Sunkissed Innsmouth
Part Sixteen
The youth grunted and nodded the same way his father did, barely acknowledging the praise.
Felecia let another handful of minutes grind and scrape like the sullen youth’s teeth. He did it a lot, being this close to him proved that much. Felecia used to do that, grind her jaw, usually whenever she heard Nana’s house shoes scraping across the floors of Rotary house. Over the last few years that graduated to pinching herself, anything to release the tension or overcome the terrible feelings brought on by yet another slight or rebuke. There was always some area easy to cover with clothes, some discolored patch of skin with finger nail sized gouges of scabbed over flesh for good measure.
“I just thought a meal would be harmless, something we could all enjoy.”
Nothing that time, not even a grunt or a shrug. Even at twelve, going on thirteen Felecia was already all but certain where her desires lied. Nana would have no doubt had plenty to say on the subject but thankfully it never came up before her banishment from Rotary house. Why did the youth bother her so much, so what if he didn’t like her? Felecia had already become quite accustomed to being disliked, she had plenty of detractors in Rotary house, her grandmother just to name one.
Felecia waited until the post was reseated and secured in the earth after the damage the rain and flooding had done before she waved a hand at the barn. “I’ll go let the goats out in this pen so they can get some time outside before dark.” Felecia didn’t wait for a grunt or a shrug. To hell with the boy! Afterall, he was just that, a boy.
“Why did you do it!
The sullen youth called after Felecia, it wasn’t an angry shout or even a yell, more akin to a loud and sudden utterance that surprised everyone involved. The fact that the sullen youth was refusing to meet Felecia’s gaze when she turned told that truth.
“As I said, it was a gesture of kindness, like the clean boots, and the blanket. I’m sorry your father…”
The youth interrupted, refusing to look at Felecia, choosing instead to speak at the freshly seated fence post. “No, that day in the lot, in front of the big house. Why did you do that? Why didn’t you beg forgiveness?”
Felecia did some shrugging of her own, “I was too late by then. Begging wouldn’t have helped, I thought it was better to be done with it. Let them all think of me as dead if they think of me at all.”
The sullen youth looked past Felecia to the sagging glory of Rotary house with its constantly faded white paint and its dour, frowning windows framed by their drab green shutters. “I would have begged anyway. Life there is so much better.”
“No, its really not. It looks nice from the outside but I was scared and hungry most of the time.”
The silence that followed allowed Felecia to turn back to what she was doing when she heard the youth, it was an utterance, muttering meant for the wind but Felecia heard it all the same. “Maybe it was awful because you were.”
There were a dozen vicious and calculated things to toss back at that utterance. A dozen ways to ensure that Felecia wasn’t going to be a push over or a kicking mule for the youth like she had been for dear old Nana. The things that came to mind in the moment seemed unnecessarily cruel. The weapons Nana preferred to use most, words. Felecia didn’t want to be anything like her grandmother. If the youth wanted to believe that a fairy tale kingdom was hidden behind the walls of Rotary house, so be it. Still, there would be plenty of moments and long nights spent staring up at the night sky where Felecia would come up with a new and even worse response to the youth’s harsh words.
At the time, all Felecia did was walk away and see to the goats instead.