Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 170
The monster slipped from its place, slumped over and looking nearly dead as it still hovering for a few moments before it fell from view. Nana didn’t flinch from the sound of Felecia’s scream; she didn’t turn or make a shout or surprised proclamation of her own. Instead, the elderly matriarch of the Conway clan let the mysterious object she had been wielding drop to her side as she spoke over her shoulder.
“I always hated that nickname. Your brother first mewled that at me, you know, the perverted one. He was too stupid to pronounce the word grandma and then your mother squeezed out the rest of you and it just, stuck.”
Felecia was watching pure insanity unfold, her grandmother had held a monster the size of a pod of great whales out over the edge of a cliff like a child blowing on a dandelion and tortured it to death just as easily. She was still standing out in the back yard of her childhood home, still holding her bow and arrow at the ready, her left arm aching and starting to tremble from the strain. She was still aiming but she knew it had nothing to do with the whim of the monster. Nana was always someone to be feared but never like this.
“Well, girl. Don’t you have some rock in the swamp to go crawl back under?”
Felecia didn’t have a response. She likely never would. There was some desperate part of her, some awful longing she was busy trying to cut off, to deny, to kill, some reptile part of her brain that still kept her aim up, the arrow taught and ready to drop the old, sick, mean animal where it stood.
Quick, shoot now and no one can ever say it wasn’t still the monsters choice.
A terribly familiar voice sounded out inside Felecia’s mind and she had to stifle a bark of laughter, not to mention keeping her fingers locked on the bow string. There was no Jacqueline, not anymore, just some part of Felecia’s mind was doing a very good impersonation of her slightly higher register version of Nana’s commanding voice.
The sinister and stray voice wasn’t wrong, not by half. There was no one left in the Big House, no one left to watch, sober and armed out in the village after a certain hour. Only a sick old man and his misbegotten child down at the backwash of the village on the way to the trackless woods. Two tired and weary individuals who had no interest or business coming all the way up to the backyard of the masters estate.
Shooting Nana would feel good, it would feel like long overdue justice. Shooting her grandmother right in her awful, demanding, face would solve so many old wrongs but it wouldn’t get Felecia any closer to the truth.
Also, Felecia knew she couldn’t do it, not really. Not even after all the bullying, all the ridicule, all the shouting and demeaning and the belittling. Not even after all the pain caused. The torture, and let’s be honest, that’s what it was.
Felecia was beaten, past crying, past begging, hit until she stopped struggling, hit until there was blood. She was starved, locked in her room and left to soil herself. Locked out of her room and left to sleep in the hallway. Locked out of the house and left to die out in the barn and then threatened with worse for daring to survive and sticking around anyway. Made to work in the kitchen before and then after the staff came and went. Worked until she collapsed and then beaten for her weakness.
Never during any of it was Felecia given a reason, not a real one. There was never an answer for all her questions, why her? Why then? Why at all? No, you’ll be stronger for it, no, this was the way it was done before so this is the way it has to be done now. Nothing.
Felecia suffered for mistakes, simple ones, matters she couldn’t have known ahead of time and had no recourse to stop once she did know. She suffered for being her age, and certainly for being her sex, but there was never a lesson, not a real one. There were beatings and then starvation sessions for the simple matter of unfortunately being, well, her, and Felecia recognized those pointless lessons at the time and sadly kept a hold of what knowledge all those awful lessons taught her.
Don’t speak up, not too loud, don’t speak out, not too long. Don’t dress up or down, don’t dare to look better than Nana, and certainly not at the dinner table. Don’t speak too much about “men’s issues” and don’t ignore the hobby talk allowed for women. Don’t complain or speak out loud regarding wishes, certainly not about anything not deemed appropriate for the women of the house.
“You get hard of hearing out there in the woods, girl? I said get! Take your toys and go back to the wet woods. Maybe you’ll get lucky and die of hepatitis before you get knocked up by some second or third cousin of ours.”
Felecia winced at the harsh words but she didn’t turn to leave or let her aching arm release to let the arrow loose or let it rest. Felecia kept her aim and tried not to move enough to either fire the arrow by accident or to let her guard down so that if could be fired by mistake.
There grew a haunting and long pause between when Felecia screwed her eyes shut and hardened her spasming muscles against randomly discharging, and when Nana finally stopped speaking and then seemed to stop fussing and huffing for a timely response.
Silence was the only answer until Felecia gave up and started to relax and disarm her hands while relaxing her eyes and her jaw.
“Good. Now take your precious little sticks and go light them all on fire. Nana has real business to attend to.”