A Whey Faced Bag of Bones
Best When Cold
by MaryAnn Brooks
It was not a demand.
It was an ultimatum.
Wed the man of his choice or live out the rest of her life in a nunnery.
Never fussy as to her choice of lovers, she would have felt the same towards a husband. Just give her a man strong enough to best her in the marriage bed and she’d have been content.
Instead, he presented a whey faced bag of bones who’d have trouble finding his serving piece, let alone use it.
She refused, and he carried out his threat, watching stone faced as she was delivered screaming, into purgatory.
Time and time again during those first few months, she barely made it to the outside before she threw up her meal. And at night, she needed all her concentration just to hold onto a memory, any memory, of what used to be.
All too soon, and she could feel that moment creeping ever closer, she would slip over the edge: become just another gray shadow; living by the rule, senses dulled by the inescapable, smothering piety.
Dulled, but not extinguished.
The night before the raid, she was walking the inside perimeter of the convent wall, her footfall silent on the packed earth.
She’d not heard them. She’d not needed to; her animal instinct had picked up what others would have missed.
Men. Prowling around outside the wall.
She made no effort to seek protection in her beads, or hurry away to confession; she just stood there and savored the moment, hoping it might be repeated. She sensed them just once more then they were gone.
When they attacked, as she knew they would, she bared her head, threw away her beads, and waited.
It didn’t take long for the gate to fail and they poured through, dragging with them the beaten, broken body of a man they threw at her feet.
She stared down at the remains of what had been her father and felt nothing.
Then the leader of the group came close. And she remembered him.
God’s teeth, how she’d missed the smell of the man.
Written by Maryann Brooks
December 15th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Posted in Flash Fiction