original fiction?
this is an original piece i just wrote. i would very, very much love some comments on this. it would mean a lot, and constructive criticism is very much welcome.
like being shot.
1603 words.
r
It was a perfectly normal day in the perfectly normal life of Malahki Modestine. He wasn’t speaking to his mother, was running at least an hour late for school, and had no intentions of fixing either of the two problems. The kitchen was loud, much too crowded somehow with only himself and his younger sister inside, pots and pans crowding the counters and littering the floor, making it impossible to think.
Arianna wouldn’t stop screaming, and Malahki was just about to get out the door, if nothing else but to get away from it. He overlooked the television screen, didn’t see the bright red outline, the scrolling text, the panicked reporters or the blood. Whatever it was, it certainly didn’t matter. It never did.
“Malahki!” His mother’s voice, a sudden shriek from her bedroom just as he reached the front door, and he rolled his eyes in exasperation. She was probably drunk again, and he didn’t really care what she had to say. Fingers quickly snapping the lock, turning the knob, and there it was again. Louder, Arianna’s screams from the kitchen rising to match pitch.
He threw down his bag, threw open the door to his mother’s bedroom and stared. She hadn’t called for him in years, so what did she want now?
The scene he was met with shocked and confused him, but at the same time he felt an odd sort of anticipation bubbling inside of him. “Malahki,” his mother whispered, eyes wide as she swayed back and forth just slightly, balancing perfectly on the windowsill. “Malahki.” His name seemed foreign on her lips, and he wasn’t sure what to do, what to say.
He didn’t have time to say anything. In one crucial second, her center of balance shifted. He watched as her feet shifted just that much more, and her body followed suit, disappearing from the windowsill and there was a thud and a scream from below, the insistent sounds of a car alarm and more sirens to blend in with the ones already there.
Just another day in New York City, he told himself, strangely numb to the situation, and he opened the front door and walked down the steps to the sidewalk in a daze.
Their car was dented. There was a splatter of blood across the top that reached out to the blacktop, and the usual array of shocked pedestrians was there, gaping. The alarm was still going off, but his mother’s body was gone.
Malahki took a deep breath, went back inside, and decided to make his sister a piece of toast.
Five minutes later, his mother walked into the room, rushing like usual, dressed in her best suit and still rushing around to try and get everything together before leaving for work. He stared at her, blankly, watched as she threw away the toast he had prepared for Arianna, picked her up, grabbed her car keys and was out of the house in a matter of seconds.
He turned to look at the television, remembering that, before, it had been saying something. Something that seemed important.
It was turned off, completely blank, and that was when he first started to question his sanity.
--
School was a lost cause after a morning like that, but he knew that he had to get out of the house somehow. It took three tries for him to get the lock undone, and once he was outside, it seemed much different from what he remembered from just this morning.
It was colder outside, the wind swirling and nipping at his face, but he had always liked the cold weather. The dent was still there, deep in the roof of their car, but the blood was nowhere to be seen. The police cars were gone, pedestrians weren’t crowded around anymore. There were no sirens, and he decided that maybe he should just get on the subway and stop trying to make sense of this.
--
The subway was even worse than home, somehow. It was full of people he had never seen before, but not in the usual, overly crowded city sort of way. These people were different.
Blank stares, too much like his own, and there was a girl sitting in the corner, curled up in a ball and crying softly, just loudly enough to be heard. Malahki stared at her while the subway shook just so, wondered why she was crying. Nobody said anything, nobody but another boy who was standing a couple of feet to the left. He moved closer, sat down beside her and talked with her in a low voice until she wasn’t crying anymore.
Malahki watched. Malahki was fascinated. And then the boy smiled at him and he didn’t know what to do.
The subway stopped. They all got off, and it was as simple as that.
--
When Malahki got home that night, the door was locked. He banged on it to no avail for at least ten minutes before he remembered that his house key was in his pocket. He pulled it out, didn’t pay much attention to the way that it was smeared with blood, and walked inside.
The kitchen was still littered with pots and pans everywhere he looked, Arianna was sitting in the living room watching television, and his mother was home, for once. She was still in her suit from earlier in the day, pacing back in forth with bare feet over tile, talking much too quickly.
Malahki thought nothing of it, just the same old routine, until he paid attention to what she was saying. Yes, I’m going to the morgue tomorrow morning, making arrangements with the funeral director. He was so young, so young.
He blinked, took a deep breath, and turned around. Once he was back outside, he wondered why he wasn’t cold anymore.
--
“Your clothes are all bloody.”
It was a statement, and the words made Malahki feel like maybe he was trapped in a glass box, the person speaking to him free on the outside. He looked down, and wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before. He was covered.
Instead of speaking he shrugged, and the boy came closer, sitting next to him on the bench in the subway station, sitting much too close, but Malahki couldn’t feel him. He recognized him though, recognized him from the subway and wondered strange things about him. Did he ever go home? Did he have a home?
“I think I might be dead,” he said flatly, and the boy smiled.
“I’m Aurele,” he offered. “And I think you might be dead, too.”
--
Time wasn’t a variable anymore. Suddenly, Malahki had all the time in the world. He had time and bloody clothes and a friend named Aurele, a friend that he talked to every night in the subway station.
Aurele had always been different. He had always seen the people that Malahki was seeing now, seen the things that happened, sometimes even before their time had come. Too many people were lost, and he explained that it was his job to show them where to go.
He brought Malahki newspaper headlines, clippings, even audio recordings of the day that he died. Malahki read about it, about how he had jumped out of the window of his mother’s bedroom and landed on their car below, read about how his mother had cried and his sister had screamed even though it seemed distant and impossible.
One night, when they were talking, he reached over and tried to touch Aurele’s hand. Nothing happened. There was an illusion of touch, but he couldn’t feel it.
Aurele stopped speaking, and Malahki cried.
--
It was dangerous, stupid, and just about every other negative adjective that Malahki could think of. He knew that, but falling in love had always been a secret wish of his in life, a dream that, one day, he wanted to fulfill.
Aurele was easy to cling to, easy to talk to, and had a smile that could make Malahki forget about his bloody clothes, about his mother and his sister and jumping out the window. It was a tainted love, attraction that made no sense, but he couldn’t pull himself out of it.
Time wasn’t a variable, so he didn’t know how long it had been. But one night, sitting side by side on the same bench in the same subway station, the words moved past his lips in a whisper.
“I love you.”
Aurele nodded, and Malahki hugged him without feeling it.
--
The next time Malahki got on the subway, it was different. Full of the same people, the same blank stares as always, and the girl from before was crying in the corner.
It was strangely quiet, and it felt as though there was some sort of secret, something that he was missing out on. When he got off of the subway, he saw him.
Aurele’s smile was as bright as always, his eyes a little darker than usual. Malakhi didn’t care, because when Aurele stepped forward and kissed him, he felt it.
--
Arianna sat in front of the television, staring at the screen, watching the words scroll by.
Aurele Rainier, seventeen years old, another tragic teen suicide. So young, so young, and there were people crying and sirens just like what she had seen before.
For a fraction of a second, she thought that she saw something familiar. Two boys, hand in hand, both of them smiling.
Her mother strode into the room, too busy like always, and turned off the television. It was as simple as that.
like being shot.
1603 words.
r
It was a perfectly normal day in the perfectly normal life of Malahki Modestine. He wasn’t speaking to his mother, was running at least an hour late for school, and had no intentions of fixing either of the two problems. The kitchen was loud, much too crowded somehow with only himself and his younger sister inside, pots and pans crowding the counters and littering the floor, making it impossible to think.
Arianna wouldn’t stop screaming, and Malahki was just about to get out the door, if nothing else but to get away from it. He overlooked the television screen, didn’t see the bright red outline, the scrolling text, the panicked reporters or the blood. Whatever it was, it certainly didn’t matter. It never did.
“Malahki!” His mother’s voice, a sudden shriek from her bedroom just as he reached the front door, and he rolled his eyes in exasperation. She was probably drunk again, and he didn’t really care what she had to say. Fingers quickly snapping the lock, turning the knob, and there it was again. Louder, Arianna’s screams from the kitchen rising to match pitch.
He threw down his bag, threw open the door to his mother’s bedroom and stared. She hadn’t called for him in years, so what did she want now?
The scene he was met with shocked and confused him, but at the same time he felt an odd sort of anticipation bubbling inside of him. “Malahki,” his mother whispered, eyes wide as she swayed back and forth just slightly, balancing perfectly on the windowsill. “Malahki.” His name seemed foreign on her lips, and he wasn’t sure what to do, what to say.
He didn’t have time to say anything. In one crucial second, her center of balance shifted. He watched as her feet shifted just that much more, and her body followed suit, disappearing from the windowsill and there was a thud and a scream from below, the insistent sounds of a car alarm and more sirens to blend in with the ones already there.
Just another day in New York City, he told himself, strangely numb to the situation, and he opened the front door and walked down the steps to the sidewalk in a daze.
Their car was dented. There was a splatter of blood across the top that reached out to the blacktop, and the usual array of shocked pedestrians was there, gaping. The alarm was still going off, but his mother’s body was gone.
Malahki took a deep breath, went back inside, and decided to make his sister a piece of toast.
Five minutes later, his mother walked into the room, rushing like usual, dressed in her best suit and still rushing around to try and get everything together before leaving for work. He stared at her, blankly, watched as she threw away the toast he had prepared for Arianna, picked her up, grabbed her car keys and was out of the house in a matter of seconds.
He turned to look at the television, remembering that, before, it had been saying something. Something that seemed important.
It was turned off, completely blank, and that was when he first started to question his sanity.
--
School was a lost cause after a morning like that, but he knew that he had to get out of the house somehow. It took three tries for him to get the lock undone, and once he was outside, it seemed much different from what he remembered from just this morning.
It was colder outside, the wind swirling and nipping at his face, but he had always liked the cold weather. The dent was still there, deep in the roof of their car, but the blood was nowhere to be seen. The police cars were gone, pedestrians weren’t crowded around anymore. There were no sirens, and he decided that maybe he should just get on the subway and stop trying to make sense of this.
--
The subway was even worse than home, somehow. It was full of people he had never seen before, but not in the usual, overly crowded city sort of way. These people were different.
Blank stares, too much like his own, and there was a girl sitting in the corner, curled up in a ball and crying softly, just loudly enough to be heard. Malahki stared at her while the subway shook just so, wondered why she was crying. Nobody said anything, nobody but another boy who was standing a couple of feet to the left. He moved closer, sat down beside her and talked with her in a low voice until she wasn’t crying anymore.
Malahki watched. Malahki was fascinated. And then the boy smiled at him and he didn’t know what to do.
The subway stopped. They all got off, and it was as simple as that.
--
When Malahki got home that night, the door was locked. He banged on it to no avail for at least ten minutes before he remembered that his house key was in his pocket. He pulled it out, didn’t pay much attention to the way that it was smeared with blood, and walked inside.
The kitchen was still littered with pots and pans everywhere he looked, Arianna was sitting in the living room watching television, and his mother was home, for once. She was still in her suit from earlier in the day, pacing back in forth with bare feet over tile, talking much too quickly.
Malahki thought nothing of it, just the same old routine, until he paid attention to what she was saying. Yes, I’m going to the morgue tomorrow morning, making arrangements with the funeral director. He was so young, so young.
He blinked, took a deep breath, and turned around. Once he was back outside, he wondered why he wasn’t cold anymore.
--
“Your clothes are all bloody.”
It was a statement, and the words made Malahki feel like maybe he was trapped in a glass box, the person speaking to him free on the outside. He looked down, and wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before. He was covered.
Instead of speaking he shrugged, and the boy came closer, sitting next to him on the bench in the subway station, sitting much too close, but Malahki couldn’t feel him. He recognized him though, recognized him from the subway and wondered strange things about him. Did he ever go home? Did he have a home?
“I think I might be dead,” he said flatly, and the boy smiled.
“I’m Aurele,” he offered. “And I think you might be dead, too.”
--
Time wasn’t a variable anymore. Suddenly, Malahki had all the time in the world. He had time and bloody clothes and a friend named Aurele, a friend that he talked to every night in the subway station.
Aurele had always been different. He had always seen the people that Malahki was seeing now, seen the things that happened, sometimes even before their time had come. Too many people were lost, and he explained that it was his job to show them where to go.
He brought Malahki newspaper headlines, clippings, even audio recordings of the day that he died. Malahki read about it, about how he had jumped out of the window of his mother’s bedroom and landed on their car below, read about how his mother had cried and his sister had screamed even though it seemed distant and impossible.
One night, when they were talking, he reached over and tried to touch Aurele’s hand. Nothing happened. There was an illusion of touch, but he couldn’t feel it.
Aurele stopped speaking, and Malahki cried.
--
It was dangerous, stupid, and just about every other negative adjective that Malahki could think of. He knew that, but falling in love had always been a secret wish of his in life, a dream that, one day, he wanted to fulfill.
Aurele was easy to cling to, easy to talk to, and had a smile that could make Malahki forget about his bloody clothes, about his mother and his sister and jumping out the window. It was a tainted love, attraction that made no sense, but he couldn’t pull himself out of it.
Time wasn’t a variable, so he didn’t know how long it had been. But one night, sitting side by side on the same bench in the same subway station, the words moved past his lips in a whisper.
“I love you.”
Aurele nodded, and Malahki hugged him without feeling it.
--
The next time Malahki got on the subway, it was different. Full of the same people, the same blank stares as always, and the girl from before was crying in the corner.
It was strangely quiet, and it felt as though there was some sort of secret, something that he was missing out on. When he got off of the subway, he saw him.
Aurele’s smile was as bright as always, his eyes a little darker than usual. Malakhi didn’t care, because when Aurele stepped forward and kissed him, he felt it.
--
Arianna sat in front of the television, staring at the screen, watching the words scroll by.
Aurele Rainier, seventeen years old, another tragic teen suicide. So young, so young, and there were people crying and sirens just like what she had seen before.
For a fraction of a second, she thought that she saw something familiar. Two boys, hand in hand, both of them smiling.
Her mother strode into the room, too busy like always, and turned off the television. It was as simple as that.