Winter writing competition

If I close my eyes and still my awareness of life as it is now, I can still see the room and smell the rosy scent of a child’s body, my coloured pencils and fluffy toys.

There is no key in the door, and I cannot lock the world out; sometimes I hold the door knob with both hands until my knuckles are white with rage and fear, but I am too light and small to stop it, and too hopeful that it will.

When the silence in the rest of the house whispers soothingly, I shall let go of the door. Reassured, I climb on top of the window sill to look down, through the dirty glass, at the children in the playground beyond the church.

I rarely join life outside, skipping across the cemetery with its mould-encrusted graves and sepia photos of stern-looking people. Now that the school has started again, my mother will ease me into the light blue woollen coat with the itchy collar before I can be poured into the grassy paths between the gravestones, kicking golden autumn leaves with shoes too big for me.

Father will come home early, sometimes, and offer to walk me over to the park. There is no door knob in the cemetery but plenty of places to hide. He knows them all. There are no escape routes, the inescapable reality of us eclipsing from view, from the house, from mother.

I shrink and shiver, I shake my head. No, no. My mother helps me into my coat, and blindly gives me a kiss. I feel dirty already.

Later, when he has explored the untouchable and felt the unspeakable, he will tuck clothes and secrets in, and brush the autumn leaves off my blue coat. The yews moan in the wind, the bushes are his friends. Children laugh in the distance about childish things he has made me too old to share.

That Christmas, I prayed for a door key, and I got a dolly. I keep it in the loft, with broken door knobs, a blue woollen coat, and a dislike for cemeteries.

353 words

She’d never seen a dead person before.  She’d been staring at the body for some time, allowing herself to absorb the situation entirely.

The grey sky hung morbidly overhead, it’s heavy light falling through the branches of the horse-chestnuts.  The wind swirled around her ankles making spirals of the leaves, pulling like a lover on the bronzed cloak that covered the body at her feet.  He had curled up and died during the night.  The bitter cold meant the usual vagrants that patrolled these parks had not rummaged his pockets, but stayed under shelter.  Deep lines etched the contours of his face, merry crow’s feet sawn onto the side of his head by years of exposure to the elements.  Frozen shut, his jaw remained clenched and his white stubble glistened with frost.  This is what it looks like to die alone.

Kneeling beside him the woman gazed at the details of the corpse attentively.  Thin fingers ran lightly over the thick holed jumper that had protected the body, running down his arm until something cold and hard was sensed wrapped around his wrist.  Amongst the ragged clothing this wathc was an anomaly.  It was robust and heavy; the screw that winded it up had worn to a smooth wheel betraying its value.  It was gold.  Gently, the woman undid the mechanism and slid it over the gnarled hand, revealing a white strip of skin and matted hair.  She imagined the struggle the man must have endured to keep this watch on his wrist.  Maybe this was evidence of a more affluent past, or a previous lover whom the tramp had never forgot.  The italic script on the back read clearly:“Dear Father, with love from your daughter Belle 1979”. 
The bleakness of the scene erupted from within her and she let out a sob that hurt her throat from trying to hold it back.She exhaled a shuddering sigh and sniffed back the tears.  This lonely man had lost his daughter, his whole family.  But he had loved them, she knew this.  This sacred time-piece had remained, counting the days of their separation. 

After years of fragile estrangement, she felt reunited. At age seven, when her father died, her childhood had imploded into an orb of pain and anguish as her mother slowly sunk into solitary psychosis.  Not a day had passed since his death when she had not wished more than anything to see him one last time.  She had clasped desperately onto her last fading memory of her father before his disappearance; feeding the ducks, kissing her mother as she ran down the path, kicking golden Autumn leaves through this very park.  Through her tear stained vision, this man could be her father; the blurred image matched that of her memories.  As the tramp’s knuckles thawed in her hand she felt years of unfinished mourning come finally to an end.“Goodbye Dad,” she wept, clutching the watch as paramedics held her shoulders and coaxed her to stand.

[499 exactly]