Why Can't You Play with Us?

A dark piece about the girl up in the metaphorical tower, locked away by those her age by her loathed parents.

I don't know why I wrote this.  It wasn't even for the BCD.  I think I was just in the mood to write something darker than I freqently do, and this character came to me quietly and requested I tell her story.  So I did, and here it is.

 

Picture credit to Nacivet.

 

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            The young girl looked from her window down at her street.  The sun poured down on the smiling, playing children her age.  This child whished it was raining.  Then it would seem all right that there were tears trickling down her cheeks.

            Those children wouldn’t play with her.  They never wanted to play with her.  Their parents didn’t like her parents so they taught their kids to stay away from the family.  This girl didn’t have any friends.

            At least, now she didn’t have any friends.  When she had first been rejected by her peers she had stolen one of the little stuffed animals they liked.  It was a unicorn that she loved with all her heart.  She had moved from imaginary friends to the little toy.  After all, her parents had told her imaginary friends were for…  Oh, what words had they used?  S****y b******s.

            She wished she was a b*****d as much as she wished rain would fall from the cloudless sky.  Instead she had a father she wished would either die himself or kill her.  He had come in minutes before, screaming and hitting the wall.  When she had protested and screamed, “Daddy, I didn’t do anything wrong!” he’d taken the little unicorn from her death grip and ripped the head off.

            Stuffing was now all over the floor.  The head sat, flung aside, beside the doorway.  The body was at her feet where her father had thrown it.  He had hit the door on the way out and now one of the hinges was broken.

            This little girl couldn’t decide whether she was thankful he hadn’t hit her or if she wished he had beheaded her with the little unicorn.  Thinking about it made the tears fall faster until it was hard to blink: the salt was drying and she refused to wipe her eyes.

            A child playing on a scooter in his driveway across the street looked up from where he was riding and gazed directly through her window into her eyes.  He smiled and gave a questioning look.  She imagined him asking, “Why aren’t you out here playing with us?”

            Another child, older by a few years, walked out of the garage with a slinky and smiled at the younger child.  When the older girl saw what he was looking at she scolded him and made him look at his bike.  The girl in the window saw the street girl’s mouth moving and a moment later the previously nice boy was pointing up at the window and laughing ferociously with a mocking overtone.

            The undertone, however, was very different.  Deep in his eyes there were questions floating every which way.  Why couldn’t he play with the pretty porcelain girl up in the window?  Why did he have to point and laugh?  Why couldn’t he look at her?

            That was too much for the little girl.  With one outburst—a cry of disbelief as she kicked the unicorn she had loved so—she jumped from her stool by the window and threw herself onto her “bed”.  It was a ratty mattress on the floor with a baby blanket, stained sheets, and an old, itchy knitted blanket.  When she saw that the unicorn had hit the wall and more stuffing had come out she released another cry and pounded her little fists into her pillow.  Her bare feet kicked the floor behind her and bloodied as they were scratched.

            The room dimmed around her.  That meant clouds were covering the sun.  Her father had broken her lamp two days ago—there had to be something blocking the sun.  Tears were streaming down her face and onto her pillows.  She didn’t care if it rained anymore.  It’d just ruin their play and she didn’t feel like going to the window to watch the rain patter against the street and leaves, anyway.  It wasn’t the children’s fault she couldn’t play with them.  That was thanks to the grownups.  A lot of thanks like that went to the grownups.

            Moments later as exhaustion pulled at her senses, her motions became calm, and as her tears lessened in flow she heard the patter-patter of rain on the window.

            After all that, it had finally rained.

            Well, damn that piece of s**t!  She thought with a sneer as she adopted her parents’ tongue.