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Word for Word: Tongue-lashing
I’m in a writers’ group that meets on Zoom, though before the pandemic we met in person. Every week, we do a writing prompt: someone gives a page number, and our organizer picks a word from a huge dictionary. We write for five minutes. In this example, the word is: tongue-lashing.
Arachne wasn’t done castigating me for… something she apparently believed she could bully me into believing I did. I wasn’t done going into speechless shock in response to her false accusations. Amidst her latest tongue-lashing, she snapped, “I still haven’t forgiven you for lying about me to your brother.”
I knit my brow and gripped the steering wheel tighter. My heart hammered, but even in that moment, I knew she was projecting her dishonesty.
What was she so furious about? Over a week ago, she grabbed my smartphone and read my private text messages between my brother and me. I had the audacity to confide in him about Arachne’s latest shock and awe tirade — five hours of bizarre, psychotic insults and false accusations. For her this was normal behavior, but she still succeeded in rendering me too stunned to form words or thoughts.
I was accustomed to Arachne messing with my phone without my permission, but reading my text messages was a new boundary violation. In hindsight, I suppose it was a natural progression from taking my phone and…