One story in which PTSD makes a world of difference
-AS
Soapy, Fish-Braided Anticipation
- Originally posted on a 6s community on June 8, 2011 at 9:55pm
Amy’s fish-bone braid slithered down her cotton-shirted back: Mama often spoiled her with fancy plaits in summer, though Amy felt rather fresh as a pail of new milk. Anyway, no ordinary day met Amy as she settled upon the cool granite outcropping at the north tree line, the smell of Ivory soap pressing an uncomfortable piousness into her pores, for Daddy would soon barrel toward her and raise so fierce a dust cloud she’d lose her holy scent.
Folding saved up gum wrappers into a single long chain, Amy took thought of Mama’s only advice on the matter of her Daddy – advice that doubled as her sternest command: pay no never mind to the sillified young people marching in town for a freedom they can’t even sum, ’cause one day they’d wake in a world off track and their whole entire lives would change in a city minute.
Amy could not learn Mama’s surety, but she didn’t much care to; all Amy wanted was to hug Daddy’s neck and sink into that red clay on some mission of delving and finding.
Well, a man came home, though it wasn’t Daddy and Amy wasn’t convinced it was even a man, as he would wring his hands before turning red earth in them, he forgot the joy of spinning a little girl in the air with pigtails flying, he screamed in his sleep and coveted the dark.
Amy’s last clear hope was laid to waste on that shady granite in a hail of soapy, fish-braided anticipation.