would probably never stop. Ever. She just prayed to God that they would get to be less over time.
It wasn’t until the second eulogy that that urge to vomit came up again. All the kind words and gentle sympathy and everyone just touching her got to be too much and she slipped away from her aunt’s grip, lying and saying that she had to use the bathroom, when really she just wanted to be alone. Her chest hurt from the simple need to breathe, and once she was clear of the family room she split into a full-out run, into the backyard and out of earshot, to a place where she could break down, cry, even scream if she wanted to, but she didn’t. She survived. She came up first. She was the one who lived.
“I could take care of it for you. And it won’t cost you anything for ten whole years.”
She sunk to her knees in the grass, feeling the way her chest tightened and heaved as her eyes stared into the distance. She’d done something wrong. She’d done something terribly wrong, and she wasn’t sure what. Something about the girl’s eyes and the fact that she was promising something she couldn’t possibly know how to deliver on. But somehow she agreed, and the next thing she knew her parents were dead and she was kneeling here in the dirt and the filth, free at least, but somehow, all at the same time, not really free at all.
And with that, she actually was sick.
607 words
That was just how things were done in England. Never show too much emotion, only just enough. Abby could admit that she didn’t feel particularly broken at this loss, so it wasn’t hard to manage the stiff upper lip that was stereotypically required of someone in her position. In fact, she wasn’t even sad he was gone. She’d miss her mother, that much was true, but as far as her father was concerned, it was good riddance to bad rubbish. Good riddance to a man who never caused her anything but pain where there should have been love. As they lowered the urns with her parents remains in them into the ground, she said good riddance to all the things her parents should have been and weren’t.
The day of the funeral itself was an endless series of pats on the shoulder and unsolicited “comforting” touches. She really didn’t want to be touched at all, simply wanted to be left alone with herself and her thoughts. She knew that these people weren’t truly sorry, not like they should be. If they were truly sorry, they wouldn’t be putting up this show of mourning for Walter Winters, the disgusting, lecherous, despicable man who had called himself her father. They would have thrown her a parade if they had known the real truth. They would have congratulated her for doing what she did. For being that desperate. For being that scared.
The sad part was, though, that for all the relief she felt at her father’s being gone, she wasn’t happy. In fact, while the physical being itself was gone, never to return, she still could feel him everywhere. She smelt him on her clothes, in her room, everywhere he’d been. It was an odd mix of cologne, cigar smoke and sweat that just caught in her nose and made her want to vomit, or cry or any odd mixture of the two. Her skin was still crawling from the way he would touch her, and the nightmares—she knew the nightmares would probably never stop. Ever. She just prayed to God that they would get to be less over time.
It wasn’t until the second eulogy that that urge to vomit came up again. All the kind words and gentle sympathy and everyone just touching her got to be too much and she slipped away from her aunt’s grip, lying and saying that she had to use the bathroom, when really she just wanted to be alone. Her chest hurt from the simple need to breathe, and once she was clear of the family room she split into a full-out run, into the backyard and out of earshot, to a place where she could break down, cry, even scream if she wanted to, but she didn’t. She survived. She came up first. She was the one who lived.
“I could take care of it for you. And it won’t cost you anything for ten whole years.”
She sunk to her knees in the grass, feeling the way her chest tightened and heaved as her eyes stared into the distance. She’d done something wrong. She’d done something terribly wrong, and she wasn’t sure what. Something about the girl’s eyes and the fact that she was promising something she couldn’t possibly know how to deliver on. But somehow she agreed, and the next thing she knew her parents were dead and she was kneeling here in the dirt and the filth, free at least, but somehow, all at the same time, not really free at all.
And with that, she actually was sick.
607 words