Charlie remembered when he was five and was running through the yard shrieking in delight. He had just completely destroyed his mother’s garden. The garden she explicitly told him to stay very far away from. Then there was that incident when he was twelve and he was told to carry his sister down the street to his grandparents house and they were both to stay there and not leave.

Instead he went dropped his sister off and told his grandparents that his parents gave him permission to go with friends to the river. Sensations tingled on his backside from the memory of the whipping he received from his father when his parents found out what he had done.

He was always doing things like that; lying and getting into mischief. Sometimes he wasn’t even up to anything. Sometimes he just didn’t want to wash the wares when he was told or go straight to practice. Sometimes he would take a detour for no reason.

It wasn’t that he detested taking orders. He wanted to do right, really he did. It was Simon. Simon was always the one telling him to disobey. His voice was incessant inside his head.

“Disobey.” He said.

“They are wrong.” He said.

“Why should you listen to them.”

Simon was a rebel. Simon hated instruction. And Simon controlled Charlie.

It was never clear when or how Simon’s control came to be but Charlie could scarce remember a day without Simon’s voice in his head.

………………………………………………………………

“Mr. Goodridge!” The prosecutor waved his hand in front my face. I snapped alert. “Yes Mr Bartholomew. I was her house that night.”

” Don’t tell him you idiot!”

“I have to!”

“You have to what Mr. Goodridge?” The puzzled look on everyone’s face made me remember that they couldn’t hear him. I don’t know why but Simon only spoke to me.

“I have to explain,” the lie came naturally, ” I was at her house that night, but….”

“But, what?”

I fumbled about, looking nervously at the audience. Mr Bartholomew wore a black three piece suit like all the other lawyers, hell even I wore a black suit. There was a lady to the back of the courtroom in a striking red dress and white jacket. She was beautiful. Not in a magazine cover beauty kind of way but beautiful…no intriguing, captivating, mysterious kind of way. There were Susan’s parents and her brother sitting just behind the prosecutors bench. Four other people watched. I didn’t know who they were. The jury, five women and three men, sat apart, trying to judge my innocence. And then there was my parents. My father with his intense eyes looking hard at me and my mother who looked nervous and on the verge of tears. They didn’t believe I was innocent. Everyone here to judge me.

I glanced over them, completely uninterested, except for the woman in the red dress. As much as I wanted to not be interested, and it really isn’t the best time, I was curious. Who is she? What would she taste like? How can I have…

“Mr Goodridge. You were at her house but?”

Damn! I forgot I needed a lie.

“Tell them but you just went to get back your ring.”

“But I just went to get my ring back. I was there for maybe 10 minutes. But when I left she was alive.”

…… stay tuned for the continuation. This originated from a #dailyprompt for #disobey and now it may become a serial blog/short storey.

#creativewritinglife

<a href="https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/disobey/">Disobey</a>