emptymouthpiece

Sun Kissed Innsmouth

Part Forty Six

After being banished, even after being left for dead. After having her life altered and ruined, even nearly ended. After all the hostilities and horrors and even with the new understanding that she was being offered up to Phillip, his youth, or any man who might sniff close enough to rut her against her will, there was still the silly idea that who she was, who she really was, was left safe in those buried pages.

For the girl who dared to walk up the drive to the big house and disrobe, for the girl who laid her dirty pinafore dress down on the pebble carriage way to sun herself and show off her shame for all to see, Felecia had never felt so naked, so vulnerable, or more injured for her trouble than when she looked down on those open letters.

Felecia’s private letters had all been removed from their envelopes. Over two hundred of them and all had been uncreased, splayed out, and examined. There was no single culprit involved there, it had to have been a team effort, as was packing the majority of Felecia’s more worthless belongings into the ancient trunk. There were a number of blotchy fingerprints left spread out on the carelessly spilled inkblots that soaked through so many of Felecia’s carefully written letters. So many of those finger prints were obviously different, even at a glance.

Several members of the household staff had to have been called to collect Felecia’s belongings, several had to be made to carelessly dump her old clothes and miscellaneous belongings into the old trunk. Many of those miscellaneous members would have been needed to pull all those letters free from their envelopes and lay them flat out atop the mound of old clothes and worthless memorabilia. Dozens of hands and eyes were involved, maybe every adult member of the staff…and maybe more.

So many hands, so many ink-stained fingerprints rubbed and smeared across those personal letters. Everyone in Rotary House knew now. There couldn’t be any hope left for Felecia to own her secrets.

Felecia lost herself in moans and piteous cries. Slow, steady drops of rain were her only answer for a while until she heard the suck of boots as the dug into and pulled free from the mud. Phillip came into view and stood nearby for a few moments before he reached over and pulled the trunk lid closed. He sat down on the thing and it creaked and moaned in chorus with Felecia as she stayed balled up.

“No one gets here easily but most of us wind up here eventually. We all wind up making a choice, Fee.”

When Felecia didn’t have a response Phillip sighed and continued, “Your father and I. It was the war and time was a precious thing. We never said anything and we never talked about it afterwards. Life is a funny and awful thing. Life doesn’t allow for plans but it cries and carries on about the why’s and the what’s. Seems we all need the most from those who give the least.”

Another long pause, another missed opportunity for Felecia to say something, anything.

Phillip stood and stepped over Felecia until he was all she could see when she dared to open her eyes. “I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but you can choose to do anything you want to do. Anything at all except give up. You’ll never read a scripture passage about the virtues of spite, girl, but spite is all you have left against them. Spite is all you have left to sustain you now. This trunk is nothing but kindling and firewood, when you’re ready to stand up, we’ll burn it together.”