Well, we had this assignment for my new creative writing class. We were required to write a short-short story (3-5 pages,double spaced). In order to do this, we had to pick a first line from a list that was given to us and then go with it from there.
Keep in mind, this is only the first few pages right now, and it's very, very rough at the moment. Also, only read if you want to feel creeped out/depressed.
Alix liked to think of ways to kill her father. Every Sunday, when she heard his heavy footsteps on the rickety wooden stairs, she closed her eyes and counted backward in time with the thunk, thunk, thunk of his descent into her tiny basement room. Twenty thunks later, and she was immersed in her own little world, filled with pictures of gleaming steel knives, small black handguns, and him lying in a pool of his own blood. The way he died was never the same, but the images all served the same purpose. She hardly even felt his cold, rough hands on her small body anymore.
It had been three months since Alix came to live with her father. Her mother had died on Alix’s twelfth birthday, and after that she was bounced around from relative to relative for the next few months until her father was located. She had cried when he came to pick her up from her Aunt’s house. She had never known her father until he showed up at that little house with the yellow paint and the white picket fence to take her away. She remembered seeing his soft eyes crinkle at the corners as the grin split his face as he got out of the car. She remembered his coarse embrace and the way his beard felt scratchy against her fair-skinned cheek. She remembered the smell of tobacco on his breath. But most of all, she remembered the feeling of hope that overcame her as she looked into his eyes, so much like her own. She had been a drifter since her mother’s death; someone with no real place in the world. Now she was on her way home.
Alix heard the door open at the top of the stairs. That was always the first sign, followed by the thunk, thunk, thunk. Her father was on his way down. “Another Sunday,” Alix thought, a chill running through her thin frame. She often lost track of the days, which was easy to do since he never let her out of the damp, dark cement basement. She closed her eyes and began to count. “Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen,” the coldness in her limbs and the world surrounding her began to fade. “Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, twelve, eleven, ten,” he was almost there, the sound of his footsteps got louder. “Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…” the world went away and she smiled internally as she saw his face floating in her mind. She never quite knew where the visions were going to take her. This time, she stood before him in her holey jeans and thread-bear cotton t-shirt with just a shoe lace. “Huh,” she thought, “this could be interesting.” She had very little control over her visions any longer. She just let her mind take her where ever it felt like going. She saw herself walking toward her father, the gray shoelace in both hands stretched taught. Her father smiled at her in her mind, but it wasn’t the same smile he’d given her when he came to get her. No, this was a smile she was more accustomed to. His eyes didn’t crinkle so kindly at the corners, and they weren’t soft, but cruel and unkind. And he not only smelled of tobacco, but of the whiskey he so often drank as well. She watched herself smiled back at him. Her smile was not kind either, and her eyes were hard and cold. “What are you doing, sweetheart?” he grunted at her, his smile getting wider as she approached. In Alix’s mind, she just continued to smile and walk closer to him. As she watched herself near him, she felt the fury grow within the figure of herself, and in the final few feet, she leapt upon him, wrapping the shoe lace around his neck and strangling him until his screams stopped and his breath failed him. Her mind-self stood above him, smiling. This little part of herself, this vision in her head did what her physical self was too afraid to do. Once again, her father was dead. She heard her father’s footsteps fade away as he went up the stairs. As she lay in bed naked, bruised and chilled to the bone, she smiled, this time outwardly. It felt odd to her, but she knew what she had to do. She lay awake for a long while, thinking and smiling at the bare ceiling.
The first hint that Alix had had that things weren’t quite right was the way her father had brought her into his small one room house. He had unbuckled her from the back seat of the car, grabbed her, slung her over his shoulder, and marched none too gently up the driveway and through the front door. The house was nothing like the perfect, small yellow house in the suburbs she’d just left. The exterior was dingy, the white paint chipping and the shingles falling from the roof. The inside didn’t fare much better. There were empty whisky bottles and cigarette butts lying on every available surface of the tiny kitchen, the chairs and couches were a sickly green color and covered in dirt and grime, and Alix hadn’t wanted to know what those stains on the carpet were. But it hadn’t mattered. That was the only time she ever saw the upstairs portion of the ramshackle house. She had closed her eyes, and willed herself not to cry as he carried her down to the basement. When she opened them all she could see was a dingy, gray cot laying on the floor, a washer and dryer, and a single, bare light bulb in the middle of the room. She had lost it then. Her will not to cry was gone and she let the tears flow freely down her cheeks. She hadn’t known what to say to him, so she had just stayed quiet. “This is where you’ll be living,” he had said to her gruffly, and then he turned and retreated up the stairs. Thunk, thunk, thunk. Alix was soon to learn that living in the basement was the least of her worries. The first Sunday he had come downstairs, the first Sunday he’d touched her, she’d screamed and kicked and fought. He hit her then. And she’d never screamed again. The first few Sundays were hell for her, but soon after the visions started, and each Sunday after she had a retreat. Some place in her head she could go to get away from him.
---
Yep. Leaving you with a cliff hanger for now. Will post the rest when it's completed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment