There's nothing in this world that I would love more than to have the hole in my ceiling be just a little bit bigger. So that I could see just a couple more stars as I lie on the heap of hay that I have come to know as my bed.
Daddy's barn isn't the worst bedroom I've ever had. It's loads better than the dusty old cupboard or the dreaded box I was forced to suffer a couple of summers ago. Gods did I hate the box.
I best not think such thoughts too loudly. Dirty thoughts are just upstream from a dirty tongue as Daddy always says. Ill thoughts of Gods or bedrooms don't put him in a happy mood. And his happiness is my happiness after all.
No the barn wasn't the worst bedroom. Most of all because I have this hole in the ceiling something my other bedrooms have severely lacked. I've counted a hundred and ninety six stars in total. Give or take a few dozen depending on how I move my head.
I feel connected to the outside. I've never been able to explain it, and father certainly doesn't want to hear about it, but to me it's as if I'm part of the world. Even on days full of gray clouds or, if I'm wonderfully lucky, a thunderstorm full of warm or cold rain will bless me.
Of course I can't allow myself to enjoy the rain out in the village with Daddy. People start looking ill at you. And when people start looking ill then father gets put out of his happy mood. But when I'm alone in the barn I can stand underneath my magnificent hole in the ceiling and let the water of the skies shower me in all of it's peace and grace.
I do wish to ask Daddy if i could make the hole just a tad bigger. I'd have to ask him in the morning since theirs no getting around that big lock he has on the outside of the barn door. And since all the windows are boarded up there's no way climb out. I doubt he would allow it anyway, it took all the pleading I could muster just to keep the hole I have.
Giddy with the idea of reenacting the this hypothetical scene with him I jumped up out of my hay bed and brushed the hay straws out of my shadow black hair that I can never get to behave properly. Always alive with static or tangled beyond what a wooden comb would salvage.
Being on the second floor of the barn with no railing and only an unattached ladder to get up and down to the ground floor, I was careful about the placement of my feet as not to fall off.
"Daddy." I said to the empty barn, "Is it not true that I rarely ever ask for anything?"
"A trend that I should hope you uphold!" I said in a poor imitation of Daddy's low and growly voice.
"Of course. But I thought you might make an exception just this once and I promise I'll never ask for anything ever again."
"Thou shalt not tell lies Rowena! If i do recall you promised to never ask for anything ever again after I so kindly let you pick flowers last month."
"I suppose that's true father. But I just-."
"Just like you to make promises you can't keep. You get that from your mother you know."
"Yes Papa."
I lowered my hands in defeat and fell back into my bed with reckless abandon. Even in my fantasies i couldn't win with Daddy. Whenever I did something he didn't like, which was more often then I would like to admit, he always said that same phrase. 'You get that from you mother'. Momma must have been one horrid woman to have had so many negative traits all at once.
Momma died when I was very young. Too young to remember what she looked like. Although I often picture she looked just like me. Daddy almost never talks about her. But one time he let slip that she looked like a mirror image to me accept with fiery red hair instead of black.
ESTÁ A LER
And Then They Trembled!
FantasiaI never knew my mother. I was raised by the religious town of Red Springs. The barn that Daddy locks me into every night isn't so bad, it's better than the box anyway. Then, one day, I'm male nymph appears into my room and changes my life forever.
