This is for The Seventh Thing Competition on HPFC.
I had to write 7 drabbles (although these aren't 100-word drabbles, they're just brain-dump drabbles) on what a character hates about another. Honestly, I just sat down and wrote this and completely forgot about the challenge. It was a total coincidence that there ended up being 7 bits and hopefully each of those bits ended up fulfilling the criteria of the challenge. I really don't know. All I did was write it.
i.
Eileen Prince wasn't a beautiful girl. She had hair that was approximately the colour and texture of a drowned rat, eyes as beady and dark as one and a nose that, every so often, Tobias was sure twitched just a little at the smell of cheese. So she wasn't beautiful. Not in the traditional way, and not in any of the new ways he'd seen on billboards in the train station and on the sides of buses on the way to work.
And yet...
There was something about Eileen Prince that was undeniably engaging.
ii.
"Stop staring, you freak!"
The screech of Eileen's voice was a shock in the silent street, making a crow, scavenging scraps from the rubbish, squawk indignantly and take flight into the grey sky.
Tobias quickly looked down to the pavement, a blush igniting his pale cheeks a shocking red.
It wasn't the first time he'd stared at the strange, captivating girl who lived just up the street from the bus stop where he waited every morning, but it was the first time he'd been caught. Yet, even as his heart hammered – half out of shock, half out a something else entirely – Tobias chanced another sideways glimpse. Eileen still stood there, glaring obnoxiously back as if daring him to meet her eyes, but when he did her expression faltered just for a moment. As if no one had ever dared to look at her like that before, and she didn't know how to respond.
Then a bus rattled to halt at the stop and the doors flapped open. The rumble of its engine in the cold morning drowned out any words Tobias might have been about to say and, breaking the uncomfortable stalemate, he looked away. He could feel Eileen's eyes on him as he boarded the bus and gave a handful of coins to the driver. Their dark weight sat on his shoulders as he took a seat, and even when the bus trundled away, even when he knew she was left behind, he still felt them on him. Like a burden. Like a promise.
iii.
"She's definitely a looker, an ideal girl for you," his friends assured him, tugging Tobias into the dingy pub.
Usually he avoided the place at all costs, eager to stay away from the bright lights that made his nose seem even longer than usual, his eyes more deeply set. The darkness of his lonely flat was a much safer, much friendlier atmosphere than all the rowdy laughter, the flashes of grins, the golden drinks that surrounded him in here.
But it had been too long since he'd been out, his friends said. He was becoming a recluse, a hermit, and that wasn't what they wanted for Tobias Snape. They were going to set him up with someone right.
She wasn't right.
From the moment he saw her honey-blonde hair – too light, too pretty – and pouting lips – too wide, too red – he liked her. She was as different to Eileen as they could come, and that suited him perfectly. This girl was stupid – full of giggles and nervous hair-pulling and shy smiles and nervous lip-biting and sentences that went up at the end and nervous toe-tapping. This girl was insecure. This girl was perfect.
For a week, a month, a couple more, he liked her. He liked her smile when she woke up beside him. He liked the dinners she'd set out for the two of them. He liked the way she'd look away if he started staring too much. He liked that she wasn't confident or strange or ugly.
He liked that she wasn't Eileen.
iv.
"I invited a couple of the neighbours over to dinner," the honey-blonde girlfriend said one afternoon. "I hope you don't mind?"
Tobias shook his head, mostly ignoring her because she made it so easy to. It was amazing how quickly he could forget about someone who was so unexceptional. Bloody Eileen Prince never left his mind, but it was because she was different – badly so – that she stuck there. This girl he was with now – the girl who was pretty and made an effort – held absolutely no interest to him. She was like a garden hedge or a brick in a wall. Eileen was like a towering granite statue, a tribute to some pagan goddess.
When the neighbours came, Tobias greeted them each politely.
"Hello, nice to meet you, come on in, let me take your coat."
Then the honey-blond girl looked after them, and he could shrink back into his chair in the corner, watching them all with narrowed eyes.
When another knock on the door sounded out, he instinctively stood, happy to leave the company behind.
"Hello, nice to meet you, come on in, let me-" he broke off.
It was her.
Eileen's expression was sour, matching the foul earrings framing her sallow face. Without a word she stepped inside, pushing past Tobias and thrusting her coat into his hands. The material was scratchy and cheap and he wondered why she wore it at all. Beneath she wore long sleeves, long skirt – both dull and inexpensive. She had no desire to show off, no need to. Tobias was already gaping.
v.
He'll never know why the girlfriend invited Eileen back out of all of the guests. All Tobias will ever know is that, somehow, he became used to her presence.
All of a sudden, she was always there when he got home, sipping tea from one of his mugs, sitting on his sofa, feet resting on his coffee table, nodding boredly as the honey-blonde chatted away. She'd flick her gaze to him as he arrived, holding his eyes in that obnoxious way she had, before blinking, long and hard. As if wishing that, when she opened her eyes again, he'd be gone.
He never was.
Tobias always stood there, captivated. Wanting. Despite having no idea what it was that he wanted. Only knowing that she and she alone could give him it.
vi.
"Where's-" Tobias broke off abruptly, discovering that, drowning in the pits of Eileen Prince's eyes, he'd forgotten the name of his honey-blonde. Hell, he'd forgotten the name of himself.
"She went down to the store for sugar," Eileen answered. "She'll be out for a while."
Tobias was numb as he hung his coat by the door. He walked slowly into the lounge room where she sat, stonily ignoring him. Outside, rain hammered on the windows like always, doing nothing to drown out the sound of his heart racing in his chest.
"So we're alone?" he asked.
Curtly, and still without looking at him, Eileen nodded.
He moved closer until he was the closest he'd ever been to her, maybe a foot between them. Then he bent down, to be at her height where she sat, and moved closer still.
Suddenly her gaze shot to his and he was shocked by the intensity of it. The hatred in it.
"Do it," she dared him.
He paused.
She grabbed him harshly by the neck and pulled him in, crushing their lips together.
The kiss was like everything he'd been missing, everything he'd been fearing, everything he'd been craving. It was like warfare. It was like the apocalypse. It was like perfection.
vii.
At some stage, the honey-blonde found out about the affair, if you could even call it that. By that point, Eileen had explored every crevice of Tobias's body, bitten and consumed and tortured every inch of his skin until he was desperate and begging and pleading for respite. She never gave it to him.
There was a wedding involved – a rainy ceremony with few guests – and then a baby, but the hatred never stopped. Eileen continued to shoot her husband those back-breaking glares at every possible opportunity, even when their baby was clutched to her breast. She'd shout at him and he'd shout back, and they'd wonder why on earth this ever even started, because now it would never be finished.
It was vicious cycle of hatred and pain and what might, to some, have seemed like passion. But to them it was simply power. The power to dominate, intimidate, destroy. The power to reduce an enemy, a rival, an adversary into a pathetic, moaning, sobbing wreck.
They didn't like each other. They never had and never would.
Tobias still hated her ratty hair and ratty eyes and ratty nose. He still hated her arrogance, her composure, her secrets that she'd only share with their son but never with him. And he hated – hated with a raging, bullish force – how much he needed her.
How he fed off her glances like they were water - clogging his throat, trying to pull him under with every greedy sip he took. How he fumbled and caressed every last kiss from her, even if the last were mere scrapes of her chapped, pale lips. How he constantly struggled to figure out what it was about him – why him? – that made her so violently set on staying, set on waiting here until every last breath of life had been dragged from the both of them.
No, he didn't like Eileen Prince. He hated her. He loved her.
At some point, they became the same.
I have never written these two before. I have no idea what I think of them or what anyone else does. This was honestly just me letting the angsty side of my brain go crazy. You're welcome to tell me what you thought of it.