Richard Stimac
She Shall Surely Die
The children of St. Mary Magdalen, possessed by the first warm day after Easter, danced dizzying circles on the black top, rutted their heels into the turf of the sports fields, and swung, arm over arm, across the monkey bars. The teachers watched with indifference and apprehension. The bodies of children disquiet the souls of adults.
Angel was the new girl. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Tall. Slender. Athletic. Breast buds. Even at fourteen, everyone knew that she would be a stunning woman. Parents cast side glances to each other. Mothers would say, “She’ll be trouble.” Fathers turned their eyes away.
This day, recess began simple enough. A boy or girl here or there retreated like a monk with a book to a picnic table or bench. A few boys congregated against the chain-link fence, as if they were inmates concocting an escape. A group of girls huddled on the swings and began a catechism of make-up and clothes and who was friends with whom. Other children grouped into impromptu sports. Kickball. Tag. Foot races. Angel ran with the boys.
The race was a simple dash, not even fifty yards, from a telephone pole to the softball diamond backstop. A boy who ran slowly always volunteered to act as judge. He would stand at the finish line, raise his arm, and give the ready-set-go commands. Most races had clear winners. A few were close. Seldom any controversy.
Today, though, the stakes felt higher, as if this were the beginning of a pagan spring fertility festival designed to release the pent-up desires of winter. Race after race, winner after winner, loser after loser, the boys wore themselves out. The girls, except for Angel, watched with a mix of devotion and boredom.
Finally, Angel stepped to the starting line. The noise of the playground settled into a collectively held breath. Even one or two of the adults raised their eyes to see better. Three boys, average runners, slid beside her. Someone yelled, “Winner goes on to the next race until everyone’s run.” A general murmur affirmed this rule.
By three steps, Angel won this first heat. Same the next. A full body length the third. And so on, until only the most athletic boys were left for the last race. The judge raised his hand, “Ready. Set.” One of the boys ran. The crowd gasped. But in a moment, Angel was after him and beat him by a step. He argued, but the judge held his ground: Angel won.
The teachers began herding the kids towards the breezeway door. The bell rang.
The rumors began on the way into school.
Who was the first? No one could say. The last boy Angel beat, the proudest? Maybe him, though he had an erotic admiration for the girl who outran him. Maybe one of his hangers on. Or even one of the outcast boys who realized that a mumbled phrase could make him into the founder of a myth. Maybe it was one of the girls.
By the time the kids settled into their desks, nearly the entire class knew, all except a few of the most ostracized, and Angel, who sat next to the pencil sharpener. Still flush from the run, her cheeks glowed like a Renaissance putto.
A boy raised his hand for permission to sharpen his pencil. As he passed Angel, his leg bumped her desk. She looked up. He mouthed the word. A few girls giggled. Angel looked towards them. One of them used her finger to spell the word in the air. Angel returned to her work. Soon, the day was done.
A neighbor of the school planted daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths beneath the budding apple tree at the corner of the playground. Angel passed this tree on her walk home.
Two boys waited under the tree. Two more followed. At least three, maybe five, approached over the grass. A group of girls behind them.
One of the boys under the apple tree stepped onto the sidewalk. Angel tried to step around him but he stepped in front of her. She sidestepped. He followed. After a third time, he said it. Angel stood stunned.
As if according to a reset rite, the children descended on Angel. Girls held her legs and arms. Boys pulled up her jumper to expose the shorts beneath. As if detached from bodies, hands pinched her butt, her thighs, her back, her face, her arms, her breasts. Maybe someone slide a finger under her shorts.
A cacophony of calls from hundreds of swallows perched in a honkey locust muted their voices.
Then it was over.
Covered in dirt, and bruises, and blood, Angel stumbled home.
The next day, Sr. Maria Goretti, the principal, spoke over the intercom for ten minutes after the pledges to the flag and to the cross. She talked in such roundabout ways that even the adults struggled to get her point. She spoke of the sinful nature of the flesh, our own temptations, and how we tempt others, and the affirming love of our Virgin Mother. Alone in her office, she fingered rosary beads with one hand, and with the other, the loin-clothed Jesus crucified on the cross.
Angels’ parents met with Father, first in the school, but the yelling was so loud that Father took them to the rectory. Angel returned on the third, with a few bruises and cuts still visible. Though all the boys admitted later that they lied, the girls still hated her for the rest of the school year.
Richard Stimac
Richard Stimac has a full-length book of poetry Bricolage (Spartan Press), a forthcoming poetry chapbook Of Water and of Stone (Moonstone) and published over thirty poems in Burningword, Clackamas, december, The Examined Life Journal, Faultline, Havik (Third Place 2021 Poetry Contest), Michigan Quarterly Review, Mikrokosmos (Second Place 2022 Poetry Contest; A.E. Stallings, judge), New Plains Review, NOVUS, Penumbra, Salmon Creek Journal, Talon Review, and Wraparound South. He published flash fiction in BarBar (2023 BarBe nominee), The Blue Mountain Review, Book of Matches, Bridge Eight, Bright Flash, Drunk Monkeys, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Good Life Review, Half and One, New Feathers, Paperbark, Prometheus Dreaming, Proud to Be (SEMO Press), On the Run, Scribble, Talon Review, The Typescript, The Wild Word, Your Impossible Voice, and “Transitions Sydney Hammond Memorial Short Story Anthology” (Hawkeye Press).