A one-shot for the Unreliable Narrator challenge on xoxLewrahxox's forum.
Exactly 400 words.
Unreliable narrator
Write a story or drabble with an unreliable narrator.
Most of the time when we're reading a story, we automatically assume that the narrator is objective and telling us the truth. An unreliable narrator is one who is not, for any number of reasons. They could be deliberately twisting facts to serve their own POV. They could be a child who isn't able to understand the things that are going on around them. Or they could be slightly crazy.
The baby is crying.
She has to take care of him. What kind of mother would let her son cry himself hoarse?
(but he has been crying for hours)
She hears him all the time. He never stops (accusing her) he is scared of the dark (he wants his mummy) he is hungry and wet (but she won't take care of him).
Her baby is close, so close, but she is not going to go to him.
(he could have starved to death)
(it has been so long. Why isn't he dead?)
Sometimes she longs for the silence. She won't come for her baby anyway. Why go on? She wants to shut him up, once and for all.
(his screams are so shrill they sound like blood and God it hurts)
(she would shake him to silence, till his body was limp, a broken puppet on the floor just like his daddy)
Suddenly, she screams.
(people are saying it is just a fit again but who are they to talk about fits who are they to talk for her she has too many voices)
She wants her baby away, she wants her baby dead
(because life is so cruel, beautiful with a scary smile and life hurts hurts hurts like a bloody red mouth screaming at her)
She won't come for him, she can't and she is scared of ever seeing him again
(they came for him he was born in July oh God it hurts and her baby screams in the distance)
Her baby is dead, her baby is dead, and it makes her want to laugh, she feels oddly free
(the young man is here again he says mum he gives her sweets such a sweet young man if the voices were not so loud drowning her voice she would say please sweet young man take care of my baby)
She is alive, she is alive, she is alive
(Alice went through the mirror and found ghosts that stole her voice and screamed in her pretty little head pretty Alice like in Muggle books and the woman laughed and laughed and laughed)
Alice is laughing and she screams her own name
(who is Alice Alice doesn't exist Alice is a broken doll on the floor and the woman is sobbing through her laughter and it is over it is over it is over)
And it – will – never – change.