From Poetry to Fiction

reap-a-rat

Hi all!

I've posted here a few times before. I mainly enjoy writing poetry and songs with the very odd piece of fiction thrown in. As part of a challenge recently provided by a society I'm part of, we were given 12 random words and ask to write a piece with them - anything goes, like. So I decided to go for (semi) flash fiction. I have no idea what to rate it against though, I don't know if I should kind of keep writing these longer kind of stories. So I said maybe if anyones here has the time, I'd value feedback on whether I seem to be able to tell a story or not! Cheers for reading

Upsetting the Norm

Jessie was 6 years old when she lost her innocence. It wasn't that Santa's true identity was revealed or that she awoke to see her father exchanging a tooth for a coin; no, it was something much more mature than that. When Jessie was 6, she barely knew how to add or subtract. She could hardly put her socks on the right way. Sometimes, she mixed up the colours green and yellow. But Jessie, unlike most girls (or indeed boys) her age, knew what an abortion was. At the time, though, she didn't exactly realise what that meant for her.

"I didn't go with Auntie Mary," her mother had said on that breezy autumn day, "I went with...someone else. A man. We went to a clinic. I...I had been pregnant. The clinic made the pregnancy go away, so I won't be having a baby. It's called an abortion." Even though she was only 6, even though she hadn't even been told about the birds and the bees, Jessie knew that this couldn't possibly be a good thing. What had been a clear blue sky for all of her short life was now being invaded by dark, black clouds. Jessie knew that this had the potential to be a storm that never blew over.

"Whatever you do, don’t pretend like any of this has happened. Never ever speak about it to anybody. Don't even talk about it with each other. Your father and I will be ok." Her mother, an advocate of keeping up with the Jones', had spoken these words without letting the revelation sink in. Jessie, now almost 22, soon realised that the Jones' were not the type of family one should strive to keep up with. They were always the ones to act like life was one deliciously creamy milkshake - big occasions were the chocolate surprises in the middle and everyday happiness the sprinkles on top. Life being a milkshake, however, is disastrous when one is allergic to dairy. And lactose intolerance wasn't the Jones' only flaw. Sinister secrets dwelled deep within all of them - that much was obvious, at least to Jessie. What lived in the public eye was not the same as what lived indoors. A house full of happiness covered a basement full of woe.

The Jones' being who they were, of course, meant that even a dysfunctional family like Jessie's didn't really have to go beyond the norm to stay with them. Whether everyone else knew this was irrelevant. The norm was where the problem really started, though. The word itself was completely subjective. Was it the norm to have a dishwasher? Was it the norm to keep animals as pets? Was it the norm for an oak tree to survive in the Tundra? Like trying to triangulate a circle, there's waste involved in defining such a loose term. Not just norm, though; no, there's a cluster**** of other things one can only define as being subjective.

Jessie lived her life thinking, subjectively, that her family was "normal". When she visited friends, she found it altogether odd that other parents spoke to each other calmly, almost lovingly. When the whole family sat around the table to eat dinner, Jessie felt a physical discomfort. Slowly, she began to realise that hers was not a normal home, nor were any of the people in it normal. Hoping that families acted happy in her company as if to purposely drive her insane, Jessie began to leave gatherings earlier. She used to get home later, though.

It was after one of these later trips home after keeping watch on the family of her best friend, Nicole, to see how unhappy they surely were in real life that Jessie changed her view on everything she had ever believed. Hearing a shriek from the Jones' house aroused her interest. It sounded like nothing she'd heard before. There was no terror to the shriek, but neither was it the shriek of someone opening an unexpected gift. Sneaking quietly around the house, Jessie found the only room with a light on. The blind was half open, as if closed in a panic. Being careful not to be seen, Jessie peeked through one of the many gaps that had been left. She heard the shriek again, along with a deeper, more rhythmic sort of groan. Then it hit her like the cold on the first morning of winter.

"I went with someone else," she said. "A man," she said. Mr Jones, she never said.