This is an excerpt from a short story I started writing a few years ago. Don’t judge too harshly because this is really old. But, I’d also like some feedback on where to take it from here. Warning, it does contain emotionally heavy content. To be honest though, I was mostly just enjoying writing the imagery of it:
I sat on the cool stone rock in front of the school, my right hand at my side, its callused finger rubbed gently against its frostbitten surface. My left hand rose in front of me, clutching a weather-beaten book. My legs beneath me were numb, and my lips froze together as I whispered quietly to myself, finger following along with every word.
The alabaster snowflakes danced on my eyelashes, and pirouetted to the flimsy pages, eventually melting, and evaporating into darkness. I rocked back and forth, pulling my coat closer and tightening my scarf around my neck.
There was a mystical spirit in the air around me. It perched on the branches, riding the repelling gusts of wind, that strode toward me as a night does atop his horse. I yearned for the storm to whisk me away, and carry me from the burning fire that climbed up my throat and sang in my nerves.
This was why I loved winter. Because it numbed everything.
I pulled my coat tighter around myself, and resumed reading, biting my lip slowly. I picked up from where I had stopped, but tears threatened the corners of my eyes, and suddenly I couldn’t distinguish the difference between them and the snow.
The snow swirled around me in a mess, rich with feeling I slammed the book with a powerful thud, rising from the bench slowly, and turning to retreat back inside. I wiped my tears away carelessly on the side of my sleeve. Trembling, as I stumbled through the snow.
The cold ate away at the soles of my boots and seeped into my feet, melting them like ice. My eyes began to water. I blinked vigorously, staring in front of me. A brick building was sprawled amongst the powdered sugar that was the snow. It appeared as if it didn’t belong. It looked almost out of place to me somehow. Harsh reality staring me in the face, amidst a fairytale land. I laughed out loud.
It sounded hysterical. I wanted the trees to sprout candy canes, the grass to grow lollipops, anything, anything to make me feel something.
Even then, would I feel joy?
I trudged forward, my heavy snow boots turning it to a lumbering gait, approaching the front shrubs of the school. I stared back at the sign post, and granite bench, almost longingly as if I was retreating back to another world
The bell shrieked loudly, shocking me out of my stupor. For a minute I felt something. But then its wild noise just melded into it all. I was left standing there, like a statue in the sand, swaying slowly, as I stumbled forward. People milled about me.
All I could see was myself in the mirror that day. Staring at my face, my shoulders. Searching for where he had left his mark.
I had expected bruises scattered across my skin, like flower petals hand-picked from spring weeds. Like the little cottonwood seeds cascading in the breeze.
Then he would caress my face the next day, tell me he loved me, that I was his fairy. That I made him good. And I would believe him
And that mark he was supposed to leave would evaporate from my skin, from my heart like pooled water on paper. It would dry. I would dry like clothes on a clothesline.
And he would use me, and use me again.
And again.
Students clustered around me, pushing past as they raced to class. I spotted familiar faces, names, but they all moved around me. I was in a bubble, a protective covering. So I just stood there. I wondered about the other kids, how they would go home, to families that held their hearts like they were something fragile, whereas mine was nothing more than a piece of twine.
I stood there inhaling the crisp, bitter breeze as it snaked around the building, like smoke signals from a burning fire. Maybe I was that burning fire. Would anyone see me if I was?
I felt like the center of the stage. The curtains were open, uncovered, everyone could see me for who I truly was, scarred beneath the layers of clothes. Beneath the armed and bulky exterior. Beneath the weaponry that I carried, as I sat on my magnificent steed.
“Are you okay?” A passing girl whispered. She had blonde hair, and blue eyes. A kind smile radiated from the hollowless pits. I stood still, and stared at the oak tree in front of the school. A little crow was perched on it’s branch, I watched it’s ascension. It swept delicately against the pale sky, almost like an inky paintbrush on white paper, its wings sweeping behind it.
The girl still stood, waiting for an answer. I felt mean. Maybe it was the winter air. Or maybe I had already turned to ice.
I looked the other way. People teemed around us, like little ants scurrying from place to place, the bell continued to blare. She shrugged, and kept walking, her head tall, her backpack on.. She was probably the type of girl with straight A’s, was in band, played a dozen sports, and still managed to find time for friends and family,
Silently I shook my head. She walked away, with a bounce in her step. My eyes trailed her, but my body was motionless. I was glued to the snow.
The bell slowly stopped, the students had snuck back to the safe-zones of their classrooms, hiding behind computer screens and books. They had no idea what the real world was like. I made no motion to go to class. My book was clutched beneath my left arm, my bag strewn in the snow.
The courtyard was deserted. I watched as stray twigs fluttered in the breeze, the bare branches swaying to and fro. The trees seemed to be nodding their heads in approval. Yes…stay with us. They seemed to be saying.
I couldn’t agree more. An eerie silence settled upon the courtyard. I was frozen in place. The world around me blurred into one indistinct mirage.
I was dancing on my feet, at four, ballet slippers tight on my ankles. I flew with a careless grace. Pink tutu flittering as I glided from place to place like a hummingbird.
I was panting heavy at six, racing down the court with the wind rapidly falling behind me. The ball bouncing up and down from my loose arms. My hair, damp with sweat. Screams echoing as I fell into a pit of nothingness.
Fast-forward three years later, I was nestled between the branches of the chinaberry tree in my front yard, listening to the screams resounding from the house; the shatter of a glass vase as it was thrown against the granite island. I felt my breathing growing heavy.
I wiped the blood away from my cheek with a paper towel, it was nothing more than spilled wine on the carpet floor.
Here I stood, as I felt my limbs grow heavy. Thoughts spiraled in my mind, I was caught up in a dizzy trance, my eyes fathomless in their sockets. The people around me were gone now. I was alone.
I breathed in the faint scent of pine, the evergreen trees’ branches around me swaying in the breeze. I was like a tree.
The caw of a crow reverberated through my branches. I felt my pulse quickening. It was coming over me again.
But as I stood there, I could feel the snow suck me whole. I was nothing more than another object, another landmark to a passerby.
Someday, a hundred years from now, I would just be a frozen over carcass laying in the snow.
Spilled Ink 