Hi, this is my first time posting in this particular forum, and I hope this is the right place for me to post something like this.
I had an assignment for my Creative Writing class to describe something "violent" and write about it from the third person perspective...it was about 5 pages long, so this post might go on a bit.
....And in case you were wondering, "the girl" in this story is actually me, and the story describes an actual meltdown I had when I was 12. My needle phobia was the trigger.
Sudden, Deafening Explosion
She’s never done this before. Of course, she’s gotten angry plenty of times, but never this dramatically. What was the antecedent to this outburst of hers? Is she sick? She does tend to catch colds and strep infections often, since she sees her two younger half – sisters once a week and they both attend daycare. Is this a sign of that; does this mean another doctor’s visit? Or, maybe she simply didn’t get enough sleep last night; or something happened at school last week.
I know what her mother’s input to this aberrance would be, if she were told: “I know this is what will happen if she’s allowed to live with her father; if she lived with me and was in the proper environment and on the right medications, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen.” She doesn’t need to know, though – hers and her husband’s latest designs on the protagonist’s future are more than likely the cause of this whole incident.
But at the end of the day, does anyone really know? Is there really any one cause for tonight’s explosion? Maybe it was just a classic case of a lot of isolated incidents, frustrations and fears coming to head…and they all came out tonight.
…………………………
It was looking to be just an ordinary night, as the 12 – year – old walked out of the grocery store and to the car with her father and stepmother. They were simply going to put their items in the trunk of their car, drive home, and enjoy the rest of their night.
The young girl was looking right at the ground as she walked. She had to walk like this, otherwise she might not see something waiting to trip her and send her crashing to the ground; scraping her hands, her face, and her legs for everyone to see. They’d all LOVE to see that, the girl thought to herself grimly. But at least this way, even if it does happen, no one can say it was because I was careless.
However, it was not hazards lying on the ground that proved to be the girl’s biggest problem. About two feet away from the approaching girl lay a parked car with a mangled muzzle. Jagged outcroppings of corrugated plastic and Plexiglas jutted out from the automobile’s front; the owner having neglected to have these repaired. It was parked a little further over the parking lines and barriers as the others, like a shark awaiting its prey.
OW! Was the next thing everybody heard, as a section of the girl’s knee was caught on one of the scraps plastic and Plexiglas hanging off the front of the parked car. The girl recovered from the shock of the unexpected pain, and then looked with horror at the stream of blood that seeped from the fresh wound….the wound that looked like a stripe across some wild animal’s body.
Now, one thing that must be made absolutely clear is that it was not the pain from the scratch or the unexpectedness of it all that precipitated what was to come. No, the straw that ended up breaking the camel’s back was what the stepmother said next: “We should take her to a doctor – she might need a tetanus shot.”
………………………….
….And at that, the heretofore pacified volcano erupted. NO WAY was she getting a tetanus shot – they were the kind that hurt worst of all, weren’t they? It wasn’t HER fault that she’d gotten the scrape; she hadn’t done anything wrong; so why did SHE need a tetanus shot? Argghh, so much injustice had occurred in the space of only five minutes! Everything became a swirl of mixed – up colors, and everyone’s voices seemed so far away, but not because the girl had moved at all from where she stood.
…………………
“I’M GOING TO GO BACK IN THE STORE AND FIND WHO DID THIS!” screamed the girl, who was starting to stomp her feet, something she hadn’t done in years. “I’M GOING TO FIND THEM AND MAKE THEM PAY FOR THIS! IT’S THEIR FAULT I NEED A SHOT! I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG! THEY DID! LET ME GO IN THAT STORE! I HAVE TO! I HAVE TO!”
“No, no, you don’t,” the girl’s father said. It was easy for him to stay calm; he wasn’t the one who had been randomly targeted by some total stranger that night. “You probably don’t even need a tetanus shot anyway. Besides, the owner of the car may not even be IN Kroger’s…he could be in the Rite Aid.”
“I AM GOING IN BACK INTO KROGER’S TO FIND WHO DID THIS AND YOU CAN’T STOP ME!” the girl continued, further infuriated by how calm her parents seemed about this. “I AM GOING TO FIND HIM, PAGE HIM OVER THE PA SYSTEM AND BEAT HIM UP! HE’S GOING TO PAY FOR THIS! WE’LL SEE HOW HE LIKES BEING ALL BLOODY AND HURT! YOU HAVE TO LET ME! YOU HAVE TO! I HAVE TO DO THIS!!”
What happened afterwards is rather difficult to piece back together from memory. What is remembered is a fierce lunging for the store as if to follow through on the threat, and having an arm or hand grabbed by the girl’s stepmother or father. Somehow or other, they all eventually managed to find their car, and the groceries were unloaded silently as the girl simply stood a few feet away, chin pulled down to her chest, as she huffed for breath and murderous visions in vivid reds, blacks, and purples danced before her eyes. She tried closing her eyes very tight and then popping them open again, but the visions and gruesome pictures remained. They always lingered like that, regardless of whether she wanted them to or not. Crying sometimes washed them away from her line of vision, though, but that would not happen tonight.
…………………………
She didn’t know WHY it happened. These kinds of things never happened that often to worry about them much, but when they did happen, she never knew why. Either that, or it was due to a bunch of different causes that couldn’t be teased apart from one another….or they could, but it would take a long time. Anyway, her father and stepmother mercifully never mentioned the incident again and she was allowed to go to her room to ruminate after she had mutely assisted in putting the groceries away.
……………………..
What happened? Why did I act like that? The girl asked herself as she lay on her side on her bed. In her room, she was surrounded by floral wallpaper and stuffed animals that smiled understandingly in a way that said to her, “it’s all right, you can trust us.”
It was only a scrape, and I don’t think I need a tetanus shot after all; otherwise I would be really sick by now, wouldn’t I? she questioned herself further. But if she really didn’t need a tetanus shot, why had her stepmother mentioned that in the first place? If she was really feeling lucid enough to backtrack through the whole event in pursuit of the definite antecedent, wouldn’t she end up right about there; to the point where her stepmother raised the question of a shot and going to the doctor?
She had always had something of a needle phobia, and some anxiety surrounding the doctors who would administer them for any reasons they could think of. She preferred not to have people touch or get too close to her unless she was the one to initiate it. In any case, something had caused her to feel threatened, but she couldn’t be sure of what it was.
…………………………..
Her head snapped upright from its slight, bobbing motion and she realized that she really needed to start getting ready for bed. Tomorrow the judge wanted to talk with her privately in his office about why she wanted to stay where she was at her dad and stepmother’s house rather than move halfway across the United States with her mother, stepfather, and two younger half – sisters. She stumbled into the bathroom, gently dabbed at the bloody gash on her leg, and had a shower.
It was so wearying and heartbreaking; having to unintentionally hurt so many different people that you loved most of all.
_________________
I wish Sterling Holloway narrated my life.
"IT'S NOT FAIR!" "Life isn't fair, Calvin." "I know, but why isn't it ever unfair in MY favor?" ~ from Calvin and Hobbes
13 Sep 2012, 5:19 pm
