This work literally took me months to create, and this is the first time I'm sharing it with anyone. Please enjoy ripping this shit apart and telling me how much you hated this story! (I'm saying to write a critique, because I really want to know how I'm doing.)
Thx,
Jason
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"A Rose Stem"
The sound of children’s laughter rang like crystal bells at a family’s dinner table. The air was saturated with heat and sun, and a shimmering mist rose to the sky from garden hoses kids would use to paint each other. Water would stab their eyes like daggers, but they’d scream with pleasure and resume tagging their friends with two-dollar water guns in the apartment parking lot.
But it seems that their piercing laughter couldn’t reach the woman at 186; either that or she pretended not to hear. She sat on a foam sofa with her legs crossed in the dark living room, with its only window heavily veiled by a half-inch thick quilt that she bargained for years back at some yard sale. She stared at the blank TV screen at the corner of the room and lightly tapped her foot next to a black bag containing her few and only possessions. The only time she’d stop frowning is when she’d take quarter-second intervals of aggressive puffs on her cigarette butte. Then she’d occasionally lean over and take a sip of expired beer that rested on a puddle on the coffee table.
She sat to recharge her batteries, like a crocodile with its grotesque scales spread on a rock under the Floridian sun after being mocked by a family of otters, except she fed off the darkness, zoning everything out. She didn’t even react to the loud yelling from outside that floated through the front door, nor the man that had just entered from it.
The man stood in front of the woman and waited for her as she took a long inhale of smoke and sucked the fire at the end of her cigarette until it flared red like a nuke.
“Wanna tell me what happened here?” he asked, stuffing his thumbs into his pockets.
She didn’t react to the man or his question, and a long gray draft floated out of her nose and through the slits at the corners of her thin mouth like sleeping Vesuvius.
“Do I really need to tell you, Darling?” she finally responded, crossing her arms with her cigarette stub pointing out.
“Did you fight with her again?”
She tapped her cigarette and ash flaked off like dandruff. “She’s gone in her room now.”
The man sighed and crossed his arms. “Didn’t you promise that you’d try warming up to her?”
“She wouldn’t let me, Darling. You know how she is. She’s so selfish and so damn conceited. She is the most stuck-up, palest bitch I’ve ever met, and there isn’t a single teen in the entire world that can match her shrewdness.”
“It doesn’t seem that you’re puttin’ a lot of effort into this, Hera. It doesn’t look like you’re putting any God damn effort.”
“I’m putting up with shit that isn’t mine. I’m not her damn mother. What do you expect?”
“You never hear Joseph complaining about Jesus not being his son.”
She crushed her cigarette butte on a sandy ashtray and picked up the beer can. She sipped at what was left, never meeting the man’s gray eyes, just watching the smoke rise and hang in the air. “This isn’t working, Darling.”
“‘Cause you’re not trying to make this work, that’s why.”
“So this is my fault?”
“Yes it is, Hera. You’re not trying.”
“Miriam’s a conceited shrew.”
“She’s a depressed kid! You know what kind of hell she went through?”
“That’s no excuse for her to be so conceited. She is the vainest of all that is vanity.”
“Vanity of vanities. Hera, all is vanity.”
“She’s a worthless bitch.”
“What’re you talkin’ about? You didn’t show any kind of concern when she voluntarily became mute, or when her psychiatrist put her on God damn Tryptanol.”
“God damn it, why can’t you see things the way that they are? She doesn’t do nothin’. No work, no chores, no discipline. All she does is walk around like some mute ghost. Give up the damn ghost.”
“You can’t love anything outside of you’re immediately family, can you? Do you not at least sympathize the poor girl?”
“She doesn’t deserve any pity. She’s a bitch, just like her dead mother.”
The man shook his head with great disbelief. “Hera, I can’t believe you just said that.”
“What’s done is done, Darling.” She recrossed her legs and smoothed out the creases on her suede purse. “Darling, it’s done.”
He softly sighed and ran both of his hands through his rough hair. “You know, if you can’t love Miriam, I can’t love you. I’m her guardian now, and you have to accept that.”
She glared at him with a viper’s eyes. “You can’t have both of us, you know.”
He closed his eyes and scratched the bristles of his side burns. “Yeah Hera, I know.” He crossed his arms. “Get out.”
The woman stood up. With the manner of a Victorian lady, she stoutly picked her bag up and walked swiftly, directly to the door, and was gone.
The man sat down on a dining chair and massaged his temples. The place was silent. Children weren’t laughing; they must’ve fled from his banshee screams. He stood up and plodded towards the door to his niece’s room.
He knocked. “Miriam, are you there?”
Silence.
He knocked again. “May I come in?”
Nothing.
The man sighed and let himself into Miriam’s dark room. The room was painted a deep, ocean blue two weeks ago by Miriam and he, while they laughed and joked, splashing blobs of paint onto each other until Hera stomped in to ruin the moment, telling them to cut the noise out. That was the same day he gave her a rose bouquet. She squeaked with glee, promising him that she’ll cherish these forever. Everyday she’d come home from her new school to water her roses and to prune any abnormal buds that sprouted on her babes while she was away. However, this tender caring didn’t last. The terminal roses immediately lost their straight stature from neglect. Their petals shriveled, becoming brittle and delicate, falling one by one like salty tears; and the walls looked sickly gray.
The bedroom’s only windows were placed directly across from the door on the opposite wall, right in front of an ancient willow tree, blocking all the sun with its mossy tresses. The architect who built this apartment complex must’ve been mad for placing the window at such an irrational location.
But today, some beams of sunlight penetrated the willow’s heavy green curtain. The rays looked like thin ladders connecting the earth to the heavens, with glowing rungs that angels could climb and descend on it. Those ladders illuminated the dust falling in the air, and landed on the room’s occupant, who lay on her side in her bed, facing the window with her back on the door.
The man sat on the bed next to her. They didn’t say anything to each other for a long, awkward time.
After an eternity, the man cleared his throat. “I finally got that position I was hoping for. Looks like the big guy finally noticed my hard work.” He chuckled. “So how was your day?”
The girl didn’t react.
“You heard us fighting, right?” he asked.
He rubbed her back, but she didn’t respond to his warm touch.
“Come on, don’t be upset, kiddo. Don’t listen to anythin’ that Hera says. You know and I know that she’s the worthless one. Just wait a week or two, even a few days; she’ll come slitherin’ back to our front door, saying that she’s sorry for what she said. But this time, we’re just gonna close the door on her, aren’t we? No matter how tempted I might be, I won’t give in. You’ll see, Miriam. You’re gonna laugh you’re head off.”
There was still no movement from the lump under the sheets.
The man noticed that the roses he gave Miriam were all dead, except for one that was practically just a stem, with its last petal on the foot of the vase on her nightstand. The photo of a smiling woman wasn’t at its usual place on the table beside the bed of the portrayed woman’s daughter.
“You miss her, huh? I miss her too, kiddo. When your mother died, I also lost my big sister. We used to do everythin’ together when we were kids. I remember this one time when I nine; I was ridin’ my bike barefooted, but then I fell and ripped my big toenail off. I was bleedin’ all over the place and cryin’, but she was suddenly there with her red wagon to pull me and my sprayin’ toe back home. She took care of me you see, and now, I hope that I’m somehow paying her back for all the good things she’s done for me by taking care of you. I hope you understand.”
There was silence. The man looked at the willow tree outside.
“You know, I never, ever really believed in God. Never went to church, never read the Bible. But now, I really hope that your mother is truly in a better place right now. I bet she’s in heaven, lookin’ down on you and me, hopin’ that we do good. You know that your mother wants you to do your best. I don’t mean to lecture, but I really want you to really concentrate on school. She’d really like it if you can get to college. I know you just broke up with your boyfriend, who offered relief from Hera and the big move to Seattle, but you shouldn’t be thinkin’ about that kind of stuff now. Just get through high school, go to college, get a good job that pays good money, meet a good man who’ll take care of you, respect you, and love you. Buy a big house, have some kids, and live happily ever after.
He squeezed her shoulder. “That’s what I want you to have, a happy life. I know these last few months’ve been really hard on us, but let’s just get through the day. Tomorrow’ll be better, Miriam, I promise.”
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. A sudden icy chill swept through his entire body and hammered his bones and lips, dominating his soul with unimaginable horror. He threw up the covers and found Miriam with her eyes half-open and one of her contacts stuck on her lifeless cheek. Her face was an unnatural blue and cold like a glazed china doll. Her mother’s photograph and an empty bottle of antidepressants were desperately clutched in her stony, dead hands.
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In your review, please include your answers to these questions:
1. Did I do a good job foreshadowing the ending throughout the story?
2. How did the last paragraph affect you? Was it shocking? Distrubing?
