The Bright Blue Baseball Cap.

 

She stares, from across the room, at that stupid worn out bright blue baseball cap she gave you for your tenth birthday. You’re facing the opposite direction, but she knows it’s pressed tightly over your eyes the way it always is when you’re upset. She knows it’s your special place to hide, and Mrs. Hopkins silently wishes she had a place to hide too sometimes.

            But immediately she takes the wish back. The wish is stupid, she decides, just like your blue baseball cap. Mrs. Hopkins counts the dark spots on the ceiling, longing for you to speak but not finding it in herself to make you. She can’t remember what she did to make you stop talking. She can’t remember so she doesn’t know what she’s being punished for.

            The room Mrs. Hopkins and you are sitting in is a dark shade of maroon, with expensive and meaningless painting every few feet of wall. She always seemed to like the paintings, but now they mock her, just like your baseball cap with the cursive ‘L’ on the front a little above the bill. You were so happy the day she gave you that baseball cap. Your blue eyes had lit up so bright it put the baseball cap to shame.

            The chair in which Mrs. Hopkins is sitting is maroon, to match the walls. And it does. It matches the walls perfectly because everything in Mrs. Hopkins life had to be perfect.

            She sighs and uses all the effort she has to lean forward a little, just in case you are talking and she just can’t hear. She knows she’s getting old. That’s one thing she isn’t ashamed of. But it’s all in vain because you are not talking. You’re not talking because of a fight that Mrs. Hopkins can’t remember.

            All she wanted, she decides, was an average life because she believed average was perfect. She only wanted a big yellow house with a white picket fence, a husband to love and be faithful to and 2.5 children who eat her apple pies everyday and never gain a pound overweight. She wanted a golden retriever and two gold fish. Only two. Because three would be too many. Mrs. Hopkins wanted to go to a church with a little cross hanging on the door. She wanted everyone to smile as she walked past and think ‘how lucky she must be’. She wanted to wear a sun dress and have a sprinkler with a plastic tractor on top to water her lawn every Sunday.

            And as she grazes at you from across the room she wonders if she wanted too much.

            She yawns, she’s exhausted and she doesn’t know why. Her eye lids give her an itchy, uncomfortable feeling to stay open, but she can’t close them. She can’t sleep because the noise of your silence is deafening. It’s just like a scream, an awful scream.

            Mrs. Hopkins could call her husband…if she really wanted. But she doesn’t. She barely even considers it. She doesn’t know when her love for him faded out, into the background; but after all the concerns, worries, pressure, it just seemed to be missing. Now it’s just a memory, just like the day she gave you the bright blue baseball cap and saw a glimpse of your smile. Your real smile. The smile you used before it was all just make believe. Now part of her doubts that moment even happened, just like part of her doubts she and her husband ever did truly like each other.

            She hears a bird chirp outside. She has to strain to hear over your silence, but she’s sure it’s there. She’s even a little surprised that other things actually exist in the world anymore. To her it’s only you and her in the maroon room with the matching chair and mocking paintings.

            Mrs. Hopkins wants the words ‘I’m sorry’ to come out. She has to make them. She concentrates real hard. She thinks if she can do that you will love her again. She needs someone to love her. She tries to make the words form. Her mouth opens, but nothing happens. Why is she so tried? Why can’t she remember?

            She knows she did something really bad because the feeling like poison starts to seep over her. The feeling is not a stranger. The feeling is self-loathing. Her memory wants to cooperate. Her brain wants to tell her something, something important…but it’s too late. She’s too damn tried and your silence is too damn loud.

            Mrs. Hopkins then hears sirens. They are from a distance at first, so soft and harmless. Then, they get louder, nearer. Mrs. Hopkins would normally be annoyed by the sirens because they would interrupt her conversation with the minister’s wife who came over for tea. Or they would ruin her favorite soap opera. Or they would come in the middle of her exercising video. But this time is different.

            Her brain is saying she should feel something else. She should do something else. But she doesn’t know what. She doesn’t understand what her mind wants her to do. So Mrs. Hopkins sits in the maroon chair matching the maroon walls and let’s them come. She is a prisoner in her own body, in her own not-so-perfect life.

           

            She can hear them talking. They are talking about her, but she only catches a few words at a time. The police officers all look concerned, shaken. She doesn’t understand but doesn’t ask questions.

            “…temporary insanity…” Mrs. Hopkins hears from across the room, as they take away the cap and the shirt and the blue jeans. You’re not there at all. You weren’t there the whole time.

            “…twelve year old son of Mrs. Sarah and Tim Hopkins, Lenny Hopkins…”

            They kneel over something in the kitchen floor. Mrs. Hopkins is so confused. She wonders where they took you. She wonders why you weren’t in the chair across the room wearing your bright blue baseball cap.

            “…stabbed twice…”

            A police officer walks over to Mrs. Hopkins, who is still watching and listening. She’s too tired to stand. She’s too tired to question.

            “Mrs. Hopkins?” She’s too tried to nod, “I’m afraid you’ll have to come with us.”

The police officer puts the hand cuffs around her wrists and helps her up. Two men carry her out.

            She passes you on the way out of the house. You’re on the floor, dead. The report card you brought home sitting on the ground beside you. Your blue eyes still open.

            It’s not till she’s in the police car that it dawns on her. You were a disappointment. You weren’t popular or good looking or even smart.

But it’s not till she sees the bright blue baseball cap in a bag marked ‘evidence’, stained with your blood she understands. She then remembers why she laid the clothes out in make believe. She then remembers why you wouldn’t talk, why you couldn’t talk. It was all pretend anyway because she was never really happy and you weren’t either.

But it’s not till then she remembers that she stabbed her only son.

Reviews

[Tessa]

Great twist at the end, I'm very impressed. It's difficult to handle second-person p.o.v but you've used it well to add to the surreal atmosphere. Good length, just short enough to keep the reader engaged. It is a chilling write, thanks for the share :)

[Roshayann D' Lyn]

I got chills as she began to piece together what had really happened, the abstractness of the memory and the knowledge just added to the surreal feelings that this piece inspires. Very well written, I enjoyed this piece imensly.

[Ladyrose64]

This is a great story and had me going and I was so ingrossed in the blue babseball cap through the whole story it was in my mind you have quite a talent and I truely enjoyed reading this story the ending was a fantastic twist made the story more real thanks so much for the great read

[{Angel Redd}[Formerly A..]

This was stellar. I was engrossed in the beginning, so that i didn't have time to even try to predict the end. It reminds me of a story i read about a man who ad Alzheimer's but thought his spouses did, so he ended up killing them repeatedly.

[TL Boehm]

wow. I didn't see that one coming. I actually thought maybe she was sitting with her dead husband perhaps. I had no clue this was going to end the way it did. Nice work.
I did get the 2.5 children comment - I used to say that myself. peace

[Llysofar]

I found this is a hypnotic piece of work - I hung on every word. I didn't in any way anticipate the dramatic ending, and i think the leisureliness of the descriptive passages are all the more remarkable because of this. Very poignant, brilliantly characterised story!e

[Heather Rodwell]

"She�s too damn tried... "
"Why is she so tried?"

is that meant to be tired?

Other than that, this is a very good piece. Well thought out, with an eye opening twist at the end.
2.5 children, the perfect average! I love the way she strives for that perfect average, and gets nthing like it. Showing the reader that nothing is perfect.
And to kill your own son, you have to be insane! I love this piece! I'm excited to read more of this genre from you!

[Alyssa Cranfill]

This tale amuses me. As we all know, I'm a fan of well-written, detailed story lines, which you have displayed here. However, this story cannot pass as horror because it lacks the horror factor; you spent several lines describing Mrs. Hopkins and her inability to communicate with someone, and thereafter the reader learns that person was Mrs. Hopkins' son. By the time we find this out, the story is generally over. The established fact is that your main character stabs her son because he isn't perfect and never has been, and having said that, I am left to wonder what could have happened to her to make her want to do that to her own child, other than her insanity.

I give you points for venturing out into your unknown.

[revolution9]

This is a great story. It's a new style for you but you did it very well. I don't really like the tense, but you pulled it off and made a great story out of it. This is really creative and it caught me by suprise. Good Job!

:)

[Ryan Jaimz Knight]

Personally, I don't like this style of writing. I will just say that up front, I don't use present tense verbage unless it is in dialogue, and in a third person point-of-view format. Aside from that, this is a great piece of fiction with the pacing, atmosphere, set-up, and stylization that allows the reader to be pulled into the world of Mrs. Hopkins. It was only after reading it twice that I saw the purpose of the timing perception, in order to exemplify and demonstrate the disembodied mentality of the main character who is caught up in an unreal world due to shock over the events surrounding the death of her son. The twist at the end is superb, especially they way it comes at you, and catches you off guard so that you are feeling the shock of that revelation at the same time as the main character as she realizes that the reason for the silence of her child was due to the fact that she had taken his life. Masterful. Therefore, I was quickly able to overcome my personal prejudices towards this style of writing when I saw how it was being utilized to magnify the emotional context of the piece. Overall, this is a wonderful piece of fiction, and I enjoyed reading it. Barring some editing, and a few technical touch-ups this could become a candidtate for publication. I am wondering if you have considered going that route with this? Aside from that, this was a fun read. Thank you for taking the time to write, put up, and share this piece with everyone here on the WC! I look forward to reading more of your work in the future. Have a wonderful and creative day.
Ciao!
BJH

[Everyday Is Just Anothe..]

I am really amazed how you seemingly slipped into a new style and you have mastered it! Superb job! I am very impressed !!! :D