It’s not horror and by chance you haven’t realized how rude it is to say that this isn’t a remarkable story. Sure your right those are reasons why people commit suicide but most people jsut do it because they don;t see the point anymore. This is to make people realize that the quiet girl needs help, that the slut has an alternative reason, that the girl who steals is doing it to survive. Thanks for the comment but I think your wrong that this isn’t remarkable.
Short Story / "I was just another cockroach"
He never stepped on me and my soft shell. He pushed me away, and hid me in the dark cold shadows of his basement. I was just another cockroach to a dirty old man that was supposed to care. Meant to be untouchable, I should have been able to take over the world get rid of the insolent man. I never could though. I was too fragile, too small. And so that night I would let go. Drift away from this horrible place, but why was dying the only way to end my suffering? How did I come to the conclusion that death was my first and last resort? Why did I suffer so greatly at such a young age?
I was the end result of a one night stand. My mother died having me, and instead of growing up in the hell hole of where love might blossom I was sent to him. I had to go to my father, because he was my last living relative that the government knew of. There weren’t papers to be signed just a moment of “Sir, this child is your responsibility. We can offer you tax deductions for taking her in as if you may have adopted her.” He had never wanted me, except for the tax deductions. A daughter to him was trash that he couldn’t get rid of. Still I grew and lived a pathetic worthless and meaningless life. At five I learned how to make food, dress myself, even read on my own. I knew how to take care of me and my things. Most people didn’t learn that till they were on their death bed; I was on mine. I read the dictionary when I was supposed to be in kindergarten. I learned adding, subtracting, multiplying, and division before I was ever in a school. Finally at 7 I entered first grade a year late. It was a waste. I functioned better than the wet sappy infants. The school realized my “potential”, something my dad never saw and they moved me up to fourth grade. I was still above these kids but I learned. I watched them talk about each other, stab one another’s backs. Although it was a fairly worthless experience, I learned something very important. Pick pocketing, allowed me to buy my clothing for my future. Elementary school was easy even when bad things happened.
How should I describe the man who was my father? He was a drunk with dirty brown hair that could have been a dirty blonde color if he washed it. Every day I was a punching bag for him with his weak upper body, but strength filled calves. Night after night whores, sluts, even hookers were bought and never paid for. One night a “pimp” came to our house, looking for the money owed to him.
“Where’s your daddy, lil’girl?”
“He isn’t home, mister. If you want to talk to him later though, he’ll be bringing the next round of bitches home by 11 o’clock.” How I hated my dad. I resented him with a passion making my sarcasm fierce.
“Well, you know I got work then so let me take care of my business with him-”He paused I shivered, “With you.”
Slapped, kicked, punched, and beaten. He was sorry that I had to feel this pain, but some men just didn’t get that every woman bought needs money. I tried to explain that this wouldn’t mean anything to my father it would just mean another cold night for me. He carved “Debt” into my thigh, and I would forever remember that word as the only description my father could use. I was debt for his one night stand. I was debt for his no condom policy. I was debt for his idiocy. The man left after saying, “If he doesn’t get the picture or he doesn’t care. Know I’ll take you next time.” The door shut before I could whimper with, “Oh dear God, please take me.” My father didn’t understand the point of having me. I was a bug to him. I use to wish that he’d just squash me under his foot and it be over and done with, but no my father was so called sensitive and didn’t like to kill bugs. Instead he pushed them down the stairs to my basement. When he came home, he saw my face, my arms, and the blood going through my pant leg. All he said was, “You fucking whore. You’re already getting knocked up and you’re only in first grade. That boy comes back you tell him he can take you with him next time ‘stead of messing around in my house.” He threw me down the stairs. I sat there and whistled to myself. Not a happy song, not a forlorn tune just whistling, because I knew crying wasn’t something I could do. My tears no longer came out knowing I’d be stuck here forever. There was no God, I thought. If there was a God why had he not saved me yet? I felt like nothing. I was nothing. Nobody had ever asked where I got my bruises. Nobody had ever wondered where my dad was. Nobody ever saw me. Lots of time was wasted in my basement. Years went by, tears were kept nothing really seemed different. Night after night he came to my hole. “Bitch! Nobody ever wanted you. Here eat up you fatty.” A ham sandwich with brown water, it was a feast to me. As I ate thoughts of murdering my keeper came to mind. I couldn’t kill him. I wanted him to suffer the way I did. I wanted him to cry. I wanted him to disguise his cuts, hide his face, and be nothing. I wanted him to drown in alcohol, get a concussion from beating himself, and bleed out from the slits on his wrist. I wanted him to be nothing, just like me.
When I was 11 turning 12 I entered the 8th grade. The time wasted in my basement, my hole, was well spent. I realized the pimp would never come for me, my father would always be a bastard of a man, I’d always be the cockroach who wanted to die, and nobody cared. I was an early developer at the age of twelve I had breast. By eighth grade the boys all wanted me. I had the figure every girl died for and every boy craved. I was skinny with big boobs. Which of course wasn’t healthy, but what in my life was healthy? I was neglected, starved, and unhealthily craving attention. I had sex before I should’ve. I don’t regret the moment we had. It was my best experience in life. Sure the pain was intense, but no more than what I had endured before. Even with the pain though it was the closest, I had ever come to being loved and feeling like something. When we had finished, the boy, who was my first, held me. Just having his hands holding mine was a revelation that maybe one day I could be loved. I suddenly started to cry. I hadn’t cried for so long it actually felt right. He asked me why I was crying. I nuzzled my face up against him and I simply replied, “I’m unhappy with life.” I had sex a few more times. The end was never the same as it was with him. He had been so kind. He had left me in the end, and I became another one night stand. I never asked why the guys didn’t want more of me. I figured they just wanted to get some. However there was this one guy who said, “Maybe we can hang sometime.” I looked at him inquisitively replying, “Yah, sure.”
We met at a café. During our date I said, “Do you love me?” Scaring everyone away because I never got the love I deserved. He left me then saying, “We had sex. It wasn’t love making. It was sex. God you freak.” So there went what could’ve been a relationship.
With everything I had learned I still couldn’t cope with my life. So I stopped going to school. I would stay in my hole, my dark depressing hole. Teachers hadn’t noticed me other than being the strange, dirty girl. My classes had always been so full for such a tiny town. The other children were easily noticed when ill or hurt, but not me I covered myself in long sleeved shirts and pants all year. Teachers who tried to contact my family never even realized my home address was a P.O box. When I had entered Ninth grade my English teacher was the only person who truly showed any affection or worry toward me. Maybe she did care, but I doubted this with all my logic because no one had ever cared about me. I was nothing, so why did this woman ask me, “Where did you get that bruise? What’s wrong with your lip? Did you eat today?” My English teacher acted like she cared, so I pretended as if she loved me. One day in class she had said, “Write about your life. Tell me your story. Before the end of the year I want to know who you are.” I thought this woman wants to know my story I’ll give it to her, so I found her address. I dropped off my notebook and added one note. It read:
My bruises come from my soul for it is rotting through,
My lip is cut for I had nothing else to bite
My stomach is empty as is my heart
This is my last assignment
learn about my life
From, Rose pray I a lay dead
I walked away knowing my teacher might cry, but she would be the only one. I never made any friends in case they would ask the questions she asked. All those one night stands never resulted in love. My father was just the wind blowing hard into my sides at evenings light. This was the only way out. Death would change my life. Finally, I could breathe. Within death I would be loved. Life may squish me, but it will not control me. I walked into the bathroom of my father’s grimy room. In my mind I knew I would be something once I took away my entire nothing. I took his xanax lots of them. With his smooth razor I wrote on my arm “I wish I had died earlier.” The words were barely legible, but it was the thought that counted. My father came home that night. I guess parental control came through. He called 911, although it was too late. In my pocket the police found a note unlike my other. It read slightly different:
If you read this I am finally gone,
finally set free to fly
able to see the morning’s dawn-
tell the world the truth
I don’t know how to cry
because I am a cockroach
being forced to die.
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dutch861 reviewed Version 8 -
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Huskings reviewed Version 8 -
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danielleharlow reviewed Version 7 -
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wow, this is a gothic story you’ve got going on here. I think there are legal processes by which a baby would have to be transferred to her father, and I think that you should try to explain how exactly the father ended up with the girl. Maybe he gets money from the state, and that’s his motivation? The bread, water and bologna thing is a bit cliche, what about cheapo TV dinners or something that doesn’t evoke a dungeon with manacles on the wall, etc?
I think you have a pretty honest voice here, it’s just that some of the incidents are a little bit unbelieveable or overdramatic. I think maybe if you give very specific details about some of the events. For example, the pimp carving debt into the girl’s thigh, well, that’s pretty heartless. I don’t know what a pimp would and wouldn’t do, but I think you need to go into detail about the events.
i.e the girl is begging him not to, explaining that her father won’t care anyway.
or the pimp expresses reservation, but does it anyway.
Good luck in the future!
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Razzer123 reviewed Version 7 -
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Unremitting horror is not necessarily the best way to get published I’m afraid. The problem with the story is that it has no real point. Such horror stories, if not commonplace, are common enough to be unremarkable. To get this to a publishable state it needs to be remarkable. Ultimately it is unsatisfying, without a real resolution. I understand why your character commits suicide, but what does that tell us? People commit suicide because they’ve reached the end of their tether, but we all know that. Some people lead awful lives, but we know that too. I sincerely hope that this story doesn’t come from personal experience, but if it does, then fight back with whatever weapons you have available – including writing.
AV reviewed Version 7 -
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This was definately an interesting read. It made sense as to why she killed herself in the end. If she hadn’t I would have been surprised just from the way you spoke about her.
“The school realized my “potential” something my dad never saw and they moved me up to fourth grade.”
There weren’t too many noticeable grammar mistakes, but these are what I found. There should be commas after “potential” and saw for starters.
“Pickpocketing allowing me to buy my clothing for my future.”
This is technically a fragment. You may want to fix it.
“Night after night whores, sluts, even hookers were bought, and never payed for. One night a “pimp” came to our house; looking for the money owed to him.”
The semicolon should be a comma and there should be no comma after bought.
That was the gist of what I found. A bit of tinkering with this and I’m quite sure you could easily get this published. Also, it might be easier to ask a friend to read it and help as well as showing it to the people on urbis.
jhmckeogh reviewed Version 7 -
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you make some logic errors here. She’s 7 going into first grade, and then 11 going into 8th… also, you said she hadn’t cried since the time with the pimp, and i dont remember her crying then.
Heres teh biggest concern i have with this story, and its something that will need to be addressed if you want it published. The story is in past tense, “when i was 11 turning 12”... you speak in the present a couple times, but for the most part its telling a story about what happened before. You also speak in the first person “i did this” “this happened to me”. Heres the problem. IF she dies at the end of the story, your going to have to break that past tense, and let your reader know that you are now in the present. You also need to set up, since it is in the past tense, how far back the story is going. Now it seems like you want to end with her death, in 8th grade. Why not put in the past tense, “my teacher wanted to learn about me” and then break form, “this is it” kind of like “the outsiders” where the whole story becomes an essay that one of them wrote. As of now, the tenses don’t logically fit with they story. I hope this makes some sense.
AstroBoyJ7 reviewed Version 7 -
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I may not completely get it but the symbolism is very vivid and the constant pain the main character’s life seems to be tugs at you as the story progresses. I can totally relate to a lot of their struggles because I grew up in a rough neighborhood myself and didn’t have a whole lot either. I would really like to see where this goes.
libraryboy reviewed Version 7 -
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It was a curious thing. It seemed to clunk by, big blocks of clumsiness, but then suddenly you’d hit us with a line like,
‘My father was just the wind blowing hard into my sides at evenings light.’
Of course, this isn’t poetry, so to have that language wrapping the whole piece would have been ridiculous, but I do feel those lines only work because the paragraphs surrounding them are so derivative in comparison.
Don’t get me wrong, I quite liked it. However, the story was generic and, by today’s standards, cliche; the movement of the piece blocky in places, and the ending was just plain obvious.
It was promising, though, and that’s important.
tjdangerfield reviewed Version 6 -
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I like this, it goes with the whole nature versus nurture thing to see that we are what our parents make us. It is a sad tragic story that I can visualize as it happens all the time in the inner cities across this country that we live in.I would have like to see the father charachter develpoed more along with the relationship betwen the girl and her teacher, but overall this os a good work and concept and can serve as a lesson to teach other adults and youth about what goes on in an abusive relationship and that you are not alone. There are other people who feel the same way as you, and that death shouldn’t be the answer even if in our own minds it seems that death is the answer. We as a people should take this story and show it to the youth who we are concerned about and see if we can be there for them in any way any shape or any form. Good Work
Alycia reviewed Version 6 -
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Wow. That was amazing. There were grammatical errors here and there, but overall I can see a ton of potential. You really caught my attention early on in the story, and I truly loved it to the end. It was very sad, and I wanted to cry, but I think with some more detail, you could make it really good. I’m glad I was able to read this, keep on writing!
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