A mutiny in small parts by Sophie Purchase

My first, great crime took place in my grandmother’s living room; all swirling patterns and light thrown through lace curtains like the scatter of a disco ball, it gave the place a certain drama which suited me; cut.

The two of us had been left to our own devices, her waxy smile and pink lips, stagnant and smooth like the surface of a lake; a thick rope of plastic hair from her crown; wafts of cigarette smoke through the open kitchen door, I took my chance and reached for my mother’s sewing box; cut.

Little girls sit nicely, they don’t fidget or whine, they keep their clothes clean, they play mummy and coo over baby dolls, gently rocking them back and forth, blue trapdoor eyes flicking open, closed, open, closed; cut.

We were always too different, I think, me: stubborn, scrapped, dirt under my nails, her: pristine and compliant, ready to be styled and posed, never complaining about the prodding and the hold still and the coarse, preening fingers; cut.

I didn’t feel guilty, but as she watched me from below, her chest sunken into the ground, I wished I could do the same; if someone had given her legs she might have run too; cut.

Yellow clippings surrounded me like a circle of salt, the solution was in the reflection of the scissor’s blade: two short, brown pigtails nestled at my ear lobes, two ripe figs ready to be freed; cut, cut.

A butchered blonde with a blank smile, clumps of fine brown hair resting on each of her shoulders; a new coolness on the back of my neck and the swing of a door brought with it a certain calm, I surveyed my work safe in the knowledge they’d never know a thing; cut.

Sophie Purchase writes flash and short stories from her bed in Edinburgh. She studied MA Contemporary Art Theory at Edinburgh College of Art and BA Fine Art at Norwich University of the Arts.