"Where's my Son?"

A school writing piece

“Where’s my son?” The words came from Clara’s mouth in a way that made her sound genuinely confused, as if she really had no idea. Her face was blank as though she had forgotten something, but perhaps that was simply the whereabouts of her aforementioned son. Her first child, Cheryl, was kneeling beside her, staring at the ground with a look of despair, ignoring the question completely. “Oh, never mind I know now. He’ll just be in his room sulking over our argument last night. I’ll go check in on him later.”

  At this point, Cheryl exhaled loudly, stood up, and went to fetch that day’s newspaper from the kitchen bin. She placed it on the dining table and then began to clean up the rest of the apartment. After stacking the dirty crockery into the dishwasher she turns to her mother, who is now sitting at the dining table reading the placed newspaper.

“You know mum, you could try helping to at least keep the place tidy. You know, like that family across from ours? Their place is always lovely and clean.” She says it half-heartedly, as though she know it won’t happen, but is worth a try.

  Clara looks up from her paper and chuckles softly, a small smile showing on her face. “I remember when I was trying to tell you that not too long ago. I had to fight with you and your brother to do the littlest things: cleaning your bedroom, washing the dishes, even taking your medicine. Oh that reminds me! You haven’t taken your medicine today young lady. Wait a second I’ll go get it.” She stands up and walks over to the fridge where all of the medicine is kept and grabs a small bottle. “I could’ve sworn there was more in this before,” she shakes the bottle, “I guess I’ll have to get some more later on.”

Cheryl looks at the bottle and shakes her head harshly, quite intently saying that she’d already taken it that day. Clara sits her down on one of the chairs quite demandingly, and gives her the liquid. Cheryl half-heartedly obeys and drinks the brown sludge, forcing it down.

“Good girl. How about your brother? He hasn’t had his today has he? I’ll go give it to him now; he’s got to come out of that room sooner or later.” Clara walks to the children’s shared room and knocks on the door, calling the boy’s name, but there’s no reply. “Oh come on, now you’re just being stubborn. Don’t make me come in there.” After waiting for a few more moments she opens the door and walks into the empty room; the room with one single bed, one set of draws, and no son.

Clara starts to shout for her child, getting louder and louder until Cheryl leads her back into the kitchen and sits her down at the dining table, holding her arm the whole time. She sits herself down on the chair next to her mother, and looks at her calmly. She explains to her the day that they have been living on repeat, the day her son died. The day where beforehand, him and Clara had fought over the medicine, and she forced it down his throat. The day she had accidently gripped his jaw too tight, and had given him too much of that brown sludge. The day he was dizzy in his room due to pain and an overdose of medicine and his head smashed onto the wooden edge of his single bed. The day he was gone.

  She explains how Clara had lost her memory due to the trauma, and how they had relived this current moment over and over again for almost a month, several times a day. Clara reaches for the newspaper lying in front of her, and the date was wrong, it was almost a month wrong. She takes the paper and throws it into the kitchen bin, falling to her knees on the floor. Cheryl goes and kneels beside her mother as she cries into her own hands, muttering to herself. It’s never easy for a child to see her mother in pain, but to see it constantly for the last month, several times a day, is almost unbearable, especially when she forgets.

  Quite soon, the crying comes to a stop, and Clara looks up from her hands. Her eyes went blank as the tears began to dry up. She looked around herself in a daze, confused as to why she was on the ground, kneeling beside her daughter, who was looking down at the floor. To her, something was different, something didn’t make sense, how could it? Someone was missing.

“Where’s my son?”

Author's Note

This was an assignment based on a series of short stories from 'Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?' where we had to take character from one book and put them into the setting of another, then make up a story. Bam result :)