In the separated beams of a morning sun, an unhappy boy peers out
a rain-stained window, to see his cat scratching at the glass.
The cat's eyes are wide. Her ears are back and pointed.
Her mouth opens wide with no sound, and the boy grasps the window lock and pushes with all his ten year-old strength.
At last the lock gives way, and he squats to push the window up. As the outside air rushes in, he takes a breath and reaches for the cat. She decides to run, and leaps away, faster than the boy's voice can
reach her.
In the darkness of his room, he hears him talking..in surly, muffled tones that are familiar to him.
His voice is getting stronger and the sound of it echoes through the living room, adjacent to his bedroom.
His father is yelling now, in a tone that he fully recognizes.
His mother is whining and crying.
She can't defend herself, but the boy can't verbalize this.
The boy screams and begs his father to stop hurting his mother.
His father feigns remorse and continues to pester and belittle his mother.
The boy's tears roll down his cheeks in silence as the argument goes on almost before it's time for him to get up for school.
As the full moon of the night travels through the clouds, a thought about his fantasy crosses his mind..
He thinks of flying, and of saving people from evil things and evil people. It pleases him to think he CAN be a superman. "I am super!! I am super.", he says, over and over again.
He runs to the mirror and looks at his costume.
It bears a striking resemblance to what he has seen on T.V.
But in the dark, the mirror looks black..and he begins to notice it is not what he wants.
In the isolation of the cellar, the boy plays drums on an old mattress. The thud of the stick on the bed reminds him of a big drum.
He thinks he is the drummer, though he sings along too.
His mother calls for help from upstairs in the kitchen.
He runs to find her on the floor, underneath her "walker".
He tries to pick her up by her armpits, but can't get any leverage.
He gets a kitchen chair and braces himself against it and then pulls her body to the toilet seat as she cries and cries about the pain.
Her legs are nearly useless now, and the boy knows that she will soon have to be ridden to a wheelchair.
He curses her for making him struggle, and he runs after she's on the seat, to hide in his room. Her crying permeates the house.
After the crowd begins to get loud and noisy, he quietly leaves through the side door to have a cigarette.
His Dad doesn't know that he smokes, and he wants to keep it that way until he's at least 16.
The funeral director sees him, but winks as if to prove his loyalty to the secret.
He can't think about crying or anything but smoking that cigarette..it tastes smooth and thick.
The teacher asks the class to write a silly poem..he can think of nothing silly and instead writes a dark tale about his childhood...he gets an "F".
On the wall behind the refrigerator in the kitchen, as he cleans the dust and greasy cobwebs from the plaster, he sees a purple crayon scrawled message on the wall. It is faint...yet he can read it..."My doll is dead" it reads, and he freezes...
This is a metaphoric tale that probably can be understood by one
person, but will tell his complete emotional makeup to the whole
world.
~Eric Franklin 12/17/90~
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I wrote this because I accepted a challenge to write something using 5 words or phrases within the story or paragraph that I was writing.
Cat scratching glass
Smoking cigarettes
Black Mirror
My Doll is Dead
the letter "F"
"A Tale" was the result.
I won something for it being the best of all the stories written.
I think it was "free access", no membership required for 6 months, to a BBS (Bulletin Board Service "Before Internet (BI)" in the 1990's).
Rick White..
