[Short Story 1]

          It felt like the world had stopped, the room was silent, frozen almost. Nice's world had just been shattered for a second time. Nice woefully left the cold heartbreaking room after the doctor gave his diagnosis and took his mom, Pearl, back home where he takes care of her. The house filled with a stench of smoke and sickness, Nice's father has been gone since birth never meeting him nor visiting him. Ever since then, Nice has been trying to take care of his mother, Nice and his mom have been living a dark, quiet, and lonely life. He has never spoken to his mom about his dad and neither will he try to find him. After Nice lays his mom down in her bed and adjusted her dark covers he walks into his room where everything is neatly organized and made clean. Here, Nice focuses on his school work to become a doctor and balances two part time jobs to raise money for him and his mom's living. All the windows are covered with blinds that are faded and dusty as if they were never tended to for years and there are only crevices of sunlight coming through. 

1. [Nice hears a familiar noise coming from his mother's room and as he runsto her room he recalls seeing a similar moment once before, an open bottle ofpills. He rushes to the bathroom seeing a morbid sight of pestilence and acycle of addictiveness as his mom lights "another one".] 

2. [Nice hears a noise coming from his mother's bathroom and he rushes there to check the sound. What a morbid sight of pestilence he sees, his mom shoving pills into her mouth and lighting "another one".]

Nice quickly smacks the devil's sugarcane out of her hand and stomps on it putting it's light out as if killing poisonous spider. As he yells at his mom for doing this again even after hearing the bad news from the doctor, she just sits there, lifeless, as if Nice wasn't even there and she reaches for the box of short term pain relievers and the lighter. Nice sees this and snatches the carton and lighter, taking it outside to the waste can and throws the box and pills in using the lighter to burn the items of death. He walks back in the door seeing his frail soulless mom, Pearl, slowly roaming to her room. Nice yells at her for not even giving her own son at least a simple glance to know she still sees him with no avail, not a single reaction to his cries. Afterwards, he runs into his room and angrily throws his chair and flips his desk as his mother walks past his door oblivious to the mess in what once was the cleanest room in the house. He sits down on his bed gripping his hair, trying not to lose hold of life when he remembers his dad's name, he had heard it from his mother before when he was little, how could he have forgotten such a name that caused him great hopelessness, being picked on by students from school about how his dad left and his mom is a freak. Nice grabs his bag and all his savings, he walks back to his mom's room, she's sitting down, in her chair, like a doll, Nice says he's going out for a while, he'll clean his room when he can and apologizes for making a mess of the house as he walks over to her and kisses her forehead. "I love you mom". He walks out of the house and down the road, he pulls out his phone to search for anything about his dad, just, anything he can. Nice's insides turned, his dad, a wealthy business man, living debt free, healthy, not a care in the world about Nice, his son, let alone Nice's mom. Enraged, all day and night Nice tracked the dad he never met to the ends of the earth till the morning of the week after the eventful day. Nice has found himself in a crowd of people in suits and briefcases, looking across the way, at his dad. From a distance Nice thought of what life could have been like having his dad still with him and his mom together, thinking if it would have been different. He approached the man in suit wearing what seemed to be an expensive watch and a pin of some campaign. Nice told the man he had to be his son, with a disgust look the man back away taking it as a sick joke, till Nice told the man of his mom, how she was sick, how he had, just had to be his son. The man told Nice, he has never had a child, or told so, his mom never told him of being pregnant with Nice before he left and nor does he care, for this man was the owner of a big company and has no time for children wanting to be his kid, that he had no money to spend on such a trivial matter to him. Nice enraged, punched this man and screamed at him for wanting him to be there for him and his mom, yelling if not for him do it for Pearl. Nice stole the man's wallet and watch for money hoping it was enough to buy medical help for his mom's cancer, hoping it would fix his mom and she'll notice him again, hoping his mom will be healthy again and he'll be a good son and keep her happy and graduate and become a doctor and she'll be there clapping and cheering for him at the front of the crowd and they'll be happy, just, happy... hoping that he could have a little more time with his mom. Time, it felt like an eternity to come home, Nice ran to the cold room again demanding to speak with the doctor. He asks if all the money he had combined and the watch was enough to cover the expenses as the doctor took it and told Nice, that there was no way he could take this money and watch. Nice, still and silent, again in this cold room, this heartbreaking cold room of sadness, lost it. Nice pushed the doctor and threw items across the room, he flipped and broke till there was nothing left to do. Nice took a look at himself in the now shattered mirror, then, ran home as fast as possible. He open the door and ran inside, for once the house, didn't smell horrid. Nice ran into his mother's room, as she's laying there in her bed, in her darkened covers nearly changing black as her clothes, as he holds her hand so tightly, as he cries for not being able to be a better son, for not have being older and already graduated, for not being an adult in time to fix her. Pearl hears the cries of her son, she opens her eyes slowly with barely any strength left to look at her son crying, as she tightens her hold of his hand and she uses her other hand shakily, on a whim to reach him almost, she begins to brush his hair. She lifts his tear filled face and smiles at him, one, last, time... "I love you too son."