Hate Short Story Competition - Winner

I’m nearly at the door. Only a few more steps. My heart’s hammering against my ribs. I stand still and steal a precious moment to try and focus on my breathing. I swallow down tears before I grip the handle. They won’t see me cry.
I know they’ll be waiting, with their jeers and their taunts. With handfuls of stones to throw at the monster. I’ve covered myself as well as I always do; a thick coat, a hat, a scarf wound around my face. Very little of my flesh is visible, because I know monsters should stay hidden and shouldn’t frighten children.
I hate summer. I hate daylight. I hate being seen. I’m too hideous to be seen and I should hide in the dark. But there isn’t enough darkness to hide me. And I have to go out.
I have to go out twice a day. I have to take you to the place called school, and I have to shield you as I bring you home. The children know this. They wait for me, ready with stones and jeers and taunts, counting down the seconds until I emerge. And their mothers wait, with cold silent stares. Monsters must not be spoken to.
I wasn’t born a monster. I remember a time when I could walk the streets in safety. When people would speak to me. When I could smile. But that was before the alleyway and the man. The man who pinned me to the ground. The man who was your father. The man whose memory I smothered and sweetened with chocolate and pizza and doughnuts. The man who still sneers and growls through every cell of the rolls of creamy fat that have become my armour.
When you were a tiny seed inside me, I tried to dissolve you in a bottle of gin, but you stayed solid in your stubborn skin and you grew. Until that day when I pushed you, screaming, into a world that greeted you with lights too bright and noises too loud.
I wrapped you in love and tried so hard to protect you. I kept you safe in my home and we laughed together, sang together. And then one day, people came to the house, people in uniforms, and they insisted you should go to a place that was not safe. A place where other children would laugh at you, jeer at you, hurt you. You were too delicate for this world, I told them, and you had to be kept safe. But still they said you must go, and so you did. To the place where lies were sold, to the place where I knew you would be damaged.
That first day, when you came home from school, you were already altered. My perfect child, bright and golden as the sun, was edged with shadow. Each day the shadows grew. Your songs were silenced and your colours dimmed. And when I complained to the teachers, they laughed at me. Called me over-protective, told me not to worry. You were growing up, they said. Learning to conform. Learning to fit in with other children.
You kept changing your perfect shape to try and fit in, twisting and growing rough and ragged edges. You tried so many ugly forms, desperate to find one that would fit. But you would always be the child of a monster.
One day you came home and you were silent, and when I asked what was wrong, you said a boy had asked why your mother was so fat. And I hugged you and cried with you and swore to myself that I would lose weight. And I tried. But I wasn’t ready to shed my armour. I was afraid it might fall away to reveal even worse ugliness.
You are jagged now and I am so sorry. Your anger is my fault. Your teachers call me every day and complain that you have hit another child, or kicked, or bitten. And the reason is always the same. They had insulted me, and you had tried to be a hero, tried to be the edge of a silencing sword. But I’m the only one who sees your pain. The jeering children, the silent mothers, the tight-mouthed teachers, they only see your anger. And they call you a monster, like me.
I press down the handle and open the door a little way. It’s quiet and I breathe in this beautiful, brief moment of silence, to shield me from the horror I know will come.
It begins as soon as I step outside.
‘Oi, fattie!’
I would run if I could. But my armour weighs me down.
‘Look, it’s a monster!’
‘You’re disgusting!’
‘Look at her wobble!’
Tiny stones sting my cheeks, my arms, my legs. As I reach the school, the other mothers move aside to let me past. They don’t speak to me and their stares are like iron. And then I see you and I let myself smile.
I don’t deserve you. My mother told me so. When you were born, she held you close and thought I didn’t hear her whisper that you didn’t deserve a mother who went with men in dirty alleyways. I told her I hadn’t had a choice, but she didn’t want to listen.
You walk slowly across the playground, your head down and your eyes lowered. The scowl I’ve grown so used to is firmly stuck to your face, but I know it’s only a mask you will wear until we get home. The other children don’t speak to you. Neither do their mothers. But when you see me, you smile.
The brilliance of that smile will strengthen us both on the walk home. Your smile is like the sun breaking through clouds. But it doesn’t last long. You take my hand and the familiar shadows begin to cross your face as you tell me about your day.
‘I got in trouble.’
‘Again?’
‘I hit David.’
I push your amber hair back from your tiny face. ‘Why did you hit him?’
‘He called you names.’
I’m not going to ask what the names were. They won’t be names I haven’t heard before. Fat cow. Jelly monster. Lard face. I’ve had so many names that sometimes I have to remind myself of the one I used to use. The man who was your father didn’t know my name. Slut, he called me, as he pushed you into me. Filthy slut. And my mother agreed with him. That’s what she called me.
Looking up, I can see David’s mother staring at me, clutching her child by the hand. He’s crying and you stick your tongue out at him.
‘Can’t you keep that little monster under control?’
She doesn’t come any closer, speaks to us from a safe distance. Monsters are dangerous.
‘She has a name.’
‘She’s a brat.’ David is spun around and taken away.
No one wants to know the names of the monsters. I called you Fleur, as you lay in the plastic hospital cot. My little flower.
‘Mummy?’
I smile down at you. That’s my favourite name. I don’t need any other.
You’re tugging at my hand. ‘Can we go now?’
Like me, you don’t like being outside. You know you’re only safe in our house, in the darkness of our cave. And as we start to walk, we’re conscious of the stares. The stares that soon turn into jeers and thrown stones, and tin cans, and accusations. We cling to each other, cling to the love that binds us, as we scurry past our tormentors, crouching to dodge the stones.
When we get home, I give you the bar of chocolate I kept for you. You grin and tear open the wrapper. I close all the curtains and we are suddenly safe in the darkness. It might surprise people to know that life in the monster house is quiet and normal. There are no children hidden in dark cellars, no creatures writhing in dusty webs or rotting in clanking chains. No bones littering the floor. There are books on the shelves, pictures on the walls. Photographs on the mantelpiece. We keep photographs of better days, when we were able to smile.
I help you with your homework and we eat and laugh and watch TV. And then you go to bed and I sing you to sleep, and I sit downstairs, in the darkness where no one sees me.
There are no mirrors on the walls. Not even I dare look at myself. I watch beautiful people move across the television screen and I envy them their grace. Sometimes I would be glad to shed the weight of my monster scales, just for a little while, but how can I, when they cover the hideousness of the things I have done?
He laughed as he ground into me. Stones dug into my back and his breath stank of decay. He was the only man I ever lay with. I am a monster. What else did I deserve?