My Inky Folios: Mistakes of Mine

Here's one about a teen girl having a row with her mum and storming out of the house. I've written a story on her thoughts and feelings.
Your feedback is appreciated! Please let me know what you think of this one! :)


Mistakes of Mine
 I round the corner of the footpath blindly, my mind lost miles away, and immediately smack into a lady carrying a bag of canned food.

Her high-pitched shriek - and the irksome sound of a dozen tin cans crashing on the pavement - pull me sharply from my reverie.

"For goodness's sake, watch where you're going, girl," she scolds me, and I hardly stammer out an apology when a couple of the cans roll down the pavement and onto the road.

The two of us watch in silent unison as a speeding sedan approaches the poor cans without any sign of stopping. In a second, they explode under the tires in a burst of colour - tomato sauce and baked beans splatter the road, and the car tears away without hesitation.

The lady turns to face me, looking just about ready to inflict some lasting physical harm, but I am already jogging down the sidewalk. I don't have time for her petty issues.

I wan to run; I want to run away from what I know, to forget what happened, to enter a world of oblivion, a world emotionless.

I want to forget everything.

But it all comes gushing back into my head anyway: Bouchra's party; my friends leading me to a group smoking some unidentifiable substance. I remember my initial refusal to join them, but now I curse myself for my half-hearted attempts. If truth be told, my curiosity got the better of me, and combined with the tremendous amount of peer pressure, I caved in. I crossed the line for the first time in my life.

And my mum knew.

As soon as I staggered back home after the party, she only needed to take one look at me before all hell broke loose.

The row that followed was possibly the first; she was hysteric with shock, anger and disappointment, and I found myself trying to defend my actions.

And when it got too much for me, I ran. I left home at a sprint, wanting to rewind and undo all the wrong I had done. Hours trickled past, and now here I am - tired, hungry, and miserable, watching the sun travel up the sky.

It's wrong of me to have left. I should have apologized to my mum. I should have taken my deserved punishment with grace. I should not have run away like a coward.

I should not have caved in to my friends' pressure in the first place.

Feeling a renewed sense of purpose, I halt and turn on my heel. Then I walk back the way I came.




4 comments:

Aa'Ishah said...

It's great to see that this character doesn't shy away from her responsibilities and accepts that she is at fault. I realise this is only a short piece, but perhaps we could see a little development while she's walking to help show how she got from storming out of the house, having some internal conflict and then coming to the decision that she needs to go back. Lovely piece! :)

Aa'Ishah @ Reading Under the Stars

Erfa said...

Hi Aa'Ishah!
Thanks for your feedback! Yeah, it's probably the shortest story I've ever written, so I didn't give enough space for the character's conflict, and I should have. Thanks for pointing it out!
Love,
Erfa

ShadyLane said...

Wow this is really cool. Great writting.
New follower!

http://thecrossbreeds.blogspot.com/

Erfa said...

Hi Shady Lane!
Thanks for the compliment! It means a lot. And thanks for the follow! :D

Love,
Erfa

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