Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part 171
Felecia didn’t turn tale and scurry off to set herself or her belongings on fire. She didn’t raise her bow back up either. Suddenly she didn’t care all that much about the monster out in the waves, or how her grandmother was controlling it, or why she said the things she had said, or even why she had killed the awful thing.
“Why?”
Nana didn’t answer her, the elder Conway bent down to retrieve the mystery object and seemed utterly preoccupied with that task.
“Answer me!”
Felecia took a few steps toward the gazebo and kept on shouting, “Fucking answer me!”
“Why what? None of what you saw here is your concern, nothing that happens here is your concern anymore. I already told you, get.”
Felecia choked up and her eyes threatened to start watering. She had to take a moment and focus on the anger, the rage, the unfairness of her nearly every moment of growing up, “Why…was I never enough? Never quiet enough, never obedient enough, never intelligent enough or thoughtful enough or…”
Nana scoffed and stood up from her searching, she raised an arm out to the ocean beyond the cliff. “Really? After what you just witnessed? I don’t have time for your petty soul searching, girl. You’ve gone soft in the head like that dullard mother of yours.”
With that said the elder Conway turned away from Felecia and began stooping over looking for the precious mystery object lost somewhere on the gazebo floor.
Felecia noticed the object then, gleaming if for only a moment under the light of the moon before it vanished behind a thick layer of dark clouds. More rain was on the way, it always was that time of year. Four broad steps and Felecia had the queer thing in her grasp. Two angular bits of tarnished metal with a small handle in the middle. The metal could have been bronze, or copper, it was hard to tell under all the green and brown. There were symbols etched along the edges that seemed to be more the awful burble gurgle language. The handle in the middle felt like it was polished bone, or maybe some sort of tusk. She felt symbols etched there as well but the handle was so yellowed and felt cold and slimy like trying to hold onto a squirming frog.
“You were awful, to all of us. You treated my brothers like refuse, my mother like a doormat, you hated my father even though I know he was the only one still keeping the family financially secure. You hate me and I never did anything to deserve it. I wasted so much time fearing and hating that animal you just butchered and now I realize I’ve wasted all that hate on the wrong monster.”
Felecia kept speaking as she walked past the gazebo, past the tufts of stubbornly brown grass and ever closer to the cliff. She only dared to turn, defiantly, as she held the object out for her sainted Nana to see it.
Nothing.
The elder Conway kept rooting through the thick piles of leaves gathered up on the gazebo floor.
“Nana!”
Another shout, another howl of anguish and anger that Felecia knew she would feel in the morning.
Nana let out a melodramatic sigh so loud Felecia could hear it over the pounding surf below, “Your father was a drunkard, and a coward. He only married into this family because he saw dollar signs. Your brothers might as well have been refuse but I raised them as I raised you, or tried, to be proper, decent people. I failed on all accounts. I did my best by you, girl. You were just rotten is all. You were supposed to inherit this place, be my fitting successor, lord knows your mother was too simple and weepy.”
“Succeed you? You were a spoiled house wife? All you ever managed to do was throw your own sister and brother out of their home and marry a mean drunk.”
Nana stopped searching for the object and turned toward Felecia, for the first time that night it seemed like the old woman was looking directly at her and all Felecia could see in that wrinkled old face was loathing.
“Shut your stupid little mouth. You don’t know anything about my family beyond what an insane harlot and a hand full of moldy old books told you. This conversation is over, leave my property and don’t you ever come back here again.”
Felecia still had the odd little object in her hand, holding it was awful, it seemed cold and hot all at the same time. The handle still felt slimy and gritty all at the same time, like a frog, or the corpse of the candlemaker, that sense memory alone made Felecia want to drop the thing.
Instead of dropping it Felecia held the object out in front of her and smiled wickedly, “Or you will do what, hover me up in the air and tear me apart limb from limb? I don’t doubt that you would.
“You listen to me, now. Drop that thing and get out of here. You leave it on the ground and you run as far away from here as those feet will take you!”
For a moment, if only a moment, Felecia saw a look on Nana’s face she had never associated with those shiny silver scales or those narrow green eyes. Nana was afraid, or worried, or both. The mask of authority shot back up and the voice raised, but it was there and it was so delicious that Felecia wanted another taste of it.
“What, this thing?” Felecia held the slimy, hot and cold object out in front of her and then a loft, the implication that close to the cliff was obvious and not missed at all by the elder Conway.
“Do you think my life was spoiled, or easy? Do you think I was ever shown love, or was made to understand what that word even meant? All I ever knew was fear and degradation. I was born and bred of dullards and drunks. Ravaged by disease and plagued by perversion. I made this place what it is, I put in the work, I did my best by all of you stupid freaks!”
There she was, finally. No careful mask of authority or matronly disapproval being warn any longer. Nana was standing, fully upright for the first time in years. She looked fierce, and hateful, a good ten years instantly shed off her face and frame as she stopped trying to hide.
“I think you’re the coward, and the dullard. You were too stupid to see that the only way to make this place better was to be better than those who raised you. Too cowardly to break any molds and be kinder to others than how you were treated. You could have loved your daughter, given her your heart and your kindness, or at least you could have tried. All you did was poison every one and every thing around you. You’re right, Nana, you have made this place what it is. Just look at it.”
Felecia waved toward the pale and sagging façade of Rotary House with one hand and then flung the foul feeling object out over the edge of the cliff with the other.