SINKING

Evening. Sara was on her way home from work. She felt tired but above all embittered. She had had a disagreement with one of her colleagues and big words had flown between them. She had also been recalled by her boss who had guarded her for her lack of attention. “ You don’t seem to pay attention to what you’re being told. You must be more careful” He had said. And all for a job she didn’t like, that she had never liked. Yeah, why then she hadn’t left it and hadn’t looked for another one? She felt a lump of bitterness in her throat.

All of a sudden it was like in her dream that she happened to have for some time. She felt the earth sink under her feet. As in her dream, she was sinking underground.  Sara screamed: “Help! Help”

“ What is it? Do you need help?” an old woman who was walking her dog asked.

“ No, thanks. It’s okay” Sara said, embarrassed. A few more steps and she would be home. At home, her husband Aldo, drunk as usual, had beaten their son Stephan who had been suspended from school because he had been found in possession of drugs. “ This is what happens to children when they have parents who set a bad example,” Sara said sternly.

“ However you don’t have the right to beat him”  Stephan had a black eye and bruises on his face and arms. He had also his shirt torn.

“ I have the right instead! I’m his father and the boy has to go straight!” Aldo protested.

“ The lesson comes from a very nice pulpit! Not a day goes by that you don’t get drunk. What example are you for your son? Do you ever think about it?” Sara screamed.

“ What an example of a mother you are, always thinking about work. It is you who neglects your son!” Aldo exclaimed, pouring himself another glass of wine,

“ Someone will also have to think about work since you’re too busy drinking and getting drunk to be able to keep a job for more than two days!” Sara was indignant and furious.

“ Mom, don’t start arguing with Dad…you knew it is useless anyway,” Stephan said.

“ Ah, but I want to talk with you too. What is this drug story? I didn’t know I had a drug addict son. I want an explanation” Sara said, severe.

“Mom, you have nothing to worry about. I’m not a drug addict. I can explain everything to you” Stephan said with nonchalance. “ You won’t tell me you’re a drug dealer then” Sara was more and more worried. “ Oh no, don’t worry. It was just a bet. I had a bet with Jack on the volleyball game. I won the bet and he paid me with a little bag of drugs”

“ What story are you telling me? A bet? And what use would you have made of the drug if it hadn’t been seized from you?” Sara asked, incredulous.

“ But I would have thrown it away!”

“ You don’t convince me. On, say you would rather have used it!” Sara said. “ And this friend of yours WHY he paid you the winning of the bet with drugs?”

“ Because he didn’t have the money to pay the bet”

“ Ah, but wonderful! Then this Jack, he takes drugs or he is a drug dealer! And you spend a lot of time with him!  You will become a drug addict too! You have to stop seeing him!”

“ Mom, you’re wrong….you won’t believe but Jack doesn’t take the drug and he is not a drug dealer. He is very against drugs indeed. The drug he gave me he had stolen from a drug dealer”

“ But listen what story! Incredible! And should I believe it? Evidently, your teachers didn’t believe you since they suspended you from school”

“ Oh Mom, the Latin teacher, that witch! She wanted to punish me, she put me in the pillory! Oh, but I didn’t say that Jack had given me the drug. I said that I had found it in the bath”

Sara was exhausted. Aldo had begun to stagger around the room inveighing against her and against Stephan. “ Damned wife and damned son! Ah, the whore race of the women who give birth. The children? They are all sons of a bitch! Nothing but worries and damnations!”

“ Mom, Dad is a true hell! He beat me up when I’m completely innocent and I got expelled from school unjustly!” Stephan cried.

Suddenly Sara had before her the scene of her recurring dream. She was running down a road to escape from someone who was chasing her, who was threatening her. Maybe that someone had a gun in his hand, maybe he had a bottle….Oh, but then he was Aldo! She was running at breakneck speed. Her pursuer was about to catch up with her and at a sudden, the earth opened under her feet and she sank underground.

“ Of course, I have this nightmare with the situation I’m experiencing,” she said to herself while Aldo had fallen to the ground screaming and Stephan kept protesting his innocence and against the injustice he had suffered.  Stephan grabbed a bottle and started hitting Aldo on the head. The bottle broke and Aldo’s head bled. “ STOP Stephan! You are killing your father!” shouted Sara who rushed at him and injured herself trying to snatch the bottle from his hand. “ He is just an old drunk! He beat me up terribly! He deserves to die!” Stephan cried while he began to kick her away from him and continued to hit his father with the broken bottle. Aldo’s head was now a bloody mass, and Sara was bleeding too. The room was smeared with blood. It ranges from the phone. It was Sonia, Sara’s sister who told her that their mother had fallen, she had hit her head and was hospitalized in a coma. At the same instant that Sara received that news a tremendous roar was heard. The house jerked with an earthquake and collapsed. Aldo, Stephan, and Sara were overwhelmed by the collapse and died under the rubble. Their deaths, including that of Aldo, were attributed ( were believed to be caused) by the earthquake.