Day 29 - short story: Innocence

Day 29: a little bit of ''CREATE'' 

short story - Innocence

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INNOCENCE  

Laurie-Anne Jean-Baptiste

picture shot&edited by: Laurie-Anne Jean-Baptiste

She thought the kitchen light was on, but it was only the sun peering in through the window. A window her father had fixed over the summer and had had to fix again in the fall. It could not seem to keep the cold out. It let it in, it allowed it to chill their bones. It was a small old house they lived in, the kind that had become a home, at one time, and in that respect, it was just the right size for them. Their home always said crack here and crack there, even when no one graced its wooden floors with their footsteps. 

***

Sometimes, when Lorna was home alone she heard odd sounds. Death wishes were howled in the vents, and sometimes when she showered, she would hear women screaming in the pipes. She had grown accustomed to those sounds, had convinced herself that they were nothing. One of the sounds she couldn't quite get used to though, was the voice. A voice which came to haunt and taunt right when she was about to shake hands with the sandman. It was a low, unsettling whisper, which seemed to live in her favourite pillow. It would tease by saying her name. Sometimes it would say it quickly, others, it would linger on the L and the A: ''Llllornaaaaa'' it would say. Whatever it was which insisted on keeping them company, did not seem to bother Mr. and Mrs. Anderson. No. It seemed fixated on their youngest, Lorna. It made sense, because most people were drawn to Lorna. This, of course, had to do with her immense kindness, her deep eyes, and perfectly-brown long locks. Some who knew her family history simply admired her strength, and others, who, lately, had been noticing how fast she'd grown, admired something entirely different about her. This was starting to worry Lorna's father. Mr. Anderson, who had honest-green eyes and hid a strong jawline under his ample beard, had given Lorna her good looks. He never wished to take them back, but did wish he could be rid of the worry which crowded his soul. 

Mr. Anderson worked with his hands a lot; a handyman of sorts for the small community in which they lived. He had been out of work at a time and found himself helping neighbours, until fixing Mrs. Lynch's doorhandles and repainting Larry's porch became his job. The good neighbours would always slip him a generous envelope or give him something from their kitchen for him to bring home. This generosity had made him shy in the beginning, for Mr. Anderson was an honest, timid man with strong values. But he had wanted a job, and there it was. How could he let his pride get in the way? Especially after what had happened to his family. Two children had been born, two had been raised, until one had vanished with no explanation. Not a ray of hope in the last 10 years. Leanne had disappeared when she was only 10 and Lorna was 7. Every year on her birthday, Mr. Anderson would arrive home very late and take a minute to himself, on the porch, before entering.  He would whisper her would-be age to himself. This year he would say "she would have been 20". Uttering those words triggered many tears and the pain of the past 10 years revisited him all at once. Finding it unbearable, he fell to his knees and sobbed, hoping that the members which formed the remainder of his family, laid inside sleeping, and would remain deaf to his cries. Little did he know, Lorna had discovered her father's ritual when she was only 11 and Leanne would have been 14. She had heard muffled sobs from her bedroom window and had been overcome by emotion herself, when she'd glanced out and saw him. She'd never seen her father cry. She knew a stoic man. Everyone knew he had a heart of gold, but he had never been very expressive. Much less after Leanne was gone. He knew in his heart of hearts that she was dead and that very belief had killed his marriage. Mrs. Anderson and he lived together, they had their sides of the bed, they remained a team in raising Lorna, but that was it. A point-of-no-return type of resentment had seeped and settled into what they had once had. They never touched, they never spoke more than a couple of words to one another, unless it had to do with their remaining child. They never laughed. Every morning they rose, and she wondered why he had given up and he wondered why she had not helped with the search for Leanne, when it mattered, instead of drinking her sorrows away. Leanne would have been 20 this year and Mrs. Anderson was 5 years sober now, but she'd become only a shell of the beautiful woman she had once been. 

***

The night on which her sister Leanne would have been 20 years old and 22 days, Lorna was visited. It was the voice again. Lorna had never thought of this voice as a ghost or something which had once been human. She had never even thought it was her sister. She had always thought about it as a nuisance, and she preferred to push it to the back of her mind time and time again, rather than worry about it. That night it was different. Lorna was just about to fall asleep when she heard  the voice laugh. A snarky, chilling laugh, which followed with her name. Lorna had never felt so awake. She sat up, and only realized how hard she was clenching onto her sheets when she felt her nails dig into her palms. It took her five minutes to wipe her frightened tears and reach a composed state again. She managed to fall asleep, but not for long. She heard it again. This ghastly voice. It whispered ''Burn Lorna. Burn''. The voice didn't laugh this time. Lorna didn't cry this time. She sat up and looked at the burning candle on her desk. She then got up to blow it out, turned the light on and sat in bed until the sun rose.

Mr. Anderson was surprised to hear the shower run so early. He was even more surprised when he saw Lorna fly down the stairs, dressed, book-bag in hand and ready to go. She drank two cups of coffee and declined a ride to school. He wondered what this meant. She was never this early, especially not on Fridays. On Fridays, she dragged her feet and complained that she wished it was the weekend already. 

That was the morning she met him. Tall, with handsome and dark looks, he spotted her from across the street. She was waiting for the light to turn green to cross and he was waiting for her to cross to talk to her. He lied and  told her he was 19. He smoked the entire time he walked next to her and when he offered her a drag, she didn't decline. She'd never smoked before, but didn't cough. They parted ways when her schoolyard was in sight and she had spent all of her first class thinking about him. She wondered if she had smoked the cigarette ok, if her hair had looked nice when she had been in his presence. Most importantly, she wondered why she was so drawn to him. None of the boys in school had had this effect on her. She had walked with him 15 minutes and all she could think about was him. His mysterious brown eyes had lingered on her body and now they lingered in her head. She wondered if she would see him again.

It was Lorna's Friday night custom to fall asleep in front of the living room television. Each time, she awoke to an empty house and it never surprised her. Her mother was at Lorna's aunt's house and her father would run errands until the early afternoon. Although she knew no one was home, after a quick shower, she would always take a little tour of the house as if to confirm that all of the room were indeed silent, empty, deserted.

That morning, she thought the kitchen light was on, but it was only the sun peering in through the window. A window her father had fixed over the summer and had had to fix again in the fall. It could not seem to keep the cold out. It let it in, it allowed it to chill their bones. Lorna stood there for a moment, letting the warm sun caress her tired face, as it fought with a cold wind. She wondered if the window was broken again. She then realized the breeze was coming from down the hall. She made her way to the entrance and saw glass on the floor and realized the front door was ajar. She then felt his hands for the first time. They rested on her shoulders, as if to simply make her aware of his presence. She turned. It was him. The brown-eyed man who had turned her world upside down. His jacket reeked of cigarette smoke, but when his lips touched hers, nothing mattered. It was as if the shattered window was nothing compared to her newly shattered world, as if the fact that he had found her address and broken into her house did not frighten her. He told her how beautiful her thought she was and how he had not stopped thinking about her since their first encounter. She smiled, she blushed, she kissed, she lived. They somehow ended up in the backyard. It was a backyard big enough for a small deck, and a tree just sturdy enough to handle two high swings Mr. Anderson had built when the girls were 8 and 5. Lorna sat on the swing and he stood in front of her, between her legs. She felt transformed. The next kiss he gave her was different from all of the others. She wondered what had come over her as she started to sweat despite the chilly weather. He started to unbutton her blouse and she wondered what his name was. Should she stop this? She remembered the broken glass on the floor. His brown eyes seemed to erase all of the worry she should have been feeling. For a moment Lorna thought she heard the voice again. It came to wake her up, she thought. It had to have been a dream, she tried to convince herself. But it wasn't the voice after all. It was the door to the backyard. It was open and revealed her father. His face was one she had never seen before, a pure mix of confusion and anger. Mr. Anderson ran towards the man who had been holding his daughter just  seconds earlier, but it was too late, he had already hopped the short fence. Mr Anderson could have kept running, but he chose to run to his daughter's side instead. 

''What did he do to you?'' he screamed repeatedly. 

Lorna seemed to be in a daze in front of her father's panic. She snapped out of it and started to button her blouse frantically. 

''Are you ok? What happened?'' He screamed as she remained silent. 

''We'll get him! I'll get him!'' 

''No dad… No!'' Lorna screamed. 

Mr. Anderson backed away slowly, confused.  

''What did he do to you?'' he whispered. ''What did you do?''

''Dad, I'm sorry'' she muttered, clutching her blouse, looking at the grass. 

He slapped her. Once, twice. A blur. He saw her red face, tears rush out of her stunned eyes before she ran inside the house.

They never spoke of it again. Lorna never saw the smoker again. She cleaned the broken glass and her father fixed the window. Mrs. Anderson didn't ask any questions when on a Sunday morning, Mr. Anderson took his chainsaw to the swings, he had made his small daughters on a summer day, which seemed so far away now. All that was left of them were two pieces of beautifully carved wood, with Leanne engraved on the bottom of one and Lorna on the other, along with the pieces of rope which had once held them up and allowed them to swing towards a once blue sky.