Short stories👌👌

Her haunted soul

~Part One~

Chink. Snip. Chink. Chunks of curly golden hair fall sorrowfully to the cheap linoleum floor. A photo of a wizened, rosy old woman watches warmly from the grimy wall.

The last wisp falls silently to the ground as a sharp face stares into a stained silver mirror. She has lost the round rosy cheeks and the young looking face she had before, an illusion woven by her beautiful, long hair. What was once soft and childlike has now become hard and dangerous.

Her pronounced jawline and the shaggy hair that grows from her head like an explosion of ringlets show a sense of soft masculinity. She hates it. Oh, she hates it so much. But she loves her Grandfather more. So she stares into that damned mirror, that stained silver mirror and swears to do whatever it is that she needs to do.

A tremulous creaking fills the musty air and breaks the intense staring match she is having with her own vicious reflection. Hurriedly, she drapes a frayed, deep viridian scarf over her head to cover her rough, rampant curls, her late mothers' sweet vanilla and cinnamon perfume still clinging stubbornly to the faded fabric.

She turns to see her grandfather perched helplessly on his grouchy old wheelchair, one pant leg knotted crudely, mid thigh. She hasn't told him yet, about the letter that came in yesterday's post. One man from each family, it scribed. One man to be sent to his death fighting on a losing side in a losing battle.

They'd take her father, leg or no leg, as he is the only man in the house. They'd take him and dump him in some foreign war-zone and tell him to fight. Fight with one leg and 89 years of life behind him.  He'd be slaughtered, and I'd never see him again. It'd be like carving out my own heart.

So I'll tell him I'm going away. Only for a while, I'll say. Away to a lovely little cottage to be a maid. He'll be so happy for me, always for me, yet never for himself.

"I've got to go away for a while, Grandfather, not for long but it's good money", I murmur to him as I roll his chair into the cramped kitchen. His piercing grey eyes burn into mine as his desert dry voice rasps,

"I'm happy for you Rosemary, dear, I only wish I wasn't as poorly as I am, if only to provide the life you deserve."

Stubborn tears threaten to flood down my face and it takes all of my titanium self control to keep them at bay.

"I have all I need, Grandfather, but this job will pay for the doctors for your leg. I leave at midday, I hope you'll be okay?" A single streak of soft silver slips down my cheek and he says nothing, only drawing me in for this last hug. My last touch of affection and familiarity.

Blood, death and noise. The roar of gunfire mingling with the shrill screams of the wounded, like the blood that is twirling in the dirty puddles. My unit sprints for cover, a thick tussock of razor sharp grass, 12 feet high, shredding any bared piece of flesh to bloody ribbons.

I glance around at the sweaty, blood stained men with grim precision. Two men lost and three more wounded, draped between some of the stronger soldiers. I definitely wasn't the smallest recruit but I was certainly the most fine boned one here. And just as sweaty and bloodstained as everyone else.

With my mind preoccupied with gauging the safety of my fellow soldiers, I let my guard down, like an ignorant fool. Before I could react, a burning, blinding pain shreds through my left shoulder, racing down my arm, up my neck and all the way down into my legs.

I spin with the force of the hit causing me to land on the gaping bloody hole in my shoulder. My eyes twirl and spin with colours and shapes of all sizes and shades. The pain forcing my body to shut down. "He's down! Ross is down!" Ross. I am going to die a stranger.

A stranger to the people who have fought by my side for the past 7 months and a stranger to myself. I felt my shirt being torn from my limp body and I want to scream in fear but pain jams the words back down my throat. Fear of what they will all find out. Fear that they will go after my Grandfather. Fear that if I die now, they'll punish him.

I am a woman. It is punishable by death. Yet here I am. The darkness spirals down and consciousness bids me a silent, solemn farewell.

Blinding lights and the smell of rotting flesh drag me roughly from my restless sleep. Soft voices flitter past my ears and the pathetic smell of roses attempts to smother the stench of decay. I force my body to stay alert as another wave of brutal nausea washes over me.

As I sit up, the stained bedsheets slip down, revealing my  bloody, bandaged shoulder and my naked chest. My fight or flight response explodes and I heave my heavy body out of the bed, stopped only by a pair of cold, steel handcuffs holding my right wrist to the iron bed railing.

A dizzying sensation drags me back to the bed, a toxic concoction of fear, resignation and adrenaline fizzing through my veins, again stealing my consciousness, brick by brick.