Angst: A Short Story

It was a beautiful, cool July morning in the mountains of Colorado; the birds were chirping and the leaves on the trees were rustling. I could almost taste the bacon sizzling on the stovetop as my mother made breakfast. Nothing could ruin a perfect morning like this… At least that’s what I thought. Interrupting the cooking of breakfast, my mom’s cell phone strangely began to ring; there hadn’t been many people trying to contact my mom since she was on vacation. However, my mom ran to answer the call. “Oh, it’s your sister,” I heard my mom say. Although I was in a different room, I could hear the concern and worry in my mother’s voice moments after she answered the phone. Instantaneously, my heart began to race. I began feeling sick to my stomach

As I looked up, the sky was dark the sidewalk illuminated by the streetlights. The sound of crickets and cars echoing through my ears. I walked home that night, tears in my eyes. I was leaving, I couldn’t handle it anymore. The meds, doctors, psychiatrists nothing was working, our lives were in constant danger. By the time I got home the car was gone. By the time, I finished packing it was dawn. The sun creeping in through the shutters. For the next couple of days, I crashed at Jason’s before I headed South. I heard my cell ringing, it was mom… I let it go to voicemail.

A morbid melancholy stole over me. Anxiety gnawed at my heart. I was a living corpse. There was a feeling of chill in the air every day as I felt. I faked illness so as not to go to school. Despair hangs heavy in the stifling air. It was a dreary day for me , cold and without sunshine. I dread people and always avoid people. The door was locked from the inside. A cold grey light crept under the curtains. The windows were secured with locks and bars. The room felt cold and sterile.The flowers faded for want of water. A single lamp was suspended from the ceiling. The clock ticked louder and louder in a quiet room. I regarded the room as a refuge from the outside

The sharp arctic like breeze propels itself onto my young and fair skin as my mother forces the old, frail white birch door open, exposing both myself and my younger sister to the harsh and unforgiving climate that awaits us beyond the both feeble and aged shack that I have called home for the past nine and a half years. My father sits in the frost bitten and beaten three seater Chevrolet truck. Crammed in the tray covered in tarp, I struggle to make out the shape of what seems to be my previously owned duffel bag, bestowed upon me by my next door neighbours following the death of their son, my mother describes his death to me as being “a tragic accident” down in the Cape Breton mines. Before my eyes could properly focus on the contents inside the tray of the truck, my Mother had already

It was a mysterious, windy, dark night. Annabel, a short young girl with jet black hair, eyelashes that reached the sky and eyes like a puppy dog, had just awoken on the floor of a cold dark forest. As she took in her surroundings and wondered how she had got there, a sudden pain appeared in her head and she had a brief flashback of painful memories of the car crash that she and her parents had just been involved in, a horrific accident; she lay there as tears slowly welled up in her eyes and rolled down her soft, pale cheeks. The thought of her deceased parents sent a shiver up her spine; she couldn’t believe they were gone.

We were walking for a few hours. My feet throbbed and my ears were ringing from Taylor’s whining. Finally I could see it, the old abandoned house I discovered one day while riding my bike. The door was barely hanging onto its hinges, and there were several windows missing or broken. I pried open the splintering oak door. In the house there was two rooms. One, the one you first enter, was most likely a kitchen and living room. There was a sofa with faded fabric and springs popping out everywhere. An old furnace sat in the corner with rotting charcoal inside. The door of the furnace was missing rendering the whole thing useless. The other room was much smaller. It was a bedroom. There was a twin sized bed. The frame was rusty and missing a leg. I pulled the mattress off of it, so we could sleep on it. There were springs and stuffing sticking out of the mattress. It wasn’t too dirty to sleep on because I pulled off the moldy sheets. We laid down on the mattress. Taylor started snoring within minutes. I was worried about Mom. She had had a seizure before. It was because of her failing liver. Last time, social services took me and my sisters to a girl’s home. They served cooked vegetables that smelled like rotten seafood and chicken noodle soup with frozen chicken. After Mom got out of the hospital she got custody of us, but the judge told her if it happened again she wouldn’t get us back. My older sister, Becca, was eighteen so she didn’t have to

“It is a shame that her father left her...this happened because her mother failed her job as a wife...she is so young...what was her father thinking?”, my relatives whispered as they sipped their tea. My cousin’s face turned pale like the white blanket of snow falling outside the lodge at the camp in Lake Tahoe. Her expression held so many emotions as if it was a canvas of a painting to be gazed upon. I could see that she felt frustrated and tired of these rude remarks, and all I did was just stand there and caressed the back side of her hands, so I could comfort her. Suddenly, it felt like the air had thickened so much that even a hammer could not slash it into tiny bits. My cousin had not yet known why her father left the house yesterday.

When we headed up to her room to prepare for bed, the night hit rock bottom. It started with her ranting about how mad and upset she was with me, but the second I tried to explain that I’d done nothing, and didn’t deserve her comments all night long, it escalated quickly. Her shrieks projected off the ceiling, echoing throughout the room; I swear the whole block could hear her. Suddenly, the heat of the atmosphere rose: tension. My heart raced. My body paralyzed.

She finds herself standing by the open window of her kitchen. The city’s nightlife booming beneath her. The cold wraps itself around her like an old friend. Now, she finally realizes the cause of his death. It was her all along. Her blamed herself because it was her. Drip, drip, drip. It echoes around her, filling the last of her senses as she leans out the window.

I hear a clap of thunder and slam my book shut. My Mom jumps, I tell her to stay here. I go to the kitchen, she’s screaming at me, I don’t care. I walk out the front door and I feel the first drop of rain hit my head. I pause and look up toward the sky: the sky doesn’t care about what I am or what I do. I run to his house and twist the worn knob of his door, I’m not stopped. I open the door to find him in the kitchen, a look of surprise on his face he goes to yell but is stopped by the cold stainless steel piercing his abdomen. I take in the stale stench of his room and the vision of his helpless large body hit the cold concreted floor. I walk to the door, lock it and close it. I hit an icy wall or rain and let the pure water trickle down me. I hear the cries of my mother but I cannot help but smile. One less set of unrelenting predators eyes to stare into, one less rumbling mouth for our eardrums to beat

As I watched my house crumbled into a million pieces, my legs started to quiver to the point where I could no longer stand on my own two feet. Everything… everything I’d ever loved was inside: my diary, my family photos, my childhood memories. I couldn’t take the pain any more so I began to thrash around the frozen, forlorn floor like a fish on a hook. As my pupils rolled back, flashbacks rolled in. The picture of a child lying in bed while her parents read her a bedtime story replayed in my mind. Images of a primary school girl showing her parents the pictures she drew of them, as a family, wouldn’t fade away. All those memories…now gone. Forever.

Her eyes struggled to stay open, slowly blinking but never closing. Droplets from the clouds rolled down the windowpane, like copycats of those running down her face. The night was dark with shadows. The only sounds in the house were the plump raindrops falling on the windowsill, the clinking of beer bottles and the sound of her nervous breath. She had to stay awake for she had left the moment he had passed out on the dusty couch in the living room. Her sweaty palms clutched the leather straps of her bag. Her body shook like a small dog’s and the wind made the trees sway like the ghosts of everything she’d ever known. The sound finally came and so did the closing of her bedroom door.

As I scour around for something to eat, I find the pantry empty (what a surprise) except for a bag of potatoes, a couple of packets of 2 min noodles and a few loaves of almost-finished bread. I salvage two pieces, put them in the toaster and flick through the junk mail. "How was school?" a husky voice calls from the lounge. Mother has resurrected. The side of her face is patterned with red marks from the pillow. She trudges over to the fridge, opening it mindlessly, closing it. She repeats this process with the freezer and several cupboards, tears began to fall down her cheeks. I know the fact we had no food MUST have really upset

I was giddy to get home i was walking down my my street “ Walkers rd.” I scoffed and roll my eyes. I walk down this road everyday and appreciate the scorching irony every time. I opened the deep oak doors with force. My 13 year old body still has trouble. I shoved the door with the elbow my grey backpack wasn't depending on. Finally when my body managed to push the door, something wasn't right. By that i mean my house wasn't mine… the orchard my mother obsesses over wasn't the center of the foyer , the bright white walls with the complementary purple rug wasn't there. It was dark with a rustic light switch. I hit the light switch and the creepy hospital lights that turn on one by one showed blinding light that settled to a musty yellow

I panicked because I didn’t want her to cry again. I didn’t want her to cry anymore. I told her to stop, but her soft tears went into loud sobs. I started crying because I was petrified. I felt nervous, and my hands felt clammy. My hands were still cold. The rain was still pouring. My brother was still sleeping. But why can’t I be still? I reached my fingertips to her cheek so I could wipe her tears away. At first, she cried even more, but as I wiped more tears, she started to calm down. Then I felt calm. I felt her heavy breathing, her chest heaving from her loud sobs. She finally stopped crying, so I stopped too. She breathed in deeply a few times and exhaled so hard like the pain would leave from her body. Her eyes were on the road, and her hands were tightly gripped to the steering wheel. Her hands were exactly at the ten and two positions. She wore her pretty blue shirt that sheered at the sleeves with small black roses. It nicely clung to her delicate frame. She even wore her favorite hair clip, two flowers with a diamond encrusted at the middle. My mom was so pretty. If it wasn’t from the running mascara, one would think she was definitely breathtaking. Why would anyone make such a pretty face so sad? Why would anyone make my mom sad? I don’t want to see her sad anymore. She felt the intense stare that I was giving her. It probably made her