Free Broken & Damaged Love by T.L. Clark

terrified where this conversation was going.
    No-one must know. Nobody must ever know, she thought.
    Her eyes had grown wide with fear, and her body was coiling to flee. But Frank took a subtle sideways shuffle away from her, and reached into his bag.
    “Here’s mine. It’s not really what I had hoped, but you can see it anyway,” he offered apologetically.
    His calm demeanour, and lack of his own self confidence made Tina pause.
    She peeked around her cascading fringe. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Frank reach into his portfolio and slowly pull out a dark picture.
    He had drawn a whole army of fearsome goblins, all of whom were brandishing weapons. It was drawn in wax pastels, but in dark reds and blacks.
    The goblins faces alone were pale, but twisted and smeared with blood. Tina wasn’t sure who their enemy was, but she didn’t think she’d like to be them.
    They really were a fearsome lot. She looked into each of their faces and saw hatred and rage in their snarling mouths.
    There were several wounded warriors, but they were being trodden over by the rest of the hoard in their rush to battle.
    As she looked deeper she saw body parts strewn around too. It was a scene worthy of Vlad the Impaler himself.
    Tina dragged her eyes away from the picture and into her friend’s gentle face. Could he really have drawn such a nightmare? How could he even imagine this pain?
    This torment that seemed to express her own angst. And she suddenly realised she did want to fight.
    She wanted to do battle with her own nightmares. She just wasn’t sure how. How could she fight a man locked in prison?
    “Sorry. I told you it wasn’t that good,” Frank’s words yanked her away from her inner monologue.
    She blinked at him a moment.
    “Sorry to bring you back to Earth, space cadet. You alright?” he asked.
    But Tina could only nod blankly at him, her mouth slightly parted. She shook herself back to reality.
    “It’s really good. Sorry. I was just wondering…I mean…how did you…? It’s so dark!” she finally managed to blurt out.
    “I told you; dark clouds,” he said as if that explained everything.
    Finding a little confidence, Tina reached into her own bag and pulled out her pad, and bashfully revealed her own picture.
    It felt like a childish daydream now. Her fairy almost mocked her ludicrous notion of fear. But she heard a gasp next to her.
    “Wow,” Frank exclaimed. “Now, that’s way more scary.”
    “Don’t. You don’t have to placate me. Please. You won.”
    “Are you kidding me? Mine’s a scene of war. But this? This is a beautiful place of serenity, where you feel safe. It should be nirvana, but here on this peaceful path, just out of sight so you don’t see it until it’s too late is this dark patch of woods, and out jumps this guy. You’d be caught completely off guard, and would be completely at his mercy, unable to fight back.
    “My guys know they’re there to fight, but your fairy is in mortal peril. It is the destruction of the pure in a moment. Tina, it’s brilliant.”
    But as he looked up he saw tears streaming down Tina’s cheeks.
    “Tina, what’s wrong?”
    “You…you saw all that in there?”
    “Uh huh.”
    “I didn’t mean…it’s not supposed... you’re not supposed to see.”
    She snatched her picture back, nearly ripping it, and ran away. Once more Tina found herself sobbing her heart out in a girls toilets.
    But this time there was no Mrs Strauss to help her come out again.
    The ‘end of lunch’ bell sounded, and she knew she had to pull herself together.
    Tina drew some deep breaths, which were jagged at first. She pried open the cubicle door and checked to make sure she was alone, and once she was sure the coast was clear she slid over to the sink to splash her face with cold water.
    She looked at the red rimmed eyed reflection and shook her head, and let her hair fall back down into her face.
    She looked at the ground as she slowly made her way out of her sulk