Come On, You Guys Have Opinions about EVERYTHING!!!!
Ok, so I just turned in my first short story in Creative Writing, and I'm a bit apprehensive about it. I would love some HONEST feedback. Be brutal! I know you can do it!
God’s Justice
Jeffrey sat in the woods behind his house and thought about how much he hated her. How much he hated all of them. His father for dying. His mother for leaving him. But most of all he hated her. He hated his grandmother.
The small wood behind the old Victorian house Jeffrey shared with his grandmother was the only place he could find any solace. The soft tranquility of the place had a calming effect on his rage. The trees here felt like old friends. They were the only ones Jeffrey could talk to. They were the only ones who would listen. He loved them for that.
He just wished they could talk back. He just once wanted someone to comfort him. Someone to hug him and tell him that it was going to be alright. Jeffrey’s father used to do that. But then he died. He got into a fight with some bad men, and the men had killed him.
“Those gentlemen did your father a favor if you ask me,” Jeffrey’s grandmother would tell him. “Men who live in perpetual sin don’t deserve the Lord’s grace. God never liked a faggot.” It always made Jeffrey mad when she talked about his father that way. He didn’t know what a faggot was, but he was quite sure that it was much better than his grandmother.
The sun was starting to set, light piercing through the canopy and casting shadows upon the carpet of dead leaves. Jeffrey rose to his feet and started back towards the house. The old Victorian came into view slowly as the tree cover receded, towering above him. Jeffrey hated the house as well. He could always see his grandmother in that house, with its peeling white paint and rotting shutters. The house always seemed to be in the dark, no matter what time of day it was. The floorboards of the porch creaked as he stepped on them. He braced himself and entered.
“That you boy?” Jeffrey cringed at the sound of his grandmother’s voice. He had hoped she would be asleep by now. He stepped into the living room. She sat in her favorite chair, the one with the hideous brown floral print and holes where moths had eaten through. Her favorite pastor, Jim McDougal, was preaching his nightly sermon on the television. His grandmother stared at the TV with the utmost scrutiny, as if her life was dependent upon what this bejeweled televangelist said. She turned that scathing gaze upon him.
“Where the hell you been boy?” she asked. Jeffrey stared at his feet to avoid her eyes. Those eyes terrified him more than anything.
“I was just, out.”
“Humph. That’s just what your useless mother used to tell me. ‘I was just out mother.’ She would say. She was a lazy, worthless child. Just like you are.” Jeffrey felt tiny beneath her piercing gaze. “Come here.”
His feet moved of their own volition, shuffling slowly towards the ugly chair and his grandmother. He stopped next to the arm.
“Closer. Come closer child.” Jeffrey leaned in. The stench of cheap perfume and age wafted over him. He braced for what he knew would come next. The slap still hurt, just as it had every time before.
“Get your lazy ass out of my sight. You’re ruining Pastor McDougal’s sermon.” She turned her scrutiny back to the TV as if nothing had happened. Jeffrey picked himself up off the floor and hurried from the room. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing the slap had hurt. Not that she would care either way. He made his way up the stairs to his bedroom, collapsed upon the bed, and buried his face in his pillow. The softness soothed his stinging cheek.
“Family is very important Jeffrey.” His mother told him one night as she was tucking him in. “Family is all you have in the world sometimes. You have to stick together and look out for each other. Do you understand?”
“Yes mama.” He had said. His mother had leaned in and kissed his forehead.
“I love you Jeffrey.”
“I love you too mama.”
The very next day she dropped him off in front of his grandmother’s house and drove off. Jeffrey could still see the back of her white Volvo as it fled down the dirt driveway. Even now, three years later, he could remember the hurt he had felt. The betrayal. Both his mother and his father had left him. Abandoned him to his horrible grandmother.
That first day was the hardest. His grandmother had not been glad to see him standing in her doorway. He had never met his grandmother once in the nine years he had been alive. His mother and father had never even mentioned her. She stared at him with those hateful eyes of hers, and from that moment he knew that he would find no love in this woman.
“You must be Jeffrey,” She did not wait for affirmation. “Your worthless mother dropped you off, didn’t she?” she paused, looking him up and down. “That daughter of mine never could take responsibility for anything.”
His grandmother’s tiny frame seemed to fill the doorway. She stepped slightly to the side and motioned for him to enter. Jeffrey picked up his bag and went inside, hurrying past his grandmother. She closed the door behind him.
“You look like your father,” she said. “He was a filthy faggot. I warned your mother about that boy, but she never listened.” She squeezed his face hard and brought it closer to her own. “Listen, and listen good, boy. I don’t want you here, but seems like I ain’t got no other choice.” She pointed a bony finger at the staircase. “You sleep up there.”
“I want mama,” he told her. His grandmother’s eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t ask what you wanted, boy. I told you to get, now get.”
“I want mama!” he repeated forcefully. She hit him. He stared at her in shock, holding his face. No one had ever hit him before. Jeffrey picked up his bag and ran up the stairs, fearing another blow. He had thrown himself down on the bed and cried himself to sleep.
He didn’t have any more tears left now, just anger. Pure, unfettered rage. It was the only thing that kept him going, the only thing that kept him from giving up hope altogether. Jeffrey liked to think that there was justice in the world. That maybe God would do for him what he had done for the Israelites and free him from his Victorian prison. He had done nothing but pray for three years, pleading with God for some kind of help. God never answered.
Jeffrey rolled over, turned out the light, and tried, just as he had every night before, to forget everything in sleep.
The next morning was Sunday morning. Sundays brought a much-needed relief from the daily ritual of degrading and asinine chores. It was the one day Jeffrey’s grandmother actually treated him like a human being. Jeffrey rolled out of bed, quickly threw on his Sunday best, the only outfit Jeffrey owned that wasn’t threadbare, and headed downstairs.
His grandmother waited for him in the foyer, wearing a horrible mish mash of colors that should never be mixed. She inspected his attire conspicuously, nodded once in approval, and headed out the door towards her 1987 Oldsmobile. The drive to church was short and silent, just as it always was. Jeffrey saw the steeple of the one room church before the rest of the building crept into view from behind the cover of trees. A few cars were parked sporadically in the unpaved parking lot. His grandmother eased the Oldsmobile into an unmarked spot, and headed for the church.
As Jeffrey sat next to his grandmother in their usual pew, the one directly in front of the pulpit, he remembered how much the reverend’s sermons used to frighten him. He was a very gesticulate man, waving his arms back and forth and shaking violently. His voice would run the gamut from painfully loud to so quiet you had to lean in to understand. The pastor spoke of Hell, always of Hell. If you did this or didn’t do that you would go there. God was always watching you, every minute of every day, and he always knew when you committed a sin.
Jeffrey hated the very sight of the man now. The image of his massive gut protruding out from underneath his robes, the rivulets of sweat running down his head that he would wipe off constantly with a handkerchief, the way his jowls sagged and flapped about as he spoke; everything about the man was repulsive. His grandmother couldn’t get enough.
“Reverend Miller is a great man,” she said to him on the way to the parking lot, “He is never afraid to tell people exactly what needs to be said.” She looked at him from out of the corner of her eye, waiting for a reply.
Jeffrey hastily supplied one. “Yeah, he’s something else.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing grandma. It doesn’t mean anything.” She stared at him hard, her lip twisting into a grotesque snarl.
“You listen to me you little bastard. I’ll not have you saying anything unkindly about the Reverend.” She stabbed a bony finger at his face. “He’s a good, Christian man, not like that faggot father of yours. You’re just like he was: a faggot.” Jeffrey just stood there, unable to reply. His grandmother got in the Oldsmobile, gunned the engine, and sped off, leaving Jeffrey to leap out of the way to avoid being crushed.
As Jeffrey stared after the rapidly receding Oldsmobile, he decided, quite suddenly, that he had had enough. He kicked off his uncomfortable dress shoes and tore off down the road after his grandmother, running harder and faster than he ever had in his life. The heat of his muscles fueled the heat of his rage. His blood burned in his heart. He made it to the unpaved driveway of his grandmother’s house and dashed up it without slowing down.
The sight of the old Victorian did not fill him with dread as it had every time before. He did not have room in his heart for anything other than anger. The door was slightly ajar when Jeffrey made it to the porch. He shoved it open with as much force as he could muster. The glass in the window shattered. Jeffrey gingerly leapt over the shards, conscious of his bare feet, and landed on the shaggy carpet of the living room. He took a quick survey of the room, and found his grandmother where he knew she would be: sitting in her chair. She didn’t move as he started towards her.
A sudden realization made him pause. Why hadn’t she said anything when he broke the window?
“…and we must do everything in our power to bring the heathens back to Jesus.” Pastor McDougal’s voice blasted from the TV. His grandmother’s head sagged to her chest. Jeffrey quickly walked over and shook her.
“Grandma, wake up,” he shook her harder. “Please, wake up.” He reached down and slowly lifted her chin. Her eyes, which had always looked upon him with loathing, stared blankly at him now. Jeffrey jerked his hand back and recoiled away from the chair.
“Justice will be delivered unto them that sin against God. He shall smite the atheists, the homosexuals…”
Jeffrey had to laugh. Justice? Where was God’s justice now? She had died in her sleep, and he had never even been able to… To what? What would he have done?
“Remember always that Jesus loves you.”
Jeffrey grabbed the TV and hurled it at the wall. Pastor McDougal’s sermon ended in a shower of sparks and glass.
“I hate you. I hate you!” he screamed at her. Jeffrey’s grandmother simply looked at the floor, silent.
“It’s not fair,” he whispered. He left his grandmother sitting in her chair and left the house through the back door, slowly making his way to his spot in the woods. The trees welcomed him silently, as they always had. Yet even here, Jeffrey could not help but feel alone. The trees could not take care of him. They could not feed him, clothe him, keep him warm. All they could do was listen. Their silence offered him no comfort today. He turned, dejected, and headed back towards the house.
The acrid smell of smoke met him on the way. He looked up and saw streams of black smoke floating towards the sky. He ran around to the front of the house to find the living room completely engulfed. Jeffrey only had vague thoughts of the TV as he watched the fire consume his grandmother’s house. It burned its way through the house, a steady supply of rotting furniture providing kindling. The upstairs windows blew out as the fire moved upstairs.
Jeffrey watched. The old Victorian groaned as if in pain. A shudder ran through the house just before it collapsed in on itself, shooting sparks and smoke high into the atmosphere. The fire had destroyed the house, along with his grandmother’s body and his memories. Jeffrey heard sirens wail somewhere in the distance. He had to laugh. What could they possibly do now?
Jeffrey turned his back on the smoldering house, on his grandmother, his father, his mother, his memories. Jeffrey turned his back, and he walked towards the woods. He didn’t know where he was going, or what he would do, but there was nothing left for him here now. For the first time in his life, Jeffrey felt truly free.
He said his goodbyes to the trees as he passed them. They were the only ones who would notice his absence. Jeffrey vanished into the woods. He did not look back.
Thanks guys, I really appreciate the time. MUCH LOVE!
God’s Justice
Jeffrey sat in the woods behind his house and thought about how much he hated her. How much he hated all of them. His father for dying. His mother for leaving him. But most of all he hated her. He hated his grandmother.
The small wood behind the old Victorian house Jeffrey shared with his grandmother was the only place he could find any solace. The soft tranquility of the place had a calming effect on his rage. The trees here felt like old friends. They were the only ones Jeffrey could talk to. They were the only ones who would listen. He loved them for that.
He just wished they could talk back. He just once wanted someone to comfort him. Someone to hug him and tell him that it was going to be alright. Jeffrey’s father used to do that. But then he died. He got into a fight with some bad men, and the men had killed him.
“Those gentlemen did your father a favor if you ask me,” Jeffrey’s grandmother would tell him. “Men who live in perpetual sin don’t deserve the Lord’s grace. God never liked a faggot.” It always made Jeffrey mad when she talked about his father that way. He didn’t know what a faggot was, but he was quite sure that it was much better than his grandmother.
The sun was starting to set, light piercing through the canopy and casting shadows upon the carpet of dead leaves. Jeffrey rose to his feet and started back towards the house. The old Victorian came into view slowly as the tree cover receded, towering above him. Jeffrey hated the house as well. He could always see his grandmother in that house, with its peeling white paint and rotting shutters. The house always seemed to be in the dark, no matter what time of day it was. The floorboards of the porch creaked as he stepped on them. He braced himself and entered.
“That you boy?” Jeffrey cringed at the sound of his grandmother’s voice. He had hoped she would be asleep by now. He stepped into the living room. She sat in her favorite chair, the one with the hideous brown floral print and holes where moths had eaten through. Her favorite pastor, Jim McDougal, was preaching his nightly sermon on the television. His grandmother stared at the TV with the utmost scrutiny, as if her life was dependent upon what this bejeweled televangelist said. She turned that scathing gaze upon him.
“Where the hell you been boy?” she asked. Jeffrey stared at his feet to avoid her eyes. Those eyes terrified him more than anything.
“I was just, out.”
“Humph. That’s just what your useless mother used to tell me. ‘I was just out mother.’ She would say. She was a lazy, worthless child. Just like you are.” Jeffrey felt tiny beneath her piercing gaze. “Come here.”
His feet moved of their own volition, shuffling slowly towards the ugly chair and his grandmother. He stopped next to the arm.
“Closer. Come closer child.” Jeffrey leaned in. The stench of cheap perfume and age wafted over him. He braced for what he knew would come next. The slap still hurt, just as it had every time before.
“Get your lazy ass out of my sight. You’re ruining Pastor McDougal’s sermon.” She turned her scrutiny back to the TV as if nothing had happened. Jeffrey picked himself up off the floor and hurried from the room. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing the slap had hurt. Not that she would care either way. He made his way up the stairs to his bedroom, collapsed upon the bed, and buried his face in his pillow. The softness soothed his stinging cheek.
“Family is very important Jeffrey.” His mother told him one night as she was tucking him in. “Family is all you have in the world sometimes. You have to stick together and look out for each other. Do you understand?”
“Yes mama.” He had said. His mother had leaned in and kissed his forehead.
“I love you Jeffrey.”
“I love you too mama.”
The very next day she dropped him off in front of his grandmother’s house and drove off. Jeffrey could still see the back of her white Volvo as it fled down the dirt driveway. Even now, three years later, he could remember the hurt he had felt. The betrayal. Both his mother and his father had left him. Abandoned him to his horrible grandmother.
That first day was the hardest. His grandmother had not been glad to see him standing in her doorway. He had never met his grandmother once in the nine years he had been alive. His mother and father had never even mentioned her. She stared at him with those hateful eyes of hers, and from that moment he knew that he would find no love in this woman.
“You must be Jeffrey,” She did not wait for affirmation. “Your worthless mother dropped you off, didn’t she?” she paused, looking him up and down. “That daughter of mine never could take responsibility for anything.”
His grandmother’s tiny frame seemed to fill the doorway. She stepped slightly to the side and motioned for him to enter. Jeffrey picked up his bag and went inside, hurrying past his grandmother. She closed the door behind him.
“You look like your father,” she said. “He was a filthy faggot. I warned your mother about that boy, but she never listened.” She squeezed his face hard and brought it closer to her own. “Listen, and listen good, boy. I don’t want you here, but seems like I ain’t got no other choice.” She pointed a bony finger at the staircase. “You sleep up there.”
“I want mama,” he told her. His grandmother’s eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t ask what you wanted, boy. I told you to get, now get.”
“I want mama!” he repeated forcefully. She hit him. He stared at her in shock, holding his face. No one had ever hit him before. Jeffrey picked up his bag and ran up the stairs, fearing another blow. He had thrown himself down on the bed and cried himself to sleep.
He didn’t have any more tears left now, just anger. Pure, unfettered rage. It was the only thing that kept him going, the only thing that kept him from giving up hope altogether. Jeffrey liked to think that there was justice in the world. That maybe God would do for him what he had done for the Israelites and free him from his Victorian prison. He had done nothing but pray for three years, pleading with God for some kind of help. God never answered.
Jeffrey rolled over, turned out the light, and tried, just as he had every night before, to forget everything in sleep.
The next morning was Sunday morning. Sundays brought a much-needed relief from the daily ritual of degrading and asinine chores. It was the one day Jeffrey’s grandmother actually treated him like a human being. Jeffrey rolled out of bed, quickly threw on his Sunday best, the only outfit Jeffrey owned that wasn’t threadbare, and headed downstairs.
His grandmother waited for him in the foyer, wearing a horrible mish mash of colors that should never be mixed. She inspected his attire conspicuously, nodded once in approval, and headed out the door towards her 1987 Oldsmobile. The drive to church was short and silent, just as it always was. Jeffrey saw the steeple of the one room church before the rest of the building crept into view from behind the cover of trees. A few cars were parked sporadically in the unpaved parking lot. His grandmother eased the Oldsmobile into an unmarked spot, and headed for the church.
As Jeffrey sat next to his grandmother in their usual pew, the one directly in front of the pulpit, he remembered how much the reverend’s sermons used to frighten him. He was a very gesticulate man, waving his arms back and forth and shaking violently. His voice would run the gamut from painfully loud to so quiet you had to lean in to understand. The pastor spoke of Hell, always of Hell. If you did this or didn’t do that you would go there. God was always watching you, every minute of every day, and he always knew when you committed a sin.
Jeffrey hated the very sight of the man now. The image of his massive gut protruding out from underneath his robes, the rivulets of sweat running down his head that he would wipe off constantly with a handkerchief, the way his jowls sagged and flapped about as he spoke; everything about the man was repulsive. His grandmother couldn’t get enough.
“Reverend Miller is a great man,” she said to him on the way to the parking lot, “He is never afraid to tell people exactly what needs to be said.” She looked at him from out of the corner of her eye, waiting for a reply.
Jeffrey hastily supplied one. “Yeah, he’s something else.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing grandma. It doesn’t mean anything.” She stared at him hard, her lip twisting into a grotesque snarl.
“You listen to me you little bastard. I’ll not have you saying anything unkindly about the Reverend.” She stabbed a bony finger at his face. “He’s a good, Christian man, not like that faggot father of yours. You’re just like he was: a faggot.” Jeffrey just stood there, unable to reply. His grandmother got in the Oldsmobile, gunned the engine, and sped off, leaving Jeffrey to leap out of the way to avoid being crushed.
As Jeffrey stared after the rapidly receding Oldsmobile, he decided, quite suddenly, that he had had enough. He kicked off his uncomfortable dress shoes and tore off down the road after his grandmother, running harder and faster than he ever had in his life. The heat of his muscles fueled the heat of his rage. His blood burned in his heart. He made it to the unpaved driveway of his grandmother’s house and dashed up it without slowing down.
The sight of the old Victorian did not fill him with dread as it had every time before. He did not have room in his heart for anything other than anger. The door was slightly ajar when Jeffrey made it to the porch. He shoved it open with as much force as he could muster. The glass in the window shattered. Jeffrey gingerly leapt over the shards, conscious of his bare feet, and landed on the shaggy carpet of the living room. He took a quick survey of the room, and found his grandmother where he knew she would be: sitting in her chair. She didn’t move as he started towards her.
A sudden realization made him pause. Why hadn’t she said anything when he broke the window?
“…and we must do everything in our power to bring the heathens back to Jesus.” Pastor McDougal’s voice blasted from the TV. His grandmother’s head sagged to her chest. Jeffrey quickly walked over and shook her.
“Grandma, wake up,” he shook her harder. “Please, wake up.” He reached down and slowly lifted her chin. Her eyes, which had always looked upon him with loathing, stared blankly at him now. Jeffrey jerked his hand back and recoiled away from the chair.
“Justice will be delivered unto them that sin against God. He shall smite the atheists, the homosexuals…”
Jeffrey had to laugh. Justice? Where was God’s justice now? She had died in her sleep, and he had never even been able to… To what? What would he have done?
“Remember always that Jesus loves you.”
Jeffrey grabbed the TV and hurled it at the wall. Pastor McDougal’s sermon ended in a shower of sparks and glass.
“I hate you. I hate you!” he screamed at her. Jeffrey’s grandmother simply looked at the floor, silent.
“It’s not fair,” he whispered. He left his grandmother sitting in her chair and left the house through the back door, slowly making his way to his spot in the woods. The trees welcomed him silently, as they always had. Yet even here, Jeffrey could not help but feel alone. The trees could not take care of him. They could not feed him, clothe him, keep him warm. All they could do was listen. Their silence offered him no comfort today. He turned, dejected, and headed back towards the house.
The acrid smell of smoke met him on the way. He looked up and saw streams of black smoke floating towards the sky. He ran around to the front of the house to find the living room completely engulfed. Jeffrey only had vague thoughts of the TV as he watched the fire consume his grandmother’s house. It burned its way through the house, a steady supply of rotting furniture providing kindling. The upstairs windows blew out as the fire moved upstairs.
Jeffrey watched. The old Victorian groaned as if in pain. A shudder ran through the house just before it collapsed in on itself, shooting sparks and smoke high into the atmosphere. The fire had destroyed the house, along with his grandmother’s body and his memories. Jeffrey heard sirens wail somewhere in the distance. He had to laugh. What could they possibly do now?
Jeffrey turned his back on the smoldering house, on his grandmother, his father, his mother, his memories. Jeffrey turned his back, and he walked towards the woods. He didn’t know where he was going, or what he would do, but there was nothing left for him here now. For the first time in his life, Jeffrey felt truly free.
He said his goodbyes to the trees as he passed them. They were the only ones who would notice his absence. Jeffrey vanished into the woods. He did not look back.
Thanks guys, I really appreciate the time. MUCH LOVE!