Okay, this is totally not my style, but it's something I remember writing two months ago when I was in a writers group. The idea was to think of everything disturbing in your life and contrast it with the most disturbing thing that your life could witness and then write a short story about the consequences in narrative form. I naturally look down on my work, and hate this piece like most of my others, but hey, others liked it... and I don't see why.
In my childhood years my Mother would read me fairy tales and sing me lullaby's. Her gentle kiss could heal any hurt or pain or dissolve any ill feelings I had for the world in those days. A finger touched to her lips would silence my complaints and make me obey. A piece of candy or an ice cream cone never failed to silence my bitter cries.
I looked up to my mother, and loved her in every way. I wanted to grow up to be just like her, and be granted the patience that she possessed. She never neglected me, and she would always tell me to never give up. I promised her I wouldn't.
As life progressed and I morphed into a teenager, I took to morbid fantasies and sick games my mother would never approve of. Her sweet voice meant nothing to my closed ears, and I seldom heard what she would say to me. She could read my face without me breathing a word, and would silently fold her lips into a thin, tight line. I could sense her disappointment in me, her only child, but she never said anything.
In the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother faded from my life in the same way the winter snow melts in the sun. When they came to take her body away, I didn't say anything. I stood in the doorway watching, but not watching, with no emotion playing on my blank face. I did not attend her wake nor her funeral, and I didn't regret not attending. I wandered around town and hung around our house that day, fearing to enter in case her ghost was haunting the place. I doubted that she was really gone, for I could feel her presence around me and at any moment I was ready for her to call for me in words that I wouldn't hear.
Three days passed. It was then that the reality that my mother was dead came to me. In a confused way, I was happy, but inside I felt a mixture of anger and sadness that dominated my morality in the lonely parts of the days. I would tell anyone who tried to console me that I'm alright; but inside I would torture myself for not saying a final goodbye. In a vain attempt to free myself from the thoughts and feelings, I took to hanging out on the streets.
The streets taught me to swear. From then on, I could never speak to a soul without swearing before and after every word. I hated myself for it, and the only way I could express my hatred for it was to keep on swearing. I never considered those I met on the streets my friends. In a way, we were friends, and in another we were enemies. We shared an understanding of each other, hating each other, but at the same time loving each other in a sick way. We staked out invisible territories, and confronted one another when the boundaries were crossed. We were trapped in a box that we climbed inside of and couldn't find the way out.
Time meant nothing to me, and love was a game. The world was a hard, cruel place, and I was determined without a cause to be the same way. Nothing mattered to me, and even though I wanted my life to end as soon as it could, I couldn't imagine death being real.
I broke my promise.
I must stop writing now, because my tears are blocking my vision. I wish I had never gone down the path my mother silently warned me about, but I did. I sit here writing this in my cell, only three days after being diagnosed with a mental illness. No more curses will these lips utter. No more drink this throat will swallow. No more breath these lungs will take. And no more life this man will live. I lay this pad aside as the story of my life and stretch myself beside it to wait for the hands of death.
