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- 08/19/2011
- 1,391 Words
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
The Gate - 1. Chapter 1
The Gate
It seemed like the millionth time I had stood here, exactly six feet from the gate.
The clothes I wore hardly anyone had seen. They were the clothes I would go out in. But I didn’t go out, did I? Because of the gate. They were expensive, my chain and buckle black jeans fit snuggly on my long powerful legs, held up by a belt with a large silver dragon buckle. My black shirt was the finest black silk with tiny stud buttons, down the front and at the cuff. My ankle length coat was black with buckles and rings. My boots, my size thirteen black babies, they too had buckles and chains. My dark brown hair was slightly curly at shoulder length. My farmhand said I looked formidable, even scary.
I had money, banknotes I stuffed in my pockets.
I sat down on the small hillock of grass I had created just for the purpose of sitting and looking at the gate.
What was the fear? why is it so scary? I’d been through it many times before. Was it because I’d never been through it alone? … could that be it? But I hadn’t been through it for nine months.
Nine whole months in which so much had happened.
Nine months ago I had come back from my mother’s funeral, just two days before my eighteenth birthday. The funeral was a small ceremony, only me, her old friend Kate and a female priest, who stared at me throughout the service. She looked accusing, maybe even cross, at why I could not forgive the woman who had made my life a living hell. God forgives her, why shouldn’t I?
God! didn’t I have the mental and physical scars? I received from a life of being beaten and scorned, for what? For being born, for existing?
I felt angry and frustrated. I just wanted to be away from there. I listened to the bullshit that this woman spouted. She didn’t know, she didn’t have a clue. I glanced at Kate she looked sad, but not crying. Had she known what my mother was really like?
We left the crematorum eventually and went to have a cup of tea in a pretty little café in Thirsk. I loved Thirsk, so 'olde worlde'. A typical North Yorkshire town. An hour later I waved Kate off, back to her family. She wanted to move in with me, to look after me. Why? I’d looked after myself since I was twelve. I could cook, clean, look after the animals, look after the farm, and my mother. That was one chore less at least. No more screams and pokes to get things done. Even ill in her bed she scared the living daylights out of me.
I looked at my hands, large and calloused from the gruelling work, day in, day out, with no respite.
My idea of a holiday was visiting the far flung farmers markets, where animals were bought and sold, hardly the busiest places in the world. Hardly tourist spots with nothing more than a mobile van that served grease covered rolls and tea that tasted like it was warmed up washing up water. Oh I lived the high life, I chuckled to myself.
It was now summer and the heather bloomed purple and white across the never ending moor. From my perch here I could see for miles, nothing except the few odd farms like mine that were spotted across the horizon. even an airbase tucked up close,I Never saw anyone, not one single soul.
Back then, nine months ago it had been knee deep in snow, and out here there is nothing to stop it drifting high up against the fences, and small trees and shrubs. The paths were kept clear, I had personally seen to that and the animals had been moved into a large barn to shelter them from the bitter cold. The only one that seemed to love it was my faithful friend Max, my black Labrador. He would stick his nose down into the snowy depths and then crawl, his backside high in the air, tail wagging. He snorted every time he lifted his head, to do it all over again.
After that came more heavy snow, soon I had trouble getting to the barns to see to the animals, let alone the gate. My food stores were full. My water that pumped up to the house, was as trustworthy as ever. The pipes, buried deep, were heavily lagged to stop them from freezing. I hadn’t known a time when they had. Two weeks of total solitude followed, and the silence, the nothingness was so loud. I would shout and scream to break it.
But mother was still there, I could hear her cruel words. The poking finger still stung as it bore into my chest each morning.My daily chores started at 4.45am, were done in the same robotic fashion each and every day. Mum’s finger drilled into my chest, my alarm clock.
“Get up you lazy fucking bastard. Get up and get to work The animals won’t look after themselves and you can’t expect me to do it. I’m ill.” Her face ugly and contorted with anger. With rage at something. She began every morning with the exact same thing, and that was only the onset of the verbal abuse, that would last until she fell asleep.
I would get up and put the kettle on the dying embers of the overnight fire. Then I washed and dressed as quickly as possible, so I was ready for when the kettle boiled, and I could take her tea and toast up to her room, where she would be sat up in bed, sneering at me,
“Look at you!Think your good looking don’t ya? You think you’re some sort of catch for all those filthy women out there?” she snorted. “They’ll spread their legs for ya, but you’ll have to pay them to look at that ugly mush of yours. And that body, ugghh! All that horrible white flesh.” She knew how to hurt, what cut deep. I knew what would follow. More abuse, more words that would sting. Words that would bring tears to my eyes. She would then laugh that high pitched cackle at me that had me dash from the room. Her laughter followed me down stairs.
Then I dusted and cleaned the house. I would make a loaf, from scratch, and then outside, first to let the animals out into their various pens. With rare sheep, pigs and chickens to tend too it was hard slog. To then clean out, and then feed and water the menagerie.
Each day had one big chore, either chopping logs or changing the hay bales, or laundry. Something that always took a couple of hours to complete.Today was chopping logs. The pile ready to chop, covered by a tarpaulin to keep it dry. It stood beside a large tree stump, which served as a surface to split the logs from lengths of tree into sizeable chunks for the fire. I took off my jacket and pushed up my sleeves, before lifting the long handled axe, and swinging it through the air to land central onto the log which split it instantly in two. Swept off to the side, and then another. It took an hour to work my way through the pile. Even in knee high snow it made me sweat. At the end of it I was stripped to the waist, left with nothing but my jeans and Wellington boots, my hair clung wet to my head.
Coming back from my memories, I stood and looked at the gate, then took my place on the line that said six feet. I closed my eyes. This was for Stuart; this was for Stuby my baby. I took three big deep breaths. I lifted my foot and moved forward, then nothing. Blackness wrapped around me in warmth I had never felt before.
When I came round, I shouted obscenities at the gate, then walked back to the house, but didn’t go in. Instead I ran to the wood and into my den. It was sanctuary. I could cry and lick my wounded pride.
I’m so sorry Stuby, I will try again soon.
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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