Hunger.

prompt picture credit to Virginia Frances Sterret. Jane Dougherty’s microfiction challenge #27 to join in or read press here link and post your story by next Thursday 22nd December.

 

Melinda often escaped to the folly, where she would wear her mothers gown, paint her delicate lips, smear her smooth cheeks with rouge and ink her brows. She would  loose her hair from its restricted braids and play makebelieve. She’d call her ghostly friends from the recess of her mind to pamper and preen; laying out scenarios thought up in a dream. But as daylight twinkled through the stained glass and threw colours in the space she knew to not be caught. Melinda would creep back into her other life before she was missed. One last twirl one last sway around the mosaic floors then as quiet as the running stream she’d lock the folly doors. 

Face scrubbedand her dress folded neatly away, Melinda with hair bound under a turban entered the kitchen as Mandeep. Where he worked tirelessly making concoctions mixing a pinch of this a pop of that. His passion for creating a feast was known far and wide as his three Michelin stars were proof . Mandeep no matter how famous he was known, or how high he climbed in his proffession he still had to hide behind a sad facade. Hoping one day that Melinda would be able to satiate this gnawing hunger to cook in the restaurant kitchens openly. He longed be seen having fun eating sumptuous food, sharing stories and no longer have to live a lie. The irony of his situation was, his religion nor his family would have any problem with his orientation, but to climb the ladder he coveted he had entered a western world of bigotry and intolerance.