Can't
By: Sapphire
Authoress' Note: This essay was for an English creative writing assignment. We were given the following topics. 1.) She; 2.) Can't; 3.)Be; 4.)Serious; 5.) She can't be serious!. I chose 'Can't' and wrote the following short story.
"I can't!" she exclaimed in a hissed whisper. Her hands were trembling, her eyes were dark pools of fear.
He came up beside her.
"Of course you can. You, my love, can do anything."
She turned to look at him. They were in the dark. The only light came from the moon which spilled its silver light into the room through a crack in the curtains. He was fully dressed in black pants and a long-sleeved shirt. So tall and confident in comparison to her fragile, shivering form.
"What if someone catches us?" she asked him in a voice strained and thin.
He chuckled darkly.
"Oh come on! No one will ever catch us once you've done this, because we'll be so rich, so free, the world will be our playground."
He walked around her and put his hands onto her shoulders, massaging them gently.
"Besides, shouldn't it be our playground? He deprived you of one when you were a child. You really are just claiming back on what you're owed, anyway."
The hoot from a car outside in the traffic caused her to jump, startled, and let out a sharp gasp. After she'd recovered from her scare, she said:
"No, Alistair. I can't do this. I'm too frightened."
He pulled his hands from her shoulders with silent anger and frustration.
"I can't believe you! Since you were a little girl you've been bullied and abused, made to feel inadequate in his presence, hurt on purpose and deprived of childhood happiness and innocence. God, Nadine, I have lived across the street from you since you moved to this cold, monstrous mansion and I have seen the misery he's put you through! You may have had all the money in the world, but because of him, you were never happy."
Hot tears had been shimmering in her eyes, on the brink of falling, but at the end of his last sentence two fell and rolled bitterly down her pale cheeks.
"Nadine," he murmured and put his arms around her waist. The tone of his voice, which moments ago had been hard and dominating, was now soft and caring.
"You know as well as I do that, if this is not done tonight, it never will be. You will have trapped yourself in this cold world."
She closed her eyes, trying to hold back rivers of tears from pouring down her face. She bit back sobs. The night was wearing on and she was dimly aware that time was running out. The door to the lounge, a door hidden inside behind a large painting, lay before her. The silence was ominous and heavy, but inside her head, her mind was a whir, screaming with chaos and emotion.
He pulled away from her and looked her in the eyes.
"Do it. You know it's worth it."
She tensed, then nodded gently.
"What do you say...what do you think as you go into that room where he sleeps?" he asked sternly.
She clutched the murder weapon and said:
"I can."