The Five bitches of Louthwell- a parody of proposals & exams

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She dragged her hand along the jagged rock, each small indentation and crack rippling over her worn calloused hands. She didn't care about the tough surface of the grainy rock as it pulled at her skin begging to draw blood, it screamed its indignations at her, it's worn and challenged brick work, the struggle of an entire nation to uphold its standards that so easily toppled and spilt over. This rock had once been a way point, an indication that a traveller was on the right path to the next village over from Louthwell, having once stood tall and grand, the towns name chiselled into it proudly by a local many centuries ago. And yet now all that was left of the name was the odd l or t scattered on the ground, amidst the many other rocks that lined the paths, the rubble of a once peaceful small town now diminished to rubble. Most of the main buildings and structures of the town had been spared from the ugly truth of war, still standing somewhat, although most buildings had at least a window or part of the old cobblestone walls that made up the majority of homes in the rural area of Louthwell, crumbling. This lead to the streets being filled with rubble, making the town look ghostly and abandoned during the war when we were forced to stay inside at day to avoid the bombings that became so common in the bigger cities of London and Birmingham. Mae liked to walk this path, a small woodland expansion, with oak trees looming above like an archway, the path dotted with bright flowers amongst the desolate waste of old town signs and abandoned farm barns, shrapnel and the odd old piece of electrical equipment that had not been capable of anything useful in years. And yet despite all of this, the main pathway was almost entirely clear, with a springy moss carpet to entrance you in to exploring further into the woods. She often walked this path to think, to indulge herself into the luxury of imagination, to travel to a distant land, a land where man could get along and help one another, and not result to war as soon as anything minorly inconvenienced them, although it had been a popular rumour that the USA had been itching to use their nuclear arms and to show off their strength. And yet somehow we had lost, from what I heard a spy from the enemy infiltrated the American nuclear arms program, had taken the codes and reprogramed them to self detonate in a weeks time, they never stood a chance.  

After the war had been bitterly lost, the government of the united kingdom had been taken over by one Jacob Lutherman, who had been volunteered by the Russians to lead the country into their values and ideologies. Lutherman had done this in an interesting way to say the least. A terrifying and tyrannical leader as he was, he made sure to enforce his new found power over the humiliated and destroyed British people. One of his first policies after having mostly built up the country was a new law, a law that seemed entirely preposterous and unnecessary, with many rumours spiralling around it. This law had declared that all citizens under the age of eighteen would have an arranged marriage set out for their eighteenth birthday, of whom they would be told of on their seventeenth birthday, as to have a year in advance before marriage.  it was a requirement that you marry the person assigned to you, no matter your sexuality or previous relationships, and if you failed to do so, you would be shot on the spot. This had left many feeling outraged, but with a country so distraught and damaged, it was all they could do but obey. When Mae had first heard this news she had been disgusted and terrified at her new fate, and yet a year later she had grown to accept that it was inevitable she would have to go through with the marriage, and she waited in anticipation for her seventeenth birthday, to reveal who she would be spending the rest of her life with. Her friends had varying reactions, some hating the very idea of the marriage, others moving on and looking forward to their new future. Mae was one of the latter, Kelly was one of the prior. Kelly Watts, a somewhat small girl with a slender figure and the appetite of a constantly hungry lion- but she wasn't hungry for food. Mae had once wondered why she was friends with Kelly, an obvious whore who would sleep with any man or woman to fill her spare time, jumping from person to person, it was a miracle she had gone this long without contracting every STD known to man, and yet even then she would be able to find more. But despite how much of a whore Kelly was, she could be a very good friend, and what she lacked in empathy she made up for in helpfulness, when she wasn't being a horny bitch anyway. And then there was Elizabeth Roads, she had been impartial on the most part. A shy and depressed young girl, not much made her happy after the events of the war, and yet she had once flourished, a confident young woman with the world in her hands, now a timid mouse trapped in a cage. I am quite sure she must have had some kind of internal dilemma with the situation, but I suppose there isn't much point torturing yourself with the inevitable. 

Next was Jennifer Smith, a small tired looking girl who had been worked hard during the war, harder than the rest of the youth in the area anyway, helping her father to make ammunitions in the major factory in the next town over, her father having forced to her, as he believed it was their duty to serve our king dutifully, and you wouldn't get that making bread in the bakery with the young baker who's father had been enlisted to fight, among with many other eligible men. Women hadn't been enlisted, mostly due to sexism on the governments part, although they claimed it was so that our country could thrive from home and still hold the capabilities to reproduce.  She had reacted very negatively to the news of the new law, and you could hear her shouting and screaming at the family's small tv when it had been first aired and declared. However, she hadn't had much time to change her  mind on the matter, as two weeks later what was left of her was buried in the old church graveyard, the result of an accident in the ammunitions factory, a tragic and devastating loss for the town. 

Elizabeth had had her seventeenth birthday four months ago, learning of her future husband, a boy named Peter Brown from a small town in Wales, and had been yet again impartial, sending him the odd letter, as each couple got a letter with their partners basic information on, and getting the odd reply, but with the country de-established postage between different countries was proving a challenge. Kelly had also had her seventeenth birthday a month ago, learning that her future husband was a boy named Cameron Adams who lived two towns away from Louthwell, a small but very possible chance, and yet unlike Elizabeth she had made very little effort to contact him. After all, she hated the idea of being tied down to one person, it would be inevitable that she would cheat on him at one point or another. And that is why Mae Watts was sat in the woods of Louthwell, which were plagued by the ghosts of the town it once used to be, on that bright, sunny summer day. As you may have guessed already, tomorrow was Mae's seventeenth birthday, and she somewhat dreaded the arrival of that fateful piece of paper. The piece of paper that would tell her, her destiny, the man she would probably one day learn to love, the man she would perhaps even have children with. What would he look like? she thought as her thoughts ran away with the wind, twisting and turning into many figments of her imagination. Would he have dark brown hair or light blonde hair, would he have green eyes, or brown eyes, or maybe even dazzling bright blue eyes, would he be tall or short, would he have an accent, would he like the same things as her or would he be interested in the complete opposite things as her? Maybe whilst she enjoyed painting and reading he would enjoy breaking things and killing small animals. How she hoped she wouldn't be stuck with some psychopath, or pervert, or paedophile,  or sexist, or anything bad, she was really playing a lottery here.  

Soon she found herself drowning in her own thoughts and decided that perhaps it was time to make her way home, after all her mother would need help preparing the food for tomorrow's festivities and to control her unruly siblings, of which she had five, although the older of the five had matured greatly during the war, having to step up and help the community to fill in necessary jobs that were left abandoned after enlistment, or helping her mother to sew blankets and clothes for the soldiers. On her silent walk back to their small ruined home she wondered whether any of her siblings would have to face the same fate as her and marry against their will, she hoped not but she had a feeling deep down that they would one day follow her path. She could see it now, wearing her Sunday best as she walks through a field full of the townspeople all sat in rows on the floor, a small bouquet of wild flowers held together with old string clutched in her hands, walking towards a boy she had known for less than a year, most likely wearing a patchwork brown jacket and trousers, ready to promise her life and soul to him for the rest of eternity. Well, it certainly wasn't the white wedding she had dreamed of when she was a young girl, but the inevitable simplicity of the event seemed so beautiful. It was a good thing that her Sunday best was a flowing knee-length cream coloured dress, with off the shoulder sleeves and small lace flowers decorating the bust, she had brought it before the war and had been determined to keep even just that small part of her alive during the worst years of her life, and so was the town. And so they began to wear their best clothes on Sunday, not as a sign of prosperity and respect to the church but to motivate the town and to give them hope of better days to come far in the future.  

When Mae got back home she spent the night helping her mother, not only to be kind and to lend a hand; but also to take her mind off of the day to come and her fate in a years time. A year seemed so distant in thought but in practise was such a small time increment that the thought kept her up long into the night, staring longingly up at the distant dotted stars sparkling millions of miles away, giving her thought. She once discussed the works of Shakespeare in school, specifically Romeo and Juliet, and how the Tudors had thought that the stars above us controlled our fate, if so were they looking down on her now, planning out her days? She drifted to sleep with this thought as her boat to the dark peaceful silence of sleep.