Pandora's Box
an excerpt

“ ‘Tell us a story- a true one.’ She beseeched with the wide dark eyes of one who knows how attractive they are and wants to seduce the answer out of everyone they feel the need to ask for the truth. ‘We all wa- would be very grateful if you could tell us a story—the story about Edith.’

“An ember of fear rekindled in my heart and I pondered for a split second how to best answer her… request is too kindly a word for it, is it not? I opened my mouth, thinking so furiously that none of the cogs of thought seemed to grind against each other and work at the necessary speed.

“ ‘I was not there to witness her fall and so I can not tell you that story- the one which you wish to know. But come, I have others which she taught me a while ago ones which I am sure that you would find appealing if not captivating..?’

“But they would have none of it and so we sat there in silence for the rest of the lunch hour, bored beyond belief. More than anything I wanted to go over to the others- my friends who were sitting in a huddle a little apart from the rest and glancing over at me as often as I glanced at them, but I remembered what Edith had said and so sat almost motionless apart from my eyes in the centre of the group of little ladies, feeling more alone than if I had been with the smallest group in the miserable yard.