Danna by Josie Jolley (ebook e reader .txt) 📕

Chapter One: The End

The wind had a bitter taste to it: sharp, like cat claws sinking into the flesh and leaving its mark even after withdrawing. The rain was worse. It came down in horizontal sheets, soaking everything from people to tree's to homes. Anything in its path was being swalloed whole. Ophelia moved with little grace, her head tucked down and her gaze following the thick paving slabs. She was in her early thirties now and lived on her own, in a small log cabin on the edge of existance. No one spoke to her or offered her help as she struggled against the winds, down narrow allies and wider, quieter streets of the richer. Battling past the first few trees that signified the on-slaught of Bonito valley and down the twisty path to her home.

The log cabin was hand made. Built nearly twenty-five years ago by Charlie McHarvey who had used only the finest timber he could find. Those had been better days where summer time meant homemade lemonade and cookies, dancing in the Church hall and spending the days exploring the local fields and woodlands. But even then Ophelia was never really liked. Children kept their distance. Only Charlie was her real friend. When they turned sixteen they'd got married, Ophelia had even fallen pregenant but she had a misscariage. They lived happily until a couple of years ago when it turned out Charlie was ill. He never recovered and, three months ago, he died. The funeral had been empty. Only Ophelia and a couple of strangers who seemed to turn up to every Church service, the preist and a very old friend of the pair turned up. The sun had shone but the clouds were tinted with sorrow and even the birds seemed saddened. Charlie was populair, if it hadn't been for Ophelia he'd have been very well liked and the face of the town. But he married Ophelia and stood by her to his end. The town didn't appreciate that and no one cared about him rotting under the ground.
No one apart from Ophelia. She was pregenant again. Charlie's child. She wasn't long due and as she sturggled through her front door she felt a painfull kick from the baby. She wobbled into the kitchen and took the pan of the fire. The armoua of stew and beef filled the small room. She poured the contense onto two plates and took her seat at the table, setting one plate before her and the other oppisite. A few mimuntes of still followed. Minutes turned to hours. The food grew cold, the steam that had first rose in sprials dying to a meeker mist which, evntually died beside the heat.

Chapter Two: A girl

Weeks past and the weather hardly changed. November was having revenge, dark rain clouds hovered in the sky every morning at by noon the sun was lost to the persistant black that screamed at the world. Dust had begun to settle on the furnature of thrity-seven no-name home, the grass was long and weeds decorated the lawn. Ivy had started to climb the wooden frame and rain water dripped through the broken roof. It landed with a dull 'plop' in a bucket already over-flowing with rain water. But Ophelia didn't care. She hadn't cared for a long time. The contractions had begun three nights ago. She hadn't the strength to go to the village for help and the phone hadn't been inturduced to the small town yet. She'd hardly made it into the living room where she had collapsed onto the floor. It took a couple of hours just go take off her trousers. Blood swept the floor, the very last embers of a raging fire glowered in the fire place. The room was eerily silent. Death hung on the air.
But not all was yet lost. Ophelia lifted her head slowly, her thin blue lips weaped and her blackened face had tear trails rolling down her cheaks. She gave a stiffled grunt before the house was drowned in noise. It came, not from Ophelia, but a new creature. Small. Fragile. Spooked and tiered. It had broken from the narrow cannal into the larger world and immediatly regretted it. It whailed in fustration: a long word for a creature still learning to breathe. Its fingers screwed against its plams, its eyes were wide and tinted with a silvery linning. The whole thing shone inside it's bag. Ophelia moved forwards with a sudden burst of engery. She pulled away the linning and lifted her new born baby to her lap. The fire inbtween her legs was numbing her whole body but, her last action was to lean forwards and let her trembling lips hover above the girls forhead.
"Danna"...then she slumbed backwards, her head rocketing of the floorboards as the mouth-eaten sofa cave way to the force and flew backwards. Ophelia's body convolsed once more before growing still. The new born baby was helpless. Still attached to its mother by the unbilicalchord it continued to cry to the stubborn and silent walls of the house.

Chapter Three: Dana

Danna spent the first hours on Earth screaming. She quickly sussed that screaming was never going to get her anything, small wonders are children's brains. She licked the blood on the floor and around her mother until the umbilicalchord died and broke off. She was too young to do anything and, for a time, she stayed curled into a ball sobbing into her naked flesh wondering what it was she'd done wrong.
Joshua only came along because his mother had sent him. He was seventeen, and as his mother said, time he was looking for marriage. He didn't like girls all that much, he was into other things. Cattle ranching and farming for starts. Girls were annoying. But he had to see Ophelia. She creeped him out. She was only thrithy-three but it was rumoured that she was a witch. She had thin grey hair and a long withdrawn sort of face. Her nose was carved into a gentle slop and her dark brown eyes seemed to hypnotise you. He didn't like having to come and see her but, as his mother had also pointed out, she was pregenant and hadn't been seen for over a week. He climbed the steps to the overgrown and abandoned house before knocking on the front door. There was no reply. He tried again but the door splintered and he crached into it. Complaining of bad luck and pulled his fist clear and began pulling away splinters. The hallway was dark and gloomy. He left footprints in the dust as he walked nervously into the house. It was deathly cold and a sick scent crashed over him. Close to puking he edged into the living room. Unable to cope with the site he spun one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, and vomited. His sick flew forwards and he doubled over. When he felt a little better he braved the site again.
The white of Ophelia's brain had died light pink from her blood, her eyes were glazed and milky and her skin was white as ivory. But it wasn't just that. She was clothed in only a shirt and locus and cockroaches climbed over her body. Maggots squirmed in her open mouth and split ofer her chest. He stepped closer. Danna was small, he could see her ribs and her green eyes were spectacualiry dim. He almost fell over in his haste to get to her, and when he did he scooped her up and fled home with Danna in his arms.

Danna was talk of the town. By the following sunday not one person wasn't talking about the strange world in which she'd fallen into. But Joshua stayed with her. He helped his mother to feed and look after Danna. Even when he should have been helping his father he stayed in with Danna. He was her brother now. She was an orphan and he couldn't let that be so forever...

Publication Date: 02-05-2010

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
To Shaygrin For all the times we played I always had one idea set aside for you. Witchcraft.