Fanfic 100 - 084, He.
May. 21st, 2007 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolevalanTitle: Deliver Us from Evil
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Characters: Johanna, Judge Turpin
Prompt: 084, He
Word Count: 323
Rating: PG
Summary: Little pitchers, as they say...
Author's Notes: Just a short one this time.
I would not say that my father is a religious man. We go to church every week and he prays every night but religious is still not the word I would choose.
He prays without ceasing. But his prayers make me afraid.
Once, when I was much smaller, I asked him. He cannot have imagined where I heard the name, or I am sure he would have lied about it. Scared as I was, I plucked up the courage to ask, “Papa, who is Lucy?”
I still remember his precise words. He said, “Lucy was your mother, child. She is in heaven now, with the other angels.” And then he smiled. He smiled as if he hadn’t been shouting “Lucy, forgive me, forgive me,” in the most anguished tones just hours before. As if his mea culpas hadn’t been so tied to her that her name might as well have been part of the liturgy.
His blows are sometime rhythmic, like the beat of a song, sometimes as ragged and irregular as his breath can get. I have never seen him whip himself, though occasionally I have glimpsed blood on his shirt before he can replace his jacket. He thinks I know nothing. He thinks I am a child, that I am deaf and blind.
I let him think it.
Perhaps that is wrong, perhaps I should throw in my father’s face all it is that I know. Perhaps I should tell him that he has killed all love through cultivating fear. But I do not. My lips stay pressed together as surely as church doors, keeping evil out.
Because one day, shortly after my sixteenth birthday, his prayers changed. The words “what I have done” shifted and transformed into “what I long for.” “Lucy” became “Johanna.” And I realized I had never known fear until I heard my name in my father’s mouth, mixed between the long, slow lashes of a whip.
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Characters: Johanna, Judge Turpin
Prompt: 084, He
Word Count: 323
Rating: PG
Summary: Little pitchers, as they say...
Author's Notes: Just a short one this time.
I would not say that my father is a religious man. We go to church every week and he prays every night but religious is still not the word I would choose.
He prays without ceasing. But his prayers make me afraid.
Once, when I was much smaller, I asked him. He cannot have imagined where I heard the name, or I am sure he would have lied about it. Scared as I was, I plucked up the courage to ask, “Papa, who is Lucy?”
I still remember his precise words. He said, “Lucy was your mother, child. She is in heaven now, with the other angels.” And then he smiled. He smiled as if he hadn’t been shouting “Lucy, forgive me, forgive me,” in the most anguished tones just hours before. As if his mea culpas hadn’t been so tied to her that her name might as well have been part of the liturgy.
His blows are sometime rhythmic, like the beat of a song, sometimes as ragged and irregular as his breath can get. I have never seen him whip himself, though occasionally I have glimpsed blood on his shirt before he can replace his jacket. He thinks I know nothing. He thinks I am a child, that I am deaf and blind.
I let him think it.
Perhaps that is wrong, perhaps I should throw in my father’s face all it is that I know. Perhaps I should tell him that he has killed all love through cultivating fear. But I do not. My lips stay pressed together as surely as church doors, keeping evil out.
Because one day, shortly after my sixteenth birthday, his prayers changed. The words “what I have done” shifted and transformed into “what I long for.” “Lucy” became “Johanna.” And I realized I had never known fear until I heard my name in my father’s mouth, mixed between the long, slow lashes of a whip.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 10:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 11:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-22 03:43 am (UTC)