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Prompt #1: Monster/Demon
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Memoriam
By AbsentAngel
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Lucy doesn't know how to feel when she finds out her father has died. She doesn't cry – not at first – and when the tears do come it is more out of guilt and self loathing than grief.
She is parentless now, but things don't feel different from before. When her mother died her whole world had shifted. She felt the loss everyday as a child and cried enough to have filled bath tubs. Even now, more than a decade later, there is a keen ache beneath her breast that serves as a memorial to her mother's memory.
With her father's passing there is no bone deep ache, no tears.
There is a mixture of emotions, some typical and others not so much. She regrets that she didn't have more time with him; is sad that she won't be able to see him again. There is a little hollow ache in her chest when she looks at the birthday gifts still wrapped neatly in their glimmering, festive paper. Her father's death feels like a lost opportunity – a train that could have went somewhere special but she just missed the boarding time.
When she thinks of him her memories are painful instead of fond. She remembers him as cold hard edges, ruined rice balls, and hurtful words. Growing up he was the father that existed but wasn't there – an imposing figure of discipline and authority but no familial warmth. She tries to remember the handful of happy moments she has shared with him, tries to reason with herself, but the happy times are too few and the hurt he has caused too deep. She needs more – more love, more smiles, more Father – to balance the scales.
She knows she won't get any of it.
For them, for their relationship, time has run out. She is left with only with scars of childhood and the dusting of happy times, and it just isn't fair. None of it is fair. She wants to love her father, wants to miss him and hold his memory close to her heart. She wants to think of him and feel the same fond ache that she feels when she writes letters to her mother, but she doesn't. She can't.
So she cries. Not because she is sad or lost. Not because she will miss him or regret the lost opportunity of what could have been. She cries because, as much as she doesn't want to, she remembers more of the monster than the man.
And nothing she does can ever change that.
AN: I wasn't even going to do this prompt but then this idea came to me at 1am last night and my bladder (aka baby) woke my up a 6am this morning so what the hell, why not? Apologies for any resulting sloppiness.