Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Adulterer.

The child, his eyes wander. They are lustrous gems of intelligence and malice, floating all over my face like a stranded seine floating over a sea. Perhaps it is a minor movement of his brow, the slight pessimistic curve of his right lip, or maybe it is the full, omnipresent gesture of raising a whole eyebrow, the frown with almost every inch of skin folding over each other, creating shadows of darkness within.

‘No! I’m serious! I don’t think that!’ I practically shouted at him, yet to no avail. He has left now, left me alone with my back forced against the glacier of ice, cold, cold, freezing ice, which is the glass table imposed against me.

It is night , with the cicadas’ small, ever-present chirp slowly building momentum, greater and greater, until what was a small, insignificant speck now looms as a maddening wall of sound. From the corner of my vision, I can see a small fireplace, the shadows of the flames just gently dancing, creeping along the opposite walls. The cold of the glass table still stabs against me, yet I long for the gracious heat the fire had to offer. Unfortunately, that was not to be; the boy had come back.

Come back, he did, but come back the same, he did not. If it were any other, I may not have noticed, but notice I did; is it really that difficult to tell when a child has the coating of a tear over the amazing patterns within his eyes, when the smile seems more like the new carpet failing to cover the rotting floorboards? In a voice more a primitive growl than the quiet whisper it is, with a tone seemingly more malevolent than the distressed attitude it actually is, he says three words.

'How.'

'Could.'

'You.'

And in that moment, he lunges at my exposed exterior, he gropes for my sides, he incessantly grabs me, shakes me, picks me up, strides towards the fireplace with an expression no man would ever wish to see, the hatred personified, the treachery befallen, the despondency within, it seems to crawl through his face as if worms are eating him, bit by bit, second by second, it seems....no - to describe something like this is a sin. It is an image no thing would wish to ever see.

In an instant, he throws me as if I were vermin into the fireplace. Yes, I did mention that I wished for its warmth, but not its wrath. As my pages slowly curl and darken, I hear a door opening, a human entering. She runs into the room with the fireplace and begins to say the words 'Hey darling...' but in an instant, she turns and cries.

'Is that my diary?'

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