Nineteen years before Now.

She tugged at the reigns, but the horse ignored her. She tugged, again, harder, but the huge clambering beast shook its mighty head and continued on its way. She was trying to get Pebbles into the inner track as the riding instructor had instructed her to, but the horse wouldn’t listen to her commands and instead followed Misty, Lana’s horse, around the outer track.

“Ms Stark!” Lucy called out, “Pebbles won’t listen to me!”

Ms Stark was three horses ahead, on foot, walking alongside Jessabelle, Clare’s horse, nattering away with the other rider. Lucy’s father had always said it was admirable and remarkable that the school let someone as young as Ms Stark, a nineteen-year-old, run classes like these alone and unsupervised. He said it showed they had real faith in their staff and their students. More like they are cheap, Lucy thought. Putting a kid in charge was a lot less expensive than bringing out an experienced instructor.

She tried to redirect Pebbles again, unsuccessfully. “Ms Stark!” Lucy cried out again, “I think Pebbles is too big for me! I’m not strong enough to guide him.”

Ms Stark glanced over her shoulder. “Just give him a big tug. Stop being a wimp and show him whose boss,” she said before returning to her gossip session with Clare. Lucy frowned, annoyed by Ms Stark’s absent-minded tutoring. Class twelve was on the track today, and Ms Stark had spent forty minutes of the last fifty besides Clare. It was as if the rest of the class were left to fend for themselves. Useless cow, Lucy thought.

She looked down at the back of her horse’s head and gripped the reigns tightly. “I told you, get over there,” she said, giving the resigns a hard, sharp pull. Pebbles bucked and neighed, and Lucy fell. She struck the floor with a heavy thud. Something snapped. There was laughing at first, but the laughter turned to screaming.

As pain shot up through her arm, Lucy began screaming too.

“She will be fine,” the doctor said to her father.

“You’re sure?” her father asked back, uncharacteristically nervous.

“Yes,” the doctor replied with a nod of the head and one of those platitudes style smiles the NHS staff were all so good at. “The bone is set; it will heal without issue. She just needs to let it heal; in a few months, she won’t even know it has been broken.”

“But there is a scar?” his father questioned the young doctor. He nodded in reply.

“Will it be ugly?” Lucy asked.

The doctor looked down at her, startled. His smooth, round face went from the fake comforting expression he had so clearly practised to one of absolute terror. Not so well practiced in answering the questions of children, it seemed. The doctor looked back at her father for support, and he drew out a long “Ehm” sound before saying, “No, not at all; after a bit, you won’t even be able to see it.”

It’s going to be ugly, Lucy thought.

Months later, sitting in the family living room, Lucy stared at the long raised red channel that ran from her bicep through the inside of her elbow and a third of the way down her forearm. She frowned, pursed her lips together and tried to suppress the accumulating tears at the back of her eyes.

“Frankenstein’s Bride”, she mumbled.

That is what they had called her, the other girls at school. She felt a heat of hatred billed in her chest at first as she tried to focus on her anger, but it simmered and died, extinguished by a flood of upset. The dam burst, and the tears flooded from her.

Twenty minutes later, when she had composed herself, she thought back on that riding school, that shitty nineteen-year-old that should have been watching her, the oversized horse they had plonked her on without any real thought and bristled. Her body shook with her outrage, and she knew something needed to be done.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

She hopped off the living room settee and went to her school bag, pulling out a notebook and a set of pencils. For the next fifteen minutes, she scrawled her displeasure, her disappointment and her disgust onto the page, forming it into a letter addressed to her riding school. When she was finished, she pulled the page free of her notebook and examined it.

Lucy frowned again.

The words were good, but it was a child’s handwriting, and she knew no one took children seriously. She screwed the paper into a ball and threw it across the room. Watching it bounce off the wall across from her, she sat back onto the settee, crossing her arms and huffing. She was ten years old, nothing she did now would make the letter look any better than it was now, and that infuriated her.

She wasn’t going to be beaten by this, though. She was dammed certain of that. She needed to find a way around it. She couldn’t turn to her parents, and she knew they would never let her send the letter. Perhaps her grandparents or a teacher at school would write it out for her? But they would probably tell her mom and dad, so that was also a no-go. She didn’t really know any other adults.

She needed to find a way for her letter to look like it was written by an adult without her needing one to write it for her.

As she pondered her dilemma, her eyes scanned the living room and came to fall upon the bulky, dust-covered family computer that sat in the corner of the living room. All typed letters look the same, she thought and smiled to herself. They are more professional, too. That is what they taught her in school, in the little IT lab. She could type the letter and address it from her mom and dad, and no one would ever know it had been her.

She got up and walked over to the computer.

She examined it.

The boxy monitor was covered in a fine layer of dust, as was the keyboard, which was partially buried under discarded post. She reached to pick up the letters and move them, but she hesitated as her finger brushed their surface. The computer can hurt you, she thought. But could it really? She had always been afraid of this computer, ever since that day years ago. She had been so certain the computer would hurt Jack and her, but she never found out why. She had used other computers. They used computers in school. There was one in every classroom now and they had a whole IT lab full of them.

Yet this one, this one that was in her house, where her family was, had terrified her. But why? How was it any different than the others? She didn’t know, but as she thought about the issue, her heart began to race a little faster, her throat began to tighten, and her breathing became a little laboured. She felt panic setting into her bones.

She stepped back from the menacing thing.

“Frankenstein’s bride, Frankenstein’s bride,” she heard the teasing circle back in her mind. That is it, she thought; it doesn’t matter if this thing can hurt me; I’m not letting them get away with this. She took a deep, heavy breath, once, twice, three times, and then all at once brushed the letter from the keyboard and turned on the computer.

“LUCY!” her father bellowed from downstairs. “LUCY, YOU GET DOWN HERE NOW!”

She leapt off her bed, where she had been napping, and rushed downstair, heart beating. What had she done? Why was her father so mad? He never shouted at her like that. She found her parents in the kitchen, and her father’s face was red with rage. Her mother also looked annoyed, but she was preoccupied with the thick, multi-paged letter they had clearly just opened.

“What’s going on?” Lucy asked.

“You sent a letter to your riding school,” her father stated. It wasn’t a question, it was an accusation, and Lucy suddenly remembered the letter she had written months ago. She knew there was no point in lying. Clearly, the school had figured out it was her and dobbed her into her parents. She nodded.

“And you signed our names on that letter?” her father asked this time, but she knew he knew the answer already. She nodded again.

“That is fraudulent!” her father bellowed. “You cannot sign other people’s names on letters. It’s criminal!”

Criminal, she thought. I didn’t think it was criminal. Oh god, am I going to go to prison? Will they take me away? Are the police coming? Why was I so stupid? It’s the computer; this how it was gonna get me all along. Oh god, oh god, oh god. Her heart raced, and she began to hyperventilate.

“Don’t try that with me, young lady!” her father bellowed, “you're not getting out of trouble by panicking; you are grounded, you hear me, grounded! For a month.” She felt the tears begin to well up.

“George,” her mother addressed her father just as he was about to begin a torrent of telling off.

“What?” he snapped, misdirecting his fury. Lucy’s mother handed him the letter.

“Read what it says just here,” she said, pointing to a specific paragraph. Her father took the letter and read it. His father read it, and his face turned from fury to bewilderment. Lucy noted the change and felt her heart begin to slow and regain control of her breathing.

“What does it say?” she asked. Neither parent answered, so she repeated her question.

Her mother looked at her, a little smugness in her smile, and said, “They have offered you £3,000 in a full and total settlement of any claims.” Lucy smiled back.

Her father was speechless.