Just a little ficlet. Song lyrics come from Biffy Clyro's Many of Horror. I was listening to the song on the bus yesterday and became inspired. Enjoy :)
Kirsty had been brought up to stand up for herself. Her parents had taken her to karate lessons as a kid, and when she'd experienced bullying at school, she'd been able to take on the gang leader round the back of the maths block and dislocate his elbow. They didn't bother her after that.
Funnily enough, it was her refusal to take stick that attracted Warren to her in the first place. It had been the first lesson of GCSE history, and Kirsty had entered late. She had to take a seat in the front row because there were no other spaces left. Warren had somehow managed to get even more lost and enter five minutes after Kirsty, and he'd sat next to her simply because it was preferable to the floor.
The way it worked in Kirsty's school, like many other high schools, was that the cool kids sat at the back, the geeks at the front and everybody else filled up in between. Kirsty's rightful place, like Warren, was in between, but by sitting in the front it meant she was subject to being hit by all the paper and gum that were thrown from the kids at the back.
Towards the end of the first lesson, after paper pellets had been constantly battering her and Warren's backs, she stood up and walked to the back of the class. She took the straw that was being used to shoot pellets, bent it in half and tossed it out of the window.
Two weeks after that, she and Warren were an item.
I'll take a bruise I know you're worth it.
When you hit me, hit me hard.
She'd fallen unexpectedly pregnant at sixteen, moved into a council flat at seventeen and brought up their daughter Nita while Warren worked. It was a set-up that was perfect until Nita started school, which was when Kirsty decided she wanted to get some more qualifications. She'd dropped out and not sat any A levels, so she went to night school and completed three.
That was enough to let her train to become a nurse. She'd always wanted to do medicine, but becoming a doctor just wasn't going to be possible. A nurse seemed certainly feasible, though, and by the time Nita started high school, Kirsty was working in a hospital.
It was about that time that Warren got ill, though. He took time off work with a bad back and hit the bottle. Kirsty found herself becoming his carer, but it wasn't as easy as with the patients at the hospital. For a start, they didn't hit back.
The first time it happened, Kirsty put it down to an accident. Warren had lashed out at her as she tried to give him his pills, batting them away with his hand away and catching her on the cheek as he did so. But after the tenth time, she wasn't so sure.
She couldn't leave him, though. Nita doted on him, and Kirsty if she left it would be the final straw. He would be a suicide risk, and as much as she hated how he treated her, they were married, and she still loved him in a way. She didn't want him to die.
So she put up with the punches and the slaps, the shouts and the stares. She put up with the pain and having to wear jeans and jackets even in the summer just so nobody would see her bruises. She put up with having to call in sick because Warren was having a bad day.
She'd been brought up to stand up for herself, but when the crunch came, she took the hits with the kisses. The good with the bad. Because she knew as soon as she raised one fist in retaliation, she'd be exactly as bad as he was.
Cause when my back is turned,
My bruises shine.
Our broken fairytale,
So hard to hide.