Olivia's New Mother

Down by the green wood side.- Lesley Nelson Burns "The Cruel Mother"


It was months after Hiram had decided to remarry. Olivia didn't go against it as she felt happy to have another mother again, but such happy days were fleeting and gone as Hiram left to Scotland due to urgency regarding relatives. That's when the scale tilted and Olivia's new mother, Debora Carmen, began to show her true colors. Olivia was confined for 7 years in an old shack with Debora. She was given daily beatings to the point her head went numb, given stale food and dirty water. When she tried to fight back Debora would cut her. Olivia had recently turned fifteen and lightly rolled a ball in her bedroom, with her leg chained to the metal bed frame with only a few lamps on inside the dim room with peeled paint and a bucket she used to vomit and used it as a bathroom in. In a room so thick and small, like a box, and with the windows covered by wood and nails. She was in a coffin house made for little girls.
Olivia stopped rolling and looked down at her chest, she unveiled her shirt for her ribs to be showing and her hip bones were poking underneath her dress. This was the result of neglect and abuse. Little miss skin and bones how you desire to be out of of your coffin, how to seek the light. Have you forgotten how real food tastes and clean water by the river bed?

Olivia panted gently, her head in a daze. She felt nauseous but she could not release herself from the pain that went on upon her. She tried to crawl to the doorway only to feel the bed leg pull her bed with a yank. She howled out in pain causing Debora to come thundering out to her bedroom. 

"Olive, how dare you try to leave your bedroom?" Debora snaps.

"Mother...it's so hard to breathe...and I'm turning to bones..." Olivia wheezes. She no longer has the strength to cry, "Please...you must help me....before I..."

Before I die, before I'm gone. Oh help me please, mommy dearest.

Debora stares at her, no love, no affection. She looks at Olivia as though she's a bug to step over. She leaves for a moment, letting Olivia absorb the unsettling silence of the dim disgusting bedroom that she has lived in for years before Olivia hears the dreaded sound of something heavy and metal upon the floor. 

Cling cling clang 

Cling cling clang

Cling cling clang 

Olivia wants to sob as Debora holds up chains in her hands. They look tight and small enough to choke her all ready weak body. Olivia feels temporary relief when the chain to her foot is unlocked, but the relief is gone when Debora pins her to the bed and starts putting the long chains around her body. Her body feels like it's tightening, the rattling is making her nauseous, and she's terrified her lungs are going to rupture if she tightens even more. 

"Little Olive, I love you. But it's time to sleep now," Debora says gently cooing, and stroking Olivia's head. She leaves as Olivia struggles against her fate. Olivia's vocal chords are too dry and she nearly chokes as she screams and yells. But her cries remain unheard when the walls feel too thick. She moves her body to the left and right. Her instincts are telling her to leave and run. But she is bound to such horrible chains, and the rattling continues until she ends up sleeping on the bed. 

Cling

Clang

It's morning and Olivia slowly opens her eyes to the ceiling. It's quiet and desolate. She's waiting for someone to help her out of her chains but no one comes to her. She wants to pull out of these chains but is afraid of tearing through. Death would be at her door and the pain would never stop. She knows mommy isn't here to save her no more, no, she is left here to rot and die. She remembers the detective she had met before but his name fades. It withers and burns in her lonely conscious.

Cling 

Clang

Maybe I can loosen it, she thinks with some newfound hope. She tries moving her feet and shoulders in a shimmy.

Cling cling cling

Cling cling cling

It only makes the chain rattle, and her arms are tightened along with her feet. The heavy dryness, the lonely burning anger in her stomach slowly takes a toll on her. She starts shrieking. And she shrieks loudly out of anger. It's animalistic as she cries, like a cat yowling out of pain and hunger. She shrieks until she can't shriek no more. She lays back and pants in exhaustion, perhaps death is the only misery to a girl tied to chains. 

Cling clang

Cling clang

She's lost track of the hours. She does not know the days ever since she has lived at the shack. She feels like she can't remember her father's face as her memories feel like they have fallen out.

She can't think anymore.

She can't fight no more.

"End...it..." She wheezes.

Cling Clang

Cling Clang

The silence is thick and barren. She can only think of Debora and the outside world. How badly she wants the pain to end in a painless fashion, just by sleeping, just let the silence embrace you. Let the thought of mommy holding you keep you warm inside during your last breath.

She suddenly hears a carriage from outside, "Room for one more! Room for one more...! My dear gents and ladies, there is room for one more in the carriage!" Olivia notices it's not coming from the outside but from her own window. That window that is blocked by wood suddenly breaks and falls and outside she watches a skeletal carriage rider with yellow eyes and brown bones, he's dressed in neatly dressed aristocrat clothing and a top hat, "Room for one more, dear miss? Would you like my horses to carry you to the next town?"

"You mean...you mean death?" 

"It goes by many names to others. Will you take the back, child?" 

The carriage rider moves his hand and all at once the chains fall in a loud scattered mess.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

It's a relief but it's not freedom. 

"Will you take the back, child?" The ghoul repeats.

"No, I shall not take the back. Even though I am turning into skin as bones, I will not leave till I am satisfied," Olivia says.

"Then who shall be the one to take the extra room to the back of my carriage?" 

Olivia pauses briefly, setting aside her conscious, "My stepmother."

"I do hope you realize...when you offer revenge. A due must be paid. What shall I take as payment to give you relief in life?" 

"I offer my flesh. The flesh of my hands. I can no longer feel my hands anymore to begin with thanks to my mother and being chained. I offer these pathetic hands for revenge to my stepmother." 

The carriage rider is silent in consideration. He stares at Olivia with hollow eyes but she is no longer frightened, she has stared death in the face once before.

"Then your payment will be due when you turn eighteen, dear lamb. For when revenge is due, an offer must be paid. When you turn eighteen, you shall be the next customer to my carriage," the carriage rider says before suddenly fading and Olivia hears the front door open. She limps out and feels sunlight for the first time, and along the way she runs into the police and is given a second chance in life, but not without payment.

Debora had disappeared. Scotland Yard was perplexed by the crime scene to see carriage wheel markings, and Debora's finger nails had been scratching on the road. She was dragged by chains as evident as the marks were. Such odd chains that left burnt marks.

"You ever heard of death's carriage?" One of the officers asks, "The rider calls out to weak souls and always asks for room for one more because there is always room in death?"

"Please, you're an officer," the investigator says, "Please think rationally."

Revenge can never work unless the due is paid and Olivia took her hands well on her birthday when she turned eighteen. A hallow shell of herself despite being with her father again, and a promise never to leave her again. The look on the faces of family and friends when her fur and flesh of her hands had wilted and turned to sand revealing just the bone. Then up the road with horses, she heard her call.

"Room for one more?"


END