Short Story / High Price to Pay
My head was heavy with words and thoughts that night as I went to bed. Yet for some reason, when I tried to write, I became overwhelmed with depression and frustration. My eyes filled with tears. I hadn’t been able to write in days, ever since the night my mother read some of my poetry.
“Why is your poetry so depressing? Aren’t you happy?” She threw her arms around me.
“Mom, that’s just the way I write. Really, I’m fine.” I wished so badly that she would just go away.
“Are you sure? If you want, you can talk about it.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” I turned away from her.
Now I just couldn’t let myself go. Everything that she said reverberated in my mind. I started to doubt myself. What if she were right? I began to think that I was crazy. The notions rang through me clear as a bell. My sweaty body twisted and turned beneath the sheets. The soft, feathery pillow that was once very soothing, felt like a stiff piece of board.
I was alone. It was dark. It was silent; except for the constant war that raged in my head. The clock blinked incessantly on 12:00; it had lost its strength, just as I had.
I sat up and screamed, “I’m not crazy!” I couldn’t understand why this was bothering me so much. I just liked to write depressing poetry. That’s all!
I clenched the thick covers with my teeth. Still the little voice in my head rambled. The heavy curtains hung loosely at each side of the window and moonlight filled the entire room. Now, however, I was so annoyed by myself, that everything, including the moon’s glow, made me shriek.
I threw the blanket to the side. My head was spinning with dizziness. I climbed out of bed, onto the cold, bare floor, trying to relieve myself of the frustration by blaming it on the open curtain. I thought that if I closed the curtains, there was a possibility that I could lie down and sleep.
With the curtains drawn, tucked in at the corners, as to prevent even the slightest glimmer from entering the room, I returned to my bed. I did feel better, even well enough to sleep. Even though I knew it wasn’t true, I concluded that it was the light that had me in such frenzy. That excuse at least gave me an escape for the night.
Yet time passed quickly, and in a short while, I found myself awake again, pondering my own insanity. Now the water in the sink just across the room began to drip. Each drop echoed in my mind. Each tiny splash pounded on my heart like a drum. The noise of the falling drops seemed to take on an almost haunting quality. I tried to cover my ears but the song was etched into my mind, and now it played over and over, a continuous cycle that ripped a tiny piece of my mind out each time it played.
Sweat poured down my face. My breath became short and low. Hot air filled my lungs. I wanted to be cool, for just one moment. I prayed that the window would burst open and drench me in the cold, midnight air. I was just too weak to get out of bed and open the window myself.
More and more, I became aware of my own confusion. I didn’t know what I wanted, I could only hear the voice in my mind, “You’re so depressing.” It repeated itself over and over again, like the song of the water droplets. I cringed but I could do nothing to make the voice in my mind go away. It just kept wailing its ugly voice.
I laid there with the constant nagging inside me. I moaned with such a low, weak voice that I could hardly hear myself over the thoughts. I grunted in frustration and anger.
“This is it,” I said to myself. I had to make it go away. My efforts so far hadn’t been enough. So, in terrible desperation, I stood, using all the strength I had left, to walk over to the cabinet. I pried the bottle of sleeping pills open. I just needed one pill to make myself go to sleep.
The water flowed so softly and so smoothly from the faucet into the glass. But the sound of water rushing into the glass made me dizzy. “What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you?” I spun round on my heels to grab the bottle of pills from the counter, but my mind was in a daze and I couldn’t quite make out the bottle in the dark. The bottle fell from the counter and pills spilled all over the linoleum.
I wanted to make the voice disappear more than ever as I knelt down in the dark and groped for the pills. I had gone insane, I concluded. But I just didn’t care. My only focus now was to make the voice in my head stop.
I forced a handful of pills into my mouth and rose to my feet. I grabbed the glass of water from the counter. The cool water calmed my stomach.
Laughing uncontrollably, I knew I had conquered the voice. Soon, I would be sleeping.
I took one last sip of the water and set the glass back on the counter. My mind still raced. Time was going too slowly. I sat down at the kitchen table and held my head up in my palms. The clock continued to blink. Minute after minute went by and I sat there, still and alone.
I finally became exhausted. And just as I had planned, the dripping stopped. The voice was silenced. I was calm. I lay my head down on the table with a smile. I was finally at peace.
I closed my eyes.
The voice was gone forever.
1998
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i liked it very much. theres nothing to really say-it’s all written very well and does not need much changes. the story wrapped me in and i couldn’t stop reading it. very interesting. i liked it. keep on writing. structure is good. there is nothing i would change. keep doing what you are doing! good luck!
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This is a perfect example of “show don’t tell”. You have done an exceptional job at bringing me into your world and into your state of mind. More and more I seem to find that we writers(especially the best of us) experience periods of delusion and moments of terror, where we wuestion our own purpose, the reason why we do what we do. Perhaps we are the modern-day martyrs, who must sacrifice their outer selves in order to bring forth truth to others in the world who seek it. Well done. Great work!
This was very well done. It flowed from beginning to end very well, and the concept was new, at least to me. I wish I could find something more helpful to say here, but I didn’t see any errors to note. Keep up the great work.
I like the wording of the story, but it seems to me like the narrator is overreacting to what their mother said. Maybe that’s part of the story, but I just couldn’t understand why that affected them so deeply. That threw me off when continuing the story. It’s well-written, though. Keep working on it.
The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath’s only novel. It is a masterpiece! Have you read it? If not read it and compare your story. The main character Esther, becomes increasingly depressed, and finds herself unable to sleep. She makes several obscure attempts at suicide (including swimming far out to sea in the hope of being swept away by the current, a method successfully used by the protagonist in the feminist novel The Awakening) before making her most serious attempt at the end of Chapter Thirteen. True to Sylvia Plath’s actual suicide attempt, Esther leaves a note saying she is taking a long walk, crawls into the cellar, and swallows almost 50 sleeping pills (part of her medication for insomnia).
You are on par with your story.
Brilliantly written if not stolen!
Thanks
not sure if I should say good story or say sorry for your loss. Very emotional,I unfortuantly have been there but was found in time to have my stomache pumped.
So does your main charecter die in the end or does his or hers muse die. This was a piece that stuck with me and forced a re-read. I at least would stop with all the I’s all the time you start probably better than half your sentances with I’s
Trust me it’s a hard habit to break when you write in first person.
Well like i said i liked the story but not really sure how it ended.
Keep writing
Dave
Interesting story, in writing about depression the narrator makes himself depressed thinking about it. This sounded more like some kind of schitzophrenia episode gone wrong, with the over-dose at the end. Maybe the reason your poetry was about depressing issues is because the narrator suffered from a mental illness. (I mean in the story, not you personally). Well writen, i did’nt notice any typo’s.
I think this piece definitely has potential and I found myself wanting to know more about the narrator. I was also quite curious to see some snippets of that depressing poetry he/she is writing. Be careful to avoid telling us too much of the story though instead of showing us e.g. ‘I became overwhelmed with depression and frustration’ – how does she physically interpret this depression?
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