Thursday's Child

Thursday’s Child


The Excitement in the End


Mondays child is fair of face,
Tuesdays child is full of grace,
Wednesdays child is full of woe,
Thursdays child has far to go,
Fridays child is loving and giving,
Saturdays child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.


Chapter One: White Gift



The little girl knew it would be wrong. Most wouldn’t do something because it would damage their pretty white souls. Most wouldn’t do it because it would weigh down their conscious with heavy thoughts. But she was doing it because it was wrong. She would do anything to relieve herself from the colorless, dreary world in which she had been born. Nobody gave her second thought when she passed them on the street, not knowing or caring that their life may be in her hands. Nobody suspected because she only just turned nine. She wore the well painted mask of innocence and apparent seven-year-oldness like a pro. She looked very young. This trait she had acquired from her God forsaken whore of a mother, and she looked very sweet. This was something she acquired from her pedophile priest of a father.

The blood was new. Her mother did not know of it, as she never came around except when money was needed. Blackmail was the key to her mother’s survival. That’s when they were paid a visit. Her mother lived in a warehouse on the other side of the city. A lady by the name of Mrs. Sugarman kept track of her mother at the request of the girl, paid ten dollars a week out of her father’s pocket without his knowing. Father told her that she was becoming a woman now, and not to be afraid, although this was said with a look of worry upon his face, and she knew that she was different than other little girls. She was only nine--scrawny enough to be six, tall enough to be seven, although with the wits about her of a thirty year old. She was smart and knew when to keep her mouth shut. And she knew that the blood, at her time, was unnatural.

But there were things that she did not tell the sodomite, known otherwise as Father. There were those certain things that she kept to herself. Like the fact that when she had turned five and her mother had given her a pretty white mouse for a pet, it died that very same night. The things she didn’t mention were ones she knew had to be secret. She knew that she must keep quiet the happenings of the night when she had held the limp and wet mouse (for she had been trying to give it water when it decided not to move all of a sudden) in her five year old palms over the toilet-tomb, and it began to convulse. She had gasped, looked away, and heard the -plop- as she dropped the tiny mouse in. In it had gone and at the plopping sound, she had looked in once more. There, inside the white-stained-yellow toilet bowl had lay a small rodent arching its back and throwing its head about as if it had been cut apart from the inside by some unknown force. She had watched, amazed as she heard the tiny --snap- of the tiny mouse forearm, tiny jaw, tiny toes, one by one.

She had sat there on her hands and knees, nose six inches from the toilet water, eyes wide at the beautiful death before her. Tiny droplets had hit her in the face as it thrashed. She watched, unblinking as the tiny thing had each of the bones in its back broken, one by one, quickly, one after the other. She tuned her ears in for the hiss of the gasping noise escaping the tiny thing\'s lungs. She watched and listened to the squealing as the mouse withered when its teeth started to curl and bend oddly outward. She barely noticed it break until her head flew back sharply, one piece having flung out and hit the skin aside the corner of her eye. This tiny tooth has itself lodged in the skin and she can feel it if she lightly drags a finger over the scar, even though it is too small to see if you didn\'t know it was there.
With the scar forming and curiosity peaked, she moved her head back down to the toilet water and watched as the seemingly final blow was struck; she watched as the skin on the tiny thing\'s stomach and torso was violently torn apart revealing the muscle below, then the ripping sound came and revealed to her the inner workings of a mouse. Pieces of rib were stickily attached to its stomach and intestines, a gash was in its’ liver nearly severing it in two.

She had indeed never told anyone about that. Not about the sounds, or the blood, or the fact that she had reached in for it and ran outside onto the concrete stairs and down the flight to the patch of grass containing a small bush just outside of Father\'s small New York apartment. The night had been wild and the girl became entranced immediately. The air outside was heavy with moisture and pollution, the smell sweet from the lingering of cheap perfume that only prostitutes would wear. She clenched the hand free of the mouse, slightly awed by the mixture of sweat and humidity that had collected there. She had wiped the solution on her white nightgown and blinked a bit of moisture out of her eyes before looking skyward at the red-tinged moon, ringed by a red stripe.
She had not told a single soul about the fact that her skin had started to tingle when she held the furry wet rodent over the dense, usually dusty-dry ground and when she knelt down to bury the thing, the sensation had traveled all the way up her arm and was beginning to hurt. She didn’t understand it, but she set the mouse down, not realizing that her miniature hands had a quit a grip on the formerly flailing mouse and it had turned to literal mush in her hands. The insides of the poor thing stuck to her hands then eventually her night gown as she lifted it up to kneel on the ground. She ran and got the hose connected to the apartment building and turned it on, wetting the ground, making it easier to dig in. At first, the digging was slow and deliberate, but then when the adrenaline started to kick in with the realization that she may have done something naughty and she might get caught. When a few minutes had past, she was thrashing wildly into the ground, New York mud slung across her nightgown. The hole was now about the size of her doll-like head was as deep as her arm would go. She sat there, breathing slightly heavier than normal, and looked over to the pile of slop that her beautiful present once was.

The red and brown stained fur pelt was lying flush against the concrete and its insides and crushed bone and entirety was facing her. The girl reached over and picked it up, gut-and-dirt-soup filling either side of the split-mouse bowl, and tried to dust off the mud that had gathered there as liquid drained it\'s way out of any pores it could find. She held it in her hands with the utmost care and tenderness as she brought it over the hole, staring at it, and then dropping it with a new found apathy, unceremoniously in the hole. The now wet dirt soon followed back into the hole. She then wiped her hands on the concrete, leaving a trail of mud and blood and bones, and walked back up to the apartment, back through the wide-open door, and took off her once bleach white nightly before tossing it in the trash and going to bed without prayers. She never once said them afterwards.
When she had awoken the next morning, she rushed to the window but realized that she couldn\'t see the burial spot from there, so went to the closet and threw on her normal Sunday school garb and walked to church without a second thought to her mother as she knew that she never went to church and father could only take her home. She had never even looked to see the bush next to which the buried mouse was. It was wilted and brown, a far cry from the lively green and thriving carnation bush it once was.There were just some things she wanted to keep to herself. These things just never had themselves told to another person. She learned from all the things she did, never regretting, never fearing