A Shattering (actually a short story)

Alright, the following is not meant to be a journal, but a story.
"Why aren't you submitting it to StoryWrite then?"
Maybe because I didn't want to?

Ok. The thing is, I submitted this as an entry to a writing competition for a scholarship. I've been iffy about posting this, but I figure it won't hurt much in the end. Let me know what you think about it, or if there's anything I can improve on to make the piece better, because I want to get better.

So… I’m drowning.

I know that usually, when people are caught in my particular sort of plight, they’re not sitting and thinking about what’s going on, but I’m not most people. I live to narrate.

Just like at my mother’s funeral. I didn’t attend the wake. Didn’t cry at her grave when she was being lowered… but I never failed to narrate all the events to myself as they happened. As if I were expecting someday to write it all down and receive royalty checks from it. Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea in itself, but I get the feeling that something might keep me from accomplishing that if I don’t get through it…

Oh right. I’m drowning. Well, not yet, the water hasn’t risen enough. But soon enough.

Sitting in my father’s car, my entire body practically numb by this point since I’m unable to move… perhaps now would be a good time to begin going over all the mistakes I made to get here?

Maybe I can start with the days before my mother died… yes, that seems like a good point to start reflecting from. Or should I begin after? Does it make any difference where I start? I should stop arguing with myself, shouldn’t I? Yes, let’s start there.

I argue with myself quite often. I find that over the years, I’ve become a conflicted person for what seems to be no reason at all. My mother used to tell me that it was a quirk that ran in my father’s side of the family, each relative afflicted in his own way. I believed her, because I couldn’t remember a single day that my father didn’t mutter and seethe to himself. I sometimes wondered why he always found the time to argue with people no one else could see. What sort of sense did it make, talking to disembodied voices only he could hear? Obviously, my relationship with him was a little strained.

My mother, who had been the one to alert me to his tempers from as far back as I can remember, was usually just there. She existed, and yes, I loved her, but I don’t think we had much more than a typical business relationship. I think perhaps I took her for granted to a certain point. When she died, I just… went along with it. I didn’t feel any pangs of remorse over not taking the time to have known her better.

I think the car just turned over a little bit. The water is starting to drip into the car… or maybe it’s been dripping in for a while? I can’t remember. I just feel the slosh of the water now when the car moves…

The current here is so strong. Speaking of, I can’t help but notice how pretty the water looks outside the window, despite how murky it is from all the industrial plants nearby. A thin pane of glass separating me from it. Such a fragile balance.

Now that I think about it, I realize that there are a lot of things that are very fragile indeed, and in more ways than one. The human heart, for example. Speaking physically, it can indeed be a fragile thing, despite being one of the strongest organs in the body, pumping blood to all the extremities. Speaking figuratively, a simple action or a single word delivered by the right tongue is enough to break it in such a way that it can take much longer to repair than the windshield I’m stuck looking at right now. Another thing that is very fragile is the trust that we humans are supposed to have in each other. We, the beings that walk the earth and control it and destroy it as if we made it, can’t seem to trust each other for very long. Husbands cheat and leave their wives, mothers kill their children, children abuse each other, and countless other things happen. It’s amazing, really.

There it goes again. The car shifted a little more… now it’s on its side. Maybe now I can feel some cool air next to my cheek from the glass, compared to the rest of the car. If only I could get rid of this cursed water. I don’t need my cheeks to freeze, either…

Damn it! That hurt! Perfect. Let me see what hit my head… oh, no, stop, no- that was a bad idea. My body screams now when I move. And there’s a pungent smell hitting my nose. Now that I think about it, isn’t that the…

Right… I was drinking…

The idea of killing my mind little by little is just so… intriguing to me. The ability to drink and go numb is something that no other creature in this world shares. And I know other normal people, if they could hear my narration, would probably think me a lunatic. Here I am, sitting in a car, the possibly tragic result of driving under the influence, and I’m finally taking the time to go over things.

A drunken mind speaks a sober heart. But then what does a sober mind speak?

My father drinks on a regular basis. I actually know which days to show up at home, which days not to show up at home. It just so happens to coincide with my party schedule. And by party, I mean getting smashed on my own and waking up in random places. I got to know the city better that way. I take pride in being quite knowledgeable about the best ways to get from point A to point B, especially if point B promises alcoholic beverages. My friends referred to me as the Inebriate’s Guide to Brooklyn. I usually smiled and bowed at the title I had earned, never complaining about it, but now that I think about it… maybe I shouldn’t have been as proud about it as I was. Because if they could speak about my drinking habits to my face…

Tink!

I’m a little alert again. Something just hit the glass… yes, it did make a nice sound, but that’s not the point. The point is, it hit the glass across from me, the side of the car that’s facing up, I guess. And soon it will be the side of the car facing sideways again, like it was before… I feel the car turning again, and the water’s moving with it…

Give it a minute...

There it goes. And there I go. At least the blood won’t be rushing to my head, but now if the car turns over, I’ll be sliding around inside it as it does so. At least now I won’t be stuck in the exact same place… but it’ll hurt like hell when the car moves again.

I probably should’ve worn my belt…

But he didn’t wear it that time, either. I mean, why would he? He knew what he wanted already before he had even seen me that night. All he had to do was bring what he needed, and me? All I had to do was sleep over that night. His daughter and I were best friends at one point. It was so easy to convince my parents to let me stay with them for another night, and I was a little kid. I agreed excitedly, if not enthusiastically, which would’ve been quite ironic, had I known what I was running into.

We played plenty of games, dressed up our dolls really pretty-like, smiling all the time, running around the house. Her dad would smile and pick us up and carry us up the stairs, only to have us running back down again in circles. My friend didn’t have a mom. We would run around and around… my mind blanks out around there. I only remember bits and pieces of things after that. I guess I just wanted to forget it ever happened… the alcohol helps. My friend and I… we went to sleep. Her dad read us a story and then he left for a while… or waited until we went to sleep… I… can’t remember.

The car’s moving again… and I’m moving with it, sliding across the roof that’s underneath me and nestling against the inside of the other glass windo… ow! Oh, oh, my neck, so much pressure on my neck! I have to move, I have to, oh god so much pain!

Mm, mm, ok, ok, that feels a little better now. Just a little. Enough for me to retreat into my thoughts again without having to worry about the pain so much…

I cried. I don’t think I smiled much after that. My mother tried to do a few things to cheer me up… so did my older cousins and aunts, but I don’t think I ever gave them the time of day to really get to me. It’s amazing how a child can close themselves off so fully. Take my word for it.

After all that, I just remember mostly a feeling of an immense silence… like walking three leagues under the sea, where everything is so quiet. I don’t remember things moving around me much back then. An entire building might as well have fallen over me and I probably wouldn’t have moved a finger to escape it. And now look where my impassiveness got me. I drank, and didn’t care if my father found out. I went out when I pleased, not giving a damn whether anyone did or didn’t know. I just took the time to ensure that I would remain unimpeded in my late night, and occasionally long lasting, excursions.

It seems to me that the world agreed with my point of view, and eased things along for me. For example, if I ever had to outright lie to my father about my whereabouts, the events that I used seemed to line up with other things that somehow supported the faux veracity of my statement. Usually, when I did go out, things tended to run their course, which was almost always to my liking. Only once or twice did I ever wake up in a different bed besides my own, and even then the bed wasn’t all that bad, either.

I swore I wasn’t a home wrecker… unfortunately, I think that was something that came as natural to me as drinking.

Things seem really quiet down here. Sad, isn’t it? How I finally find a quiet, peaceful place to think, and it happens to be in a crashed car at the bottom of the river, while I’m waiting for the glass to shatter. I know a couple of people that would have a ball hearing about this. In another lifetime, I would’ve laughed with them. I would’ve found the irony in all of this and poked fun at the situation, would’ve found it funny in the way that I always used to find little morbid things funny…

But being caught in this particular turn of events, I can’t say that I’m enthusiastic to look at things objectively and emit any kind of jolly sound.

Maybe… maybe I shouldn’t have… maybe I should’ve done things a little differently. I tried not caring… that didn’t seem to work very well. I tried to make it work. I think I did. My teacher’s always told me that I had the potential to do better, that I was too bright for all of this…

I could’ve.

I couldn’t.

I SHOULD’VE.

I DIDN’T.

I gave myself to this. I gave myself to these things that I let influence me, I gave in under the weight of what felt like the world, when really it was just…

When? When exactly did I screw up so bad? I knew better, I always knew better.

I went out.

I knew better than to listen to them.

Had a few drinks,

I knew better than to listen to the people that didn’t, couldn’t possibly, have my best interests at heart.

Kissed some guy…

I knew what I was worth… I thought I knew what I was worth…

Probably made out with him.

I didn’t let the right people in. They tried so hard… why didn’t I let them?

I woke up somewhere different after that… the sun wasn’t up yet.

I let everything slip, I could’ve been somewhere else!

I grabbed my things… took me a while to find them all, but I did… I knew the dance.

I knew how it went… I grabbed my things, walked out. It took me a while to walk back to where I had left the car the night before. I opened the door, slammed it shut behind me. Only to open it again when my stomach lurched.

I drove. I shouldn’t have, but I did. All I could think of was getting back home to clean up and sleep off the rest of the alcohol. I shouldn’t have. I should’ve waited for someone. I should’ve done something else, not drive. They always tell us to not get behind the wheel after drinking so much…

God, my face hurts so much. Ugh, I always hated crying… stop it, stop it!

Things have been hitting the glass for a while now… for so many years…

The water’s just getting higher and higher…

And finally it feels like everything is cracking, more water is leaking in, just when I finally decided to turn things around, to change things… everything’s breaking…


The doctors told my parents that I’d been born with a heart murmur. By the time I was seven, they told my parents that it had sealed up on its own.

They lied.