Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 155
Felecia started to walk around the youth and he got back in her way. “Just like they’ll kill you if you go down there looking for revenge. It’s no good. Not like that.”
Logically, the youth was right, Felecia could go down there and start shooting the bastards as they sat and drank on their tiny front porches but she would only manage a couple before they rose up in numbers she couldn’t kill. The village would do what it does, what it did that night some years before, the mob would form and that would be the end. Felecia would join all the other sad little sisters as they tilted in the wind, swinging from the hanging tree.
Still though, Felecia had wasted all that down time, tossing and turning at night, wondering after the half bright girl and her power-hungry gran. Still, Felecia had been the one who told Emeh how to go about ridding herself of the filthy product of rape and incest. Still, every damn man left in that village was a vile retch who seemed, at best, to deserve a quick, clean death.
“Let me pass, I’m getting my things from the house.”
The youth wouldn’t budge and got back in her way when she tried again to circumnavigate him. “No, you’re going for that bow. Pl…I need the help with Pa, I can’t do it, not by myself, not no more.”
Still, Felecia didn’t owe the youth anything, she might have owed Phillip but the man who was still just barely alive inside the husk in the hovel wouldn’t dare ask for help, not even if his house was on fire and Felecia owned all the water in the world. No. Felecia didn’t owe that half bright girl either, not her life at least.
“Alright. I’ll be back for my thing in a few days.”
The youth waved angrily at the woods to the north. “More days to wallow in that hole in the earth? More years to live like some fucking animal?”
Felecia could hear Phillip begin to moan and shout from inside the hovel. Another episode? Another monkey see, monkey do? Felecia didn’t owe the youth anything, but she didn’t want to see him stabbed again, or worse. “No, I need to see to building a place for myself, I need a place to sleep, something to eat. Mostly, I need to get the hell away from other people for some small period of time for fear of what I might do otherwise.”
The youth didn’t slink away or find some invisible spot in the floor to fixate on. He stood tall and kept his eyes locked on Felecia. “I ain’t never been afraid of you. I won’t start now.”
“All the same, I’ll be back in a few days.”
“All the same, I’ll be out come evening to help. Pa sleeps most times then.”
Felecia didn’t want to argue and she had been as honest as she dared be when she told the youth why she needed to go, and why she needed to be alone. She nodded in agreement and went off to make some sort of sad lean too and hopefully hunt up something for food.
“My name’s Taryn, by the way.”
Felecia nodded again and forced herself to be polite. “Sorry to…I never asked before.”
“Don’t think you had cause, but I thought you outta know my name.”
Felecia held her hand up and nodded again as she kept walking away.
“So, see you this evening?”
Felecia kept her hand up and waved it as she started up the rise above Phillip’s hovel.