Silence In The Lamplight | Teen Ink

Silence In The Lamplight

November 23, 2010
By Mickey_D GOLD, Santa Cruz, California
Mickey_D GOLD, Santa Cruz, California
11 articles 0 photos 18 comments

Favorite Quote:
If you don't believe in that subconscious self as a writer, then you shouldn't be doing it. ~Ray Bradbury


I couldn't believe it. I looked upon her and saw the truth in her being. It spoke with a cold voice, commanding and condemning. Its silence screamed at me with fury.

Not a single word uttered. Not a breath whispered between pale lips. Nor the flutter of eyelids, twitching back and forth spasmodically, saying Do Not Disturb The Sleeping, raging in mysterious dreams and panicked sweat. Nothing moved. Nothing stirred.

Megan Paige was quite dead.

Her blood ran across my hands and I drew them back reflexively. I looked at them in the sickly yellow lamplight, the shards of glass embedded in them still drawing my own free-flowing blood. I pulled them out, one at a time, until they were all gone. There were probably a dozen of them, opening a dozen wounds in my palms. The blood kept coming.

I stared dumbly at Megan. By my dizzy eyes, it had looked like she was run through with rebar. Two protruded from her chest. One stuck from the center of her throat. It was all very unappealing, how red-stained her dress was. White was definitely not a color she should have worn to the dance. It only intensified the blossom of crimson that was slowly creeping down her arms and onto the dark leather seats.

*Goddammit,* I thought. *This car is ruined.*

And it was. The windshield was nowhere near intact. It was all over the place. In fact, it looked as if all of the windows in the car were either blown away or at the very least smashed into a latticework of intricate cracks far exceeding the delicacy of a spider's web. From where I sat in the driver's seat, I could see in the crooked rear-view mirror that the back seats were very much torn up. What a waste.

And then the tree! I screamed at the tree, the monstrous thing. It looked perfectly fine in the moonlight! No matter the car that had tried to engulf it, nothing could run down a mighty thing like the old tree! How dare it stand there, mocking, in its good health, the abusers that had carelessly slammed into it with such a force of metal, cloth, and flesh!

I leaned forward, retching onto the steering wheel with its airbag, pathetically deflated in defeat.

*How could this have happened?*

I recalled the events of the night. It was the dance we had gone too--Megan and I. Some dumb party that a friend of a friend had hosted. It was stupid by even the poorest standards. Some guys, few girls; a cooler or two of bottled beer; some lame music. I mean, don't get me wrong, after a few beers a guy tends to start relaxing a little. The girls had fun. Megan included.

I sat back up and looked at her. She gazed out the windshield with those fine, glassy big eyes of hers. They were so beautiful. They spoke of a warm, intelligent person. Now that I thought about it, I remembered a conversation I had had with her a week ago. We had been sitting in a mall, sharing warm, salty pretzels as shoppers passed by, talking about the future. Well, her future, now that I thought about it. She was thinking about college. She had been accepted by three universities. It being senior year in high school for both of us, she was delighted. She could have picked whichever one she wanted.

I screamed again, this time in terror. She was dead! SHE WAS F***ING DEAD! The hopes of the future--some useless construction on the side of the road--had killed her! They had destroyed her own future!

Coughing again, I reached to the side, grasping for air in delirium. My hands hit something cold and smooth, seemingly perfect in the horrendous mess the car was in. It took a minute for my eyes to focus on the odd object until I realized that it wasn't so unfamiliar. It was an unopened beer, somehow still intact, laying on the center console between Megan and I. It was taunting. I just laughed. How ironic was that? Such a common thing! Such a common thing in the world! I had only had about three of them before we left. The damn things cost three bucks, but now, I realized, they had also cost Megan her life.

I picked up the bottle, smearing my blood across the glass; it was still seeping out of my hands. I forced the lid off and took a long drink. It tasted too good.

Black spots danced before my eyes and I dropped he glass in my lap, spilling the precious drink, spoiling my clothes. But when I looked down I saw my clothes had been ruined for a long time. Another piece of rebar had gone through my own chest. Blood had already stained my clothes, gluing them to my body. I laughed once more, cackling while the blood spat from my throat and choked my lungs. It turned into a painful racket of retching, and it stayed that way for a long time.

After it passed, the pain stayed behind. It was present now in every movement, in every thought. How could it end like this? It was just a few beers... A little fun with some friends... And now this is what was left.

I sighed and closed my eyes. The street light off to the side flickered in anxiety. It knew what was coming.

Not a single word was uttered. Not a breath passed through lips: not anymore. There was only wind in the trees. Only silence in the lamplight.


The author's comments:
This tragic scene has always been in my mind, haunting and demanding attention. I finally wrote it because it is a subject that has always bothered me: the absolute cluelessness of my fellow teens who drink, smoke, and do much worse. I only hope to become a better writer to be recognized for a determination against drugs and other popularized lifestyles.

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This article has 3 comments.


Mickey_D GOLD said...
on Dec. 2 2010 at 10:23 pm
Mickey_D GOLD, Santa Cruz, California
11 articles 0 photos 18 comments

Favorite Quote:
If you don't believe in that subconscious self as a writer, then you shouldn't be doing it. ~Ray Bradbury

"you seem like you've never heard of a semicolon"

Hahahaha thank you. Yeah, I gave it a read-through one more time and I noticed what you pointed out. I did have a lot of short sentences. They're simple sentences, yes? Not fragmented. But they do impact the pauses, yes, if you read it differently. And I guess I should have thought that every reader reads differently, so what it may sound like to me is completely different to what it sounds like to others. Thank you for the feedback, I've also been thought to write like Garth Nix, too :D


on Dec. 2 2010 at 8:17 am
Firebringer17 GOLD, Mayfield HTS, Ohio
10 articles 0 photos 35 comments

Favorite Quote:
"To get respect, you must earn respect, to earn respect you must give respect."

Oh Dear god, you put me right in the front seat! Wonderful! Bravo, bravo, you really know how to make a scene. Stick with realistic fiction, it suits you so well. A fantasy-action-fiction guy like me normally hates realistic fiction, but yours really caught my attention. I could hear the character's voice, his anguish, his anxiety, his thoughts. For a minute I thought I was him, you are really good. But I can tell that you are a person that likes for the voice of a character to take pauses. And that's all fine and well, pauses are important because it really pampers the reader for something comming up or lets them think, But you seem to do it too much. You had a lot of fragmented sentences in here, some needed to be but a good amount should not have been, I don't want to be petty either, but you seem like you've never heard of a semicolon, those could satisfy those pauses you like but also get rid of short sentences. Other than that you have a great talent as well,your work actually reminds me of Mark Twain. good luck to you, I'm going to comment on all your stuff. Happy writing!

Mickey_D GOLD said...
on Nov. 30 2010 at 9:27 pm
Mickey_D GOLD, Santa Cruz, California
11 articles 0 photos 18 comments

Favorite Quote:
If you don't believe in that subconscious self as a writer, then you shouldn't be doing it. ~Ray Bradbury

Hello, this is the author!

I just wanted to point out that the spelling and grammar errors ("he"=the; "too"=to) have been fixed, but unfortunately, Teen Ink does not allow editing for published work, so they will not show on here.

My Microsoft Word just stopped working, so I am confined to Notepad. Spellcheck would have gotten it, but I guess I shouldn't rely on that so much :P

 

Thanks for reading!