Right, this is me getting over my fear of exhibition and losers complex.
I wrote this last year and I haven't really edited it much but here it is. short story of doom. Read it dont read it.
(Untitled)
Kurt Cobain used to say, ‘it’s better to burn out than to fade away’. I suppose that makes sense to people who haven’t spent their entire existence in the womb of darkness; people unlike my brother Quinn. What do you do when you are not even aware of what light is? He’s one of the worst cases; practically submerged in an underwater quiet. When you have autism even the simplest acts of the day, the essentials, are crippled by your own mind and body.
Today, as we leave the grocery store, Quinn insists we circle the cramped parking lot three times. I don’t mind: I once ignored this routine request on a bad day, just once. However, this day is a particularly good one for Quinn. The red raincoat has not made its usual appearance for the entire morning – an insignificant arbitration to a stranger but for us, an unusual feat.
Things on the drive are going better than hoped for - we are even singing along to my new favourite song by ‘A Day to Remember’. I can’t remember a day like this, when it actually feels like we are brothers so I reach to turn the volume up.
Pointing, he begins his mutters in a soft, pebble-smooth voice.
‘Stop.’
There in the distance is the big friendly red stop sign. Red is Quinn’s favourite colour, his safe colour. Sweet kid, patting his head I return to the song.
‘Stop. Stop. Stop.’
By now I am used to this compulsion of naming an object repeatedly but what I am unprepared for is the high pitched sound of Quinn’s screaming cutting into my cloudy reality and the soft thump as we run over one ginger cat; order up. He becomes a living volcano with stained red cheeks and lava eyes. Crap.
The rest of the day, the song, my band, the drive marred, in ashes. Such a simple mistake has cost me more than I care to consider now. Undoubtedly we will be seeing reruns of the red raincoat until we succumb to our own dark places.
Now I am the one chewing his nails, lost to the world in a storm-cloud mind trying to put out the fire below. What am I going to tell dad? The steam from Quinn’s explosion is fogging my mind but I’ve got to get my story together before we get home; before unleashing my monster, my living volcano, into mum’s pristine white living room. My mind is driftwood with seething Bile rising in my throat, red seeping over any other colour in my vision. I’m getting carried away in hysterics… I wonder what’s going on in his mind.
‘stop’
The brakes quake and once again he is calm, no scatterings left from the volcano massacre a few seconds prior; all seismic urges are quelled in his sea of red.
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