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Short Stories
Stories over 1,000 words.
The Wicked Witch
1934. The rural countryside of South Australia
I
was four. I crawled onto my mother’s bed when she was in the hospital
and I lay near her, holding her as close as I could, which was hard as
I had to wrap my short arms around her big belly. But I remember her
patting my head as she talked to my father. And I remember hearing her
voice and how happy it sounded. And I remember feeling happy myself.
But by the next day my mother was dead.
My
sister, Millie, was something like 6 years older than me – she was
almost grown up. She was crying and crying, her face buried in her
hands, but when I tried to ask her what had happened, she pushed me
away angrily.
I couldn’t get near my father, but I would have been too frightened to ask him anyway.
My
auntie – my mother’s sister - came and took me away to her home. She
smiled sweetly and gave me lots of cakes and let me do almost anything
I wanted. I sat on my auntie’s elegant chair and ate off a table with
a tablecloth. She dressed me in a gorgeous new party dress. I quite
enjoyed it all, and couldn’t wait to tell my mother about it. I
thought they must have been wrong when they said she wouldn’t come back
that she had gone away to live with God.
But
when I returned to my house on the farm she didn’t come back. Millie
now tried to do the cooking and clean the house. Dad still worked
outside on the farm. Our mother was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the
baby.
I
hid in the bedroom and wouldn’t come out. I clutched the little rag
doll my mother had made for me when I was born. Millie yelled out for
me to come and help her – but I wouldn’t come. She told Dad to get me,
and he stood in the doorway, blocking out the light, and told me I must
help my sister. But he couldn’t see me in the darkness. I held my
breath and didn’t move. He left and sat outside, demanding tea from
Millie.
I must have dozed off, cramped between the bed and the wall. I found myself later being shaken awake by Tom, our brother.
“I
don’t want to get up. I’m waiting for mum”, I said. He didn’t pull me
up, but squeezed himself beside me. He touched Mary, my doll, patting
her hair. I clutched her closer to me. Tom was even older than
Millie. He helped dad on the farm, and also worked for the Henderson’s
next door on their farm.
“I want mummy”, I said.
He put his arm around me, “So do I, Janie”.
Four
years later my father married again. Our new mummy was our teacher at
school. She was young and looked pretty in her wedding dress. Millie
hated her. She was very strict. Millie told me a story of how she
had picked up the pencil case of the Henderson boy and smashed it on
the desk because he said ‘Japan’ wrong. He cried because it was the
first day he had it, and his father wouldn’t buy him a new one.
Our new mother smiled at my father at the wedding, but she never smiled to us at home.
I
watched her one-day while she rode recklessly on her horse. She fell
off and had to lay in her bed for a day after. I was ordered to stand
by her and hold a cold cloth to her forehead. She barely spoke to me.
I wondered why everyone was so concerned for her, when I was sure she
had ridden her horse deliberately to fall off. I whispered this to
Millie soon after. Millie snorted. “So she wanted to lose the baby,
did she!”
But
the baby was strong and lived. My new mother virtually handed the
child, Nancy, to me after she was born, and I had to spend much of my
time looking after her.
My
days at the local school were spent trying not to fall asleep over my
copybooks – after having spent the nights with the wakeful baby. The
afternoons were hot and dusty and I had a long walk home. The
Henderson boy threw gumnuts at me. How I hated him. I chased him
round and around the schoolhouse the next day, but he just laughed at
me – stupid boy.
One
day my new mother invited me to Adelaide on a weekend trip. She smiled
at me and patted my hair. Was motherhood finally working its spell on
her? It must have been, for she was bringing the baby, Nancy, with us.
We
visited her parents. They lived in a house in a suburb close to the
centre of the city. It had a white fence and a deep lawn out the
front. Nancy and I were not allowed to play on it. We had dinner with
real silverware. Everybody spoke quietly and used big words I didn’t
understand. When we had to leave my new mother hugged her mother for a
long time. I think she might even have been crying – but I didn’t want
to see that, I turned away and took Nancy down to the front gate to
wait.
That
night we stayed in an hotel in the city. My new mother was going to
dinner with some of her friends and I was to stay in the hotel and look
after Nancy.
The
hotel was beautiful – like something from the Hollywood movies. I
stood on the balcony and watched the people in their carriages and cars
in the street below. I danced around the room to the sound of the big
band on the wireless, until baby Nancy cried. I rushed to hush her up
her, not wanting to disturb the other hotel guests. I sat up with her
for ages and played with her. I wasn’t supposed to do that, for that
would spoil her, but her mother had been out of the hotel room for
hours. The night was getting late and she still wasn’t home. Where on
earth could she be?
When
she finally came home I was in bed. I could hear her whispering at the
door, and a deep man’s voice answer. There was a muffled goodbye and
then the door closed. My new mother crept into her room to go to bed.
She didn’t come to our room to check on Nancy.
***
Because
my new mum had been a teacher, she insisted I go to high school. Tom
had been working on the farm for years, and Millie was training to be a
nurse. The high school was in town. After school I used to go to my
Auntie’s house. She would give me tea and scones with a delicate china
set. We’d sit in the bay window in her elegant chairs and sip the tea
with our little fingers in the air. She had a piano. I would play on
it every afternoon. My auntie told my new mother I was good on the
piano and as I loved it – perhaps I could have lessons? My auntie
offered to pay for the lessons.
But
my new mother sent her a letter to say I had to look after Nancy, who
was now a little child – so I couldn’t go to my auntie’s house anymore
but had to come straight home from school.
Then
one day Tom got married. He was going to leave the house. I used to
run to him when my new mother got angry. He’d hide me in his room and
stand by the door to guard it. He was gentle, and told me funny
stories. “Just like your mother”, Mrs. Henderson from next door told
me.
Tom’s
fiancée, Em, could speak German because that was all her mother knew.
Her mother came from one of the old German families who first settled
in this area. Em could bake hundreds of cakes and pies – all with
German names. “Just like your mother”, Mrs. Henderson told me.
I
wasn’t allowed to the wedding. Em asked me to be her Junior Bridesmaid
– and told me all about the romantic dress she had planned for me –
covered in lace and frills. But I wasn’t allowed to go. I wasn’t told
why.
***
Dad
worked on the farm all day. At night he sat by the fire and read the
newspapers. He barely spoke to me. My sister argued with him all the
time. She would yell at both Dad and our new mother constantly. I hid
in my room most of the time.
It
was raining one day and my bike had a flat tyre. On my way home from
school I called in at my auntie’s house. My auntie wasn’t home but my
uncle was. I asked him for a lift home in his buggy. “I’d love to
pet, but…I’ll not go to your father’s house, not with that woman
there”.
I
started trudging home. I was fifteen. The Henderson boy from next
door came past. He was no longer at school; he’d left years ago. He
was working on his Dad’s farm now, and sometimes did some work for my
Dad. I was embarrassed – stuck with a busted bike and soaking wet. He
took his oil skin coat off and placed it round my shoulders. He took
the handlebars of the bike out of my hands and pushed it for me so I
could pull the coat tight. He was tall, with dark hair slicked back in
movie-star style. He flashed a perfect white grin at me. A new set of
false teeth, I thought to myself – but they looked good, against his
tan. I couldn’t believe how this horrid little boy had changed. He
was seventeen.
When we reached our gate I took the bike from him and gave him back his coat. “Better go now – or my Dad’ll catch you”.
“Hell, I’m not scared of him”, he said, but he left anyway, whistling as he walked down the track.
By
that summer I had turned sixteen. It had been my last year at school.
Now I was stuck at home for good. I had no idea how to escape. My
days were spent looking after Nancy, and trying to dodge barbs from my
new mother.
One
night I lay in bed thinking about my real mother, the lovely woman I
had last seen when I was only four. I tried to picture her, but I
couldn’t. It felt as if my heart had been torn out of me, when I
realized I could barely remember what she looked like. Mrs.. Henderson
kept saying that I was just like her. She was the mother of the boy
next door – the boy with the dark hair and the white smile. My mother
and his mother had been best friends.
There
was a tap on the window. I looked about, startled. Only possums! I
lay back down again. The tap came louder, stronger, and definitely
human. I looked up to the window, on the other side stood the boy next
door. His hair was lost in the darkness of the night – but I saw the
moonlight shine in his eyes. He indicated I open the window. I got up
and slid it open just a little.
“Go away – what about my father?” I hissed out to him.
He flashed his white smile and reached in to grab my hand. The touch of his warm skin sent a bright tingle through me.
“What about my wicked witch of a step-mother?” I asked.
He laughed, the sound floating in the late night sky. “Hell”, he said, “I’m not scared of her”.
(c) 2005, Eirene Hogan
*******
The Little Goddess
By Eirene Hogan
This story is set in Minoan Crete, about 1450 BC. At about this time the huge volcano on the island of Thera (called Kallista in this story) erupted, covering neighbouring islands with ash. The eruption is believed to have been larger than the eruption of Krakatoa in the 19th century.
Daidalos was nineteen when he first came to Crete to try and make his fortune. Trained as a mason on the Isle of Paros, he had picked up his father’s passion for modeling clay and carving stone and hoped he’d achieve what his father could not, become a professional sculptor. His father, Metios, had sat in dusty workshops and on hot construction sites carving blocks of stone for the buildings commissioned by the palace where Daidalos’s mother served in the court of the local Queen.
When he’d come home at night Metios would set up his oil lamp and sit up in the pool of flickering light modeling clay and carving on broken shards of white stone (the stone on Paros was magnificent). These nights would leave him bleary eyed and the next dawn, when work began again, his wife would chastise him for his carelessness, and he’d hang his head in shame, but would still continue with his hobby when the evenings came. Daidalos would avoid his mother’s glance whenever she would chasten his father. He was angry at his mother’s heartlessness. Couldn’t she see that creating these little statuettes was what kept his father alive?
Daidalos took up his father’s hobby long before he was old enough to take up his father’s trade. One afternoon while Metios was outside working, Daidalos sat in his father’s workshop entranced by a statuette his father had begun. He had seen a huge statue of the Goddess Eurynome at the temple, with her arms held out wide from her body, brandishing her sacred serpents. Daidalos could not repeat that pose in carved stone, for the stone would break under his hand (he discovered years later that the statue in the temple had been pieced together in several portions and was not carved from one stone), but he worked feverishly on the soft stone his father had begun and did his best to recreate the stature. He positioned the arms in front of the figure where the body of the stone could support them, as if the Goddess were about the raise her arms high toward the sky.
He had become so engrossed in the carving that he had forgotten the stone was originally his father’s. When he remembered he was frightened. He hoped his father would not carve that night so he could begin a second carving the next day and leave it in the state he had found this one.
But once the other workmen had gone home, Metios came in to his workshop and set up his lamp.
“Now my boy, time has come for a little carving,” he said and headed eagerly for the shelf where he had left his stone. He looked about the room puzzled when it wasn’t there.
“I . . . I had a little tidy up today Papa? Daidalos said, “I cannot remember seeing any new stone, perhaps I . . . accidentally threw it out.”
Metios turned to look at him, “but you saw me with it yesterday.”
“I . . . I’m sorry Papa,” Daidalos blurted out. His father looked at him perplexed. Daidalos ran out to the nearby room, grabbed the statuette where he had hidden it, and returned to see his father searching through the pile of discarded stone and rubbish.
“Here is it Papa,” and Daidalos held the statuette out to Metios.
“This is it?” Metios carefully took the statuette and began to finger it slowly. “Did you finish this?” he asked, and Daidalos saw a sadness come into his eye.
“I’m sorry Papa, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have, I know it. I just got carried away, I forgot, I . . .”
His father gently patted him on the head, and smiled. “I shall have to give you some more stone”, he gave the statuette back to his son, “you must practice it my boy, and you will be famous, you are already far better than I”.
Daidalos took the figure back to his sleeping room and set it up in the corner above his bed. He sat looking at the statuette. He remembered the sadness in his father’s eyes. His father’s statues seemed stiffer than his. They still looked like stone. Daidalo’s little goddess was full of the divinity. She stared out at the boy and as he watched her he thought he could see her begin to raise her serpents up high above her head and tell the Earth her secrets and warnings. From that night on Daidalos would wait to hear her oracles, but she never spoke, and every morning she still held her snakes down low.
Daidalos began to realize it was he who put the life into the statuette, not any divine spirit, or any all encompassing, all powerful life creating force, but his own mere mortal hands. After awhile he began to laugh at his little goddess who stood there so ominously but who never moved. She was entirely in his power. He could create a new statuette and thereby free the Goddess from that single position, and give her a new pose if he so chose.
At the temple the people stood in awe of the Great Goddess with her hands held high, fearing her disfavour and awaiting her oracle. But Daidalos knew there was no Goddess there. She was just a creation of artists like he, who could give that divine look to stone.
“Where is your oracle?’ he asked his goddess, “you cannot give it to me, because your existence depends on me. Very well, I shall give you my oracle; I shall became a famous sculptor, I shall work for the Great Queen’s court in Crete, I shall work miracles in stone for her, and I shall be remembered for years, forever, probably longer than you,” and he was going to pick up his statuette and throw it into the hearth fire to smash to pieces, just to prove his point, but as he picked it up he thought he caught a warning look in her eye. He placed it back quickly before he quite realized what he had done. He looked at the goddess in surprise, but she never moved, just kept staring over his bed. He shook himself and laughed, “ha! It isn’t worth smashing anyway.”
Daidalos became apprenticed to the palace’s stonemasonry house beside his father. By age fifteen his mother had found him a place in the palace at Athens. He worked with the masonry team but he moved about the palace grounds getting to know those men who worked as artists. In time he became a familiar face, and they allowed him to practice beside them during his evenings. By nineteen he felt had outgrown Athens. He found a place as a rower on a trading ship and left to sail among the Aegean islands, ultimately finding his way in Crete, the largest and richest court in the Sea. He planned to pursue his dream to work as a sculptor for the palace. He had left his little statuette behind with this childhood, confident of creating many more, much finer and more “divine” than that.
Five years later he woke with a violent start and stared out into the dark night. He lay on a soft bed in a beautiful room inside the rambling palace of Knossos, the capital of Crete. He remembered no dreams to cause his fright and could hear nothing except for distant thunder. The next day refugees came pouring into the city from the Isle of Kalliste.
Several days later Daidalos heard that enough ash had come from the volcano of Kalliste to cover nearby Paros completely. Some people had survived. Daidalos waited for several days for his parents to arrive in a refugee ship, but they never came.
He thought that his little statuette would have been buried too.
© 2005 Eirene Hogan
********
INTO TEMPTATION
Words: 1,818
I’m lying on my bed, with the light out, staring at the darkness of the ceiling, just as I used to do during my teenage years. I’m staring at an imaginary spot, hoping somehow my life could collapse into that spot, like a black hole.
As I lie here I can hear his voice. It’s drifting up the stairs from the lounge room. It sounds warm – it sounds like home. He’s a colleague of my Dad’s; he does the legal work in my Dad’s real estate business. He’s quiet, calm; life seems easy for him. When I first met him he smiled at me for such a long time. He’s tall, thin, moves in a sort of willowy way. I love to watch him. And he’s a 'he'.
So am I.
I moved back into my father’s house a year ago, after Victoria left me. She moved out of Melbourne and up to Queensland, to make a new start. I moved here – to find my place in the world again. Dad and I hadn't seen much of each other since he and mum divorced, and that was just after I’d left school. He had been busy trying to find his place in the world again. Now he was eager to take me in, to help me, to be a dad once more.
His name is Anthony, the owner of the voice I hear. We’ve chatted a lot of times; he sitting with his long, lean legs stretched out, ankles crossed, asking me about my work, and my life. I’ve hedged around the subject of my life. He’d smile, softly, watching – then diplomatically leave the topic, and return to discussing my work. He has worked around a few legal offices. We social workers are often skeptical of cynical lawyers, but he had worked for a legal aid office, and he’s seen poor people struggle against the constraints of a society made by the rich. He laughed when I described it like that, but nodded when I told him of my work with kids left out on the streets and ignored by the comfortable people in their expensive homes. He knew someone like that once, he said, and his eyes lost focus for a moment and looked at something only he could see, his long fingers tapping idly on the arm of the chair. I watched the veins in his hand flex rhythmically with the movement of his hand, then his eyes came back into focus, and he caught me watching him. I coughed and looked away.
I’ve enjoyed his company, his friendship. I’ve longed for it, chased after it. Dad often brings work home and Anthony sometimes comes along and helps. I wait until their work is over, then join them in conversation over coffee. We’ve shared gardening tips, anecdotes of old university days, holiday ideas, political gripes, football news, movies worth watching or not watching, books, philosophy…
But after he goes home I lie in bed worrying, tossing and turning and wandering how I can stop this, stop these feelings I have for him, stop this emotional bond from turning into something physical. I’ve been so embarrassed, and ashamed. And I’ve been quite certain he has no idea, to him I am just a friend.
Victoria left me because she claimed she still loved me, but that I didn’t love her. I desperately wanted her to stay. But when it’s late at night, reluctantly I must admit that my desire for her in bed had gone. For the first few months it was there. We were on fire for each other, and I couldn’t wait to move in with her and spend our lives together. This was it, I thought. She was slender, fine boned, she was mad on sport and worked out constantly. She was taunt and tight. I loved running my hands along her legs with their tight muscles underneath.
But I lost it, the desire. The yearning for her was just a memory. Yet, I didn’t want to let go. We were still friends; we could have still had a relationship. Surely, the sex dies in every long-term relationship – doesn’t it?
I’ve always been popular with girls. I never had any problems getting to know them, or getting them to like me. Not like a lot of guys. I can remember well, at school, how awkward and stupid a lot of guys became when around girls. But I always found them easy to talk to, and so they always easily talked to me. From talking to going out, to going to bed, are easy steps.
I’ve simply never found the right girl for me. That’s all. I thought Victoria was, but she wasn’t. I’ll find her one day.
But I’ll be 30 in a month’s time, that makes me panic. So many others have found their perfect girl, got married, had children.
I can still hear Anthony’s voice. Tonight it’s driving me mad. He asked Dad where I was. I haven’t gone down to talk to him; I’ve stayed up here all evening. Dad just gave a muffled, “dunno, he’s in his room … said he felt unwell.” I heard no more from Anthony. That’s worse; that makes me feel even more on edge.
Every night after he’s gone, I remember, all those years ago, on the beach, when I had followed the two surfers to the small isolated cove. I was just a kid, about 12, and I was curious to see where these two were going with their surfboards. They found the small cove hidden behind some bluffs that I didn’t know even existed. I’d lived by the coastline and thought I knew every part of it. After they’d reached the cove, I sat up hidden in the sand dunes and watched them as they headed for the water. I wondered if the beach here was safe for swimming. As the two guys, both about 18, reached the shoreline, they put down their surfboards, and stripped off their bathers. They were wearing nothing. I gaped, wide eyed. They laughed, picked up their surfboards and continued on into the surf. Just as they were about to hit the water, one of them turned around to me grinning, and winked. Then he ran in after his mate.
I’d jumped up and scurried home. It was a long walk, but I did the best I could to completely blot from my mind what was happening inside my pants, and how hard I was.
That was when mum and dad’s marriage was falling apart. They barely spoke to each other for another five years, until they finally divorced. But by then I had learnt how easy it was to talk to girls, and I desperately wanted to find a girl and ultimately marry and have a swag of kids.
I have trained my mind pretty well, and during the day can keep things under control, but at night, in the dark, all the gremlins come out and play with my thoughts, and my body.
Anthony began talking again. Can I detect a note of disappointment in his voice? Yes, I can. But he’s doing his best to hide it from Dad. He’s laughing and trying to pretend he is his usual, carefree self. Is Dad fooled? Dad replied with an offhand comment; I think he is, he is just a work friend as far as Dad is concerned.
Last week after Anthony was here; I walked with him to his car as he was leaving. I kept chatting, unable to let him go. His car was parked away from the streetlight, deep in shadows. It’s a blue BMW, very impressive. I played my role well and admired his car, hoping he would offer a ride in it – trying desperately to stop myself from lingering, from wanting to be near him, but failing miserably. He grinned, enjoying the praise, but he also gave me a quizzical look. He asked if one day I’d like a spin in it. Oh yes. It had worked. “Now?” I asked.
He shook his head, “too late,” but his smile was wide and inviting. He held his hand out to mine to shake. We shook, saying goodbye. But he held my hand a little too long. I looked up in surprise. He placed his other hand on mine and gave it a slight caress. I blushed, but I ventured a tentative smile. He smiled back. We had communicated; we had told each other. “Next week then?” he asked softly. I nodded, my heart pounding. Then he gently let my hand go, and left.
Now it is next week, but I’m frightened. Or I’m being disciplined. I can’t tell which. I have spent seventeen years chasing girls; I can’t destroy that now. All I need to do is find the right girl.
I start breathing slowly, trying to control myself. I concentrate on an image in my mind, a tree waving in the spring breeze, gentle and slow.
I can hear the lounge room door open, the voices grow louder. “Sorry that Jacob didn’t show up,” Dad said.
“Hope he’s okay?”
“Sure he will be, didn’t seem too bad, just stressed from work, he always is, it’s a hard job, his job…social work.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, see you at work.”
“Yes. Say hello to him…if he’s interested.”
If I’m interested? The sadness in Anthony’s voice reaches out to me. Now even Dad could recognize it.
“Sorry, Anthony,” Dad said, perplexed by Anthony’s rueful manner.
Breathe slowly – look at the tree.
“Oh, that’s… well, that's what happens... Goodbye then.”
And the front door opens and closes, then I hear Dad’s footsteps retreat into the lounge room.
Silence. He is gone.
Gone. I’ll find the perfect girl to spend my life with.
I jump up – my mind is no longer capable of stopping the need in my body. I run out of the room, down the stairs and out the front door. I just hear Dad’s voice call out a query to me before the closing of the front door cuts it off.
“Anthony!” I called out, frightened he has left; but his car is in its usual spot, in the shadows, and a long thin dark figure stands next to it…him.
I run up to him, “Anthony”. I stop in front of him. He stares at me.
“I thought you were ill?” he asked, his voice barely audible.
“Oh no – only, tired. I fell asleep, and woke up just as you were leaving.”
He continues gazing at me, apprehensively. Is he not sure whether to trust me again?
I smile weakly, “maybe, we could… go for that ride, in your car…”
I can hear the distant sound of traffic droning in the darkness, as I wait, looking into the reflected streetlight in his eyes.
Slowly he smiles, and takes my hand.
****
August 2005