Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Seven
The walk around the goat pens and onto the lane that led back into the Rotary house grounds was a long march, Felecia took it slowly as she felt all the eyes on her. The girls busy in the vegetable garden, the ones still finishing up in the barn, even the groundskeeper stopped his busy work mending a length of picket near the front of the house property to watch Felecia as she slow marched with her head hung down. She stopped just long enough to look over at him, long enough to see the disapproving sneer on his face. He had showed her mercy but refused to offer her an alternative.
You aren’t meant to live out here. Those words stood out in Felecia’s mind the most as she drank warm milk and felt the cold slime of raw eggs in her mouth. They rang out in the wee hours as she laid, half frozen under the cold comfort of her coat. Nana told her plain, if there was going to be a next time for them to speak, it would be ruler to obedient subject, or never again. This was the time for an audience. You aren’t meant to live out here.
Felecia walked past stone benches that hadn’t been warmed by anyone’s ass in decades, past the decorative and delicate flower beds that only dared to bloom in these brief summer weeks before the ground turned cold again. The grand fountain ran at the center of the courtyard with gravel drives coming around for carriages that no longer ran to the old homestead. Felecia stayed on the sun side of the fountain as she set down her single suitcase and took off her stained travel coat, careful to fold the coat and set it down atop the case. She stood there in her worn and soiled clothes for a time, letting the sun warm her as she built up her courage with so many eyes still on her.
The dirt and muck covered pinafore dress came off first, tossed aside like so much night soil and well, wasn’t the poor thing already covered in enough of that. Next came the simple shift and bloomers that Felecia had learned to accept as a thin second skin in the barn and then out in the wilderness. Three full layers had to be untied and pull over or under and all the while the eyes only grew in name and number. Curtains both downstairs and up came open inside as the casual viewers outside turned full attendees at the one girl show.
There were no outcries or howls as Felecia finished taking off the length and breadth of her attire. Her long socks were the last to be removed and they previewed marked and bug bit legs as she tossed them aside before she reached for the folded coat. She shook and snapped it out twice to get the excess muck and dust off of it before fanning it out in the sun and then she laid down on it, just as naked as the day she was born.
The sweet summer sun came on and Felecia chose to look over at the scales on her shoulders, then the ones that ran down her arms to those on her hips and down her legs as they turned from pale yellow and shown honey colored and red besides. Felecia let her body drink deep from the sun while she waited for whatever came next. Surely Nana wouldn’t let such a public show stand, surely this would bring things to a head, once and for all. As much as Felecia feared the unknown horror of being manhandled and possibly hurt by the groundskeeper maybe that would be the Rubicon river her mother would refuse to cross. Seeing her last surviving child hurt and wounded, maybe that would be what it took for any real change to occur in Rotary house.