SHORT STORIES ON MEDIUM
Her (Part One)
~The “perks” of womanhood~
This is a true story and one I’m penning down not to garner pity but to raise awareness. Nothing extreme happens but I am not the first nor will I ever be the last. Mothers protect your girls as mine did me. Fathers fight for them as mine did me. Enjoy.
Her head spins. It aches. It pounds and throbs. She presses the heels of her palms into her temples in a nugatory attempt to stem the innumerable thoughts whirring about. She shakes her head to clear the potent, noire cloud of dread and despondency that threatens to overwhelm her. To snuff out the light of her soul and replace it with an odious acridity in her core.
Her eyes smart. They sting. They fill with moisture. She slides her palms from her forehead to her eyes, pushing in a little harder. Why? She has no idea. She doesn’t yet know if she presses in an endeavor to gouge them out herself simply so she can un-see what she definitely saw, or to push them in as far as they can go so that they never have to see again.
Her lips tremble. They shudder and quake and quiver. She moves the fingers of her right hand to them, hushing the frenzied gyration of their dance. It’s not a physical itch she has. It’s a rather perplexing one. One that makes her want to tell somebody- anybody- what she experienced; tell them why her eyes sting so and her head throbs so. But she digs the skin of her fingers harsher into the flesh of her full lips because there’s another itch that far transcends this one: The itch to never let a soul see her at a such a point of flagrant weakness.
Her breasts grow weighty without ever gaining flesh. Where she once looked in the mirror and found her flat chest a familiar comfort, she now holds them with a single thought in mind. “I am now a woman.” Even though she wishes against all hopes that it didn’t have to happen this way, she embraces the injustice of it all. Or so she would love to believe.
Her stomach bottoms out as a vermilion vortex of apprehension blackens her fear-addled mind. She flattens her palms on it, rubbing in soothing circles to try and appease the juices and heavy-weight machines grinding disgust into her. After a while, she begins to knead the flesh. If her stomach won’t adhere, she’ll make it. But the pain of flesh pinching and twisting and reddening takes her mind back to the pain of her heart and her cheeks at the beginning.
Her mind is a maelstrom of memory and for the first time in over a week, she lets herself sink into it. Just this once. She recalls his quadrangular face and the light stubble of his chin. She remembers how his calloused palm felt on her arm when he said he wanted to speak with her “in private.” She calls to mind the artlessness of her heart when she said okay. When she followed him. When she sat, expectant, before him. Worst of all, she recollects how her heart dropped and drummed a thunderous panicked rhythm in her chest, hammering its puny fists against the prison of her ribs, not begging to be let out. No, to be more securely caged in. Her heart implored and keened to be so smothered that it couldn’t find the vigor to beat.
And it all started when he said those words. This male that she had come to learn from and hold in esteem. This male who was her mother’s namesake and, imprudently, because of that one fact, had acquired a place of respect in her being. She thanks God she cannot remember how his abominable mouth formed the words that damned them both. But she remembers how her smile remained uselessly pasted on even in her trepidation, how her ears began to ring a siren tune for blissful oblivion. This teacher of hers- this teacher who she was now alone with- opened his vile mouth and said, “I like you, Stephanie. Let this be our little secret.”
The air went stale. The tiled floor morphed into larva. The stool she sat upon turned to jelly. Her knees became custard. Her heart joined a band. Her eyebrows kissed her hairline. Her head nodded vigorously. Her feet moved of their own volition. The door creaked a horror tune. She fell into the arms of concerned friends. And ‘our little secret’ spilled forth.
★ Thank you for reading and supporting The Scriber’s Nook. We publish five days a week — Monday to Friday inclusively 🖋️🌟📚 ★
