Short Story Archive

The Pretty Daughter

Mother always told me I was pretty.

"Oh," she would whisper in the most touched of tones, "look at my baby girl. All grown up. Oh you are so beautiful."

I heard these words for many years. Right up until the day the illness grasped her soul and refused to let go. She believed I held each and every star in the depths of my hazel eyes. She thought I could shame the sun with the smile she always painted on my lips. She saw the universe bend to me when I laughed, falling deeper in love as she knew some man someday would.

Today, it appears, is not that day.

"You are ugly," he smirks. "You are hideous, a monster in the shadows, waiting to sink her gnarled fangs into some poor man as he walks by. I see that you will need the curse of a child to force any man to stay with you."

I feel defeated for no more than a moment. My mother would not have lied  to  me for so many years. There was no denying her that blessing she had given to me. My mother, who showed me what made me beautiful. My mother, who put me in front of a mirror every day, simply to tell me what she loved about me. My mother, who never lost her inner beauty as the sickness robbed her of her beautiful hair, of her clear skin, of her melodious voice.

My mother, who died gorgeous in the hospital of the hideous.

"I may be ugly in your twisted vision," I murmur in return. "However, beauty is something more than you believe. I have watched you watch other girls. I know how you judge them. If their skirt is too long or too short, they are a prude or a slut. If they are a prude, they are worthless to men, because what man wants a girl who wants nothing to do with his body? Yet, damned be the sluts, those who do not even put up a fight when a man demands their presence in the bedroom. Still, there are the teases, the girls who keep things interesting with their clothing, but manage to cover themselves and maintain the decency sluts never had. They are forsaken as well, in your hateful mind. If they wish to make you wonder what they are hiding, how dare they not share with you what they have? You, who believes he deserves every girl, every woman, every body in the same room as you. So, I must ask, in what way am I ugly?"

He is on me in a heartbeat, pressing me against the walls, his brown eyes blazing with fury. "You are the prude, the girl who must cover herself because she has nothing to offer a man. The girl who's breasts are too small to be pleasing, who is so loose that no man could fit properly inside of her. You are everything a man hates. You are-"

I interrupt his monologue with my own. "I am everything a man wants but nothing a man can have. I am my own person, and I am not to be sexualized."

"I am your master," he reminds me in a snarl. His expression turns wicked. "I can have you in any way I wish."

"Your father is my master," I remind him haughtily. "You can have me so long as daddy agrees. So, run along and ask your father before I scream rape."

He shakes me until my head snaps against the wall. "Rape?" he growls. "You believe you can call rape on me? I will teach you what a man likes, and you will appreciate every moment, you worthless prude! You will finally know what it means to make another person happy, to make another person proud, you ignorant shrew!"

As his hand moves to my chest, I spit directly in his eye. Taken aback by my sudden offense, he releases me at once and backs away slowly. I feel the fire ignite in me, the same fire that put me in debt to his father to begin with. Killing his son will certainly result in my own life taken, but I cannot find the will to care. I step into a fighting stance he will not know. I have taught myself how to be lethal before these monsters can soil me.

Mother's dying words to me were to protect myself.

I covered myself after the first time a man grabbed ahold and would not let go.

I thought he loved me.

Now, I know why mother was always so careful in what she dressed me in. Mother never complimented my natural figure. Mother never told me I had perfect hips or perky breasts. She never commented on my tight behind, nor on my luscious curves. Mother's focus always landed upon my eyes, my smile, my laughter. These are the things that showed her a passion she had never seen in a girl before. These are the things she knew I should be loved because of.

These hideous beings that soil the name men disagree.

"I will have you put to death for that!" he shrieks at me.

"If I am put to death, it will be because I have destroyed another of you," I hiss.

The night the bloodlust consumed me rushes back to me. His blood painting my fingers, his cries for help caressing my ears. I remember witnessing his heaving chest, seeing down to the bone at the carving I had done into his worthless body. I remember the sirens that ended in me winding up in prison, put on death row for the damage I had caused to a mother who should never feel proud of him. I remember him finding me, and him remembering my mother as a beloved coworker.

He paid for my freedom on the condition I worked for him, so he could keep me safe. I believe he loved my mother. I believe he wanted to keep me safe for her.

Even though I'm a murderer.

"Enough," he murmurs to me now, seeing me atop his son with the fury that paints my face into the wicked beast this monster had accused me of being.

I don't stop.