“Get out!”
“I…”
“I said, get out…”
“But…”
“I thought I just told you to get out of that bed and get me some breakfast.”
Mary obediently dragged herself out of the bed and headed for the bathroom.
Each day of her thirteen years long life was like this.
Breakfast for the usually drunken father.
School in the mornings. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping in the afternoons.
Mary didn’t remember her mother. As her only heirloom she had a withered photo of a woman holding a baby. That picture had always invigorated her immensely.
On some “peaceful”, read not drunk, days she dared to ask her dad about the photograph, but the only answer she ever got was that her mother had left them few weeks after giving birth.
Those were the memories that cropped up the moment when the twenty-five year old Mary saw her father in front of her house.
Those and… more. Years of humiliation. Months filled with fear and terror.
She looked at him with a gracious smile.
“Get out!”
“I…”
“I said, get out…”
“But…”
“I thought I just told you to get out of my life and never show up at my door.”
With these words she slammed the door on his face and ran upstairs into her room. There she took the faded picture, touched it gently, kissed it and smiled through tears.
She was shivering, but she was happy… She finally moved on, she rose above… She was free. She ascended.
This is a short story I have written for "Ascension" Short Fiction Contest going on here.
The story should be of maximum 250 words and inspired by the picture above. Hope I did the theme justice with my entry. You all are welcome to take part in the competition also. I would love to read your takes on the prompt.
And please check out my new short story over at The Stories Untold. I also would love some title suggestions.
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