Servant

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I always considered myself an ugly thing in the beginning. Ugly and a bit of a bumbling idiot. I would knock into things every now and then, and my mistress, Josephine would sneer at me and sigh in exasperation. She'd then shove me into the arms of some maid and never look at me again until she needed my services. I did try to be better, but there was only so much I could do. The worst times were when she brought me out in the presence of her companions. Naturally once her companions saw me for the first time the next time they came for a visit they had their own versions of me. My mistress was not one not to be shown up of course, and she constantly offered me to them, instructing them to feel my skin and admire all of the my lovely patterns. They all soon grew bored of that, my mistress included. I and the others were no longer special, now that everyone else had one of me.

When Josephine passed, I was given to her daughter, Hannah. As a child Hannah was always fleeting, loving one thing for a day and then tossing it to the side and loving another. When I was given to her she regarded me with indifference and the next day I was sent to a physician. My strong and polished bones were torn from my skin, and replaced with cold, metal rods. My skin was stretched out, pummeled and abused until the physician finally decided that I had had enough and returned me to my mistress. Upon laying eyes on my new closed and silent demeanor, Hannah smiled a wide smile and put me on a pedestal in a room with many others like me. I stayed in that room on that pedestal for many years and I'm quite sure everyone forgot about me. Until she came.

She was lovely. She squealed with delight when she saw me and held me to her bosom, laughing and petting my skin gently. She placed me in a narrow box with soft velvet lining and the next thing I knew I was in a bin by a light blue colored door. At first I thought I was to be thrown away. But it turns out that my kind were no longer kept in closets or on pedestals. We were placed in bins, and when we were needed our mistresses--Now masters made use of us as well--took us out and used us as we should have been. I adored my life with my new mistress, Grace was her name. She treated me right, she apologized when I bumped into a doorway or a tree branch, and it was then that I realized that in the past I had never been the problem, it was my mistresses who did not take proper care of me. Grace was okay though, I did not get upset when she accidentally steered me into a tree. I liked Grace, I loved her and I never wanted to stop serving her. But alas, all good things must come to and end. I stayed with Grace until she was old and brittle, but unlike me, when he bones stopped working properly, she could not get them replaced. So she passed and I in turn, passed on to her son, Benjamin.

Benjamin was nice enough, he kept me in good condition, giving me to the physician when I began to lag. But he did not make use of me the way he should have. He had inherited Grace's house, and instead of placing me in the bin by the light blue door, he laid me on her bed and never moved me. Years passed and Benjamin had children, two boys, Ethan and Eric and a little girl named Grace, after her grandmother, but everyone called her Gracie. When I first laid eyes on the daughter, I grew excited. Ethan and Eric were well mannered as well, but they were boys and well boys tended to be brutish and I didn't want to be placed in their care. But Gracie! Gracie looked so much like her grandmother, granted she didn't enter the room much, but I just new she would be a perfect mistress for me.

I was mistaken.

Gracie did not care for me at all. In fact she hated me. When Benjamin presented me to her on the day that she finally reached the proper age of a womanhood, she threw a fit. She screamed and screamed, and flung me against a wall when Benjamin handed me to her. I had to visit the physician again after that, as one of my bones broke upon impact. When I returned, Benjamin once again handed me to Gracie, speaking to her in a hushed yet stern tone, and she took me with eyes filled with rage. She brought me to school the next day, and the majority of her peers laughed at us, and Gracie tried to throw me into the trash but a teacher found me and reunited us. Gracie began to take her anger out on me after that. Often times she would ram me into a wall just for the fun of it all. Or she would toss me from a window, and watch as I floated to the ground, and chase my descent down with a rock because I wasn't falling fast enough. Finally, after she brought me along on a trip with her friends, she launched me out the window of the car on the way back, turning her back, and winding up the window.

So here I lay, broken, and mangled.

Oh Grace, how I miss you.