A Collection of Stories

The Jacket's Gone, What to do Now? (SS)

Hihi! This is a short story that we had to write for English. I was pretty proud of it, so here we go.

The Jacket's Gone, What to do Now?
There was once a young girl with a faded pink jacket that was very, very important to her. The little girl wore this jacket everywhere, and only took it off once a week to wash it. Every week, just before her mother washed it, the little girl would confirm once, twice, three times, until her mother was sick and tired of her asking whether it would be given back to her in an hour, no matter if it was dry or not.
    When her mother finally took it from her to be washed, the little girl would rush into her room and stay there, shaking. When her mother poked her head in and shoved the jacket through, almost like she was afraid of the little girl, the girl would scramble for her jacket in an almost feral manner. Her mother would be startled every time, and would nearly slam the door closed in an attempt to get away from her frightful daughter.
    The strange thing was, that no matter how frantic the little girl was before she got her jacket back, she was always perfectly composed every other hour of the week. As a matter of fact, she was very quiet and hard-working when she tackled any issue she had. But the one thing she couldn't control was her dependency on her jacket. It didn't matter how hard she tried to maintain her composure when that fateful hour rolled around. She just couldn't still the shaking that overtook her body.
    One thing that helped, no matter how slight, was music. Once a week, shaking uncontrollably, she would pick up a cello that lay in her room and stumble through the first few notes of a song. It sounded horrible, of course, because she couldn't play a solid note, but it dimmed the tremors ever-so-slightly, and the girl was willing to get any break she could. Any break.
    The girl would always try to play Paganini's Caprice 24, an extremely difficult piece. The mother would listen to her, and wonder why in the world her daughter would try to play this piece and not some easier one. The mother played piano, and had been for quite a while, and thus was quite skilled. She herself had actually tried to play this piece once on the piano, and had spent an extremely long time practicing the piece, but she had never played it perfect all the way through even once. Every time, there was some small mistake, so the mother eventually gave it up.
    Every week, the mother would listen in mild horror to her daughter trying to play the caprice. And every week, the mother made sure to get the jacket washed as quickly as possible, so she wouldn't have to listen to the haunting, desperate notes anymore.
    But one fateful day, the mother left the house with the jacket in hand. She had planned a meeting with her friends that day, not even thinking about the weekly routine with her daughter, telling herself not to worry about it too much. And, the little girl had yet to begin playing, so the mother had grabbed the jacket and told herself she would be home in time to wash the jacket.
    But the mother let her self-restraint go, and she had one too many drinks with her friends. Laughing and giggling, she stumbled home, empty-handed, the jacket abandoned, likely slung over some vacant chair back in the tavern. The cold bit into her skin, but her cheeks were warm enough to make it feel as if she didn't have a care in the world. As if she didn't forget about the jacket.
    A huge, silly grin stretched across her face as the thought occurred to her. She laughed, the sound echoing on the long road to her home. "Loooo'-a'-meee," she slurred. "I didn' wash the jaaacke'. Buuu' I don' care. Wha' ken she do to mee? A grow' womaaa'." Finally reaching the door, she grabbed it and flung it open, still grinning stupidly.
    The intoxicated joy from the night disappeared. In its place was a horrible, heart-throbbing feeling that felt like something was reaching into her chest and ripping her lungs out. She sucked in a desperate breath as she stood there, petrified, hand still on the door handle. Her world spun, and she tried to take a step back from what fate awaited her inside.
    Her daughter was sitting on a stool, smiling sweetly at her mother. And it would've looked genuine if her mother had not thought about the utter stillness of her daughter. Said child was perfectly still, still smiling, her hand hidden behind her back. Her cello was in between her legs, and her bow sat on her lap. The mother noticed in horror that the tip of the bow and the hair was stained a deep, bloody red.
    She... she must've dipped it in a sauce or something by accident. There's no way! No way that it's... what I think it is. That would be ridiculous, why would she do that?? The mother thought, on the brink of hysterics, laughing nervously and trying to back away. She discovered, much to her horror, that she was stuck in her place from fear, hand still on the doorknob. A gust of cold wind from outside snapped her out of her reverie. She shakily took a step backward, fumbling with the doorknob and trying to close it.
    With absolutely no warning at all, the little girl shot up, the cello clattering to the floor. A note twanged through the room. She darted towards her mother at an ungodly speed. Her neck was tilted to the side at an almost 90 degree angle, and her hands were reached out in front of her, broken and useless. At least, they looked useless. The little girl, with a feral smile, leaped onto her mother. The woman went toppling backwards, thrashing desperately. She screamed, the sound echoing through the house and out into the empty, empty woods. The little girl reached out with her broken hands and snapped them back into place, the bones making a horrible crackling noise, and grabbed her mother by the throat. She kept her hand there, and slowly wrung out any air left in the mother's throat. She leaned forward and whispered into one ear, "Mother, mother... I found a new way to stop the shaking. Are you... proud of me?"
    As the mother's vision slowly split into two, she struggled weakly, the lack of oxygen and the night's alcohol slowing her movements. Her last image was a sweet, sweet smile, and the sound of her own scream as her only daughter opened her mouth unnaturally wide, the jawbones snapping, and then biting down onto her neck, blood spraying everywhere.
    As the little girl stood up, she casually shifted all her bones back into one piece. She walked over to the cello that lay abandoned on the floor, and picked it up tenderly, her blood-stained hands leaving red handprints on the wood. She then walked over to the bow that had gone flying when she had stood up, and brought it over to the now-mutilated corpse of her mother. She dipped the tip of the bow into the corpse's mouth, shoving it wide open and breaking the skull in half. She smiled. "Thank you, my god, for giving me this beauty of a gift." She took the bow, now dripping with scarlet liquid, and traced a perfect circle onto the ground. She then drew another perfectly straight line through it, then gently opened the door in a manner so unlike that of before, and took her instrument to go find the next aide in her holy quest.
    And thus, the story of those who are shunned for something they cannot control were born.