This list of six hundred twenty three is a lot of books to look through, but scan this list and tell me what you think. http://goo.gl/IMv2fe Have a good day.---keith
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This is a short story I wrote perhaps a year ago. It is a sad reality of what children have and are going through. The worst part is many times on the rare occasion these kids do say anything, parents don't believe them. So sad. Your thoughts on this? Have a good day. -- Keith
Tree Many years ago, there was a little boy. I knew him simply as Boy. He called me Tree. I wasn’t gorgeous or breathtaking, I was just a strong medium size Mimosa. I never did much of anything to speak of, but grow and listen. Occasionally, Boy and his neighborhood friends would climb me. Boy appeared to be a normal little eight-year-old living in what appeared to be a normal family. Looks are deceiving however. The family was far from normal. This family unfortunately had dysfunctional programming going way back in the family genes. I knew nothing of this dysfunction for years, I just grew day after day at the request of Mother Nature. Boy used to lay on his back in the shade looking up through my branches wondering what it was like to be me. He thought it must be nice only having to stand here. It wasn’t so nice however, because I couldn’t wrap my branches around and hold Boy when he needed me the most. Boy perhaps had a curse. He thought too much into things, and he had too much insight for a boy his age. He didn’t know how to express the feelings he had, nor why he had them. His parents didn’t know how to express their feelings either, so there was no one to teach him the proper way to express himself. I was his best friend and he was mine. All friends have names, so Boy simply named me Tree. He shared with me about his days at school, what he learned in school and the friends he made. He shared his deepest secrets with me, which were numerous. He also talked about his dreams, which were few. He knew many things that a boy his age had no business knowing, but unfortunately, he knew such things. I knew what his older brother did to him. He told me one chilly autumn day. “Tree, my brother is very mean. He makes me suck his noodle until he…. uhhhh, I guess until he pee’s. I don’t know what happens, but it doesn’t look like pee and it taste salty. He says if I tell he will kill momma and daddy by burning them alive. He says if I tell my teacher’s he will kill me and I will be underground cold and lonely forever. He also says that he will kill Santa Claus and I will never get any Christmas presents. Tree, he also makes me try to stick my noodle his butt. Why does he do this Tree? Why? He makes me watch Bobby the dog lick his noodle to, and he has Bobby eat slices of cheese out of his butt. Why Tree? Why does my brother do these things to me? Why does he make me watch? I am just a little boy, why Tree? Why? I also don’t understand why my dad breathes so hard at night and my mother makes noises like she is using the bathroom. What is that Tree? I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like it and it scares me. I don’t think I am supposed to hear that, Tree. I am glad you are here Tree, I am scared, sacred all of the time, I don’t know what I would do without you. I wish you could help me, I know you would if you could” Boy’s brother should not have done these unmentionable things to such a small defenseless little boy, but he did. We became such good friends over a couple of year’s time. The rain would come and soak me, but I never faltered, I was always there to listen to Boy. The sun scorched me in the summer time, but I was still there to listen. An occasional ice storm would weight my branches pushing them to the ground as if I were taking a bow; nevertheless, I still stood strong. I had to, I had no choice, someone had to be there for Boy. Two years of friendship abruptly turned into a strained relationship between Boy and I. Boy made a choice one summer afternoon, which could have been fatal. Boy was on the patio crying and I could tell he was scared. No one was home accept for he and his brother. His brother molested him once again on the black plastic couch in the living room as it wait like a devil excited for evilness. Boy told me several times that more times than not, the black couch seemed to be his brother’s accomplice. Boy knew his daddy was at work. He didn’t know where mommy was. He stood looking at me and saying how strong I was to be able to stand upright in all of the weather I was exposed to. Boy wasn’t as strong to his exposure. I had been a good listener for years and knew things about Boy that nobody knew. Boy knew to treat his friends nicely and not use them in ways that may hurt their feelings, especially me, but he didn’t know what else to do. I know that Boy hated to use me for something not so nice, but he was scared and alone. He was too young to know exactly what he was doing. Or was he? Either way I was the only one that could help him, the only one strong enough, and the only one that would help him to carry out his mission. Boy shut off his tears. He looked around and saw the green water hose curled waiting in the flowerbed. The next thing I knew he was standing on my thickest branch, the hose around his neck. I watched how he tied the hose around his neck. “How did he even know how to tie something that big around his neck? Did he see it somewhere? Television or something? How did he know this?” I knew I would never know, point is, he knew how. I don’t know if he wanted to die, but he told me, “I am going to die and I feel good.” In a blink of his sad watering eye, he was hanging from my thickest branch in mid-air swinging like a pendulum. Instantly he was kicking, screaming to be loose. I showed no emotion. The sun-heated garden hose was around his neck and I could see his burned skin as its tightness of the monstrous hose squeezed his little eight-year-old neck almost to the expected result. Boy saw his mother running toward him as did I. All of a sudden, time stopped, life froze, and we felt no pain. We both looked at his mother’s face. It was like a snapshot, so clear, so perfect, and so shocking. She stopped in mid stride; an expression of relief captured her face. We knew at that moment, in that instant, in what appeared to us as frozen in time, that she stopped deciding if she wanted to save him or not. “Help, help me momma” Mother stood there, as did I. We both knew it was over, he closed his exhausted eyes, and everything fell black. Just like when brother held his face down in the black couch in the living room. Even though there was blackness, through Boy, I saw it all. Boy was still alive, he can’t remember, but his mother got him down. The burns on Boy’s neck would be hard to explain, he didn’t really care, he was feeling sorry for me of all things, he hoped I didn’t blame myself. Boy was ashamed for using me in such a bad way. We had been through so much together and boy felt guilty, not for trying to hurt himself, but for using me to help him. “What does Tree think of me? How will I explain this to my friend?” He didn’t know how to explain it, so he didn’t. He ignored me. He quit talking to me and when he went outside, he didn’t even look at me. He pretended as if I didn’t exist. That is what everyone else in the family did with every situation, so that’s what he did. He was quiet good at putting things away in his head and not thinking about them. He felt guilty and he hoped nobody would blame me and cut me down. He was a good friend. I could never blame him. Boy felt like he betrayed me and thought he would feel this way for the rest of his life. But like I said, I didn’t blame him, he was my friend. As Boy grew up, the pain he thought he caused me faded away as did his boyhood. The look on his mother’s face when he swung in the summer wind from the branch dulled itself somewhere in the back of his head, as well as that entire day. It was still there, but he imprisoned the thought of it in some far away cavern in his brain. He was such a good little boy, creative, imaginative, he could have been such a gift for his parents, he was a cute kid that most parents would really love to have. Mother hesitated to save him. “Why? Why? Would she do that?” This little boy did nothing wrong, wrong was done to him and he was in so much pain, so much fucking pain, he didn’t know what death was, he didn’t know what he was doing. I don’t think so anyway. He was such a good little boy, a funny little boy, a struggling little boy, so much pain for a little boy, so much senseless pain. Boy is a middle aged man now and he has spent his whole life tired, so tired and wounded much more than people think. I really loved Boy. The End *reply below by clicking on comments |
AuthorKeith Kelly currently lives in Rio Rancho New Mexico. Archives
October 2020
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