Young Writers Society

I slouch in my chair, gripping the itchy blue tablecloth as if I were drowning and it was my lifeline. Maybe I am drowning. Drowning in my memories, drowning in my sorrow.

Drowning in my hate.

They are oblivious of course, the half-wits. If I were literally drowning my body would be lifeless, blue and cold and they’d still be going on with their dreary routine.

He reads the newspaper, a small sweaty man. His chair is far from the table, yet his gut is pressed tightly against the table edge, bulging over and threatening to knock over his mug of coffee. His wife stands at the stove flipping pancakes. Her large figure contained in a ridiculously tight floral dress. She smiles at me and sets a plate of pancakes before me. Her red lipstick has smeared onto her teeth.

“Call me Mum,” she says. As if I could. She’s not my mother, he’s not my father. I sleep in this house, in sheets that are too clean. I wake up surrounded by photo frames and pictures that I’m not in. I sit down to a breakfast made by an imposter.

I don’t say anything. I haven’t said a word to anyone since my mum died. Well, no, since she was murdered. I clench the table cloth tighter as a wave of anxiety throws its weight upon me. I can hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears like a heavy bass. I throw the plate of pancakes across the table and it crashes down onto the linoleum floor. Maple syrup oozes away from the mess like blood.

Like Mum’s blood, I think, bolting out of the kitchen up the stairs and into the bathroom. The bathroom is ridiculously clean, too. It reeks of bleach as if the imposter is constantly scrubbing away any traces of the previous kids. The previous emergencies and lost causes.

“How can you just go on like nothing’s happened?” My reflection asks me as I gaze into the mirror. She looks just like me. The same hazel eyes, the same cropped mousy brown hair and freckled features. Though she seems infinitely different. In her eyes there’s a strange blackness, an abyss that threatens to suck me in.

“What else can I do? I’m just a kid,” I reply in a weak voice.

“Our mum was murdered and you don’t feel angry? You don’t want revenge?”

“Of course I do, but what am I supposed to do?”

“Look in the top drawer,” my reflection commands me. I pull open the first drawer that sat beneath the bathroom counter and saw my foster father’s old-school shaving razor. It was little more than a blade with a small silver handle. “Now you have a weapon. Next you need the victim.”

“Who?” I ask, I feel my eyes widen but as I look at my reflection, her eyes are narrowed and calculating.

“You know who killed our mother, you saw it.” Behind my eyes I see flashes. My mum’s fearful face, her mouth an O of surprise. I see her blood spilling across the kitchen floor, like the syrup from the pancakes. Her scream whistling in my ears like the wail of a kettle. And the face of her killer.

“No,” I gasp. The razor slips from my hand and clatters to the floor. “It can’t be…”

“Are you angry?” My reflection demands. “Are you still angry?”

“Yes,” I whisper, blinking back my tears.

“Do you want revenge?”

“Yes.”

“Then pick up the blade.” I obey. “Kill them, kill our mother’s murderer.”

“This is for Mum,” I whisper, as I drag the razor across my wrists, digging in deep and screaming at the pain. “Die, you fucking murderer.”