So we had to to an oral presentation about a theme that we made up on a text that we could choose (I chose the Umbrella Academy). Basically, the story is about the theme below:
Theme: Everyone experiences and develops from trauma in different ways.
He's lying on the stone cold floor, not moving. His chest looks as if it imploded on itself. Even though I know that he's not going to get up from this, I shake him slightly, urging him to rise from the floor and possibly the dead. He'd been wasted when he stumbled and collapsed down the stairs but I should have helped him down the stairs. I had been angry at him only minutes before be fell down the stairs. I shouldn't have used my frustration towards him to guide my actions by not helping him down the stairs.
I'm sure he was drinking for a reason, which, for all I know could range from forgetting to do something at work to his recent divorce from Mum. I feel like staying with him here may slightly make up for the times I was meant to stick by him when he needed me. His arms and legs are flailed in weird directions which could only mean multiple broken bones. He is bleeding from the back of his head and his spine is askew.
I go to retrieve a towel from the bathroom and use it to first soak up the blood then place his head on top of it to support his broken neck, then I rearrange his arms and legs so they look like he could just be asleep. I remember when I was younger (before he got addicted to alcohol) I fell off my bike and he did the same thing for me - placed the towel under my head while he called the ambulance to attend to my broken leg. This is all my fault, I could have prevented this all from happening if I got out of the zone in my head and thought about others for once. He wouldn't be dead.
It could have been anywhere between 3 hours and 3 days when I was awakened by the putrid stench and the furious knocking at the door. Suddenly the knocking turns into a battering ram coming through the door, tearing holes into the once lush wood. They tell me to step away from the body but I won't budge, he was my dad and I will stay with him like I was supposed to, like I promised him when Mum left.
The police pull me away with my arms as I cry and scream, trying to escape them and live up to my promise. I realise that it's no use trying to get away from them, they're going to take his body to the morgue and I'm only ever going to see him again in the pictures by my bedside table. They'll put me in a foster home or possibly find Mum but she won't take me in. From now on I'm an orphan, a stray, left out of normal happy families.
2 months later
Through all of the trauma I've been through, I've had time to clearly think about the situation from an outsiders point of view. His unfortunate death wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault that he got intoxicated, it wasn't my fault that he decided to walk down the stairs, it wasn't my fault that he shattered his spine. As soon as the autopsy came back I was off the hook for murder, given a second chance at being part of a loving family.
My foster family has been nothing but welcoming, supportive and caring towards me. I've finally been able to see the whole situation through a different lens. Everyone experiences and develops from trauma in different ways. I developed from it by realising that it wasn't my fault, others might not face traumatic events or just ignore it completely.
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Ma short story
Short StoryThis was what I had to write for my English classwork, hope you like it! We had to write about someone that has committed a misdeed or crime (I chose murder), 2 people had to be talking about it to each other.
