Ubertines 07: Fourteen (607 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.73 on 22 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by ghola (View user info) at 2007-02-05 15:44:03 EST
"I was a child bride at 14. I lived in Utah back then."
Tall and skinny, her shins are bruised and her knees are seesawed with short and long scars. Her hair is dyed red with that cheap box dye and it springs out from her head, dancing around her shoulders in static electricity. The room feels small.
"We were married four years. I don't like to talk about it."
She flicks her wrist and spins that last swallow of hot chocolate around her cup before gulping it down.
The room is cold and I reach over the counter to turn the space heater on. It sputters and then a gentle hum echoes throughout the room. It smells like burnt waffles and cane syrup.
She turns her empty cup upside down on the table and I cringe, thinking about those last few drops of chocolate seeping down onto my white table cloth.
I sit down across from her and prop my feet on the kitchen bar, closer to the heater.
"I just want to know who he was," I say. I try keep my eyes open wide and fix a stern expression on my face. If I crack even the slightest smile or look relaxed, it'll be over. She won't take me seriously. She never does.
"He was a lot of things," she says.
She flips her coffee cup back over and rubs a thumb across the brown speckles it left behind. She won't even look at me. She glances from the door to the squashed brown sofa to the television sitting on a nightstand in the living room, to the crack running down the side of the kitchen wall and then back at her cup.
I fight the urge to yell at her. It feels like if I could just scream and scream she might offer some real answer. I just wish she'd talk. Anything would be better than that silence. The silence just piles up in front of me and I wait.
The heater quits humming. I guess it's 71 degrees in here now. It feels more like 80.
"I left him the summer I turned eighteen. I had just found out I was pregnant with you. I wasn't very far along. About a month."
I stare at her, waiting on her to look at me, terrified that if I say anything she might quit talking.
"He was a lot of things," she repeats.
I scream, but I don't open my lips. I breathe in and try to count backwards from ten.
"Did you love him?" I ask her.
And the question breaks her. There'd be no more answers today or any other day. She was sitting right in front of me, just a few feet away, but she was gone. She was somewhere in Utah thirty years ago living with a man that she didn't love, a man that broke her and left her fourteen years old for the rest of her life.
"I love you," she answers. That's all I'll get.
I pry open a half full bottle of pills and slide her prescription across the table to her. It's just two tiny discs, that are soluble in water.
"I'll get you something to swallow them with," I say, standing up and leaning over to grab a glass from the drain. I fill it half-full and sit it down in front of her.
She swallows the two tiny blue pills and smiles at me.
It's never enough.
User Reviews
Submitted by carbon (user info) at 2007-07-27 23:37:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2007-07-26 17:39:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I wonder why. But then again I'm not going to sift through hundreds of reviews.
Submitted by SgtHartman (user info) at 2007-07-26 17:23:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
wow shin is really pissed
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-07-26 17:01:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2007-07-26 16:43:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by ikari_shinji (user info) at 2007-07-26 16:25:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
-2DIE FUCKING BITCH
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2007-02-07 08:46:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
in the oven.
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2007-02-06 22:02:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2007-02-06 00:04:07 (#)
Ranking: 2
I kept reading it as "her knees are seaweed"... like, three times. I'm not quite sure "seesawed" works, but it's better than "seaweed".
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So did I.
Where's the family cat in all this?
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2007-02-06 01:50:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by goferforhire (user info) at 2007-02-06 01:03:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
smile, the whole world's a stage and you get to burn your eyes in the lights
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2007-02-06 00:04:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I kept reading it as "her knees are seaweed"... like, three times. I'm not quite sure "seesawed" works, but it's better than "seaweed".
Submitted by Wisher (user info) at 2007-02-05 22:40:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
It feels like if I could just scream and scream she might offer some real answer
~~
It's never enough, what you write~ is the feeling im left with.
Now I see why you're so popular here: you don't write, you talk~ eyes closed, heart open. I hope you will read Godless someday and tell me what you think. I have Godless II {it's WAY longer, when Amy is 15} already written. Actually I had it written a few weeks after Godless, just never posted.
Don't stop writing.
Submitted by CrazyProtractorFace (user info) at 2007-02-05 22:10:31 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
I like it.
Submitted by Zebra (user info) at 2007-02-05 21:46:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Interesting.
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2007-02-05 20:40:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
The description of action was *perfect*.
This is a unique way to go for the comp. Right on.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2007-02-05 20:19:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This had a lot of surprising qualities to it...
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2007-02-05 17:53:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
while this is good, I was wondering what you are capable of if you ditched your formula.
Submitted by Shlongy (user info) at 2007-02-05 17:05:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Auto +2 for nice assness.
Submitted by Maltese (user info) at 2007-02-05 16:16:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Joseph Smith has ICE POWERZ!!!
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2007-02-05 16:13:45 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
no cats or ponytails?
bad ghola, no biscuit
Submitted by icarus1987 (user info) at 2007-02-05 16:08:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice treatment.
Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2007-02-05 15:52:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
awww man.