Will Willa Wilford? | A Short Story

     Willa Wilford will encounter an older duo of girls around the age of 14, but it already happened. Currently they stand in between her and her house which is set in a suburban neighborhood in the afterschool hours. Their eyes lunge into Willa’s like an Olympic athlete’s body over a hurtle. It seems they’re thick. Very thick. But who knows? They may have had milk in their cereal. WHOLE milk. 

    “Looky’ what we have here, a rodent.” The skinny one says. However, this statement confused Willa because she was of average height for an 11-year-old girl.

  “Yeah,” the other said, “a little, short maggot who’s asking to be beat.”

She is overweight, Willa thought as she made a non-verbal analysis. Meaning poor and can only afford junk food. Skinny-too skinny. Starved by parents, left alone many hours a day. Finds comfort by the only one who’ll befriend her. Insecure, both. 

Willa subtly glanced upwards and made eye contact with the delinquents for fractions of a second each, then began to walk to the left through the grass of Mr. Who’s front lawn and past the scoundrels to her house. That was how she imagined it. 

  “Look the hungry rodent’s trying to get home to Momma,” one of them said, uncaring to figure out which as they blocked her path. Then Skinny forcibly grabbed Willa’s shoulders. She did not even look up. This angered Large to see her friend try to input fear into the weak and failing; so, she walked behind Willa and picked up her legs. The other put 2 and 2 together and lifted their victim into the air. Skinny had Willa’s arms strapped to her hands and the head laid behind her as the legs were lifted by Large. It resembled parallel pillars holding a staff to the sky. She didn’t struggle or try to free himself. 

They want power. To feel it. To dominate. Human nature. To an extreme. Lift that is weaker in strength. Not logical to feel power. Stop them or not? If done, they lose. If not, they lose. Sadness.

It was as though people did not notice or did not desire to be noticed that they saw two fiendish girls carrying a younger one down the street. Was it because they saw no struggle? Rather yet because they “did not want to cause a problem”?  Or was it because they chose to hide from their own insecurities? 

Willa did notice Ms. What eye the trio from her Garden lawn, she did nothing. As they trekked across the neighborhood this would keep happening. She did not know where they were going to take him, only that she may die. 

It had been around 10 minutes when a bold pencil dropped from Willa’s lingering backpack, she wanted it back. So, with ease, she clamped her legs and bashed Large’s head, freeing them. Then with legs to solid ground, she chocked Skinny for a mere second when she let go. Then she stepped back to retrieve her pencil. Now they were mad, Willa noticed. Really mad. Not angrier than they were, because Willa knew they were never mad to begin with. Now, they were. She had caused this, and she would fix it. 

“This girl thinks she can take us like the little shit she is, man’a, man’a, I’ll take em’.” she was passionately angry. Her voice splashed when she spoke. Almost as if she would cry, if allowed. Willa felt sadder for them. Willa knew she was loved, and that they were not. And that is the greater travesty.

They approached once more; they were prepared to beat her. Willa knew this. They want to feel powerful to compensate. To take that is weaker, such as their situations did to them. Poverty and abuse. Abuse that is caused by poverty. Not excusable. Willa was going to let them bruise her without a fight, without attempt to prevent, she would do. For when she goes home this day she’ll have someone to mend her wounds and tell her that she is special and that those girls are just scum of earth. She’ll live. But if she leaves, which she is perfectly capable of doing, they’ll have nothing to mend them. Not their homes or the satisfaction of control, which Willa Wilford would willingly give. For a day, an hour, or a minute, Skinny and Large will have some form of pleasure, and that is the greatest gift.

It was now sun’s fall and she was purple and black in many spaces. She limped as she came upon her house where her caretaker would see her and immediately begin the healing process. Her eye on the left was shut, but she did not make water. Her backpack may as well be made of mesh, because she had very little things left inside, yet there was no water. Still, she was a mere few feet from the house, and on that moment, was when the muscle strain from the limp gave in and she fell on the concrete. A few later she was at the door, and she pushed.

 Nothing was what she was greeted to, as usual.