Friday Flash: The Whites
Eli couldn't remember what had made him suspect his mother was insane, but now, as she dried the fake tears on his sister's cheeks, he was too angry to care. "She's not really upset," he muttered, hands stuffed into his armpits.
"What exactly did you say to her?"
"Nothing. I was only joking."
"He said the Whites will get me," Lil said tremulously. "He said they'll come and take me away!"
"Oh, Eli…"
His mother's disappointment made him look away from her brown eyes.
"They won't take you Lil," he heard her coo. "Nothing will get you if you stay in the garden and come inside when the sun goes down. Take no notice of Eli."
"Did the Whites take Dadda?"
"No, stupid," Eli answered, hearing words choked and stuck in his Mom's throat. "It was the Sickness that took Dadda. And we won't get it, cos he never touched us once he got it, remember?"
She nodded, wiry brown curls bouncing in front of her eyes. "Okay."
She wandered out, sniffing and dragging a grubby doll behind her that watched him with button eyes. He dug a sticky nugget out of his ear, rolled it between thumb and forefinger as he watched his mother rake her hands through her hair. "Sorry Mom," he said. "She was winding me up."
"You're the man of the house now, start acting like it!"
He balled his hands into fists, squishing the sticky lump into his palm. "I'm not like Dad. I want to fight the Whites! Why do we have to stay scared all the time? I don't want to be stuck here for the rest of my life!"
"Eli!" His mother's hands were gripping his arms. "You stop that talk right now! There's no way to change the way things are. You're young, you feel like you can take on the world, but you just can't, okay? I need you here, I need you to pull the water out of the well, and keep this house standing, and keep an eye on Lil too. I can't do it all by myself!"
"But maybe there's some place else we can live, some place where the taps work and where there's more food and-"
"That's enough!" she yelled. "You don't know how lucky you are to have what you do. Now go and get Lil off that damn swing and make sure she doesn't leave her doll outside again. It's Lockdown in twenty minutes, I've still got the tomatoes to pick and I need two pails of water drawn up by then, okay?"
He did what she asked, but all the time he was doing the chores that were once his father's, one question kept coming back. What if the Whites weren't at bad as his Mom said? He'd never seen one. What if she made stuff up to keep them all close, what if she'd tricked Dad into staying by telling him the Whites would get him too? He was tired of living like a mouse. He was almost as tall as Dad was when he died. He was taller than his mother. And as much as Lil wound him up, he wanted her to have more of a life than he'd had.
Lockdown came and went, along with the rituals his mother insisted on. First they walked the garden perimeter and checked the high fence, barricaded gates and razor wire were intact and secure. Then they retreated into the tiny house to lock all the doors and windows. Lil trailed after them as his mother went to each in turn, testing and reporting "locked" which he acknowledged with a "check" that Lil echoed, clutching her dolly tightly. Then sealing the blackout curtains, pressing the edges smooth against the Velcro, and the second round of checks before his mother would let them eat.
Later, he lay awake, nursing the bitter anger brewed by that question about the Whites. His mother was asleep in the other bed beneath the window, the one that used to be his, curled around Lil who had never slept a night through without crawling into her mother's arms.
He'd been tempted to break the rules and look outside after Lockdown, but he'd never had the guts to disobey before. Silently, he got out of bed and crept to the room next door, filled with jars of preserved food. He stepped past them lightly so they didn't chink.
At the blackout curtain, he slowly edged his fingernail between the two strips of Velcro until he had worked the lower corner loose. He lifted the flap, crouching to peer through it, enthralled by the pale sliver of moonlight shining onto the windowsill. His eyes, already accustomed to the dark, made out the garden, the fence and its razor wire easily.
Then he saw something – a person! Then he picked out another, then another, just past the razor wire, all pale as the moon.
The Whites.
He peered at them, the monstrous villains of his father's cautionary tales, the stuff of all his childhood nightmares. The Whites will get you if you go out there, his Dad had said once when he'd wanted to go outside instead of using the chamber pot. They were real!
As he stared, more came into view, milling around slowly, aimlessly, something awful about the way their jaws hung slack and none of them spoke, or even looked at each other.
Until one started to twist his head towards him.
He slapped the curtain down, pressing the Velcro closed, feeling a sudden, terrible urge to pee. He strained his ears, listening for any rattles at the gate or tugs at the razor wire, but there was nothing. Eventually, he crept back to the bedroom. This time he slipped into his mother's bed, curling around her and Lil, shivering.
"Sorry Mom," he whispered. He had never loved her more.
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P.S. If you liked this, you'll love From Dark Places; an anthology of 25 dark short stories.
