Teary-eyed #3: Dead battery

[freevistas]

Story: Without Homeland
Colors: Teary-eyed #3: Dead battery
Word Count: 500
Rating: T
Notes: Content warning: animal death
I interpreted this prompt a little loosely...
Without Homeland takes places in New London, Connecticut in the 1910s and 1920s. More information and fics can be found at my journal.

After it happened, Karol spent the rest of the day reciting rosaries. He clicked the beads between his fingers as he pushed his cart up Bradley Street, onto Main Street, and finally back down Bank Street to Mr. Jaronczyk’s print shop. The cart was no lighter than it had been when he’d left that morning, full of dozens of copies of the bootleg pulp novels and prayer books Karol and Mr. Jaronczyk churned out, and which Karol hardly ever managed to sell.

Karol spent the bulk of the day praying, but the words of the prayers hardly registered in his mind or his heart as he said them; they just passed through his lips like breath, involuntary and unacknowledged.

But praying was just what he did in moments like this, when his mind felt like a magic lantern flashing images of his worst memories and his worst fears across the inside of his skull. The simple act of repeating those familiar words had always calmed him down, helped him feel like there was blood flowing in his veins again instead of electrical currents. He knew that if he repeated the prayers long enough, his whispered words would grow louder than the voice in his head screaming Run! Hide!

But today, even after countless Hail Marys, he still wanted to run. Not to some hiding spot, the kind of nook or cranny where he used to hide from the schoolboys–or the teachers, or his father–back in Września.

He wanted to run to Alba.

He wanted to tell her what he’d seen: the horse struggling to pull a cart over the hardened slush coating Bradley Street. The jitney cab skidding on the ice as it turned the corner. The horse rearing up, its eyes wide in mute terror, its back feet scrambling on the frozen pavement before its legs gave out from under it. The man in the cart tumbling to the ground and springing to his feet in a flurry of Polish curses.

Karol wanted to tell Alba that he’d tried to help–tried to lift the horse to its feet, tried to sooth the cart-driver’s sorrow and rage as they watched the animal’s implacable suffering.

He wanted to tell Alba that he hadn’t looked away when the police officer finally shot the horse, that he’d borne witness to that beautiful creature’s suffering until the last.

But he couldn’t. Both he and Alba still had hours to go until their shifts were over; and even then, how could Karol just show up at the Fairchilds’ door, his cheeks marked with the tracks of half-frozen tears, and ask if he could talk to one of their servants? And even then–would Alba want to see him? To see him like this? And over an animal, no less? For all the time they’d spent together working on her paper in recent weeks, he still hardly knew her.

No–he’d stick to the rosary. He’d pray to the Virgin until she felt that he deserved her comfort.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, poor Karol! <3 This is very well done, and despite the foreground of the sad story, you also have a lot of little historical details in there.

[freevistas]

Thank you! I actually started to do some research about the kind of batteries used in the 1910s, but it was a little over my head, so I took the prompt in a slightly different direction. :)

[bookblather]

Oh, this is heartbreaking. :(

For the record, we strongly encourage loose and strange interpretations of prompts. That's half the fun.

[freevistas]

Good to know!
And yes, I've had this scene in my head for a while after I came across a similar story from the local newspaper sometime in the winter of 1916. So sad!!

[kay_brooke]

What a great character introduction! The details woven through really well done.

[freevistas]

Thank you :))