A Collection of Short Stories

Up Stairs, Down Stairs and In My Lady's Chamber

In the utmost corner of a musty, old classroom, filled with chipped wooden desks and airborne chalk dust, sat a young girl with willowy lilac hair. She did not pay attention to the teacher with his crinkly elephant sweater and equally saggy eye bags. Instead, she played with the rainbow embroidery at the hem of her shirt, which rested atop her matching daffodil tutu.

Her mind wandered, not to the occasional contempt stares from her teacher and wide-eyed fellow classmates, but to a world where everything was soft. People were soft hearted and soft-spoken and did not yell with rigid words, like how her teacher did when he met her outside the classroom before introducing her to her peers. She could tell, from under his judging narrow stare and angry tone, that he did not like her at all, despite the fact that she was new to the school. The ground would be made of fluffy like material, not unlike clouds, in pleasant pastel colours. It would definitely not be gravelly enough to cut her petite chin, as it did when the playground bullies who were one or two years older than her shoved her, calling her a freak, a word she did not entirely know the definition of, but knew was used regularly in mean ways. People, themselves, would have hair and clothes that were airy and light, in the many colours of the rainbow. Only then would people stop criticising her mummy for the choice that she herself had made. The girl had wanted to look like a fairy from the enchanted forests in the books she read so often.

Seconds after the last bell rang, the girl shot out of her desk in the dark corner and skipped swiftly down the street. As was the norm every day, the girl waited on the rusted bench at the street bend for her mummy, who would walk with her across the field, across the street and finally to home. She carefully placed herself on the side of the bench with the least rust and began to chant, in her own made up melody.

Goosey, goosey, gander, where shall I wander?

Up stairs, down stairs, and in my ladies chamber.

Her plump legs vigorously swung back and forth as she bobbed her head whilst humming. Suddenly, she wondered when her daddy was ever going to come home. It had been a very long time since she last saw him. The last memory she had of him was from some time ago, when he was tucking her into bed, underneath the swirly, orange, red and yellow sheets. She remembered that he sung to her 'Hush little baby, don't say a word. Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird', and at that he gave her a Digibird, which was what she always wanted for her birthday. That day was not her birthday, but she distinctly remembered a woman, with a very short red dress, climbing through her window - she had something scary drawn in black at the very top of her leg - and kissing her daddy on the lips. They did other grown up stuff that she did not understand, and that her daddy only did with her mummy, but the thing was, this lady was not her mummy. This lady had lots of shiny jewellery in her ears and one on her nose. Those swirly sheets that brought memories of trips to the candy shop to her mind were thrown away ages ago, in their moth-eaten, grubby state.

At the sound of steps, the girl looked up, her eyes lit up in happiness. There her mummy stood, with open arms. The girl adored her mummy, even though, for some strange reason, she started to cover most of her head, shoulders and hands with a thick, spongy cloth. This cloth, the girl noticed, varied from black to a colour that suited her mum's skin. Where ever the cloth stopped, there stretched shiny, bright pink skin, with the occasional angry red spot. Her mummy's hair, which used to fall in soft curls around her shoulders, was very thin in some areas and was cut in an uneven line.

Again, the girl had a flashback of when this started happening. A short time after she saw the strange lady in her room with her daddy. Unexpectedly, the girl was picked up by, not her mummy, but by her aunt. She did not see her mother for a very long time and did not go to school for a very long time. She would cry about two times a day, but would be relieved temporarily by Ella the Elephant or the Little Nutbrown Hare from Guess How Much I Love You. Then came the day when her mummy was at the door, dressed in different clothing that covered most of her face. Her aunt cried that day, but to the little girl, it seemed that her aunt was crying tears of joy for the beauty that her mummy never failed to display.