Little Girl

In the study, there is a young girl. Her head tilts daintily to the side, gently smiling at her work. Her mahogany dress twists slightly, her long daffodil hair clinging to the fabric as her arm moves away from her paper. How pretty a painting this scene would be. The unadulterated young girl and her daffodil hair surrounded by a sea of dark furniture and leather-bound books, her offwhite paper and off-white skin, her hair a bright lantern guiding lost figures through the night. She is proud of her artwork. Crayons forgotten, she grasps the paper and holds it at eye level, eyes sparkling bright with undiluted joy. The dark, primitive outlines of a man scrawled across the page and synthetic red hastily drawn spurting from his neck were a source of infantile fascination. She has created this with her own hands! She skips out of the room, searching for her guardian to whom she can show off. She finds him in the living room, a cold draught whistling through the door from outside. She shivers involuntarily, her striped socks protecting her feet only partially from the chilly bite of the wooden floor. Ignoring the bitter cold, she laughs cheerfully and rushes to his slumped figure. She calls his name. She touches him. She does not notice the soft drips of blood staining the floor beneath his chair. She ignores the dark, gaping smile slashed across his neck and the blood splashed like paint across the table. Instead, she continues to laugh. “Father, father, look at what I drew!” If she had never drawn that artwork, this wouldn’t have happened. Abruptly, her laughter halts. “Father…I thought you were different from the others. You allowed me to draw whatever I wanted. The others used to lock away any pencils or crayons, keep any parchment out of my reach. I thought you were different. But as soon as I draw your portrait, you go on and die on me! How mean!” Despite her disappointed words, the smile remains on her face. She shakes her head, hair swaying side to side like a flower waving in the breeze. Her glass eyes shift towards the looming door to the outside. The draught beguiles her, wrapping its captivating promises of freedom around her ankles. How many years had she awaited this moment?

She was found at the feet of her parents’ corpses. When the adults saw, their eyes had filled with horror. Her drawings told the tale. She was taken away to the institution, with their cruel mothers and fathers. When they pieced together her cursed ability, the mothers and fathers would take her to their home and lock her away. Her first room had a window to the street. She envied the liberty given to adults. She would gaze out the window at them wistfully, watching them walk by on the streets, knowing that she would never get to experience that kind of freedom. Not without action. But what could a child do when their world was filled with the potency of adults?

First, she had cried. She would sit in her prison-like room in her temporary house, weeping on the floor, thinking that surely, they would care enough to come and console her. But they never did. Next, she tried anger. She beat her tiny fists against the door locking her inside her room. She screamed until her voice was hoarse, until she could no longer speak aside from a pained rasping gasp. Her body ached, but she continued to heave objects about the room, smashing glasses to tiny fragments, all the while tears and mucus running down her distraught young face as her heart wailed with pain. After this, her first temporary parents gave her away, back to the institution. They were so blinded by their fear that they didn’t see her as human - they only saw a fiend. Instead of seeing her pain, they thought she caused ruckus to try to get her chubby hands on a pen and paper and draw them all to death. She longed for the gentle hands of a mother, like the ones she saw on the street, taking so much care to ensure their precious gems were never stolen, scratched or damaged. But the only eyes directed at her were filled with fear, loathing, and revulsion.

After a while, she changed tack. If she just forgot, turned back into what a little girl should be, everything would be okay. This was when her current father took her in. Oh, but he’s dead now. He was lulled into her ploy and became too pliant. He trusted her with pen and paper. This was his mistake. The little girl, who had smothered her feelings down for too long couldn’t help herself. It was her chance of freedom.

Ever since her now dead father had gifted her access to pen and paper, she had taken to hoarding. The pockets of her wears would be incessantly stuffed with paper, and she would never be seen without a pen in hand. There was no doubt she could survive on her own – she could draw whatever she desired. But what she really needed, she could not draw. She could not draw love into existence, she could not draw care.

Sighing, she skips towards the door to the outside and stretching for the handle, pushes outwards. The door groans in dismay at its brittle hinges, as if it knew that it should never have been opened by this young girl. Without bothering to put on shoes, she steps onto the icy, damp gravel which lines the pathway to the door. She walks towards the woods, breath clouding the air in front of her face. At last, she stops smiling. Her eyes morph into ones more suited to one who has already seen too much. As she steps into the first lining of trees, the marshy ground beneath her striped socks grows black. The last glimpse of her bright daffodil hair fades away as she disappears into the trees, leaving behind her a trail of mouldy earth floor and shrivelled up saplings. Throughout the woods the narcissuses whisper – her freedom was bought by blood.