The Man And The Girl
The Man And The Girl belongs to the following groups:
Short stories - Spherical ScriptingsThe Man and the Girl
Again came the night. There was the banging of metal doors. At times, there was silence but that too was menacing. The man sat on his bed in deep despair. There was no rest. Through the bars the night sky with a full moon distant and alone.
The memories returned. Then as so often, she came. During his many years of incarceration, there came the very young girl in the white dress with a white bow gently holding her long golden hair.
“I am here” she said, “I will always be here”
“I know” his voice trembled “I am so sorry”
The man knew why she had been coming for all these years. He loved children yet, in a strange and sinister way. He was alone. All his life he had been alone. Childhood memories were of abuse, beatings. That horrid thing was Dad would take him into his bed. Mum thought it might not be right yet, she did nothing.
“You will know for the rest of your life what you did”
The girl held a dead flower in her hand.
“Look!” she said, “This flower once reached for light as it tried to grow. Now it is dead. It is like me, like the childhood, you violated and destroyed.”
Again, he wept. The man could not help being as he was yet, it was wrong. Many times, he had talked with children. Played with them and when Mummy and Daddy were out they came home. On his lap, kissing, touching..
“I know you talk about what you did”
This was true; the man was receiving therapy while in prison. He wanted to change yet he knew many hated him. Over the years, some had hurt him. There were those who he knew would kill him if they could.
“I hate myself for what I did; deep down I know what I did was wrong..”
The girl spoke again and her voice was slow, measured and held an unearthly absence of emotion.
“Your parents were away. I came to your house. On the settee in your front room you kissed me, held me then, on top of me”
“I know!’’ he gasped, “I am so deeply sorry, I never meant to, I truly never meant to.”
“I have come so often” she said “I can never be free even here in the next life”
“Why?”
“Hatred, all the time people are not healed from what you did, people I loved, I can only hate you”
The man looked down. In his hand an autumn leaf fragile, crushed and broken.
“This has come” he said, “I don’t know why yet I give it to you”
The girl took the leaf saying nothing.
“All I can give you is my broken self. My grieving self- I give you this, my deep regret. I believe I am at the end of myself yet, I can change”
Covering his face with tired hands, he wept. Soon he could feel gathered into his rest. Morning again doors slamming and the shouting. Then on the floor, he saw the flower no longer frail and dead but alive and blooming. Filling a glass of water, he placed the flower in it, held it in the light of a new day and smiled.
George Coombs
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