Hello everybody,
This is a short short story that I plan to enter into a contest that is held every year.. My friends and associates keep telling me that my writing is good but sometimes i am not so sure. so that's where you the general public comes in.
Thanks
The CHAIR
My little sister sits and waits for me in an empty room. She will sit and wait, and wait, but I will never show up.
My little sister sits on a wooden chair that is becoming very weak. It cannot hold too much weight. Put too much weight onto it and it will break. But the weight of a child it can hold. The chair can hold my sister’s weight.
My little sister is nine years old. And seven days a week she sits in that empty room all alone. She reads, writes, and puts puzzles together in that room where the sun barely shines its way through that one tiny window. A window that is bare and where anyone could look right inside. But that’s alright, because my little sister never gets dressed or goes bare inside of that room. You only see her sitting on that wooden chair.
Motherless-ness stepped into our lives two years before on a Sunday when our mother disappeared. One month later her car was found on a street where we had once lived. Parked on the lawn of an abandoned house that had all its windows and doors ripped out. I remember the mother and her five daughters who used to live there. Where did they move to? Who knows? Maybe if they were still living at that house. Maybe they might have seen who had left our mother’s car there and something. Or maybe they might have kept their mouths shut and not tell us anything.
Inside the trunk of our mother’s car was some meat that was stinking and had maggots crawling all over it. The detectives and police that were at the scene held their noses from the stench.
Before our mother’s car was found we had held hope that she was coming back. Now we are not so sure.
Our Stepfather moved on and started a new life with someone else two weeks after our mother’s car was found. Me and my little moved in with our grandmother, her husband, and our two aunts. One of whom was a stripper and the other a recovering crack head. Soon me and my little sister would come home to find our money, clothes, sneakers, phones, and whatever missing. In between everything we still hoped and wished for our mother to return to us. And every night before bed in the first year of our mother being gone, my little sister said her prayers. I never said mine.
My little sister sits in that empty room in our grandmother’s house and waits for me. I tell her that I am going to come by and take her out somewhere. Anywhere. Maybe to the park, to a movie, or maybe shopping. And many times I never show up. And when I do show up and see her sitting all alone. I sink into a black hole.
She sits there and says nothing to me. She gives me silence, nothing but silence. Sitting there dressed in her school issued uniform all clean and bright. Her hair done up by our stripper aunt, her black shoes shining, a book in her hands.
“Ashley I am sorry.” Is all I say.
She does not respond. I make the motion to place my hand onto her shoulder, but she pulls away in disgust and her eyes remain into her book.
I am a big sister. I was supposed to transform into her mother since our mother is no longer around.