Hi, folks,
Here's a short story I wrote a little while ago. And by short, I do mean that. You should finish it in just a couple of minutes.
I've written this thing very meticulously. Almost every word is important for something. Read it carefully. Let me know what you think.
Trigger warning: gun violence, suicide, potential mental health/depression
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Overload
6:47 a.m.
She wakes all at once, gone one moment and here the next. Sitting up. Feet flat on the cool floor. Eyes opening. Little sizzles of electricity dancing in her head. Mouth gaping in a yawn.. Eyes flicking to the clock, knowing what she will see, not seeing it, but seeing it anyway. Quarter to seven. Time to wake the children.
She turns on the radio in the kitchen first, the same way she always does. Elegant fingers twist the dial, seeking, finding. Rock music. Something by Aerosmith. Was it the same song playing when the SUV flipped, in the last moments before the sparks of life left her brain? She could remember, but doesn't care.
Back upstairs, feet thumping on the wooden treads, making no effort to be quiet. Her long fingers knock on first one door, then another. The third falls open almost before she can touch it, exuding a puff of hot air redolent of teenage sweat and angst. Moments later, two tousled heads appear. The third she does not see.
"Wake up, Steven," she calls. "It's time for school."
Little feet pattering down the stairs into the sound of George Thoroughgood. Smoky voice crooning, "who do you love", laid atop two shriller ones arguing over who gets to pour the milk. On her left, a male groan, a snarking, sobbing breath. "I'm not going."
She enters into his world then. Dirty socks, a half-eaten slice of pie from the night before. Weird art on the walls; she'll catch hell from the landlord when they move out, but they're all here now, so it doesn't matter. His smell is thick and noisome in her nose. She moves toward his bed, time ticking in her head.
"Come on, Steven," she says, and her voice is almost a whisper. She perches on his bed, straight-backed and stiff-kneed, as if about to spring up again. She can't relax, even though she wants to. He recoils, a hump covered in blankets against the wall, back to her. "Today can be better than yesterday. But you have to try."
"No. it's not the same. It's not right. It'll never be better again," he mumbles. But he knows she won't go away until he gets up. He knows this routine as well as she does. Every day the steps are a little different, but the dance is essentially the same. She rises even as he heaves himself out of his blankets, brushing past her almost roughly on his way to the shower. This is a battle she wins. She can go downstairs now. She can flinch at the sting of his words once his back is turned. But she's trying. She's trying so hard.
7:53 a.m.
She gives each of the twins a hug before they leave. The love she feels seems to swell within her as she clutches their little bodies to her angular frame, the same as she always does. They hug her back; no hesitation, no judgment in their eyes when they smile up at her. In the background, Bad Company and the ill-tempered hum of the microwave as Steven heats up last night's pie. She could argue with him, but what's the point? She won't win this one. Kendall and Kaitlyn are out the door, skipping hand in hand down the driveway and up the sidewalk to the bus stop. It will come in six minutes, perhaps seven, and take them away, the same as it always does. And she will miss them as she rattles around in the house, and she will welcome them home when school lets out and the bus brings them back to her. Steven only walks, seeming to leave the same way he arrives, in a plodding shuffle. Not caring if he is noticed. Not wanting to take up space in a world he can't seem to come to grips with anymore. She wants to walk with him, has even said so, but he always looks aghast, turns his head away, shovels food into his mouth so that he doesn't have to say that dreaded word, that "no" which has slammed so many doors between them in the last few months. She is not equipped to deal with silence where once there was laughter; every day, a few more pebbles slide out of the reality she once knew. They warned her that it would probably happen. Yet, she is frustrated that she does not comprehend this new, moody, sulky man-child where her eldest once stood. Does he even go to school when he leaves? She could follow him, but what would happen if he noticed her? That door between them would be a wal, forever after. Four would become three, for whatever time they had left, fleeting though it might be.
Steven grunts, struggles a knapsack onto his back, barges out through the door. He doesn't say good-bye. Pearl Jam sings him out: "I wish I was the full moon shining off a Camaro's hood."
She lets the radio play on. It fills up the quiet. Dishes need washing. The table needs wiping down; one of the twins left a puddle of milk where her cereal bowl once rested. Chores let her forget the thing she fears is coming.
Time passes; she could keep track of its progress, it would be easy. But what is the point? This fatalism is unlike her, but she is too distracted to notice.
11:21 a.m.
Something on her hip is vibrating. Her phone. She plucks it up, says hello. It is a woman's voice, sounding shocked, terrorized but professional. "Is this Amanda Hilliard?"
"Speaking."
"Ms. Hilliard, there's been...an accident."
Something cold slimes down her back and her legs get weak. In the background she can hear a big, boomy piano riff as she folds into an armchair. "Oh god. What's happened?"
"It's your son. Steven. He--" The professional shocked terrorized woman breaks off. The radio is saying "Mother doesn't understand it" and her mind flails for a song title. It doesn't come as readily as it usually does. Circuits busy. Try later.
The voice in her ear is back. "Ms. Hilliard, I need you to stay right where you are. Officers will be arriving very soon to bring you to the station. We have to talk in person."
"I don't like Mondays," she says. A weird cross-patch in her head. She can smell something astringent, very faintly, like frying plastic. "But I'll be here."
Her phone dies in her hand. Forgot to charge it the night before. Not like her.
Whatever she thought she had been expecting, it could not have been this.
They come less than two minutes later. Big burly men who usher her to a car and drive away. Nobody turns off the radio. The Boomtown Rats finish their song, but no one is there to hear.
Down at the station, she meets the shocked-terrorized-professional woman; beauty-shop pretty and full of sympathy and something that might even be a professional sort of second-hand grief.
She learns what there is to learn. Steven hadn't gone to school...not to his own, at least. He'd managed to get his hands on a gun--dear god, how had that happened? She is shown a picture of the twins, heads cracked open like eggshells, brains clotted inside. She can see Steven in the edge of the shot, face on asphalt where he fell, the suggestion of a ruined windpipe. "forensic evidence suggests that Steven shot himself after killing Kendall and Kaitlyn. Ms. Hilliard, I'm so sorry."
In her head, that song goes on and on, skipping and sliding in bursts and recursive loops. Nobody should've gone to school today; she should've made them stay at home. She can see no reasons because there are no reasons. What reason do you need to die?
They are looking at her again. She realizes that they are expecting her to speak. But the only words her failing mind can muster are the same ones she spoke before. "I don't like Mondays." And then she manages to find a coda to this thought, ghastly under the circumstances. "I wanna shoot the whole day down."
That smell is stronger now, melting wires and ozone. She knows they can't smell it. She knows it's only in her head. The electricity is back. It's making her twitch. Her thoughts are breaking down. Full system shutdown is imminent. Words become sounds. Sounds buzz. The buzzing breaks down into electrical impulses, and from there to bytecode. Four becomes zero.
The silicon chip inside her head is switched to overload.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1
keep it up!