Write...Edit...Publish...Halloween Special Flash Fiction Challenge 2024

 

Hello, hello! I am so glad to be back at the Write…Edit…Publish… Halloween Special Flash Fiction Challenge 2024. Life has thrown up its own, rather unpleasant, challenges at me in the past several months. There have been two shocking, untimely deaths in my extended family and among my school alumna back to back. We've lost long time members of WEP too - both Sally and Nancy will be missed. And here in my hometown, we're still dealing with the fallout of the terrible rape/murder of a young doctor. It's been a stressful time. This  hereunder is a diversion and an  escape route. 

October is an insanely busy time as the main festival season starts from the 2^nd in India and ends with Diwali on the 31^st/1^st Nov. Whatever it is you are celebrating – Durgapuja, Navaratri or Halloween – happy festivals!  

Btw, the worship of Durga, the underpinning mythology of this entire festival is the battle of righteousness versus evil - Durga, the warrior goddess descending to earth to vanquish a demon symbolising sinfulness.  

It's beyond ironic the exponential levels of casual misogyny and crimes against women forming the backdrop of a festival worshipping feminine cosmic energy. 

Anyway, here is my entry for this Challenge  - 

The Other Side

There are always two sides. The story tellers tell and retell a single version a million times till all others seem impossible.  Endless repetition makes even a lie sound like truth. And the real truth slowly dies out, unspoken, unwritten, unperformed, its fire reduced to ashes and dispersed to the winds till not a trace remains.

 

***

 

We met through the theatre. A brooding, handsome man, widowed with motherless twins. An accomplished performer, he played the role of Othello with a passionate and spellbinding artistry. Night after night, he killed me on stage. And then he killed me offstage too. He made love to me with a starved tenderness that was simultaneously terrifying and irresistible.

 

At the wedding, I smiled at the children. They did not smile back. I was too euphoric to mind. I noticed their eyes though. Positively ancient eyes in young faces, too still, too opaque, way too knowing. Dark coloured like deep waters, beneath which unfathomable secrets lay.  They could stop any friendly overture dead in its track at hundred paces. It made me vaguely uneasy, but it got swamped by the music and the mood as I stepped onto the dance floor.

 ***

What can be said about stepmothers? Invariably wicked, always a nasty piece of work, if not abusive then uncaring at least. I came into the house blazing with love, determined to disprove that. I’d make sure when I smiled at these children, they would smile back. Maybe not immediately, somewhere down the line. But down the line turned out, well, unexpected.

 

Odd things kept cropping up. The twins hardly ate the food I cooked, yet constantly complained that they were starved. I found an old letter addressed to their dead mother, in it a postscript about always having garlic about the rooms. Another small box was full of baby teeth, all of them strangely fanglike, like they were from a mouth filled only with canines.

 

I found the bedroom door of one of the twins open and the bed empty at the dead of night one time and panicked. But my husband told me to go back to sleep, the child must be here somewhere and sure enough, she was back sleeping in the morning. Was she a sleepwalker?

 

***

 

The neighbours called round, friendly at first – one with some cupcakes, another with a tub of curry. Later they came empty handed, their eyes guarded, their talk sharper with – innuendos? accusations? veiled threats? One of them said – now that there was a woman in the house, the twins’ wild behaviour would improve. Another said they needed a firm hand, they were always visiting uninvited at the oddest hours. Yet another, a redoubtable grandmother, hinted that they were not appropriate playmates for her grandkid.  Initial unease bloomed into fear.

 

When I tried to talk with the children, the girl hissed, ‘you’re not our mother!’

The boy added, ’wouldn’t have made much difference if you were, either. We can take care of any meddlesome mother.’

He brought his face close to mine and smiled a chilling, insolent smile. His breath was terribly foul, with a strange animal reek. His teeth were weirdly pointed, the canines curved sharp and long like a panther’s.

 

***

 

There were sudden and shocking deaths down the street in quick succession. A teenager, a thirty something journalist, an army captain on home leave, an airline purser between flights. All went to bed apparently healthy, did not wake up the next morning. A tsunami of rumours swirled around – the bodies were  white as sheets. There were strange looking marks, like snakebites, but no poison traced. We descended into a morass of suspicion and fear. The neighbours stopped calling altogether. My sibling insisted on a visit to come support me.  

 

We sisters had dozed off one evening in front of the TV. I woke up suddenly, my heart thudding in my throat - there was someone stroking my face and neck, a hand was clamped over my mouth, I couldn’t breathe. The intruder wrapped an arm around me instantly with immense strength, pinning my legs with the weight of their body. I fought to free myself, to call for help, twisting my body, trying to dislodge the attacker. I could hear my sister struggling too.  After what seemed like an age but probably wasn’t, I finally managed to throw the assailant off with a monumental heave.  

 

The room was dark, but in the flickering light of the screen I could see the twins silhouetted between the TV and the couch. I screamed and screamed. My sister remained prone and silent. I could smell fresh blood. I don’t know when help arrived.

 

***

 

The twins had hotfooted it of course. There was an almighty fuss involving the authorities, every conceivable arm of the government, citizenry and law. I left after it was over.

 

When the tale came to be told, the storytellers spun it the same old same old. The stepmother had starved and tortured the children, she compelled them to run away, their lifeline of breadcrumbs got eaten by birds, a convenient witch (another woman!) imprisoned them before they foiled her nefarious plans and returned triumphantly home. Cherchez la femme and all that. Whatever sells, whatever gets the eyeballs.

 

I tell my story to whoever will listen. Most people don’t. Those who do listen still believe the other side, the one collected into fairy tales from time immemorial, where the stepmother is always pure evil and gets her comeuppance in the end.

 

Not all stepmothers are wicked. Not all children are innocent cherubs. Some are monsters in disguise. Stop blaming the stepmums, the mothers, the ‘witches’. Stop looking for women to blame.

 

The bottom line is that evil spins its web of lies, no matter how horrific and shameless they are. And evil takes whatever form it requires to survive and flourish from century to century. You need to be able to acknowledge and recognise it. Truth, and good, can prevail only when you do.

 

~~*~~

WC - 1004

FCA

Tagline : Always listen to the other side of the story and stop looking for a woman to pin the blame on.

Read the other entries here: