A sparse story

I can’t breathe, the weight, I can’t breathe. The crushing weight of it all. Only twelve years old and the world has decided that the quota for pain and suffering was to be filled this evening. This rainy stormy evening devoid of clouds. Time didn’t stand still, it became a crushing weight resting, gluttonously on top of everything. Always feeding vigorously on top of apt 4.

Sounds grew louder, or was that the blood roaring in my ears. Hanging upside down from the four poster bed while my young child’s curls dragged on the ground. The noise, the incessant vocalization of unsaid truths continued to grow.

Door slamming and time resumed. I slipped under the covers and readied myself for sleep, I have school in the morning.

Standing over her bed and waiting for her eyes to open. Stale, the air tasted stale. Cigarettes and the cloying taste of unspent dreams. Silence. Deep sleep. Waiting. The embroidered curtains glowed with mocking sunlight. 

She slept. I waited. Sunlight changed to inky black. Wandering to the arena of the nightly HBO show. He slept. I waited. Night Time. Silence. Slow moving, time sat, I shut the door. Studying my reflection in the mirror the words came unbidden, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you….”

Skirts, textbooks, and pencils. Stale, the air tasted stale. Why doesn’t anyone open windows? Scratching on grey slate stone. His voice cuts through mockingly, intruding on disquiet musing. Words deride and lacerate. Childish laughter. Hunched shoulders and a smirk forms on his lips, the teacher turns. I bleed. High school is a slaughterhouse.

Legal age. Legitimate. Students lined up along the wall, childish laughter. I wander. The door closes barely muffling the din. Wandering past the wall of portrayals. Innocent wasted to a thinness, a misspent thinness. There was nothing, a void, Steel glinted. The commencement speech echoed in the background. Graduates cheered. Steel glinted. Names were called. Steel glinted. Pain, release, unyielding void. Time stilled. My name reverberated through the halls. Crimson splashed, the void began to fill. My name. Reverberated. Halls. Unsympathetic tile meets my face. An object clatters nearby. The light reaches my eyes. A date flashes. I’ve grown up. Time resumes its ravenous labor.