17 > Gallery of Femininity: Lost Responsibilities.
"They don't sleep anymore on the beach." The short girl stood at the edge, her grey winter coat on, just staring down at the pool. The water hadn't quite frozen, but it would soon. Probably by nightfall. The kind of water that kills.
"Maggie... what are you talking about?" The older man stood a little ways away, also in his winter jacket, his hand outstretched to Maggie. His features - dark hair and blue eyes - echoed Maggies.
"The people. They used to sleep on the beach."
"C'mon, Maggie. Please come down from there."
Her blue eyes didn't blink, or really stop looking. Her first boyfriend died here. One year ago today. Same weather. Same spot of the pool he jumped from. Her brother, Jimmy, wasn't supposed to be here.
"It used to be safe, to sleep on the beach. Now, you'd be raped and killed. Then, though..."
"Maggie, what's this about?" Jimmy held back a tear, he didn't know what to do. He wanted to ask all the invading phrases. 'Are you trying to kill yourself because of that asshole?' 'Please, sis, he's not worth it' or 'Damnit, Maggie, I'm your older brother and you'll do as I say!'. He knew they wouldn't work, though. They never did work on Maggie. She was always the rebelious type.
And here she was rebelling against life and death. Doing her best to refuse both. Jimmy probably would have killed to know what was going through Maggie's head in that moment. To know about how torn up she was. Love makes you retarded, someone once said. Sometimes the level of retardation is a bit too high. Makes you stay with someone when they systematically abuse you. Makes you still feel pain when they kill themselves later. Makes you decide you miss them too much to go on.
So she jumped.
***
Maggie will never forgive Jimmy for what he did that day. He lept up the wall of the pool and grabbed both her legs in midair. Yelling and crying, he dislocated his shoulder as he pulled his little sister out of the freezing cold water. They never spoke after that day, of Jimmy holding her down while he called an ambulance, followed by him yelling at her, saying she had no rights to kill herself.
Maggie learned to live with the pain, eventually.... sometimes, her second husband almost thinks she's realized how much of a villain that first boyfriend really was. Maggie never has accepted that, really...
She was only in her forties when her silence with her brother ended. The silence ended with his life.... Cancer or something, they said. She went to see him the day he died.
Her body was burning with hatred and fear and anguish when she finally asked him: "Why didn't you let me die all those years ago."
Jimmy, with his sickness nearly completely having taken him, smiled a little as he responded.
"Because you're my little sister. It's my job to take care of you. Even when you can't take care of yourself."
Maggie didn't know what to say to that. The teenager in her rebelled against it. The older woman understood the mentality, but didn't have to like it. The sister in her started to cry.
Jimmy passed away with a smile on his face. Maggie ran away in tears.
(GALLERY OF FEMININITY: Fourty Stories. Short blurbs that are introspection into how Women affect men, society, and vice versa, spawned by images of various women from the LiveJournal Random Image Generator.)
all but the images are (c) 2004-2006 Eric Logan Taylor.
[01 > Night Cap.]
[02 > The Road to Metamorphosis.]
[03 > Defining Perception.]
[04 > One of Many.]
[05 > Locked in Stasis.]
[06-07 > Wide Eyed and Hopeful (parts 1 & 2).]
[08 > A Pill to Make You Numb.]
[09 > Sides of the Coin.]
[10 > Sexually Transmitted Virus Detected.]
[11 > (Phone Post) Voices in Passing I.]
[12 > GuiltPictureBook.]
[13 > The Abyss and What You See.]
[14 > Yarns of Suspicion.]
[15 > Memoirs in the Fog.]
[16 > Butterflies Have Gone Away.]