He asked

A - very- short story based on Anne Wallace style paintings that give no context of the event that is happening. They give the paintings a meaning irrelevant of any other contributing factors.

He asked; so I told him. I told him everything. Every little thing that has gotten me to this point. All my stories, all the bad times, every horrible thing that’s ever happened to me. He looked down at me, sitting on his bed, drowning in his varsity jacket and asked ‘how do you get up everyday’ he asked how I be the person I am. How I smile and laugh and make jokes. How do I to keep my head up.

I replied;

‘There are more than ten million people with lives worse than mine. There are people who go through my lifetime of troubles everyday. There are people who don’t have houses or parents or food. There are people who will never shower in hot water and people who will never be old enough to know love. There are people who die with nothing and no one and a lifetime of hurt.

My life may not have been easy, but it certainly hasn’t been hard.’

He looks at me with an expression I cant place and pulls me close. I can tell he feels the gulf of our difference. I feel empty in his arms. I pull back from him but he holds onto my shoulders. I feel so small. He searches through my eyes and says at last

“You are a beautiful human being”

and I sighed because it wasn’t the truth. 

 

Reviews

[unexpectedsparkle]

It's interesting, but I wish there were more-it's a cliff hanger, but not much to be hanging on. Some of the formatting could be fixed, like putting quotations around sentences, and such like that. But it pulls the reader in-I just wish it had a bit more expansion.

[Ilia Epifanov]

Weird, but there' something very true about the whole situation. The authentic misunderstanding between two people, I guess. The whole monologue might've not been the most original (though not bad at all!), but the last two lines really made me get real. Simple, sad, but true and very relatable.
Thanks.