Title: The Crackle in the Glaze
Notes: Set in the aftermath of the trial.
Beneath her bed, hidden away from view in an old walnut box lined with soft ruby red velvet, is a small ceramic figurine of a girl. It's the one remaining possession she has from her childhood, a childhood filled by a revolving door of sunken-eyed men with itchy arms and "uncles" she never even knew she had. She keeps it as a reminder, a physical anchor to the life she fought so hard to escape and the promises she made.
She learnt from an early age to put up a front, to plaster on that tough as nails exterior. It was an all too fragile buffer against the harsh reality of the world that waited for her outside the four walls of her bedroom, where people whispered behind hands with closed fingers and curtains twitched. Her painted on smile - the perfect façade - never once faltered, never once betrayed the way her stomach knotted up when people looked at her like that or how, sometimes, she would cry into her pillow at night, wishing, praying, that she would be anywhere else. Anywhere but there. She understood, on a level that far belied her young years, that life wasn't fair - at least not to her, anyway. She was judged from the minute she was born and she knew this better than anyone else; she still had the scars to prove it.
When she's alone and the doubts begin to creep back in, like shadows in the dead of night, she likes to take the figurine out and hold it in the palm of her hand, tracing the imperfections with her finger. It's chipped and worn, its exterior blemished by the crackle in the glaze, the result of years of mishandling and abuse. The similarities do not pass her by unnoticed, for she too is hollow, an empty vessel held together by skin and bones.
She used to believe she had left that life behind - the reprisals, the recriminations, the fights in the street - but she knows she hasn't really left it at all.
She's just changed the scenery.