Short Story: The Boy

  This week's sneak peek is of a story my wife has recently finished for the collection.

Click. The boy turned off his lamp and crawled into bed next to  his four year old brother. The boy had been reading, or escaping as he called it. Because the world was too deathly real for him; if he read he could pull his eyes away from the ribs of his brother as his chest rose and fell in agonizing gasps. If he could read, he could forget the dull look in the eyes of his mother, who had no more tears to cry. The boy lay, sweat dripping from his thin strong body; he wiped it out of his eyes and stared up at the ceiling.

This is the opening scene of a story about a boy struggling to survive in a family that is falling apart in the middle of the Great Depression. His father has left the family, and the boy is struggling with that loss and the fact that he, a twelve year old, can do little to nothing about it. This story deals with the themes of pain, loss, family honor, love, devotion, and sacrifice as the boy tries to find his place in the world.
My wife began this story around four years ago and has been slowly improving it, changing it, adding to it, cutting it up, and putting it back together again since then. Earlier this week she stumbled upon the original draft of the story in one of her journals and laughed at how different the versions were. The stories are so different, and the characters' names and personalities are all completely different, and it has a completely different feeling about it. And now finally it's ready for other people to see.
Next week I will share another of her stories.