Welcome Back! I'm so glad FFN has fixed their various notifications and email glitches. Huge thanks to everyone to dropped by anyway to read and review last week's little piece, Addiction. You all make my weekends. :)
This week's "scrap" is a very short segment, written from a prompt by rumpelstiltskinned over on Tumblr: Headcanon that Erik's habit of clinging to the hem of Christine's dress stems from his childhood - he would do the same thing with his mother, begging her for a little bit of affection. This was the response her idea inspired. I hope you like it! If you haven't visited her page here on FFN and read her stories, you should!
As always, please leave a comment. It encourages the author to leave another piece the next time around!
~R
Silk
2017
The small boy lay hidden beneath the dining room table. For an hour or more he had watched the peaceful creep of a square of sunlight move across the floor, mesmerized by how the jeweled colors of the old Aubusson carpet changed as the light touched it. The room was warm, silent and peaceful, with the aromas of furniture polish and newly-cleaned silver heavy in the still air. He sniffed appreciatively, for those smells meant visitors, and visitors meant baking, treats in the old stone kitchen, treats that if he were skillful and quick, might be pilfered by small and nimble fingers.
She would not willingly spare him one, but he had learned to steal at an early age.
The rustle of silk alerted him, the heavy swish of petticoats and overskirt. She stood by the sideboard, arranging a spray of bright summer flowers, long dark hair lying in smooth curls against her neck. From his hiding place under the table he could see her smile, a smile that was never meant for him.
She was so beautiful, dressed for the visitors he would not be allowed to meet. In the gilded mirror he watched her beloved face, curved red lips and heavy-lidded dark eyes, high cheekbones and graceful hands.
She would not allow him to touch her, no, but perhaps he could, if he was very careful, touch her dress. It was the color of the roses that climbed the arbor outside in the garden he could see only from the shadowed window in the front room, a place he had never been allowed to explore.
Tentatively, the small boy crept forward and lifted the hem of her dress. It was soft, so soft. Wonderingly he tugged the silk upwards and rubbed it against his cheek, wondering if this was what a kiss felt like.
And she whirled, feeling the pull of the expensive material, whirled on the clinging, cowering small child with his hateful, dirty hands soiling her new gown, rubbing it against his nightmarish face near that gaping hole where a nose should have been. One resounding slap knocked him sprawling to the floor and away from her.
"Haven't I told you to never…never come near me!"
Leaving him sobbing, she swept from the room.