Mexican ToastA Story by KWP a writing challenge that starts with Until now I'd lost all hope Feedback please :) Until now I’d lost all hope. Whoever would have thought that hot buttered toast would be my turning point? Of course, it wasn’t just the hot buttered toast. A multitude of eventualities injected me here and now into the lifeblood of this reality. Starting, in the belly of my mother. Labour came but I refused to leave. The screaming torment of my mother did not sway me. She desperately wished me out while I preferred the soothing warm interior. Unfortunately, I became entangled in my own cord. Soon I felt my own senses becoming muffled. The outside world fading…. ‘PUSH!’ I heard a stranger's voice. Time to take my blue-faced leave and join my mother’s side. My father, the lying coward, I never knew. Doing his business with my mother on a night under the stars, filling her ears with lamentations of forever-love presented her with his final thrust (and me), stood, jerked his trousers up around his waist and left. My mother never spared me details of his boorish act. ‘This world is cruel,’ she said, ‘better you find out now and become strong for it.’ Daily life was a battlefield. I was merely one of it’s foot soldiers, just another b*****d child, thick with the streets grit, grime, matted hair, wearing too large Thrift Shop clothing and living in the ghetto. My mother had a habit of strapping a belt to her arm then sticking a needle into it. I knew no better than to watch on as her eyes widened and her body become slack. Time after time she lay slumped in a heap on the dirty floor. I was six when my mother lay unresponsive on the sofa. Her skin had changed to a dusty hue of blue. I touched her stiffening body, my fingers were met with a hard cold chill. A knock at the door some days later relieved me of my mother who refused to wake. An unruly house boarding with no less than ten children at any one time became my new existence. Children arrived alone and scared after they had been taken from their parents. Soon enough the children were allocated new parents. I longed for new parents, but no matter how long I waited, nobody wanted me. I witnessed each of the housemates leave. An unfair cycle carrying on without me for years. Perhaps it was because I was a bad-tempered boy who’s only interaction with the other children of the house was through my fists. Maybe it was because I no longer wanted to participate in a life so cruel. Maybe I never wanted to be a foot soldier. Maybe I became too old in a house that offered tiny samples of love. Enough to keep you alive, but never enough to satiate one’s own senses. On the day of my eighteenth birthday it was time to leave the house I’d spent the past twelve years. My option, move to another house, without overseeing parents but more grown-up people like me. I was told to get a job and make a life for myself, I left without so much as a goodbye. Like a rude slap to my face, existence itself spoke directly to me that day. ‘This life of yours is the only possession you own. Don’t let anybody steal it away.’ No longer could I stay in the ranks as a foot soldier. Time was upon me to run far from everything I had ever known. I needed to leave behind, the anger, the memories, the feeling of never belonging. Stealing three hundred dollars from my employer’s grocery store, I left promptly in search of the nearest train heading west. Stowing away in freight-train, I reminded myself of pictures of the sun, sand and great oceans that had mesmerised my childhood. Central America's West Coast - my destination. Hiding out was easy and in three days I crossed the Mexican border covered in the back of a truck somewhere in the desert. Finding my way to Sayulita, a surfing town in Mexico, I stayed in a hut twenty miles out of town where tourists don’t linger. I picked up a job gutting fish in exchange for board and food. Each morning I woke to the sweet smell of salt air and I ended the days watching the sunset over the silvery ocean. It was an overcast day, three in the afternoon. My hands aching from the day's work when I came face to face, with my Sofia. Her eyes struck me all at once, dark enough to swallow up my entire past in one blink of an eye. I finally knew love. Forever thankful Sofia felt the same rush of simple love as I had, we began to know each other slowly. She taught me many things, how to laugh, to smile, to open myself to the moments and see the beauty wrapped in each. In simplicity, I began to finally see. Weeks later I am awoken one morning by a polluted aroma served up from my past. A simple smell of hot buttered toast. Agitation rose quickly, I searched the unwelcome smell that was insisting I visit memories of the past. Greeted instead with the sweet silhouette of Sofia tendering to breakfast in our tiny and misshapen kitchen. My bad mood dissipated as instantly as the fresh-brewed steam from the coffee pot. Turning to me with a smile laced only in love and requesting me to sit, Sofia placed her specially made breakfast from my homeland and past on the table. Toast! A gesture small enough to miss the underlying meaning, yet large enough to accept it all. Sofia perched her sumptuous peach-like bottom on my lap as I placed my lips on upon her cheek and squeezed her tight enough for her to gasp into her familiar tender laugh. Hope had finally returned. © 2016 KWPReviews
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10 Reviews  Last Updated on January 23, 2016 Author
KWPSydney, NSW, AustraliaAbout'The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are sec.. more..Writing
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