Two Short Stories

These don't really have titles at the moment but I would like to know what you think and maybe you have titles to suggest? And also I need to know if I should add more and if the stories are too vague. I'm having trouble digging deep enough and explaining clearly. Please let me know.

Short Story 1:

“You don’t have to look inside if you don’t want to.”

I wanted to be away from this, I still didn’t believe it was true. I couldn’t look inside. If I did, it would make it real. It would blur my fantasy and replace it with the hard reality. Why does everyone else want to look? They’re all so sad. We were all wearing the same mask.

I remember white. White casket, white walls, white crosses. And crying. Red puffy eyes with mascara fleeing down faces, shrieking at the horror. The sheer audacity of death, to steer this one away from the rest.

I didn’t look. I wanted to pull my hair out and wail and pound my fists into my chest until I was numb. I saw him though. I saw his red hair and I saw the tip of his nose, the side of his face, he looked like he always did but paler, less color, less him. I had to look but from afar. I would be safe near my sister. Where was daddy? He loved this boy like a son. It was his gun he took. It was his gun, wasn’t it?

There’s a mixture of voices and words. I didn’t understand it all, they went through me like water rushing through small grasping fingers.

“This happened but no that happened instead.”

“There was a fight, he was angry. He has a temper.”

“She’s pregnant and it might not even be his.”

“He stole that gun.”

“He laid down on those tracks.”

I just remembered that he liked to draw and he would tell me that The Little Mermaid was a vampire to scare me, but really I just laughed because how silly is that? He liked to listen to loud rock and he liked that I liked it too.

I loved to look at him. I loved to be near him.

He brought me a dog once, with my sister and dad. It was named Spot because what the hell else would you name a dog like that? He had spots everywhere!

He liked to draw. He was going to draw and paint a castle on my bedroom door, just for me. It was going to be in the clouds, too, where I belonged. I watched him sketch it out, wispy lines creating something magnificent. It looked like something out of a Disney movie. I would sit on my bed and I wouldn’t make a sound.

I’d let him talk when he wanted to which wasn’t a lot. You could barely see it, when he decided to take a break. It was a ghost then. It was never finished.

“I don’t want to see him.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to. It’s your choice.”

I just wanted more trips to the store in his old truck with the rebel flags and the loud music that he liked to shout along to. I wanted him to tell me crazy things that made me laugh for what seemed like hours.

She whisked me away in her car. We had been there long enough. We had seen enough of everything. We were leaving everything behind. We left my brother behind.

_____________________________________________________________...

Short Story 2:

It wasn’t Saturday like she kept saying it was. I knew it was Friday but she kept insisting that it was Saturday or Sunday, she didn’t know, but she knew it wasn’t Friday. I was supposed to be at school, my favorite place in the world. I loved my kindergarten teacher and I loved my kindergarten class. I loved learning the days of the week and I loved learning about how plants grow. They need sunlight and they liked to use photosynthesis.

She held me close. It was raining, I could tell even though the curtains were covered up with blankets. I could see an edge of window touched by little raindrops, rushing down the glass. It was dark, shadows crawling over the bed and up on the ceiling. She held me closer, pressing into me. Her waterbed moved with her.

“It’s not Friday. I don’t have to work and you don’t have school.”

My mommy wasn’t a liar, but right then she wasn’t telling the truth. She was keeping me out just like she did last week. She was warm with her arm wrapped around me like that. She kept telling me that I didn’t have school and I eventually believed her even though the following Monday Mrs. Smith asked me why I wasn’t at school. I was at home with my strange mother who didn’t know the days of the week. I loved it no matter how suffocating it was.

She had to go to work. That was what she did when I went to school or daycare. She would get a ride from a bus or she would get in her car even though the car was gone.

I lay on my back and looked up at the ceiling and pretended there were bats up there like in a cave. Mommy went to sleep but she would wake up if I moved so I stayed perfectly still, my body rigid.

She was always sleeping now. It was like she a ghost in the trailer, fading in and out, and I lived by myself sometimes. She had covered up all the windows in blankets and there was no more laughing; what was she hiding from? There was just sleep, and tangy smoke that was sweet and bitter. There was a hungry stomach and ashtrays filled to the brim.

I wanted to watch a movie. I wanted to play with my barbies. I wanted to be at school with my friends, but I was trapped by the waterbed and a slumbering mommy, restless. Finally I drifted off to sleep myself. I couldn’t imagine a world unlike this one I lived in, her always near but always so far away.


Thank you for taking the time to read if you do. I really appreciate it and I would love to have feedback whether it's negative or positive. I hope to grow as a writer and I want to express myself as clearly as possible.