Blaming the Stone

fiction.

I walk up to the familiar stone.  Blunt raindrops are released from the sky, gathering momentum as they fall.  Each one startlingly pelts my bare skin like a gavel.  I’m brave enough to raise my face for a second—to my left then to my right—scanning the crayon green lawns that stretch for miles, dotted with bouquets of every color.  I want to make sure that I am alone with him.  Despite the abusive precipitation, I stand the scarlet red roses in the in-ground vase and sit at the foot of the gravestone Indian-style.

 

 

            I’m sitting at my desk reading the black ink and only half listening to his booming voice on the other end of the telephone.

            “You gotta see my lake!”

            My brother had already told me about Dad’s giant man-made tank in the back pasture behind his house and the ridiculous price tag that came with it.  This was my first phone call to my father in awhile, and its purpose was to get some financial information from him so that I could finally complete my annual student loan application.

            “Annual income of cosigner?” I interrupt his enthusiasm.

            “Uh…about a hundred and sixty.”  Grand, that is.  While he sips a margarita on the dock of his new lake, I’m drowning in debt.  He does not throw me the rope.  “The clay I had put in the bottom will allow it to hold more water,” he continues, “so me and Uncle Jack are gonna take my boat out fishin’ at Galloway Lake, and instead of thowin’ ‘em back, we’re gonna dump ‘em in my lake!  So we…“  I stop listening to do some rough calculations.  Judging by the numbers I have jotted down, I’ll be paying back these loans until I’m about to retire.  I sigh.

            “Monthly house payment?”

            “Zero.  Plus, there’s an island in the middle so you can walk out—“

            “Dependents?”

            “Zero.”

            Dependents zero.  Since my seventeenth birthday, he has had dependents zero.  He preached to me my whole life that I would be out of the house and on my own at seventeen, and now, four years later, here I sit—more on my own than ever.  Perhaps if he’d have shown just a shred of remorse for the mistreatment of his children, I would’ve shown more love for him—given him a little more of my time as an adult.  I blame him.  He is the guilty one.

 

 

            My eyes are downcast, barely seeing my imprinted surname on the stone being repolished by each raindrop striking it like a lightning bolt.  My veiled lids block out the single ray of sunlight in the sky, but instead of keeping the tears in their ducts as I had intended, one embarrassing drop is squeezed out and falls upon the capital A in his name.  I wipe it away quickly and apologize.

Author's Note

I tried to include similes, imagery, irony, allusions, and repetition. Look for the words meaning "one" to convey loneliness, and especially the words which refer to guilt as that is the theme (the speaker being the one who is really guilty). hope all this comes across.