She climbed aboard and the door closed behind her, sealing the poor girl inside. I could hear the other teachers mumbling behind me, laughing and gossiping about the usual, pointless drivel. Normally I would join them. It was what us teachers did. But today I couldn't. Something just didn't feel right.
So I stood alone at the edge of the ramp and watched as each and every bus took off down the road.
***
I didn't know what it was that made me freeze up when I saw those scratch marks on Annabelle's head. Maybe it was my inexperience handling those kinds of situations. Perhaps it was the shock of seeing an injury like that in such an unexpected place. Whatever the reason, my inaction was inexcusable.
I'd become a teacher because I loved children and wanted to help them grow. But faced with a moment when one actually needed me, I cowered away. I found a sign of possible abuse and did nothing. Just let the poor girl head back to the one place she didn't want to be.
Something scared Annabelle. That much was clear. But what? How? Was it her mother? A family friend? And if so, what could've caused those marks on her head? If they were even inflicted by a person at all. She could've been scratched anywhere doing anything. But she sure seemed ashamed about it. And that, combined with the guilt of not speaking up when I had the chance, was enough to make me find out for myself what was really going on.
I arrived at Annabelle’s home just as the sun had set into an autumn twilight. The house was fairly big for the neighborhood. An old colonial with enough structural charm to light up the block. But the building had fallen into an eerie state of disrepair. Every other inch of brown paint on the siding was either scraped or starting to peel away.
The wooden planks of the front steps splintered and buckled under the weight of my feet as I climbed them. And as I reached the top of the porch, I failed to spot a doorbell. Instead, the only way to announce my presence came in the form of a rusty lion’s head strapped to the door as a knocker.
Reluctant to wrap my hand around it, I carefully grasped the bulky iron figure with my fingertips and tapped it against the door. The noise was certainly loud enough to echo through the house, and so I patiently waited for a response.
When no one answered, I decided to carefully knock with my own fist while yelling into the wooden door. “Hello? Is anyone home?”
Again, I listened for a voice with my ear pressed forward yet could only hear silence behind the door. When I stood back up, though, a faint noise grabbed my attention. Only it wasn’t coming from the door. The shallow whimper slid under the crack in a window beside me, and I moved along the porch closer to the glass, leaning forward to peer into the house.
There wasn’t much to see, but the whimper grew strong into a steady stream of cries, which Annabelle’s pain-ridden voice desperately pleaded through. “Please, momma. Stop…it hurts.”
Whatever hesitation I had earlier in the day was gone. Annabelle needed help. There was no denying it now, and I ran back through the porch in a mad dash, reaching for the doorknob.
Only after turning it and pressing the door open with my shoulder did I wonder if it was locked. But the late thought vanished as I quickly looked around the foyer for a direction to go.
The house’s interior was just as worn as its façade. Cracks in the centuries old plaster walls and ceiling spread through the web of halls in front of me, all centered around an old, wooden staircase covered in cobwebs and dust. It appeared as if no one stepped inside the house in months let alone occupied it.
But any observation I made failed to fully grab my attention as I focused in on Annabelle’s faint, pattering sobs. It only took a second for me to realize they were coming from upstairs, and I once again propelled myself into action, sprinting up the wide staircase one creaky step at a time.
At halfway up I called out to her, the desperate fear rough in my voice. “Annabelle? Honey, where are you?”
But no response came except the continued cries of pain. Like a torturous tether, the girl’s weeps pulled me forward up the steps and down the hall to my left. The further I went, the darker the tight corridor became until a light from an open doorway drew me in like a beacon. Each step I took brought me closer to the agonizing sounds emanating from the end of the hallway.
And as I slowed down to finally turn the corner, my breath was stolen away by the strange, horrifying sight before me.
At the far end of the room, Annabelle sat with her back to me at an ornate, antique makeup table. A woman, presumably her mother, stood by the girl’s side, brushing her hair. But the brush in the mother’s hand was unlike any I’d ever seen. The homely glow of the room’s incandescent light bulb glistened against the brush’s dull, white surface. It appeared to be carved from old ivory or an ancient, worn out sculpture of pearls. The piece was beautiful and decorative, except for the worn out, jagged spines on the brush’s face. What were once the original bristles used to gracefully caress a woman’s head had become rough and course, sharp, barbed spikes that scraped against Annabelle’s scalp with every stroke.
But her mother, stuck in a trance, seemed to either be unaware or uncaring of her daughter’s pain as she continued to robotically brush the girl’s hair. “Easy now, darling. This is how we make you pretty. Don’t you want to be beautiful? Don’t you want to be perfect?”
Streaks of red-stained hair mixed into Annabelle’s beautifully blond locks as a small stain of blood spread out across the shoulders of her white nightgown. Her body writhed in its seat from the uncontrolled shakes caused by her perpetual sobbing. Looking past her I could actually see the girl’s terrified face in the mirror, completely soaked by a waterfall of tears.
Our eyes locked, but Annabelle didn’t appear surprised by my presence. Instead, the powerless girl called out to me, the despair clear in her reflection. “Miss Rosen…help…”
Upon realizing her daughter had spoken to someone, the mother stopped brushing and turned her attention toward me standing speechless in the doorway. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
She, too, was dressed in a long nightgown like her daughter, yet the woman’s hair was completely unkempt. Clumped and frayed in a series of knots, her split ends frizzled in the air like they hadn’t been washed in weeks. Dark blotches rested on the crest of her cheeks under a pair of bloodshot eyes, and although high cheekbones and a rigid jaw line showed faint signs of once youthful beauty, her oily skin and sickly frame were better representations of the woman she’d become.
But I stopped short of passing judgment, opting instead to slowly enter the room with an extended hand. “I’m Annabelle’s teacher from school. I came because…”
I expected the woman to introduce herself, but instead her face narrowed as she began yelling at me while pointing the brush at the door. “Get out of my house! You don’t belong here!”
The sudden shouts caught me by surprise, yet I swallowed down my rising nerves and pointed to the odd, deadly instrument in her hand. “But that brush you’re using. It’s clearly hurting your daughter.”
The woman walked forward and snickered, looking me up and down with condescending contempt. “Beauty’s supposed to hurt. But what would you know about that. You’re just a schoolteacher. Too ugly to take care of your clothes. Your skin. Your hair. But not me. And certainly not my Annabelle.”
I was aware the woman had been insulting me, but my focus remained on the bizarre weapon she carelessly waved around. “Ma’am, calm down. Just hand me the brush, okay?”
Like an alcoholic clutching her last bottle of booze, the manic woman brought the brush close to her chest. “Never! This brush has been in my family for generations. Makes every woman it touches gorgeous.”
“But it’s hurting your daughter! Look at her. She’s bleeding.”
I glanced over at Annabelle, now turned to face us while holding back a new wave of tears. Her mother, however, never bothered to look in that direction. “Nonsense. My mother brushed my hair with it all the time. And look at me
! Sparkling! Radiant! Too much for any one man to handle.”
The sight was so sad I didn’t know what to say. I just stood in silence, watching the deranged woman wobble back and forth with a firm grip still on the brush’s handle at her side.
When it became clear I wasn’t going to continue the argument, the woman again pointed to the door using the brush’s serrated thorns as a guide. “Now leave. Go back to your hole.”
But I took a cautious step forward, reaching my hand out towards the makeup table behind her. “I think Annabelle should come with me.”
And the woman abruptly reacted with violence in her voice. “I said get out!”
To my complete surprise, the woman took a swing at me, whipping the jagged bristles in my direction. I'd never been in a violent confrontation before, but instinct took over, lifting both arms to shield my face. I was able to grab onto the woman's wrist with one hand to stop the attack, but not before the brush plunged its bristles into my other palm.
I shrieked in pain as small streams of blood flowed out of my hand and down my wrist. I'd hoped the excruciating sound I made shocked my attacker into stopping, but she just grunted like a crazed madwoman, huffing and puffing as she pulled the brush from my palm and readied it for another strike.
In the moment before her mother's follow-up assault, I saw Annabelle out the corner of my eye. She sat wide-eyed and frightened, clutching onto the base of her seat. The captivating terror drained the beauty from her tear-filled face, and I expected the sorrowful sight to paralyze me in place.
Instead, it just filled me with more rage than I ever thought possible.
Before Annabelle's mother could finish the attack, I lunged forward grabbing onto her forearm with both hands and pulling the woman down with me. Together we fell to the floor, and I remained clutched onto her wrist as she refused to let go of the brush. The two of us grunted and screamed while rolling around on the hardwood, fighting to gain some sort of advantage in the struggle. My arms began to burn as every muscle I had fired into action.
Eventually, our sloppy wrestling match ended when I managed to straddle the woman, pinning her to the floor. She seemed uninterested in battling my position though, her attention focused on retaining a firm grip on the brush still clutched in her grasp.
While I had one hand still latched onto the woman’s wrist, the other now dug its way into her stiff fingers, futilely trying to pry them off the brush’s handle. Although fighting for my life, the tense standoff finally allowed me to see the brush and examine it up close. A carved braid outlined the edge of the mold around an array of exquisite jewels. Each stone was meticulously placed in an elaborate pattern. The intricate design and craftsmanship were truly remarkable, and even I, as a non-expert in antiques, could tell the one-of-a-kind piece was priceless.
But as elegant and ornate as the brush’s backside appeared, the front was a deadly mess of sharp teeth still wet from drawing my blood.
As I continued my attempt to break the brush free, the woman brought over her other hand to stifle my efforts.
We both gritted our teeth, summing up every ounce of strength we had to win the battle. But the woman persisted, seemingly more interested in keeping her grip tight than fighting me off of her. "Let go! This brush is mine! You can't have it!"
“You want it? Fine!”
In my frustration, a sudden surge took over, and I slammed the brush down hard, embedding its bladed bristles square into the woman’s face. Even through my grasp around the woman’s hand, I could feel the brush sink in as it lodged itself in her skin, and the cringe-worthy squish of penetrated flesh was abruptly followed by a shriek of frenzied pain. Blood didn’t shoot out of the wound as I anticipated but rather oozed out the sides, slowly flowing in several small streams down her cheeks and into the floorboards.
Upon releasing my hold from around the woman’s hand, I immediately drowned out the loud shrills of agony. If I focused on her screaming I knew I wouldn't be able to move. The horrific sound would only remind me of what I'd just done. Of what I had to do to stop her.
Shifting my focus back on the reason I came here in the first place, I stepped over to Annabelle and crouched down by the girl's chair. "Annabelle, are you alright?"
Her gaze remained fixated on her mother flailing her limbs while writhing around on the floor like a fish out of water scrambling for life. I resisted the urge to look over at the woman frantically clawing at the brush pressed deep into her face and instead gently pressed a hand against Annabelle’s chin, guiding her face in my direction. "Over here. Look at me. Are you, okay?"
Stuck open in a state of shock, her eyes glared at me as if she had trouble processing my question. But I waited a moment longer until she finally nodded her head in a daze.
A faint sign of strength lit up behind her eyes, and amidst the horror around us, that small sign actually caused me to crack a small of hope. "Come on. We have to go."
I grabbed onto her hand, ready to begin our escape, and, in that instant, wondered if the traumatized girl would even follow me. Despite their torturous relationship, I could understand why Annabelle might have trouble breaking free from her tormentor's deadly grasp. She was her mother, after all, and with a sharp object impaled into her face, it was easy to feel sorry for the screaming woman in desperate need of pity.
But Annabelle stepped off the chair without a shred of resistance, and together we darted out of the room, stepping over her bleeding mother on our way towards the door.
With Annabelle tucked firmly under my arm, we quickly backtracked through the hall, down the stairs out the front door, all while her mother’s excruciating howls echoed throughout the house. But neither Annabelle nor me ever looked back. Even as we walked down the street and the harrowing screams began fading into silence behind us.
That lovely ladies handbag over there carries the Maldad label. I’m not much into fashion myself, but I’m told the designer is all the rage…in the wrong circles.
Lori Safranek brought this bag in all the way from Omaha, Nebraska where she lives with her husband and their two dogs.
HEX OF THE HANDBAG
Lori Safranek
FOR once she was going to pick Callie up from dance class on time, in full make-up and not wearing yoga pants. It was a suburban mom’s dream-come-true, sparkling white linen pants and a Michael Kors sleeveless top. Elizabeth spent just a few more minutes staring at her lovely image in the full-length mirror in the entry way before sighing with satisfaction, scooping up her Coach bag and heading out the door.
Luckily, she realized the bag felt far too light and grabbed the door before it closed behind her. She had almost locked herself out and left her car keys inside. She stepped back into the house and looked inside her bag to find it empty. Of course! She had transferred everything to her new purse last night.
The new purse was still in her bedroom so she hurried there and grabbed it. Great, now she’d be late after all. She retraced her steps to the front door, stepping outside and pulling the door shut behind her.
Her key fob automatically unlocked the doors of her BMW from inside her purse and she opened the driver’s door and slid inside. Her new purse, a lovely thing made of supple brown calf leather, felt so wonderful in her hands. She slid open the zipper and fished around for her key fob. She smiled as she found the key and slid it into the ignition and started the car. She tossed the purse into the back seat as she moved the transmission into reverse.
She hissed in pain at what she thought was a bee sting. Turning her hand over, she realized blood was dripping down onto her palm. What the hell?
She kept her foot on the brake as she groped on the floor for the box of Wet Wipes she kept for messes. Finding one, she swiped at the blood and revealed several fine cuts across her fingers. They looked like paper cuts, but she had not touched any papers. It really stung, though. She glanced at her lap, noticing drips of blood on her white slacks. Had she wiped her hands on her pants? She never did that! Gross. She p
ulled out another wipe and swiped at the stain on her pants but it just smeared.
As she daubed at the stain, her hand bumped into her keys dangling from the ignition and now blood appeared on the top of her hand, but she didn’t feel a cut. She pushed the gearshift into park and removed the keys from the ignition. The keys had traces of blood on them. That was impossible. She used these keys every day, several times a day, and she knew they weren’t sharp enough to slice skin. What had happened?
Elizabeth looked more closely at the keys. The edges of the keys looked like a row of tiny shark teeth, and they were thin as paper! Had someone screwed around with her keys? She had used the valet last night. She looked at the car’s clock and figured she had a minute to call Mark, her husband. She dug her cell out of her bag. Without looking, she touched the screen to automatically dial his office. She heard a dial tone. She looked at the screen and realized she hadn’t dialed at all. A few pokes at the screen revealed that her phone’s entire memory had been erased – no phone numbers, no text messages, nothing. Her phone was her life and she felt her heartbeat speed up. She’d have to head straight to the mall kiosk and get a new phone after dropping Callie off for her play date. Wonderful.
She grabbed another Wet Wipe and cleaned the blood off her keys and carefully put them back into the ignition. She restarted the car and pulled out of her driveway.
Elizabeth could tell Callie was pissed off as soon as she was close enough to see her waiting in front of the dance school. Her pretty little six-year-old stood with her arms crossed over her chest and her bottom lip poking out. She was dressed in her ballet clothes, holding her lavender tutu in one hand, which totally ruined the effect of the angry pose.
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