Prose: The Gypsy Curse

Shad0r

As always please feel free to tell me whether you enjoyed it or hated it. Including why is always helpful

The Gypsy Curse

1.

Can you imagine living a life where you don’t know what is real and what is not? Where time is anything but linear; memories mixed, an existence of broken snap shots. Well I can picture it as clearly as if it were my own life, which it could be. Perhaps at one point I knew what was mine and what was not but that time has passed, like mist over a wave, there one moment and gone the next.

My name is Cathal McCormack and I try to live the quietest life I can, despite my curse. An affliction I’ve carried around with me for as long as I can remember, weighing me down and holding my life static like some sort of hexed anchor. I have little memory of the ‘when’ but I clearly remember the ‘how’ of it all. I had been playing football in the back garden of my family’s holiday home when I accidentally kicked the ball over one of the hedges.

I was much too young that day, for the horrors that awaited me on the other side of the hedge.


2.

From out front, the house had looked dilapidated, in need of repairs and a paint job. The windows were so old and grimy that they no longer preformed their intended function and I easily talked myself into the idea that nobody lived there anymore. I was both right and badly wrong.

I had walked through the wild long grass, weeds and pieces of rotting deadfall; back and forth; up and down a number of times, searching for the ball, when I heard a vicious growl that made my heart leap into my throat, driven there by the purest sort of terror.

My panic only increased, as my eyes grasped something I hadn’t noticed before. In the rear corner of the back yard, an old green caravan sat on concrete blocks; its wheels a luxury belonging to a time gone past. It was obscured partially by an enormous tree, but I could clearly see it was no less grimy than the house I had passed on the way in. In front of it stood the largest, meanest dog I had ever seen. He was easily as tall as I was and his white teeth shone through from behind a black grimace.

Looking down at the ground I saw my ball beside a large thick branch. A renewed growl snapped my attention back to the beast that was surely going to bolt for me at any second. Paralysis gripped my like…well, like the jaws of the horror that was about to pounce, and I wasn’t at all sure I would be able to grab the branch when the time came. Then he sprang forward, teeth barred and eyes blazing with calculated violence.

“Cuchulainn”, a voice commanded and the beast’s ears flew back in acknowledgement, “Leave ‘im alone”.

From the dimness of the partially open door I could make out only the shape of what looked like a small frail old woman. Her physical stature, however, was of no concern to the dog, who immediately wheeled around and ran towards her in complete obedience.

“Arnt you de brave one? C’mere boyo, and tell me wat yer doin in my beautiful garden”, with this the old crone let out a cackle of laughter that turned my blood cold. The memory of this is stronger than all the others –bar one– but I have little recollection of what happened next, a haze cast over the memory by time and shock. I remember trying to run, only to be caught and dragged inside by the old hag’s four-legged servant. I remember how deathly thin and bony she looked, and how she smelt like dried urine and rotting flesh; a vomit inspiring scent. I remember acrid smoke starting to suffocate me, and her voice building like a relentless buzz inside my skull, until I thought my head might explode.

Most of all, even more than the fear itself, I remember her last words as she sent me on my way with a skin crawling kiss on the cheek and a pat on the ass: “Yes indeedy, yer a brave un and that’s grand as that’s what I need. Wen yer of age, you’ll know what to do wit the gift I’ve given ye and you’ll use it well”.

I wasn’t the full way down the rotted wooden steps in front of the caravan when my ears were filled with that terrible manic laughter, the kind anyone who has worked in a mental asylum with psychotics for more than a month is familiar with. In my youthful innocence that day I had thought the woman was a ‘fruit-loop’, perhaps even that she had escaped from the mental hospital her laugh belonged to.

Now I know her mind had been overrun with demons, leaving only her crushed sanity behind.

Shad0r

3.

A couple of years passed by, and then one sunny morning in the middle of July I was standing outside my parent’s new home. There was a fresh breeze blowing in from the east carrying on it the smell of salty sea air. A large Red Setter ran to and fro in the park across the street, chasing a Frisbee, thrown by a boy not much older than I was the day I had met the ancient gypsy woman. The cry of air brakes alerted me to our new neighbours arrival, as their moving truck came to a halt outside their new house. From the cab of the truck stepped down the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met, even now all these years later, and I knew right there and then – even though I had only just set foot on puberty’s path – that I would marry her.

As soon as Megan stood on the pavement she looked in my direction, puzzled shadows crossing her eyes. Then she walked right over to me and said:
“Do you want to marry me?” It was a question, not a proposal.
“I…I…”, scarlet colour ran over my cheeks spreading up from my neck like some fiendish viral version of sunburn. It was as though she had read my thoughts.
“Yes. Yes you do! Well, we’re too young to get married…but maybe when we’re older”, she smiled at me then and just as I was thinking I might be lost forever in her gaze, she abruptly turned on her heel and skipped back to her father – who had observed the entire affair (kids!) – without a second thought.

Hormones new to my body, raged heat around it like some out of control forest fire. The smoke from this ‘fire’ blocked a question that only occurred to me much later on, while I was laying in bed, chasing unusually elusive sleep: How did she know I had been thinking about marrying her? I didn’t know.

The long days of summer rushed by us, leaving a lot of our time spent together as fond memories in our wake. Then one afternoon we had cycled to the big grain field at the very end of the long cul-de-sac road, on which we both lived. Summer was having her final fling and soon autumn would arrive, dragging us off to school again, a thought we both dreaded; we would be in different private schools and I knew she would miss me as much as I would miss her. We were sitting there on a circle of flattened yellow wheat carpet in a room made of yellow wheat walls when she kissed me first.
Later as we lay hand in hand, me looking down on her I noticed a long pink scar running down her neck from behind her ear, almost to where her collar started. I hadn’t noticed it before because her long blonde hair hid it well.

“How did this happen?” I had asked her, lazily tracing it’s length with my finger. I felt her stiffen with the question and I looked into her big cobalt eyes. She didn’t say anything but she didn’t need to. I could feel what had happened and the pain was so intense that for a moment I thought someone was cutting my own neck. I let go of her hand, my own flying to the same spot on my neck, but the pain was gone by then.
Absently I noticed that my finger was still working its way up and down her scar, although now there was no scar. I blinked hard to make sure I wasn’t just seeing things and when I looked back to Megan I saw alarm in her face, mirroring my own I suppose, for in the same very spot she had had a scar and now didn’t, I did. Somehow I had taken her scar, which was unusual enough, but only moments later the scar on my neck vanished too. Healed.

“What the hell just happened?” she had asked and when I hadn’t been able to answer her she had gotten really scared and hugged me close asking if I was alright.
It wasn’t until later that night, while being hunted by demons in my dreams, Megan’s demons, that I realised fully the ‘gift’ the old crone had given me. I hadn’t healed Megan’s scars – both physical and mental – as I had initially thought. Somehow I had changed the past so that it had never happened to her. It was as if I had stolen the experience, and all signs of its passing, out of her body, leaving her cleansed of it. Maybe I really can help people, make the world a better place, I had thought then.
It was much later, maybe years, before I understood fully that the gift was actually a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing. My ‘gift’ was really a curse.


4.

My curse hadn’t helped Megan back then as I thought it had. Yes, it took away some of the pain from her childhood; she hadn’t been cut and almost raped as a little girl, but it also changed her. She became someone else and we drifted apart, like fallen leaves, blown by a changed current of fate.

It changed me too. I had memories and a confusion of emotional trauma, not mine but nevertheless real; something I overlooked in the arrogance of my youth and something that is, right now as I write this, drawing the curtain across the penultimate scene of my life.

For the last three hundred and eighty four years I’ve tried to unlock the secret of my ‘gift’, to in some way understand how to bend it’s will to match my own, and although I have tried many, many times I have never had the sort of success I have sought. I wished long happy lives for the people I’ve loved, but where I’ve had varied success with elongating their lives, I’ve had only terrible failure with their happiness. Not a single one of them ever thanked me for what I did to them.

Now I live alone, after surviving all of my family, most of whom I had tried to
prevent Death getting his bony hands on. Outside the sun shone bright, in defiance of a day that longed for sleep. A boy ran across my lawn, I could see him through my grimy windows. He reminded me of one of my grandchildren and suddenly I was gripped by my grandson’s demons again. My heart ached.

Watching the boy, I wondered how that old bitch could have done this to me at his age. The unfairness of subjecting someone to this life lies far back in the darkness behind humanity, but often enough I’ve thought of her as nothing more than a witch. Perhaps she wasn’t human at all.

Hobbling over to the front door, I opened it and then something strange happened. I spoke, but the words sounded like they were coming from somewhere else.
“Cuchulainn, leave ‘im alone”, the voice coming from my throat said, even though I had never owned a dog in my life.
“Arnt you de brave one? C’mere boyo”, the young boy looked terrified and then tried to run.

*********
This work has been copyrighted, (c) 3rd August 2004. All rights reserved etc etc...

BEAT

well, I am honestly speachless.
It was so very well written that I thought I was reading a passage from a well known book.

I could see some underlying themes borrowed (in my own mind) from other stories I have read but all in all I am very impressed.
You have quite a talent with words and story telling.

I certainly hope you are doing something with your talent

meepmeep

*applauds*

Sarky

Good read. I like.

shiv

Hi Shad0r, your short story was very original well-written. What does it spring from?

Shad0r

Thanks for the comments guys. Always nice when they're positive

shiv wrote:

Hi Shad0r, your short story was very original well-written. What does it spring from?

Not sure really how to answer that. I had this old bony hag woman character that I wanted to write into a story and I was really sick of writing about death. I suppose I was just trying to expand on the themes I had written on to that point, so I chose Lonliness as a sort of working theme. I dont ever really plan my stories out though, I just start them and they evolve into what either gets seen, gets saved for possibly a later date or gets 'Ctrl-A + Del'.

Any of you writers ever get two or three paragraphs into writing something, particularly I find just after I've started that day, and read back, then go: This is a load of cack. Followed by highlighting it all and deleting it?

I hate it when that happens at the time but I think overall its a good thing. Mainly because I think after getting into the groove of writing EVERY day you kinda have a better bull**** radar with your own work. Ofc maybe I'm wrong, given that I can type 80/90 words a minute, I could quite possibly be the slowest writer EVUR!!