- Joined
- Dec 12, 2007
- Location
- California
I wrote this a couple of years ago, and it's the first of several short stories in a series featuring the same first-person narrator. Be warned, there is some foul language, and some fairly graphic violence for a paragraph, but it's nothing any mature teenager could not handle. Enjoy!
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I’m going to go crazy if I don’t go to sleep soon. It’s been about three days since I fell asleep last, and that wasn’t even at night. I lost my job three days ago. My dad died four days ago. Sleep just isn’t coming to me.
The clock relentlessly tells me that it’s 4:24 AM, and I glare at it angrily. I beg it silently to freeze, so I can spend the next month sorting out my thoughts, all while it stays 4:24 AM and then I can resume time and get some much needed sleep.
Why did I lose my job? I don’t understand it. The economy isn’t that bad. I was a good cashier and CVS isn’t going under any time soon. So what gives? I think my ex-boss hates me. Like that kind of loathing that has no basis in anything real, it’s just because he looked at me and decided, “Here’s someone to hate and make miserable!” and he did. I could just kill him the way he made me miserable.
I guess coming into work half-drunk at seventeen wasn’t good, even though I proclaimed loudly, “Am I the only one who lost his dad yesterday?” That asshole marched right up to me, smelled my breath, took a step back, and asked me to leave and not come back unless I was buying something legal for me to purchase. Whatever that meant. Hopefully he gets in a car crash and suffers like I’m suffering.
Why did my dad die? He was only forty-seven, and he was in fairly good health. Well, minus the brain cancer. So I know the medical reason that he died, but I suppose that question was more for God. Why did he have to die? That’s what I want to know.
This website sucks. I don’t know why I’m looking at it, but it is mildly amusing. Moving on, this article on Wikipedia about the Aztecs is interesting. Though they were ultimately conquered by imperialist assholes from Spain, they had an interesting culture before that. Too bad it was mutilated.
I can hear my mom snoring from across the hallway. She sounds so peaceful, because she only snores when she’s sound asleep. I don’t know how she could possibly be, though. She must have more on her mind than I. How long did she know that Dad was dying before she told us the week before it happened, when he was hospitalized? I hate that she didn’t tell me sooner. I should have known. It shouldn’t have blind-sided me like it did. I was not ready for Dad to die. I need my dad. I really need my damn father.
It’s 4:28 AM now. Time seems to be dragging, like a road weary traveler dragging his feet behind him, leaving deep, long scars in the earth where his feet were ripping into the flesh of the Earth. I stared at the clock, again willing it to freeze, a speed I could handle. If it would not fully cease, I would prefer it to fly, but time would do neither, and instead it moved along as if it were exploring a museum. I hate time.
Back to the internet. I have nothing good to do, so maybe I should masturbate. I haven’t in about a week, so I could get off. Is it wrong to masturbate? I thought about the moral aspects of masturbation for what felt like an hour, but looking at the clock, it only took me about a minute to decide that masturbation feels good, so it must be good. It is 4:30 now.
I open, and go to my favorite porn website. I quickly start to go for it, and within a couple of minutes, I’m spent. It was boring and dissatisfying, and those naked people are all going to hell.
Internet Explorer is no more, and I go back to reading things on Wikipedia. I get engrossed in an article about Britney Spears, who has a more pathetic life than anyone else I’ve ever heard of. Some people think that she has a sad life, and that she needs help. Does she have a father? I look it up and find that she does. Does she have a job? Oh wait, she’s a god damn millionaire. What’s so sad about her life? She has everything she could ever want, she was even knocked up by a back-up dancer. Oh what a sad divorce. Too bad, the ***** is stupid. She doesn’t need to have those kids.
I close the page about Britney Spears, disgusted. I really wish Mom had told me about Dad’s cancer sooner. She must have known for months, maybe even years. But did he tell her? There is no way for me to find out right now. She’s asleep and he’s dead. I look at the clock again: 4:45 AM. Will time not speed up just a little? Maybe just a bit?
I feel my eyelids slip a bit, but ultimately nothing. I look at the main page of Wikipedia, and get lost in it, my eyes lose focus, and I lose track of my thoughts for a moment.
Suddenly I am jerked back into clear, stark vision. I’m staring at a Wikipedia article about Ted Bundy. He was an interesting fellow. It says how many people he killed, and how he would lure do-gooders to help him with something heavy, before he clubbed them and threw them into his trunk. What a creep.
I look at the clock, and somehow it’s still 4:45. Has my wish for time to stand still finally come true? As if in response, the clock turns to 4:46. Of course it does, the spiteful bastard. I hate my clock.
I don’t hear Mom snoring anymore. I keep reading about serial killers. Murder…what an interesting thing. What does it feel like, you know, to kill someone? How does it feel to have adrenaline rushing through you, coursing through your veins, numbing any pain and overriding senses that you would normally pay strict attention to, impulses you wouldn’t ignore that you now do? What is it like to shoot someone, and watch the life fly out of them as fast as the bullet, to strangle someone, and slowly, steadily wrestle the life out of them, or to stab them and rapidly rip the life out of their flesh?
Mom still isn’t snoring. Maybe she woke up and is lying there staring at the ceiling, or at her clock. Mine still says 4:46. I wish it would say 4:47, but it won’t. It stays firmly at 4:46. Has it stood still? I look back to Jeffrey Dahmer, That man was crazy, too: he impaled animals when he was young, and then when he was older, he killed at least fifteen young men after somehow sexually violating them, and then kept their remains in barrels and freezers. Apparently, one of the victims even got away but was unknowingly delivered back to Dahmer by police. How tragic and yet ironic. At least he’s dead.
I think again about what it’d be like to kill someone. My clock now says 4:47, after what feels like it should have been at least five minutes. Time is slowing down just to be cruel to me. What a god damn bastard.
Mom still isn’t snoring. Maybe she’s thinking about Daddy? Does she even think about him? Does she even care that he’s dead? I haven’t seen her cry yet. I’ve cried about it. I’ve cried every night when I see that it’s after two in the morning and I’m still wide awake, and I hate that I can’t sleep and that Daddy is gone forever, never coming back to me. Never to hug me, never to yell at me, never to pick me up, nothing. Never, ever, gone forever. I can’t take it. I start to cry.
At first, it’s just a tear, then a shuddering breath, and then another tear or two, then another shuddering intake of breath, then steady tears, and a sob. Finally, I am sobbing to myself continually, closing my eyes, pinching out more tears, and they roll down my face hotly. I want my Daddy back. I want him back god ****ing dammit! Why won’t you come back to me, Daddy? Please, I am begging you; I am crying out my soul for you, it rolls down my face in small, wet pieces. I am dying to have you back.
Suddenly, the heater comes on. I guess it must be sixty-five degrees in the house. I get up, wiping away my tears, to go check the thermostat. It’s right next to the oven, which is right next to the stove, a small counter between them, with a set of knives the sole occupant of that stretch of counter. I see that it is indeed sixty-five degrees. I look at the oven, then the knives, then the stove, and then back to the knives.
What would it be like to kill somebody?
I slowly pull a knife out of the set. I look at it shining in the dim light that fills the room from the lamp on the coffee table in the adjacent room. I can see my own warped reflection in the knife. I look over my shoulder and back down the hallway; mom still isn’t snoring.
I turn around quietly and quickly, not taking a moment to notice that the oven clock display “4:47” in bold, green light. I walk silently down the hall, and peer into my mother’s room. I look over to my right at her bed, the knife still in my hand.
I walk over to her bed, and look at her lying there, sleeping, not snoring. Why isn’t she snoring? Maybe she’s dead, too. I look and see that she’s breathing. I look at the knife, and then back at her. Without stopping to think, I start stabbing away at her, blood getting on the knife, then on her, then on me, she’s screaming, and then I’m crying, and finally screaming.
I fall backwards out of my chair, screaming and crying, hysterically. My mom’s snoring is abruptly interrupted and she comes bolting across the hallway and finds me on the floor, writhing in some sort of agony that she cannot comprehend.
“My god, Mark, what’s happened? Baby, stop crying, tell me!” she looks frantic, and finally when it’s clear I won’t move, she bends down and holds my head in her hands, and on her legs. Finally, I calm down a bit, and I look up at her soft, blue eyes, the reflection of my Wikipedia home page barely visible in those motherly orbs. I sit up, and I hug her tightly, and bury my face in her long, black hair over her shoulder, and start furiously crying again.
She hugs me tightly, and I continue to cry. She squeezes me and I cry harder, as if she’s squeezing all the anguish out of me. She doesn’t let go. Finally, I stop crying, and her grip lessens, and I start to breathe easy. Somehow, I end up in my bed, laying down, with her over me, pulling the blankets up to my neck. I don’t notice but the clock silently changes from 5:10 to 5:11, and at 5:12 AM I fall asleep. My mother looks over my sleeping body, face still wet with fresh tears, the area around my eyes red from the ordeal. She looks over her son, and bends over to kiss his forehead, and whispers, “I love you.”
She goes back into her room, lays down, and falls asleep in moments.
© Nick Dineen, 2008
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Necessity
By: Nick Dineen
By: Nick Dineen
I’m going to go crazy if I don’t go to sleep soon. It’s been about three days since I fell asleep last, and that wasn’t even at night. I lost my job three days ago. My dad died four days ago. Sleep just isn’t coming to me.
The clock relentlessly tells me that it’s 4:24 AM, and I glare at it angrily. I beg it silently to freeze, so I can spend the next month sorting out my thoughts, all while it stays 4:24 AM and then I can resume time and get some much needed sleep.
Why did I lose my job? I don’t understand it. The economy isn’t that bad. I was a good cashier and CVS isn’t going under any time soon. So what gives? I think my ex-boss hates me. Like that kind of loathing that has no basis in anything real, it’s just because he looked at me and decided, “Here’s someone to hate and make miserable!” and he did. I could just kill him the way he made me miserable.
I guess coming into work half-drunk at seventeen wasn’t good, even though I proclaimed loudly, “Am I the only one who lost his dad yesterday?” That asshole marched right up to me, smelled my breath, took a step back, and asked me to leave and not come back unless I was buying something legal for me to purchase. Whatever that meant. Hopefully he gets in a car crash and suffers like I’m suffering.
Why did my dad die? He was only forty-seven, and he was in fairly good health. Well, minus the brain cancer. So I know the medical reason that he died, but I suppose that question was more for God. Why did he have to die? That’s what I want to know.
This website sucks. I don’t know why I’m looking at it, but it is mildly amusing. Moving on, this article on Wikipedia about the Aztecs is interesting. Though they were ultimately conquered by imperialist assholes from Spain, they had an interesting culture before that. Too bad it was mutilated.
I can hear my mom snoring from across the hallway. She sounds so peaceful, because she only snores when she’s sound asleep. I don’t know how she could possibly be, though. She must have more on her mind than I. How long did she know that Dad was dying before she told us the week before it happened, when he was hospitalized? I hate that she didn’t tell me sooner. I should have known. It shouldn’t have blind-sided me like it did. I was not ready for Dad to die. I need my dad. I really need my damn father.
It’s 4:28 AM now. Time seems to be dragging, like a road weary traveler dragging his feet behind him, leaving deep, long scars in the earth where his feet were ripping into the flesh of the Earth. I stared at the clock, again willing it to freeze, a speed I could handle. If it would not fully cease, I would prefer it to fly, but time would do neither, and instead it moved along as if it were exploring a museum. I hate time.
Back to the internet. I have nothing good to do, so maybe I should masturbate. I haven’t in about a week, so I could get off. Is it wrong to masturbate? I thought about the moral aspects of masturbation for what felt like an hour, but looking at the clock, it only took me about a minute to decide that masturbation feels good, so it must be good. It is 4:30 now.
I open, and go to my favorite porn website. I quickly start to go for it, and within a couple of minutes, I’m spent. It was boring and dissatisfying, and those naked people are all going to hell.
Internet Explorer is no more, and I go back to reading things on Wikipedia. I get engrossed in an article about Britney Spears, who has a more pathetic life than anyone else I’ve ever heard of. Some people think that she has a sad life, and that she needs help. Does she have a father? I look it up and find that she does. Does she have a job? Oh wait, she’s a god damn millionaire. What’s so sad about her life? She has everything she could ever want, she was even knocked up by a back-up dancer. Oh what a sad divorce. Too bad, the ***** is stupid. She doesn’t need to have those kids.
I close the page about Britney Spears, disgusted. I really wish Mom had told me about Dad’s cancer sooner. She must have known for months, maybe even years. But did he tell her? There is no way for me to find out right now. She’s asleep and he’s dead. I look at the clock again: 4:45 AM. Will time not speed up just a little? Maybe just a bit?
I feel my eyelids slip a bit, but ultimately nothing. I look at the main page of Wikipedia, and get lost in it, my eyes lose focus, and I lose track of my thoughts for a moment.
Suddenly I am jerked back into clear, stark vision. I’m staring at a Wikipedia article about Ted Bundy. He was an interesting fellow. It says how many people he killed, and how he would lure do-gooders to help him with something heavy, before he clubbed them and threw them into his trunk. What a creep.
I look at the clock, and somehow it’s still 4:45. Has my wish for time to stand still finally come true? As if in response, the clock turns to 4:46. Of course it does, the spiteful bastard. I hate my clock.
I don’t hear Mom snoring anymore. I keep reading about serial killers. Murder…what an interesting thing. What does it feel like, you know, to kill someone? How does it feel to have adrenaline rushing through you, coursing through your veins, numbing any pain and overriding senses that you would normally pay strict attention to, impulses you wouldn’t ignore that you now do? What is it like to shoot someone, and watch the life fly out of them as fast as the bullet, to strangle someone, and slowly, steadily wrestle the life out of them, or to stab them and rapidly rip the life out of their flesh?
Mom still isn’t snoring. Maybe she woke up and is lying there staring at the ceiling, or at her clock. Mine still says 4:46. I wish it would say 4:47, but it won’t. It stays firmly at 4:46. Has it stood still? I look back to Jeffrey Dahmer, That man was crazy, too: he impaled animals when he was young, and then when he was older, he killed at least fifteen young men after somehow sexually violating them, and then kept their remains in barrels and freezers. Apparently, one of the victims even got away but was unknowingly delivered back to Dahmer by police. How tragic and yet ironic. At least he’s dead.
I think again about what it’d be like to kill someone. My clock now says 4:47, after what feels like it should have been at least five minutes. Time is slowing down just to be cruel to me. What a god damn bastard.
Mom still isn’t snoring. Maybe she’s thinking about Daddy? Does she even think about him? Does she even care that he’s dead? I haven’t seen her cry yet. I’ve cried about it. I’ve cried every night when I see that it’s after two in the morning and I’m still wide awake, and I hate that I can’t sleep and that Daddy is gone forever, never coming back to me. Never to hug me, never to yell at me, never to pick me up, nothing. Never, ever, gone forever. I can’t take it. I start to cry.
At first, it’s just a tear, then a shuddering breath, and then another tear or two, then another shuddering intake of breath, then steady tears, and a sob. Finally, I am sobbing to myself continually, closing my eyes, pinching out more tears, and they roll down my face hotly. I want my Daddy back. I want him back god ****ing dammit! Why won’t you come back to me, Daddy? Please, I am begging you; I am crying out my soul for you, it rolls down my face in small, wet pieces. I am dying to have you back.
Suddenly, the heater comes on. I guess it must be sixty-five degrees in the house. I get up, wiping away my tears, to go check the thermostat. It’s right next to the oven, which is right next to the stove, a small counter between them, with a set of knives the sole occupant of that stretch of counter. I see that it is indeed sixty-five degrees. I look at the oven, then the knives, then the stove, and then back to the knives.
What would it be like to kill somebody?
I slowly pull a knife out of the set. I look at it shining in the dim light that fills the room from the lamp on the coffee table in the adjacent room. I can see my own warped reflection in the knife. I look over my shoulder and back down the hallway; mom still isn’t snoring.
I turn around quietly and quickly, not taking a moment to notice that the oven clock display “4:47” in bold, green light. I walk silently down the hall, and peer into my mother’s room. I look over to my right at her bed, the knife still in my hand.
I walk over to her bed, and look at her lying there, sleeping, not snoring. Why isn’t she snoring? Maybe she’s dead, too. I look and see that she’s breathing. I look at the knife, and then back at her. Without stopping to think, I start stabbing away at her, blood getting on the knife, then on her, then on me, she’s screaming, and then I’m crying, and finally screaming.
I fall backwards out of my chair, screaming and crying, hysterically. My mom’s snoring is abruptly interrupted and she comes bolting across the hallway and finds me on the floor, writhing in some sort of agony that she cannot comprehend.
“My god, Mark, what’s happened? Baby, stop crying, tell me!” she looks frantic, and finally when it’s clear I won’t move, she bends down and holds my head in her hands, and on her legs. Finally, I calm down a bit, and I look up at her soft, blue eyes, the reflection of my Wikipedia home page barely visible in those motherly orbs. I sit up, and I hug her tightly, and bury my face in her long, black hair over her shoulder, and start furiously crying again.
She hugs me tightly, and I continue to cry. She squeezes me and I cry harder, as if she’s squeezing all the anguish out of me. She doesn’t let go. Finally, I stop crying, and her grip lessens, and I start to breathe easy. Somehow, I end up in my bed, laying down, with her over me, pulling the blankets up to my neck. I don’t notice but the clock silently changes from 5:10 to 5:11, and at 5:12 AM I fall asleep. My mother looks over my sleeping body, face still wet with fresh tears, the area around my eyes red from the ordeal. She looks over her son, and bends over to kiss his forehead, and whispers, “I love you.”
She goes back into her room, lays down, and falls asleep in moments.
© Nick Dineen, 2008
