The Writing Machine

Stories by Christian Cloud Abraham

Because He Said So

MEMOIR PROJECT ROUGH DRAFT

“Hi son, what are you doing?”
“Writing a letter to my dad.”
“Son, I don’t want you to write your father anymore.”
“What?”
“I don’t want you to write your father anymore.”
“Why?”
“Your father is not a godly man, but your new father is going to be a great Man of God, and we don’t want you talking to your father anymore.”
“But why mom?”
“Because he said so, that’s why.”

Give a kid enough change and stimulation and conflict and dogmatism and then drop a bomb on him and see what he does. I just sat there and didn’t fight or flee when the bomb exploded quietly in my bedroom as my mom shut the door. I didn’t even flinch; I hardened. The shrapnel clinked off my exoskeleton and littered my bed. I put the letter on my desk (pitched later by my mom) and went to the bookshelf where I became invincible with the knowledge that no matter what changed, I could always find a book and step inside, away from the radioactive world I lived in. I reached up into a collection of children’s classics and selected Robinson Caruso and began reading on the first day of what would become 15 years on an island without communication with my father.

END
© 2006 Christian Cloud Abraham

Posted on August 30, 2006 in
Emotion: Indifference, Type: Creative Nonfiction