I don't work today and there is absolutely nothing to do, so I thought I would just post a short story I wrote because I have nothing interesting to say right now. It's called Catachresis.
There I sat. Huddled in a wet, mouldy corner with nothing left but time. Time to waste until my imminent death, however untimely it may have seemed. I had lost all dignity, pride, a respect for others, and most importantly, respect for myself. My clothes were torn and dirty, and I carried the unpleasant smell that came from sleeping in the rat-infested corners of the metro. I couldn't remember the last time I took a shower, let a lone had some clean drinking water. I was starving, my last meal had consisted of a half eaten doughnut and a few stale peanuts I managed to scavenge from one of the garbage bins. But none of that mattered now. I rested my head back against the cold concrete wall and sighed. I wasn't sure if I was ready to die, but I was certain that the stench of rat feces and human waste was utterly repulsive and that if this was how the rest of my life was to be lived, then I was already dead. I slowly got to my feet and turned towards the tracks. I kept asking myself if I was doing the right thing. That if I had done one thing different in my life, I would be somewhere else with clean clothes and water and a will to live. As I made my way across the metro I closed my eyes and went through all the things that had happened in my life.
I was born and raised in a small town in Devon called Teignmouth. My father was a dockworker at the local port and my mother worked in a small craft store. I didn't have any brothers or sisters but a cousin of mine lived just up the river in Newton Abbot. Her name was Claire; she had shoulder length brown hair with deep brown eyes and a smile that never seemed to leave her face. She was three years older than me and we did everything together. She was like the older sister I never had and we were rarely apart. My father, on the other hand, I tried my best to avoid. He was an alcoholic and frequently took out his aggressive behaviour on my mother. I was too young and too scared to do anything about it so I would helplessly stay away and spend my time with Claire. Unfortunately I couldn't stay away forever. When I was eight, my father began sexually assaulting me. At first he would just fondle me, but it progressively became more constant, involved, and in some ways violent. I was still terrified of him, and that's what kept my mouth shut. I always expected my mother knew about it but she was scared of him too. By the time I turned thirteen, he was full out raping me. I turned to Claire for an escape, and I got a temporary one in the form of liquor and pot. It eased the pain but only for a while, the scars were already too deep. When Claire turned 18 she moved to London. I was crushed that my one and only true friend was leaving me.
Almost a year had past when one night I came home to find my father with a bottle in one hand and a crowbar in the other, standing over a body. It was my mother, she had a hole the size of a fist in the side of her head and a pool of blood and brains had oozed out on the floor around her. Even though I was horrified at the sight, I wasn't surprised. I had felt for a while that it was only a matter of time before something terrible happened to her. I called the police then ran. I kept running until my legs gave out on me. I never once looked back at my home, my street, or even the town; I just ran for my life. I needed to turn the page and start a new chapter in my life, and leaving Teignmouth was the only solution. I new exactly where I was going, there was no other choice really. I was headed for London.
Claire was staying in a shoddy little apartment in probably the worst part of London. The first thing I noticed when I arrived at her place was how different she was to when she was younger. She was no longer a young innocent girl from down the road; she was a grown woman who was living her life, albeit as a drug-addicted stripper. She would often do rails right in front of me and after some time I became desensitized towards it. She seemed to be fine and really enjoyed it so I decided to join in. The drugs were bad and I had horrible nightmares on them, but they kept me close to her, perhaps too close. A few weeks after my first lines, Claire and I were at a local club, getting wasted and high like we did most nights, but this night would prove to be different. We arrived back at our apartment just after two and collapsed on the couch. We were beyond fucked up at this point and didn't have a care in the world. Claire got up, cut up a couple lines, we did them, and then we fucked. Ever since I had hit puberty she made me horny and I finally satisfied the need. Months passed and we indulged more and more into narcotics and sex. It was dirty, it was wrong, but it felt good. One morning I was awoken by Claire throwing her guts up in the bathroom. At first I dismissed it as just from the night before, then it hit me. She was pregnant. We were scared, we were worried, and most of all, we were unprepared. We both pledged to stop the drug use and focus on saving our earnings to support a child. We worked so hard and saved every last penny, we took every precaution and sobered up for this child. And then it happened. Coming home alone from a friends one night, Claire was grabbed off the street and dragged into a dark alley where she was tied down, raped, and slashed across the throat. The two most important things in my life had been ripped away from me in an instant. I immediately went back on drugs to try and numb the pain but it only made things worse. I realized how cruel people and God could be, and lost all faith in them. I didn't give a shit about anyone or anything. I had nothing left, and began the slow descent down the spiral.
I opened my eyes just as a train blew past and headed down the tunnel. I stopped and looked around me at the dark cavernous surroundings of the metro station and thought it was fitting for my death. I took several more steps until I reached the edge of the platform, then looked down at the tracks, my final resting place. I again closed my eyes and raised my arms in the air as if I were being crucified. I could hear the train approaching in the distance and numerous people talking to me, but I paid no attention to them. I could hear the train getting closer and closer until its arrival was announced over the speakers, that was my queue. I jumped. It felt like I was in the air forever, like I was flying. As soon as I hit the tracks, the train hit.
I woke up confused and sweating. After a few moments I realized it was just a bad dream. I had been having the same dream over the past two weeks since my eighth birthday but I didn't understand it. I was too afraid to tell my parents of the things I saw. I decided it would be best to keep quiet for now and try and get some sleep. As I rested my head on my pillow, my bedroom door slowly opened. I sat back up in my bed to see my father standing in the door way with, as usual, a bottle in his hand. I didn't dare say a word, I just watched as he slowly walked in. His shadow cast over me and it felt suffocating. He then closed the door behind him, and everything went dark.
Posted by mongo190
at 2:25 PM PST
