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She smoothed the wrinkles down on her black Hermès slacks and shirt before turning the crystal hotel door knob.
“You bring nothing good into this world,” her mother said, baring her teeth. “You just corrupt and destroy everything. You’re a catalyst, a demonic catalyst. You’re only fit to annihilate. One day you’ll understand the destructive nature of your power. You’ll see the damage you’ll bring to those around you when it’s too late. All those people who tell us you’re amazing, they’ll figure it out. You’ve fooled them for now, but they’ll learn.”
The mother slammed the door as she walked out with that last statement. The tears flowed from the girl’s face as she looked at the door. Her breathing sped up as her stomach roiled, sending her sprinting to the toilet. Her hands were shaking, clammy, as she collapsed to the floor, chills running through her body as she looked up at the ceiling. The orange and bergamot scents of the soaps mixed with the stark, white porcelain tile floor were the only anchors she could focus on to stop herself from throwing up again. Deep in her gut, at the core of her being, there was only one thought she could grasp: she’s right.
“I don’t want to be evil,” she said, whimpering to herself. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“But you aren’t alone, pretty girl,” a voice said with a throaty laugh.”
This scene is one of my favorite scenes in The Girl, not just because of where it is in the novel, but how it came about in my constructing it. The excerpt presented here is part of a longer chapter, but it was, in fact, the first chapter I ever wrote on day one of NaNoWriMo 2019. I don’t remember what I was doing when I started. I only knew that I sat down at the keyboard, and this image I had in my head spurred me on – this picture of a young Pacific Islander girl crying alone in a hotel bathroom after a fight with her family. She would be angst, caught up in her emotions of loneliness, fear, and vulnerability at never feeling good enough. And just what if someone or something actually answered her back?
I remember crying as a teenager many times, thinking I was alone in the world with my burdens and wishing for someone to rescue me. But, it was only as I got older that I realized how much the thought of a ‘hero’ arriving just in time could be terrifying. After all, how does anyone ever know if the person they’re meeting on the street is who they say they are? This passage stayed with me every day that passed NaNoWriMo, and by the end of the month, it was the section that gave me enough courage to show it to a friend who was already a self-published author.
“Wow,” he said, texting me less than an hour after receiving my email. “This is incredible? Where did this come from? What happens next?”
I can’t believe I finally get to reply after all these years, “You can actually find out on December 6, 2022 – when my debut novel, The Girl, is released.”
The parents knew it had been a mistake to have a girl. At birth, the girl’s long, elegant fingers wriggled and grasped forward, motioning to strangle the very air from her mother’s lungs. As she grew older, she grew more like her father, whose ancestors would dream of those soon to die. She walked and talked in her sleep, and her parents warded themselves, telling the girl that she was evil, unlovable, their burden to bear only until her eighteenth birthday released them.
The average person on the streets of Los Angeles would look at the girl and see a young woman with dark chocolate eyes, curly long hair, and tanned skin of her Filipina heritage. Her teachers praised her for her scholarly achievements and extracurricular activities, from academic decathlon to cheer.
The girl knew she was different, especially as she grew to accept that the other children’s parents didn’t despise them. Her parents whispered about their pact as odd and disturbing occurrences continued to happen around her. The girl thought being an evil demon should require the skies to bleed, the ground to tremble, an animal sacrifice to seal the bargain, or at least cause some general mayhem. Did other demons work so hard to find friends, do well on their homework, and protect their spoiled younger brother?
The demon was patient. It could afford to wait, to remind the girl when she was hurt that power was hers to take. She needed only embrace it. It could wait. The girl’s parents were doing much of its work already.
About the Author:Victory Witherkeigh is a female Filipino author originally from Los Angeles, CA, currently living in the Las Vegas area. Victory was a finalist for Wingless Dreamer’s 2020 Overcoming Fear Short Story award and a 2021 winner of the Two Sisters Writing and Publishing Short Story Contest.
She has print publications in the horror anthologies Supernatural Drabbles of Dread through Macabre Ladies Publishing, Bodies Full of Burning through Sliced Up Press, and In Filth It Shall Be Found through OutCast Press.
Her first novel, set to debut in Spring 2024 with Cinnabar Moth Publishing, has been a finalist for Killer Nashville’s 2020 Claymore Award, a 2020 Cinnamon Press Literature Award Honoree, and long-listed in the 2021 Voyage YA Book Pitch Contest.
Buy the book at Amazon.
