Piecing Thing Together Short Story

As I walked, the air of this haunted, dreadful and sorrowful land had sucked the life out of everything and roared as humanity began to disappear. As I carried on walking, I noticed that the small fraction of light was getting smaller and smaller, until it had been engulfed into a think black ash like smoke. Aggressively, the wind walked past the building with its cruddy feeling, blowing away all signs of life. Deeper and deeper into the land was a burning car door. The fire roared and crackled. The roaring and crackling of the burning car door merged with the aggressive air and created the loudest sounds ever heard on land. Growing darker, the skies made me feel nauseous. The fear of not waking up if a human fell asleep towered

People deal with grief in different ways. As a small child, the way the narrator handles uncertainty and pain is distressing, yet also expected. She finds distractions in the furniture and decorations. The child notices a

“I don’t feel so well” Jan’s father had suddenly said one morning at breakfast. Her father, a World War II veteran, stood up and went to go lie down. The rest of the family continued with their day. Michael went to see how his father was. When he tried to wake him his father didn’t respond or make a sound. The 11 year old boy was the one who first knew that his father was gone. The memory of her father’s loss is vivid in Jan’s mind. It was a substantial shock after he had survived the horrors of World War II and then just passed away quietly at home one morning. Jan now understands how

“It was December and the weather bitterly cold. She was a tiny mite, the size of five years, though, as afterward appeared, she was then nine. From a pan set upon a low stool she stood washing dishes, struggling with a frying pan about as heavy as herself. Across the table lay a brutal whip of twisted leather strands and the child's meagre arms and legs bore many marks of its use. But the saddest part of her story was written on her face in its look of suppression and misery, the face of a child unloved, of a child that had seen only the fearsome side of life. These things I saw while seeming not to see, and I left without speaking to, or of, the child. I never

The stone hollow echoed with dozens of small breaths and the clunky shuffling of chairs and tables. The lighting pulsated, from glowing orbs, the color of mandarins, positioned near walls throughout the room. Every child in the room was quiet in fear of disobeying and in pure content that today was another school day. Eilig sat in the back left of the room, at an ancient wooden desk with years worth of scratches and pen marks. Everyone else’s desks were identical: a scribbled-out heart an inch away from the corner, a deep, inch long scratch on the side. The silence was contagious until a woman entered the room, with hare-like features she clutched a clipboard, needle-like claws holding the soft wood in place.

So this boy by the age of 14, named Tim, lived in the worst neighborhood. There were murders, kidnappings, and even robberies. Whenever Tim witnessed something so tragic as of these topics I have listed above, he started to bawl. He cried and cried and cried until his mother came in with some cookies and warm milk and fed it to him like he was still her little 1 year old. Tim was never allowed to go outside. For 1, there was this gang called, “Victorians”, and whenever someone tries to cross their path, they would rob them of their money and beat the victim up. Tim had once crossed their path, and they tried to rob Tim, but 1 of the members passed out because Tim had thrown a pipe at the member’s temple, which was located on the sides of his

The low ceiling cowered above and the black plastic chairs formed a restless crowd around me. From my seat, I could smell the acute scent of cleaning fluid, whiteboard markers, and the nauseating perfume of the girl sitting next to me. Like so many other students, she exuded concentration. Her brows were drawn as her hand moved rapidly over the testing booklet, only pausing to reposition herself or cast an almost imperceptible sidelong glance. The effortlessness of her actions furthered my anxiety as I began tapping my foot uneasily against the speckled linoleum floor. Through the dusty shades that hung precariously in front the only window in the room, I could see the outline of a solitary building shadowed by the dense gray fog that clung to the courtyard outside. At that moment, I would have given anything to be able to run and scream at the top of my lungs. I had an inexplicable urge to break free from the confinement of that room and what it

All was dark, all was silent. Never would he see his sister or brother again. His poor old mother, without a husband, now without her eldest son. Each day his heartbroken mother would sit at home, in her old wooden rocking chair, waiting for him to come home from a hard day on the farm. But he never came!

At the front gate, there were weeds all over what used to be a garden. The door suddenly swung on its creaky hinges. Pitch black. You couldn’t see a thing in the cabin. Every couple of minutes shingles would fall off the roof. I was scared. Terrified. Then I heard creaking floorboards.

Although secure in her makeshift safe house, she was by no means sheltered from the insidious scratching. The scratching was joined with another sound, one not so alarming in tone. It was a baby’s sob, sounding so hurt and in need. All of these things pounded in the girl's mind. What if it was her baby doll? Her baby needed her. She couldn’t reject her little helpless baby.

Dread and sorrow wash throughout me. We spent so long in this cursed building to prevent us from ending up like we did. I furrow my brows. The foul smell of rotting old wood came upon my senses. Now, I could only taste dryness in my throat. This attic has still not changed one bit.

I took a deep breath as I walked through the doorway. The door was stuck open, hanging on just one of its hinges. It was clear that no one had been near this place in a long time. As I entered, a stench hit me. It smelt sickly sweet, almost like rotten fairy floss. I looked around the room at the faded and ripped wallpaper, and the broken furniture. The air was so thick with dust it was almost impossible to breathe, and everything was thickly covered with dust. The little light there was came from the cracks in the yellowed blinds.

I walked down a hallway that seemed to stretch endlessly before me. The frosted glass window on the door that spelled doom seemed to stretch further away with every step I took toward it. My heart began to beat at a more brisk pace, my palms began to sweat, and my eyes narrowed on the shiny clean brass doorknob. I had completely forgotten my mother was alongside me until she had to pull me back into reality. She grabbed my arm and tugged me forward. With slight resistance to her strong grasp we dredged on toward the door. I watched in slow motion as the doorknob turned and a giant mad scientist smiled down at me. The angle of his head allowed sadistic shadows to stretch down upon his glowing evil eyes, and his curled, sinister smile.

I stared in horror – that wall was stained with gruesome blood stains. What the smell was became all too obvious and I felt the need to vomit… that motion put away and forgotten in an instant when the shuffling of feet rustled behind me. Panic. I turned around in a blur, my eyes huge and watering. My stomach stirred in the slightest. A lamp? Indeed, a tall standing lamp radiated a warm light only a few metres in front of me. Was it real or a figment of my abused mind? Curiosity would get the best of me, lending me a tiny spurt of energy to boost me on my feet. Teetering footsteps led me forward cautiously, random tremors reminding me of my weakness. The lamp was close enough to touch, its friendly warmth the only hope in the world to me. Basking in it for some slow seconds, I wondered, maybe there were more things in the room that hadn’t been revealed to the naked eye? Turning sharp on my heel, I let out a blood curdling screech as I came face to face with the most horrific thing I had ever seen. Huge fly-like eyes took in my paling complexion, and a lopsided smile of stinking razor sharp teeth mocked me. Rancid skin that looked like the algae layer that sat upon a swamp bubbled and oozed, trickling down a sharply shaped ‘face’. Flight or fight reaction chose the obvious option and I turned back again to run. Where, I did not

On the cover of the glossy photograph is a short three year old, who wouldn’t develop much more in height as she grew older, standing in the living room of the first house she lived in, in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The girl is me, I am wearing a fireman’s outfit for Halloween and across my face is a radiant smile, when I look at the picture I can tell that I had been laughing. Looking at the photo I am reminded of the joy of a young girl who had not yet fully understood the affliction that had already been thrown at her, I, the young girl, was not expecting the pain that the world would forcibly hand to me. The house that I am standing in is home to me, my Mother, my Father, occasionally my brother Matthew, and my cat, Beast.