Nine 50-word drabbles about Effy Stonem. Enjoy!

Effy sees daylight dance against the wall, from where she sits, in the bed motionless.

The light fans and flickers and she stares at it wordlessly, from lack of something else to do. Her hands lie quietly against her sides, pale on paler sheets, harmless. She doesn't look at them.

She's Elizabeth in the park, Elizabeth in the house and so entirely, perfectly Elizabeth that sometimes it's like seeing herself move from a distance. Sometimes things are pushing against her chest like they want to get out. But they're the bad things and she's free of those now.

(isn't she?)

Elizabeth smiles, and things are right again.

Somehow, somewhere there was a little girl who didn't talk, but liked to take pills – already. She was a lovely stranger, and then she started talking, and got everyone wrapped around her dainty finger.

Elizabeth smiles, and the little girl stays silent forever.

There was a boy named Cook, and they did all the stupid things together.

They were that good at destroying themselves – and so they did. They lay and lied and loved, in secret. They fucked with their lids shut.

Close your eyes. Tighter.

There was never a book named Cook.

There was never an accident, blood on the street and terror running wild.

Car lights are flashing. If death takes her she won't be that scared again, never again. Car lights and a bus and a thousand things snarling in her head.

Elizabeth shatters, and Effy screams, screams, screams.

(No.)

Flashes.

There was a boy named Freddie and it was always about her breaking his heart. So mysterious, so seductive –

(There's nothing inside. Nothing inside.)

…and he took hers. Empty space within her ribs – that's more space for the voices.

She calls for him, at night.

(Too late, little girl.)

Once she had friends, a brother and one name.

Everybody loved her, so she liked to think. Everything was about Effy Stonem, like it had with Tony. Pretty, clever, shrewd – they knew how to make the world submit.

She thought she knew.

Thought she could play, and never be played.

Effy played.

With hearts, with pills and her body. Hide-and-seek and Russian roulette. She dealt the cards with daring smiles, her heart racing.

She played, and had the scars to show for it. Playing's never harmless, she knew it from the start.

(she was a little girl, begging for trouble.)

Flashes in white bedrooms, peaceful gardens, mess beyond measure in every eye she doesn't meet.

(was it always going to end this way? When did that happen?)

Effy stares at the wall, wordless.

She's pale and thin as the scars on her wrist, and one day, they're going to fade.