Ms. Mrs. Winifred Henry, Adinas Henry
The light and the dark shadows danced in grotesque shapes on the freshly painted green and cream walls, at times, reaching out, in mythical movements, towards the well baked off-white of the ceiling. A loud ticking alarm clock, from its place of importance on the mantle-piece, disturbed the silence of the room, acting like a hypnotist’s metronome on the man sleeping in the deep old fashioned arm chair. Singed hair tumbled boyishly about his once handsome face. The slightest movement he made brought sounds of moaning from swollen lips. Flashing firelight revealed the cause of the pain. Blisters that hung in bunches’ like grapes, almost the size of walnuts, decorated his shoulder and wove themselves right down one side of his body. I slowly opened the door so as not to disturb my father and tip-toed my way across towards the wreckage of human flesh slumped on the chair. I was a child of seven with large curls of hair that ran down to my shoulders now sparkling gold in the bright glow of the flickering firelight. I had large blue eyes that held the fathoms of the ages in them; such was the wisdom bestowed upon me. Looking at my father’s exposed burnt raw flesh, tears welling up in my eyes, bending down I planted a kiss on his forehead. Picking up my rag doll from the chair that cradled him, I left the room. Halfway along the narrow hallway a loud knocking on the door startled me. “Mummy, is that you?” I yelled. “Yes dear, hurry and let me in.” Balancing on the tips of my toes, I reached up to the door knob and turned it. A woman entered carrying a small frail child. She went into the kitchen and laid him down on the old couch tucking a blanket around him. On entering the hall again, I called out to my elder sister Milly - she appeared, sleepy-eyed from the back bedroom, looking older than her nine years. Her long almost snow white hair had been cut very short. Our cousins from next door had played at curling it round sticks of wood soaked in kerosene bought for a farth
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