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Deadly Little Orchid
Topic Started: Apr 29 2018, 07:50 AM (39 Views)
DeadlyOrchid

They say what happens on the mountain, stays on the mountain...



I reckon they're right.



We folk up here we stick to our own. We mind our own business. We take care our own.



We also has our own law.




((An older woman, with blonde hair fading mixed with grey, sits on a front porch rocking in a chair. She sips from her mason jar and is stoic and quiet for a bit before continuing))



Folks that don't live up here, they act like we ain't got the same problems they do. They think we's okay with child molestors and rapists. They thinks we's all inbred and stupid. We all might be poor, and there's a few that ain't got a lick of brains, but we's still people.



We's the people you come to when ya get lost huntin. When ya fancy gear don't work. We's the people the law comes to when someone done goes missing cause we knows the woods and the mountain. We's the one ya'll buy ya shine from and ya tax free bacco, and ya meth and ya weed.



That there is neither here nor there. No. I was born on this mountain. My daddy worked the mines as did his daddy before him. My family been on this rock for generations. Lots these folks have. Not Orchid girl though. Naw. Her daddy and momma wound up here cause he was runnin from the law. We all knew he was no good the day we met him. God rest her mama's soul she was a good woman to that man. She was a good God fearin' woman.



Me and the other gals, we prayed she never had a child. That woman would come to church on Sunday wearin makeup and glasses, or she'd be home "sick" with a headache. We's all knew the truth. He done drunk again, put his hands on her. We all tried to step in. Some dem boys even thought of just getting him good an liquered up and taking him hunting and having an accident. Course, that was about the time we found out she was with child. Ain't no God fearin man goin to put a weak woman in a delicate situation through that. Lookin back now though, I think she'd have pulled through just fine. That young girl was a lot stronger than we's all gave her credit.



It was me and Birdie, God rest her soul, who helped bring Orchid into this world. The doctor wouldn't have made it in time. Orchid was a beautiful little girl. Full head of coal black hair. Black as the shaft of a mine. Her mama was proud. We's all thought that with Orchid born, we could get her daddy out of the way. Her mama knew Orchid for bout an hour before she started the bleed. Me and Birdie, we's knew then that she wasn't going to make it. The doctor was there but, once the bleed starts, the chance of getting her to a proper hospital in time was impossible. All we all could do was help her along. She knew she was gon die. She begged me before she went to make sure Orchid was safe.




((Another few sips of tea. She seemed to be mulling over her thoughts. Her face was weathered but wise. Her rocking seemed rhythmic. She was stoic but content))



We all noticed that Orchid weren't like the other kids. She was quiet. Never cried. She seemed in her own world. As she got on a bit in age, the other kids they rejected her. Didn't seem to bother her none though. Lord did she love her dresses. She had a stuffed bunny that was her friend. Was always playing ring round the rosey with it. I reckon none of us could have known that she was touched. We all shoula expected it though, with her daddy and all.



I remember it like yesterday. We all was at the church picnic in the grove. Orchid was playing by herself, with her bunny, in the sandbox. Not a soul bothering her. Her daddy was face down drunk at home. We women we took to raising Orchid. One of the ladies of the church gave her a piece of cake. There had been a boy who was a terrible thing and was always pickin on her. He was just a few years shy older than her at the time but he was bad. He had been warned, plenty of times, more so after that there most recent event when he pushed her too far and she went after him with a plastic bat. I wished that boy woulda heeded the warnings. I knew deep down one day that girl was going to snap.



He tried to take her cake. Orchid very calmly took the fork and stabbed him in the eye. It wasn't the sight of the fork in his eye that made my skin crawl, naw, it was her laugh. Girl hadn't made a damn sound in seven years and she went and stabbed someone in the eye and suddenly started laughing. We all knew what happened in a sanitarium for kids. We just wasn't gon do that to her. She couldn't help what God and that monster of a father made her. She was born the way she was born. The townsfolk all agreed that the boy had been warned and that Orchid defended herself in what her special mind felt was the best way. The boy was sent to a special school with room and board. Turned out that the boy liked it and he did himself good. His parents are still so very proud.



Orchid had a very violent mind. We all had to watch her. As she grew on older she became angry. The other girls would mock her. Make snide comments about her face. They called her witch girl and broomhilda. Told her she should go live in the woods. Them girls knew they was playing with fire. They all was there the day that boy lost his eye. We all had made the decision that anyone who didn't heed the warnings or didn't learn from the past, well they was just not gon learn til it happened to them. An we all felt Orchid had a God given right to defend herself. Even if her defending herself meant someone died. If someone dying done got the message across then by God that was what was meant to happen.



One girl in particular was very cruel. She really took a shine to hurting Orchid. She was a pretty thing too. One Halloween, all the kids was in the hollar. It was our tradition. Whole hollar was made up for Halloween. Orchid went as a rag doll. She done made the costume herself. She was proud of it. Ya know, even them other girls who always made fun of her said how nice she looked and how well made the dress was. Not that little harpie though. She had bought her costume. She was Cinderella. Her daddy had just gotten a promotion at the mine, that he didn't deserve mind you. She thought she was hot to trot. She walked right to Orchid and laughed. Told her that her daddy was a poor, lazy drunk and that if he could keep a job maybe she wouldn't have to make her outfits.



That girls daddy was standing right across from them, on the other side of the campfire. His eyes went wide. He knew his little was in danger. We all knew it. Orchid just thrust her arms out and into the fire that girl went. Of course we got her out quickly but her hair was burned and she had be shaved. The dress was burned, some fused to the skin. Orchid just stood there, smilin. She cocked her to the side and just very quietly said, "My daddy is a drunk, but you're the ugly one now.". The whole family felt it was best if they leave the rock. Their girl needed special medical treatment after the accident anyways. We all wondered why she never killed her daddy. He was terrible to her. She was sixteen when it finally happened.



It was a bad winter. Worst one we had seen in awhile. We was all prepared up on the mountain but life's funny. There's a town on down from us and we older folk, we had a bad feelin that night. We knew somethin bad was a comin. The old witches read they bones and the front porch sages read they tea leaves and coffee grounds and we all could feel it. It was on bout 11 when it happened. They all had gas wells down there. Done came across some natural gas and the county put in some wells. Was good for all of us. We all benefitted. Orchid was sittin in my front room, bout quarter after 10, when she looked up from her bunny and her coloring book and said, "Kaboom. And then they were dead". Weren't the first time she done predicted something. We wise ones knew she had the gift. A chill went down my spine because I knew what she meant. I took her to the town hall, rang the bell, all the folks they gathered and I told em what she had said and we all done knew it meant them wells was gon explode.



Our men they got ready. Fire department, unless it was the heli, would take an hour to get here. Couple the boys got on they bikes and quads and headed down the mountain trails around the town to get help. The last one had just disappeared into the woods when we heard it. We saw flame shoot up, the boom rumbled the ground, and watched some of the fresher snow slide down towards the town. Orchid was standin right there, she closed her eyes and then opened them and said "They all dead...he killed them.". Nobody understood what on earth she was sayin! She just suddenly ran off into the woods. We was rackin our brains tryin to figure out what she was tryin to say. Turns out, her daddy was paid to blow the wells because they were hurtin the mine. Some fool down at the mine thought that if those wells blew up and we all thought they wasn't safe, that would be the end of it and the mine would be fine.



They knew just the jackass for the job too. It was easy, dirty money that he could go blow on lottery tickets, alcohol and women. He did it. He absolutely did it. One the kids found a note at the homestead to Orchid's daddy planning the whole thing. We done sent word down to the men and one of the older boys hitched a horse and went for the law. We didn't realize the law wouldn't be needed. Not til mornin. They searched those woods for her daddy and her. The company men got the wells under control, the men helped the fire from spredin til the officials showed up. Orchid and her daddy were nowhere to be found. The men, some of em, helped with cleanup, removal of the dead. You couldn't recognize most of em. It was just a matter of who all lived in the town and such. It was one of the men from the county who found her daddy.



He was strung up like a scarecrow. His throat was slit, his guts were wide open, and his eyes were gone. He had a sign around his neck with the word "murderer". They found Orchid in a cave, clinging to a singed bunny that musta belonged to one of the kids in the town. She always had the mentality of a child, but that night she was never the same. She wouldn't eat, she wouldn't talk to anyone, just clutched that burned bunny and cried. We hated him. We hated him before he died but we hated him so much more after he died. We done told the county to just take him and burn him and put him in a box on a shelf, nobody up here would claim him. Orchid went on, starving herself, deprivin herself of water, silence, it got so bad that the minister himself went to the city and claimed that mans ashes just to drive them all the way to the nearest water and dump em. He said it was the best thing. No more earthly remnants of him.



Orchid wouldn't talk to none of us. Her birthday was comin and one the boys said that maybe she needed a pet. She didn't like cats or dogs. We wasn't even sure if she would kill an animal or not. She never had before but, didn't mean she wouldn't. The boy came over, had a hamster with him. He went in and he talked to Orchid but she wouldn't say a word, then he told her he brought her a gift and told it was a hamster. He set it on the edge of the bed in the cage and waited to see if she would stir. She lifted her head and looked at it and that was it. She fell in love with it. She would talk to hamster but not to any person. I soon figured out why. She told that hamster everything about what happened. What she saw that night. A woman dead, holding her baby. Kids dead. Bodies everywhere. She said people were ugly. That they were mean, and cruel and deserved to die but them folks didn't deserve to die. That her mama would still be alive if her daddy wouldn't have tried to kill the baby.



Poor Orchid never was the same after that night. The older she got, the more ugly she saw in the world and she began to hate everything beautiful and the more violent she became. She's 21 years now and still wears her dresses and has hamsters and rats now. She still has the mind of a very evil little girl. Yet she still colors, and she still has her bunny. Her world is a very warped and twisted existance. She hates men. She hates pretty, pius women. We womenfolk here on the rock we still look after Orchid. She ours.



She can't help what God made her, or what people turned her into. She's a product of divine guidence and the awful, cruel, ugliness of this world. She just does what makes sense to her, I reckon what comes natural to her. Hurting folks makes her happy, especially if they deserve to be hurt. We all understand and see the sense in what she does.



Just, heed the warnin' cause God help ya if you don't.
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