It Hurt
Hello lovelies <3
Finals have pretty much eaten my brain, but the last one is on Tuesday, and I'll be back with a vengeance thereafter :) Here is my entry for spn_teamfic prompt one, which was blood. I'm for Team Heaven. This is a bit of background about Anna. It's completely gen, no pairings at all, and just over 1300 words. I'd appreciate any input you have time for - I know it's a busy time for people.
It Hurt
It was the day after Anna Milton’s fourth birthday when the first Child Protection Officer called. It had been a long standing joke in the neighbourhood that the Milton girl could fall over thin air. Her parents might call her a miracle, and with that hair they just might be right, but she had no more common sense than a garden worm.
Her mother saw it a bit differently. Not the miracle part; that she totally agreed with. No; the common sense part. There were just some things Anna couldn’t seem to learn.
As for Anna, she didn’t know what the lady in the blue jacket wanted her to say. The candles made beautiful shapes, and they shone with their own little lights in the darkened kitchen. Anna wanted to know what that light felt like. She wanted to know whether she could glow. She could see in her mind what it would look like. So she put her hands into the flames. They laced around her fingers, but she couldn’t seem to hold them. Worse than that; their light just got dimmer, and she had none of her own. And it hurt her. It was hot and prickling with tiny little spikes, biting and burning her small white fingers. Anna screamed.
By the time they’d taken Anna’s hand out of the flames, iced it, and got her to the hospital, she had third degree burns all over her palm and fingers. She looked frightening in the sterile bed, red hair spilling all over white sheets. One small hand was clenched tight with the pain, while the other was wrapped with bandages and tape; three times the size, like a comic book monster or a Halloween costume. She looked at it, tears in her eyes, all the way home in the back of the car.
That was when the lady came, with her soft blue jacket and her strange smell. She looked at Anna on the old green couch, her jeans a little way short of her ankles and her hair falling across her face. Anna tried to push it back with her giant white hand, and gave a small, startled shout at the pain. The lady asked her if she was okay. It was a stupid question. Anna looked sharp; “It hurts.”
That was the most sensible conversation they had that day. The lady drank a cup of coffee (black, two sugars), Anna’s mother looked like a bird being watched by a cat, and then the lady left.
---
Anna continued to fall over; up steps and down paths, out of trees and off bikes, at first onto her bandaged hand, and later onto the shiny, crinkled skin underneath. She was four and a half years old, and she learned to use the word ‘frustrated’. Her body didn’t seem to do what she wanted it to. She wasn’t asking anything difficult. She’d learned before she was three that she couldn’t fly. When she worked that out, she’d been sad for a week. She couldn’t say why; there weren’t the right words.
But this wasn’t flying, not even trying. She just wanted to move without thinking; to dance. She wanted to be Ginger Rogers in technicolour, but she’d settle for a little grace.
Sometimes she managed it, for a while; her twisting twirling steps following a melody only she could hear. In the end, she always fell. Then there was a cut knee, or a grazed elbow, or the angry bumps of nettle stings. Her body was so easy to break, it wasn’t fair. She just knew, somehow, that it shouldn’t be like this. Her body shouldn’t be fragile; vulnerable and weak. She should be perfect. But she wasn’t.
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The week before Anna turned five, she saw the lady again. This time she was wearing a green sweater, so when she sat on the couch she disappeared. Anna laughed, and the lady frowned, scrunching her face up like an ugly little dog. Anna wanted to laugh more, but she guessed she shouldn’t. The ugly dog face didn’t go away, so they sat on the old couch, the lady holding Anna’s pale arm in her wrinkled, indelicate hands.
Anna knew why the lady was holding her arm; her fingers were pointing to the bandage just below the left elbow, to the butterfly stitches underneath that were holding the skin together. How could she explain to this woman, who smelled like little-old-lady-soap, that she had been trying to put the knife underneath her skin? She had seen it in the sunlight, glittering like a warning, shining with danger, and she had wanted it. If she could just slide it under her skin, she would sparkle like that, flashing with the fire of the sun. When Anna saw herself in her mind, she saw that shimmer, that strange, fierce glitter, and here was a way to make it happen.
But the knife didn’t show underneath the skin; it got hidden in the mud of her flesh and blood. Covered in red, it forgot to shine. Anna didn’t light up; she just got slippery, sliding with blood and adrenaline sweat, so she dropped the knife. It hurt her. The edge of the knife felt hot and fat, she swelled away from its double edged blade, the rest of her body cold and shivering, nausea rising slow in her stomach, curling around the back of her throat. Anna swallowed, and screamed.
The nurse in the ER was kind as she held the edges of the skin together; blood-sucked white around the red now they’d washed the cut. It looked like a mouth, like a mouth on her arm. Anna smiled, and they called her a brave girl. She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand, and dried her eyes. Later, in the mirror, she looked at their red rims around white, and thought about the opposite of mouths.
Two days later came the lady in her green sweater. Anna’s mother was biting her nails, and had a cup of coffee (black, two sugars) ready when the lady arrived. This time the lady sat on the couch, matching, and Anna sat in the armchair, swinging her legs. Her jeans were a little long this time, turned up to show their pale denim insides.
Later, on the couch, watching the ugly dog face getting softer, Anna answered the obvious question; “It hurts.”
The lady’s smile was sad, and her voice was quiet; “Why does it hurt, Anna?”
“Because he hates me.” Anna’s answer surprised her, and she looked behind her to see if someone else had said it. But there were just the two of them on the sagging old couch, and nowhere to hide from the wide, watching eyes. “Who?”
“My Father.”, angry and angular, “He left me here, to be burned and broken. He left me here, where everything hurts. He left me here. He hates me.” Anna’s little voice wobbled on the last phrase. She looked at a pulled thread on the couch cushion. The lady let go of her arm, and Anna drew it up around her knees, wincing at the pressure on the plain white bandage with its smudge of red.
---
The day after Anna Milton’s fifth birthday, a lady came to her house. She was wearing a yellow shirt with white flowers on it, but she smelled like the soap that little old ladies use. Anna’s mother handed her a purple bag, and she made a little, broken noise before she turned away. The lady took Anna’s right hand in hers; the skin, still crinkly and pink, and a little bit shiny, matched the lady’s wrinkled palm. They walked to a big black car, down the sidewalk, and Anna’s mother made the noise again. Anna hated that noise.
Looking out of the back window as the car drove away, Anna saw her mother’s eyes, rimmed red around white, and she thought of the opposite of mouths. And it hurt.