Em J 🌙✨

Em J 🌙✨

I love the challenge of a new prompt. I hope to grow every time I write and continually improve from feedback. Writers are stars in the sky, and each one shines in their own brilliant, spectacular way ⭐️

A Concrete Paperweight

The long, meandering queue stretches beyond them like the River Nile. She can feel Eva’s quick, small slippery palm escaping from her own prying, desperate grasp. Her own fingers clutch, but falter. It’s too late. The echoing moment of calm that has passed between them only seconds ago, shatters.

“Mummy!” Eva’s voice rings out like an alarm bell and Kara’s heart falters, squeezes with that familiar tightness.

Kara looks down at her. Eva’s cheeks redden to her trademark shade of crimson. No, no, no. Not now. Her tiny hands curl into fists.

“Why are we waiting here?” Her bundle of joy bellows.

Kara feels another part of her soul take flight. Yet, somehow she’s heavier still. A concrete paperweight. Pushing the towering trolly away from them, she kneels, her face burning, feeling a sea of eyes on her. The rhythmic beep of the scanner and impatient sighs of shoppers resonate around them.

“What is it, love?” She wonders aloud what it could possibly, possibly be this time. In a world as small as Eva’s there seems to be an awful lot of obstacles. Kara studies her swollen, bloated daughter, squashed into her precious fuchsia tutu, her chubby cheeks wobbling as her mouth turns down further and further.

“I’m hungry!” She wails, and tears, somehow, miraculously, spring from her sapphire eyes.

Again? “Okay, can you please wait until we get home?” Kara pleads, her trembling knees aching for her to rise again.

“I said - I’m hungry! I want chocolate - now!” Eva’s determined gaze glints with a dangerous fury.

Kara’s heart gives another painful squeeze, feels her daughter’s unhappiness shrouding her, suffocating her.

She rises, as does the pitch of Eva’s frantic cries.

Her pale, quaking fingers fumble through the own brand items and finally she locates the magic packet.

Within moments, her cries are silenced.

She grins and bears the accusatory eyes of the checkout assistant as he scans the oddly light, empty packet, and leaves it for her to pack away on the other side of the conveyer belt.

On the way home, Kara erases the painfully recent memories of cards being declined, of dividing payments between them, praying they would not let her down again.

When they reach home, Eva begs Kara to play dollhouses with her, and despite the growing number of missed calls on her phone, emails piling up in the inbox titled “Urgent,” she agrees.

After she puts the shopping away, she goes to the bathroom and studies herself briefly in the mirror. Her face is lined, drawn, haggard, like a thousand sorrowful nights have passed by and she’s endured every single one. Her cheekbones slice through her skin, collar bones rising high like a barrier.

“Mummy!” Eva demands, impatience dripping off her tongue.

“Coming!” She replies, taking one last look at the ghost of the woman she once knew.

In That Bathroom Stall

“She’s not who she says she is!” I scream, my voice punctuating the silence like hailstones.

I probably haven’t picked the right moment for an emotional revelation. But I learned something, thirty minutes ago in that bathroom stall.

This probably isn’t what my brother anticipated when he tapped his champagne flute to announce the proclamation of speeches. The high-pitched yelp that comes from me sounds animal, foreign, not like me at all.

A sea of faces turn towards me, jaws slack and eyes wide.

What other reaction do I expect? Clapping? Booing?

The most painful reaction is Jude’s. His eyes are shining, face frozen and solidified in ice, his skin taking on a sudden ghostly pallor.

“Jen.” My mother hisses at my side, hiding beneath her lilac peacock fascinator. “What the hell are you doing?”

The silence is absolute now. It’s painful, like bullets hitting every square inch of my body. Someone’s cutlery clatters to the floor - ah, that would be the mother of the bride.

Ruby gazes at me from beside my brother, her new husband, shaking her head slightly, sending those beautiful auburn curls behind her shoulders and back again.

Only thirty minutes ago, this woman’s ivory dress lay crumpled on the bathroom floor. Only thirty minutes ago, her mouth was hoarsely whispering my name, over and over again. Just that short time ago, her legs were splayed like eagle wings and my hands were like butter on her bare skin.

I was supposed to be helping her, the maid of honour, her new sister-in-law. But something happened when I touched her bare skin, when I released the buttons that confined her heavy bust.

The dams burst open. Our lips found each other, urgent, insistent.

I had known. I had always known. Of course I had.

She pulled away and looked deeply into my eyes with her own glowing copper irises. “I’ve always wanted this Jen.” She whispered, as though we weren’t panting above a toilet tank, as though we were somewhere splendid, somewhere magical, scattered with stars.

And I took her to heaven with my hands, and with it, I took away my pride, my loyalty, my brother’s love.

After, we skirted back to the celebration, her and I. Not a hair out of place on her head, her ivory dress cascading behind her like a snowy waterfall.

I sat back down as sparkling champagne flutes were being served. I watched her trail back over towards my smitten brother and place her lips on his. I watched that loving glance poured between them like an afternoon tea for two.

A storm raged within me. Growing by the minute, my heart twisted in agony.

It was then that I screamed, fractured the fiesta with my quivering tongue. I had shattered everything.

Now, the silence that vibrates like a loaded gun makes want to take my words and stuff them back down my stupid, senseless throat.

I turn and run.

Fallen Angels

“Do you remember what I said, Piper?” I kneel down to my sister’s height, my long, oversized anorak grazing the sodden grass. The waves hiss as they surge against the rocks below, each time growing more and more ferocious, mirroring the darkening skies above.

Finally, Piper nods. Her vibrant, ocean blue eyes look up into mine with such fierce love and unwavering trust, that I almost stop, I almost change my mind.

Almost.

I could change this in a heartbeat, if I wanted to. I could choose to be selfless, knowing that she’d be safe somewhere, happy, somewhere.

Somewhere without me.

“Tell me.” I say, placing my hands firmly on her shoulders.

She swallows, her little body beginning to shake. “If we can’t..” she pauses, her eyes searching mine like a lighthouse’s beam scanning the seas. “Willow, I’m scared.”

“Tell me now.”

“If we can’t live together, then we’ll die together.” Piper intones, voice quivering. I watch her take a breath. “What if... what if there was another way?”

“There isn’t another way.” I squeeze her shoulders harder, the coarse wind slaps against my cheeks. My heart pounds at each thwack of the crazed waves battering the shoreline below. “You know there isn’t. That family are going to take you, and we’ll never see each other again. Do you want that?”

She shakes her head violently. “No. No!”

“We’re the only family we’ll ever have, okay? We have to take this into our own hands - do you trust me?” A cold droplet of rain splatters against my forehead.

She watches me, silent tears descending down her cherubic cheeks. “Yes - and you promise we’ll wake up together in Heaven, just like you said?”

“I promise. You won’t feel a thing, and we’ll be together forever, and nothing, no one can take that away from us.” Our eyes hold a silent conversation, her brows furrow, lips turn downwards. I hold her gaze, and will every ounce of courage I have into her fragile, shaking bones.

Finally, the mist clears in her eyes, her mouth sets in a determined line.

It’s time.

I grab my sister’s hand and pull her towards the cliff edge with me.

She nods slowly in my direction.

Then we jump.

After Thought

Sophia looked in horror at the abandoned bottles, littering every square metre of the house like overgrown confetti. She waded through the debris that was now her home, and every single room told the same, solemn story.

The stale stretch of beer and pungent marijuana slithered through the house and curled around her nostrils.

No matter how much she longed for this to be a tragic break in, the glaring signs were telling her otherwise.

The low hum of drum and base music seemed to reverberate between the walls. With each step, she could hear the gentle snapping of what sounded like cornflakes beneath her feet. Every few seconds or so, she felt her shoes sticking to the floor, and it made a horrible noise like a waxing strip being torn from bare skin.

Sophia’s heart lurched with each disgusting discovery.

Her beautiful, precious furniture was covered with discarded cigarettes and stains of a rather suspicious yellow hue.

No. Oh no.

Not her sofa - her treasure, she’d saved for months - it had its cushions torn and ripped from its horrendously expensive amethyst seams.

Where was he?

“Toby?” Sophia growled, her voice betraying a fury she did not recognise.

She reached the kitchen. The speakers were playing to themselves. She banged her fist down onto the ‘off’ switch.

Now however, there was a familiarly unpleasant sound, laboured, rhythmic breaths like a lawnmower that couldn’t quite jump to life.

Her stomach twisted.

Slowly, she edged towards the bedroom and found her Prince Charming. He was bare-chested, spreadeagled on the bed, like a man awaiting crucifixion, breathing heavily with crumpled cans strewn by his sides.

Here was a man who didn’t have a care in the world.

Sophia sat down at the edge of the bed, looking at her reflection in the mirror. The rings around her eyes resembled that of a wizened, rather battered looking tree. Her gaze shifted down towards her scrubs, dirty and discoloured after a twelve-hour shift.

Her hands began to tremble and her shaking fingers formed quaking fists. Fury, iron hot fury, coursed through her veins like lava. Her heart felt too big for her chest, her breaths became shorter and shorter.

The sarcastic remarks she could put up with. The upturned nose at dinners she slaved over, she could handle. The bruises to her ego, day in, day out, she could just about stomach.

Toby let out a long, laboured grunt and turned heavily onto his side.

But this. This. Her home. Hers. Everything that she’d worked for, longed for, it was here within the walls of this house. But not him, not this man and his drinking, his gambling - his lies.

No more. Never again.

The lava bubbled and boiled, filling her lungs with a raging fire, scorching, rising like bile in her throat.

A scream straight from the bowels of hell erupted from her and rose to a deafening crescendo.

“Get out!” She bellowed to the stirring lump on the bed. “Go!”