Literary Orphans

Miss Angelika March
by Tabatha Stirling

come_see_inside_my_bones_by_natalia_drepina

I never understood the appeal of Miss Anglelika March.  Her charisma, that the whole village seemed in awe of, was lost on me.  To deny her physical beauty would be petty and a lie but there was a taint to her like a broken drain whose slime and soil seeped out to cover her skin.

The realisation that she had seduced my husband hit me quickly and slowly.  A brutal wash boarding of truth that crackled about my ears and battered my trademark denial.

I saw them standing together, not touching yet but so very together as if a slightly different light surrounded them.  Not golden but perhaps brass or pewter.  Something common and easily led.

And then she touched his hand lightly and kept it there and I drew in breath to steady myself because when she looked at me there was triumph riding high in her eyes.  And I knew.  And his hand then moved to cover hers and my husband of forty years saw me looking and didn’t flinch.  But turned his face from me and I knew for a second time.

Then my heart turned hard and steel flooded those tight, little veins that feed the eye and my mouth tasted the betrayal like an overnight locust storm.

This time, Miss Angelika March, there will be comeback.  Wait for it in the night when you take off your mask and your true nature reveals itself in the blacks and purples of deceit.  I will smash that portrait in your attic and your world will be undone.

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Tabatha Stirling lives in Singapore & Edinburgh with her Warrior-Poet husband, Elven child and a beagle called The Beagle.  When she isn’t writing she’s gaming and when not gaming she indulges her zombie genre fetish.  A legendary Rum swigger (in parts of the Caribbean) Tabatha describes herself as a ‘weary hedonist’ with the heart of a loved-up Pangolin.

TABBY

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–Art by Natalia Drepina

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