Free New Welsh Short Stories by Author: QuarkXPress

hurts as much as if the girl had just straightforwardly punched her. It is instead a complex violence that is nearly impossible to react to. It is delivered in the guise of a joke, but the message is menace.
    She grimaces with pain and her eyes water.
    Don’t cry, whatever you do, don’t cry.
    Weakly she smiles, then grimaces again, this time comically, exaggerating her expression in the hope they will appreciate her humour. This is a tactic that usually works, but not now, not with this girl and her silent, sneering sidekick.
    Instead they point right at her, index fingers dangerously close to poking out an eye and laugh jeeringly, artificially. WHA HA HA!
    Then, as quickly as they had arrived they are gone, and whatever that was is over.
    At around two in the afternoon it grows unnaturally dark, nearly as black as night. The teacher has switched on the overhead lights, and attempts to keep their attention on the lesson, but beyond the big plate - glass window the distant hills and far - off steelworks are the dramatic backdrop to a spectacular performance by the weather. Grey - black clouds fill the sky and the air is charged with electricity. The children can barely keep their eyes from the window; the teacher raps the wooden board - duster sharply on her desk, creating a cloud of chalk dust, but their attention is snagged by a greater primordial force.
    â€˜Never mind the storm, we have work to do. Now, look at your books. What is the meaning of…’
    A flash of lightning draws a collective gasp from the children, loud enough to cut the teacher off in mid - sentence. Seconds later, distantly, there is the rumble of thunder.
    â€˜Woah!’ one boy cries and abandons his chair to run to the window, and then nearly all of the children are by the window staring outside, their eyes wide with wonder. Lightning zigzags down again and again on the black shrouded hills; magnesium - white veins that burn onto the retina, while the tin - tray thunderclaps grow louder and more insistent.
    Unlike the others, the dead girl stays in her seat. She can see just as well from there as from the scrum of elbows and sharp knees and bony heads that are ducking and dancing and roaring by the window. She is no less moved than the others, no more obedient than they, but she has withdrawn into herself. She is a pair of green eyes looking out at the turning world as the leaf of her body is taken there, or battered by that, or torn by this.
    Seconds pass and finally she no longer wants to remain in her seat; she wants to belong, to be like the other children, to break the rules like them, to press her face against the cold glass by the window and feel the thrum in her cheekbones as the sound waves batter and shake it.
    â€˜Children!’ the teacher is saying. ‘Calm down at once!’
    The dead girl pushes back her chair. She wears a beatific smile as she stands and begins to take the few steps which will bring her to the window. She seems to glide forward, focusing her gaze on the distant hills. She does not see the teacher bearing down on her. She hears the tirade of words coming from the teacher’s mouth, but they are as generalised as the thunder.
    â€˜I will not have this! I will not tolerate such insubordination in my classroom. Sit down! Sit down at once! YOU!’
    The teacher catches her arm, wrenching it sideways, forcing her to turn. The older woman’s face up close is terrifying, her expression almost insane with fury.
    â€˜How dare you!’ she roars, then slaps the dead girl’s left cheek. ‘Stop grinning child!’ she adds, but the girl’s smile has already gone and her face is blank once more.
    She closes her eyes.
    â€˜She is dead,’ the girl standing at her head says, and the voices travel around her prone body, echoes of what has been, of what is to come. Then they are lifting her, higher and higher, to waist level, then shoulder level, then above their heads, to the