Young Writers Society

This isn't very well written; I haven't written a short story in a very long time. Please completely tear this apart - I would like some honest feedback so that I can improve.

She hadn’t always noticed that there was toxin in his eyes or that poison trickled from his finger tips. But when his eyes skipped over her body she felt wounded and when his fingers danced across her skin, she felt her flesh burning beneath his touch.When she recoiled he would question her withdrawal – “Is it because I’m ugly? I always knew I was out of your league anyway.” Irate tears would trickle down his broken face like a toddler’s. Her hand would creep back into his, and that venomous smile would creep back onto his face, his reptilian eyes would glitter once more.

-

People always told her that he was weird; maybe that’s what compelled her to become friends with him in the first place. She was pretty peculiar herself, back then. However no one warned her how warped and bitter he was – he could always twist his face into the most nauseating contortions but she didn’t realise that his soul could mirror that. He was damaged and perhaps it was her fault for getting so close to him in the first place. She always picked up the weak ones.

Best friends, that’s what they were. She always liked to believe that boys and girls could just be friends; she fought hard to argue with those who disagreed with her. “He’s like a brother to me.” She’d laugh. They always did look odd, but that young girl was determined never to let what other people said get to her, although the faded white snakes that slithered along her hips told a different story.

-

The cycle continued until her skin crawled and her eyes dulled from the sparkle they once held. Instead they twitched with uncertainty and dread. The delight of companionship had vanished long ago; emotional blackmail does that to people. But still, despite herself, the small girl with the long blonde hair would drag herself to that same spot every night and tell him ‘no, I don’t want to’, his threats and sneers becoming increasingly cruel and chilling. She was the girl in the music box, trapped and dancing to the same tune over and over until she became faint and dazed. The wicked boy with the music box thought it was an amusing game; the twisted boy with the music box was no more than a malevolent creature cloaked in a façade of human flesh. But she loved him, for beyond the façade, beyond the malevolence, she saw the quivering face of a toddler with tears running down his chubby cheeks; the torn face of the five year old when his father told him that he was leaving and never coming back; the anxious face of the sixteen year old when his mother said she wanted to fall into an eternal sleep. She felt for the boy with the music box, the boy desperate to have some control, the little boy who yearned for a constant.

However every day she slipped further and further from his reach until he dove to grasp her and she slipped between his fingers. He dismissed her then onwards, affronted by her lack of grovelling, begging for him back. She should have been relieved; she should have jumped at the chance to do the things that he had forbidden. She ought to have gone and kissed that blonde boy at the party and enjoyed it. She should have smoked that cigarette out of her window. She could have lived. But instead, she found herself missing the boy with the reptilian eyes and the queasy smile. Instead the girl felt empty and desolate. Where trust had fled, paranoia swooped in to fill its place. What can one do when their heart’s been torn from their chest? His poison coursed through her veins and flooded the void where her heart had been.

They say that every cell in our entire body is replaced every seven years. How comforting it is to know that one day she will have a body that was never touched by his noxious fingers. Maybe it will be only then that I can completely disassociate myself from the girl once trapped in the music box.