Note from the editor: What follows is a fascinating short story by S2 pupil Penny

 

The person reading this knows this story well. Not you, of course, I mean the person reading this at the time of its writing.

 

See once there was a kind young woman. She was the most beautiful in the kingdom and the kindest in the land. She lived with her daughter Marcela, her husband Juan and her stepson.

 

The woman loved her family dearly but something always concerned her, her stepson. He was an odd boy and seemed to be obsessed with his step-sister, so I hear.

 

The woman knew she had to do something to protect her daughter, who seemed to already succumbing to her brothers manipulation. So she sat herself and the step-son down to try and talk.

 

The conversation started as most of their conversations did. Badly. The woman tried to explain to the boy about how strange his obsession with his sister was but he didn’t want to hear it. He got so mad at her that he tried to attack her! He grabbed at her dress and she pushed him into an empty trunk as retaliation. But when his neck fell into the trunk it closed quickly with a SNAP. And…well you could guess what happened.

 

The woman, so distraught with guilt and sadness, buried the boys corpse beneath the old juniper tree that his true mother planted. After the boy was buried a bird appeared at the tree every day afterwards. It doesn’t speak or move just looks sadly through the kitchen window. Never breaking eye contact with the woman.

 

…But that isn’t the story, right? This is just what you told them.

 

The real boy wasn’t pushed into the trunk by accident, the real boy wasn’t buried with his flesh still on his body, the real boy was simply friends with Marcela. But you couldn’t handle that, could you?

 

Stop lying. I know what you did. Marcela knows what you did. Soon my father and the rest of the town.

 

Marcela talks to me every day. We have a plan. Of course I’m not going to say it I’m not an idiot but we know what we’re doing.

 

What I wonder is: why? I never hurt you. I simply existed. I wish I could have had a mother like the one my father told me about.

 

Maybe you used to be good and nice. Maybe something happened to you. The death of someone you love. A possesion like the stories Marcela told me…I doubt it though.

 

I’d like to say I’m sorry. But I’m not. And I never will be sorry for what happens to you.

 

When you go out tomorrow, watch your head.

 

Yours sincerly,

 

Nicolàs Romero.