Hurt

[matt35mm]

My cousin and I decided to do a writing excerise.  Basically, the requirement was to have it be one page and to show an emotion (we chose HURT as the emotion), and that we had to finish it in a limited amount of time.  I'm not really looking for much serious critique (although you're welcome to give criticisms), and I'm not gonna touch it again because it was just a one day thing.

Anyway, this was the result:



   He's on the brink now, and he knows it.  His lip trembles, but no one is there to see it this time.  He blinks slowly, not shutting his eyes fully—half-blinking.  And there it goes: the feeling that no one wants him.  The feeling works its way from his mind, and tingles down his arms and into his chest.  His throat swells up, and his lip trembles again.  There is no one there to see any of this.
   Sitting on his bed, he slowly looks around the room.  He takes off his shirt—he doesn't know why... maybe because it's a hot day.  His small room appears massive to his eyes, so he swings his legs onto his bed, lies down on his side, and stares at the wall that's 5 inches from his face.  The world looks smaller now.  He feels a little safer now.
   His heart feels raw on the inside.  As he rubs his chest, he thinks of his parents.  His eyes glaze over, and then he remembers his mother's touch.  He thinks about the last time that his mother touched him, and about that last look his father gave him.  He can't believe that they've been gone for so long.  Their bodies have probably decomposed pretty much all the way by now.
   "What made Grandmamma think that she could just throw me out like that?" he suddenly wonders with rage.  "She knows what I've been through!  She knows that I'm trying my best, all right?  Just because I fuh—"  He pauses, then licks his lips and continues to think to himself, "... Just because I screwed up this one time."
   The knock on the door is too gentle, and her footsteps are too light, to be heard.  As his bitterness begins to work its way down to his knees, the feeling is intercepted by her rough hands.  It takes him a moment to realize that the sandpaper brushing up against his legs is his grandmother's hand.  He turns his head slowly to see Grandmamma sitting on the edge of his bed with her hand still on his leg.  She looks at him sternly through her thick bifocals.  He rubs his eyes, wiping where the tears would be if he had been given a little more time.  His lip trembles, and Grandmamma sees it.
   "You know what I do for you, is I doing for your own goodness."  Her thick accent and shoddy grammar was something he had learned to despise.  "I try," she continues, "I try and what you give-uh me, eh?  Notting but trouble!"
   He can't understand why she's ragging on him.  "Why you gotta make me feel so bad about things, huh?  You want a normal family, but you gotta be normal, too!"
   "You shut up.  You dunt remember dat I am all you hab now.  I taking the care of you, I put da food in your moufh.  And you repay me how?  By breaking-uh da window of da other people's car?"
   He sighs heavily and rolls his eyes.  She continues to look at him sternly.  In an ideal world, they would both learn to understand each other.  In an ideal world, her hand on his knee would have quelled all of the negativity that's hiding their love for each other.
   "You shouldn't have done that, though, Grandmamma," he begins, "you shouldn't just try and throw me out like that.  If you're all I have now, then that means I'm all you have now, too."  He can feel his nostrils flaring—he hates when that happens—and he guesses that his face is probably pretty red by now, but he gathers the strength to continue: "You just can't throw me out like that."
   They both feel betrayed, wronged on a fundamental level in their last moment together.  It's a shame that those are the last words that he will ever say to her in person.  He will learn to apologize to her in prayer, and she will learn to apologize in the afterlife.