Shattered

A Short Story

I sat in the passenger seat of the white Honda accord. The electric sound of the motor echoed throughout the silence in the air, creating a hum that both soothed and annoyed me. Although the heater inside the car warmed me, the chill from the outside winter world crept in through the glass of the window, seeped into my bones and froze me to the core. My arms were crossed tightly, and my knuckles were clenched firmly, the bone underneath my skin straining against the confines of my outer membrane, causing my knuckles to be white in their secure grip.

My jaw felt locked tight, grinding my teeth against teeth and pulling against the muscles in my cheeks, causing my jaw to feel raw and bolted. I couldn't move, didn't dare look away from in front of me, didn't dare even breathe in my mother's direction as she sat in the driver's seat facing me.

"Alright. What is it? You have my full attention." She sighed at me. That only fueled my anger. I felt my pupils constrict and go to pinpoints as I locked my muscles even tighter, although it should have been impossible due to the fact that they were as locked as could be.

I kept my dark, hooded jade colored eyes straight forward, though I could not open my mouth to speak, so I spoke through my clenched jaw and grinding teeth. My voice sounded harsh, cold, and slashed at her like a thousand swords and a thousand more. "Do you think I'm that insolent? Do you take me as a child, so ignorant and unobservant that I can just be brushed off like I don't have a clue to anything? That I don't notice anything or have the brain to put things together? That I am just that much of an idiot?"

I looked at her then, and I saw the fear in her eyes as my words pierced her. I felt the anger rise up in me and rear it's head, she knew what I was talking about, and she still hid it from me, even when she knew that I had pieced things together a long time ago.

I felt cold and hot all over, and I stabbed at her with my gaze as I accused her more, "Do you really think I haven't seen what's going on? Do you really think, just for a second, that I haven't pieced things together to summarize up what has been happening, really happening?" I hissed. A part of me felt mean for cornering her like this, for speaking to her in this way, for confronting her in this manner of cold and cruelty. Though, another part of me felt it was right, and that it was justified, that I had a right to speak to her like this since she had kept brushing me off and it just made me angrier.

"And what really-" I cut myself off. Should I . . . ? Oh, why the fuck not. I don't think I really give a shirt anymore. I spoke in a lower voice, and I saw her eyes start to water, as I saw emotions flashing in her fear filled gaze, "what really pisses me off, is that you kept brushing me off like it was nothing every time I asked you about it."

" . . . Jade, tell me what you think is happening." She spoke, her voice was weak and trembled, and I felt a sweet satisfaction from it. I threw daggers at her from my dark jade eyes, of which I was named for and irritably drew my raven's wing colored hair away from my eyes.

"Nothing is the same anymore." I hissed.

"Please try to understand . . . We've tried-"

"Trying is not doing, Mother. This has happened before, and you are doing barely next to nothing to fix it." I cut her off.

"We've tried . . . Jade, no matter what we love you and your brother-"

"Not enough to try and fix everything, apparently. Not enough to try and maintain what we used to have as a family."

" . . . We've tried-"

"That's not enough! Nothing is ever enough! Trying is never fucking doing! Everything we used to have would be for not because of some stupid disagreement? I can plainly see that the agreement is not between the all of us, so don't you fucking dare say, 'we've tried' when it was just one person putting in effort!" I snapped. I felt everything inside of me give, for four months I had noticed the changes in behaviors, of distance, and now I knew that I was right. And there was nothing neither I nor anybody else could do to change it.

Everything I knew and loved was being taken away from me. I no longer had a solid ground to stand on, the earth was spinning too fast and I got knocked down, and it sped up and I didn't have enough time to stand back up, not now, not ever again.

I felt my dark jade eyes well up and my world blurred around me. I no longer saw my mother or the parking lot or the trees or park, not the dashboard in front of me nor my own body curled into a tight ball of rock solid muscle as to not lash out and kill everything in my path.

My entire world collapsed on me, shattering the very essence of what I used to know and love, and everything turned to shit. Never again would life be the same.