AS English Language
Short Story
Victoria Munro
As I stare down at the photograph your voice sounds in my head. “Help me, help me, help me”.
I can hear your shrieks. Desperate and fearful, like an animal being slaughtered.
I can see you in my mind. Your face. Tears are rolling down your cheeks. Your eyes are lost and lonely. You stand defeated and broken. You are crumpled; your heart has been shattered, ripped apart by my vicious words.
How could this have all happened? What had I done?
You were once my best friend.
I jump up from the floor and charge out of the room, I can hear my feet pounding on the carpet, I fly out of the house and zoom down the empty street. As I arrive at the end of your house I notice people milling around: old people walking scruffy dogs on leads, children laughing and playing together, a mum with her baby- it is gurgling nonsense words and the mother smiles. I can see your house as I walk up to it. Red bricks, green grass, a golden coloured gate. It all looks so perfect, so idyllic.
But I knew that your life had been far from perfect. Your parents split up when you were eight. Your dad left for another woman and your mother, devastated by this shock, had turned to alcohol to numb the pain; your brother had self harmed for years and suffered panic attacks, and you yourself were so painfully shy and self conscious. Why did I test you further? I pulled on your strings until they broke with a pang and sent you tumbling to the ground.
Why did I do it? Was it to make myself seem less insecure? Was it to take away the pain from my own life? Or to banish the misery that was threatened to envelope me.
My mind wanders back to the day that things changed, our friendship dissolved.
You had been smiling, laughing, at a joke. You looked so happy, so carefree. At one with the world. Your life was finally on track. Your brother had just been discharged from counselling and was starting to make a steady recovery; your mum and dad had begun to talk to each other and put the terrible past behind them. Finally, so finally, things were starting to piece together.
But I had to go and break the puzzle. Pick apart the pieces.
Why was your life on track when mine was falling apart? It didn’t seem fair. For once you were the stronger one, the happier one, the more confident one, and I didn’t like it, I liked being in control. A waterfall of anger had washed over me, drenched my soul in bitterness. I grabbed your arm and pulled it back, heard the bone crack, a satisfying squeal of pain drifted from your lips. I smiled. Your face fell, your eyes misted over, and I felt a kind of triumph, a sensation that I was winning.
It kept on like this, and the most annoying thing was that you didn’t defend yourself. You put up with my torture. You didn’t stand up for yourself. I said jump and you did.
Your Mum noticed the bruises on your arms, from my punches, the red marks on your face from where I’d slapped you. As I damaged your life and body you started to ruin yourself in other ways, I noticed the scars on your wrists from where you were cutting yourself, to numb the pain. In the space of six months we’d gone from close best friends to a scared fragile victim and her no less scared bully.
Back to reality and I let myself in the gate and unlock the door with your old key I’d taken from your satchel, the day before everything happened. When I reach your room I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, my palms are sweaty, my throat dry.
Your photos stare at me, haunt me; your smile is ghostly and false. There is a photograph of me and you, taken a couple of years ago, at the park, on a hot summer’s day. Before I ruined it all, when we were just ordinary best friends, happy and at ease, despite our issues. Your bed has been made, the room is tidy and clean, it has been left just how you liked it. Your diary lies on your desk, unopened and unread. As I flick through the white pages, a wave of absolute sadness washes over me. Anger and self hatred stab at my heart. Guilt floods my soul. I find the words I’ve been so dreading to read.
‘I can’t take it anymore. It’s over. I’m over’.
This is your last entry, dated November 3rd. Just a week ago. I can’t believe it had all happened just a week ago, it feels like a lifetime. Last week you sat at this desk, breathed this air.
Last week you were alive.
Now you are dead. And it is because of me. My selfish heartless soul has killed yours.
In a desperate attempt to push away the guilt that is eating me up I delve in my bag and bring out the penknife. It glistens, shiny and glossy; it is my weapon, my friend and my enemy. I dig it into my skin; trace the line along my wrist. Blood bubbles at the surface and seeps out. It drips onto the soft cream carpets and makes a scarlet stain. I feel the guilt and self hatred fly away into the atmosphere as the liquid leaks from my arm. This is what I deserve. This is my fate.
I am over, just like you.
My poor innocent victim.
We are over…
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