Misery

by ImpendingDoomxXx

Chapter 1: Why?

Misery

Chapter 1

NO! NO! PLEASE! STOP THIS! YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS, PLEASE!

Those were the words my mother was screaming as her attacker approached.

I woke with a start, my math teacher had caught me sleeping in class again.

"For the third time today, wake up and pay attention!" she said, clearly annoyed with this situation

"Yes maam" i said half sluring my words while I sat up in my seat.

"I want to talk to you after class,"

"Yes maam," I said, once again sluring my words

I don't really know why I sleep in class. I get enough sleep at home, or what they tell me to call "home". Ever since I was just a colt I have been in foster care. Every time I would be taken in, the "parents" would find some fault with me or develope a typical hate for my sluggishness and bad attitude. But really, how would they have expected a colt to act after having his mother and father killed right in front of him when he was nothing but a six year old colt?

*Ding*

Here we go again with "the speech"

"Why do you relentlessly choose to sleep in class every day?" she said in her normal voice

"I don't know" I said shying away from her gaze

"You are a very bright colt, why do you waste your brilliance? You could easily have a perfect grade in this class, yet you sleep and wind up failing."

"I know. I'm ashamed of myself for it too."

"Then why don't you fix the problem?"

"The "problem" of which you speak can't easily be fixed." I say with a slightly angry tone.

"Why can't it be? No problem in too difficult to fix."

Just then, when she said that, I felt every bit of impatience and anger well up inside me and explode in a blistering fury that I couldn't hold back. "Ok then, if you seem to be able to fix all of your problems so easily and think that i'm just a little brat that would rather complain than fix his own problems, then how is this for a "problem". Can you turn back time? Huh? Can you go back in time and stop my parents from being murdered right in front of me? Huh? Can you take back all of the years that I spent going from one foster home to the next? I don't think you can, I don't even think you understand my point of view. I have nothing to look forward to. Most kids want to do good in school so that they can take home their good grades and get praised for it and maybe get their paper hung on the refrigerator for a while. But not me. I have no family to be proud of me, I have noone who cares about me. I HAVE NOTHING TO LOOK FORWARD TO!"

By the time i got finished ranting I had an audience of both students from the next class and teachers from other classrooms on the hall lined up in the back of the room listening to me.

"I...never...." she said tearing up about to break her composure.

"Thats right, you never. You never even thought ahead far enough to see if you were going to bring up a bad memory or two."

"I'm so sorry, i can't believe that I hurt you so bad." she said now just about to break.

"Don't worry, teach, you didn't hurt me. I've had eleven years to come to grips with the fact that nobody cares about me."

On that note I stormed out of the room.

***

The next day my math teacher asked me to stay after school. Oh boy. i wonder what this can be about. Reluctantly I agreed to stay after school on the realization that going "home" would only cause more grief than necessary.

After my last class I reported back to her classroom to find her siting at her desk waiting for me. The lights were off, but there was a bright lamp in the corner lighting up the area around her desk in a faint warming glow. I slowly walked up to her desk where she sat just staring at me.

"You wanted to see me?"

"I did. Please have a seat." she said indicating the chair next to her.

"Ok, what do you want of me?" I asked as I sat down.

"I want to provide you with a set of ears to vent upon." she said with so little emotion that it could have never been misconceived as a prank.

"Vent?" I asked not entirely sure of what she was getting at.

"Yes, yesterday you showed me that you have a very tragic past and a lot of pent up anger and rage,"

"What of my anger and rage?" I ask protectively, as if I felt like she wanted to rob me.

"I want to give you a chance to tell someone your story, somebody who truly does care about you."

"I mean no disrespect, but how am i supposed to believe that your not just doing your job?"

"It's not in my job description to personally help students with personal or family problems, i'm supposed to report to the councillors and let them handle it."

"So you are going to listen to my mangled past just to try and help me?"

"Yes."

"Ok, I would like that."

It seemed like a typical Wednesday night, I came home from school, I did my homework, I went outside and played with my friends, then I came inside and had dinner with my mother and father. It seemed just like any weekday, and it definitely didn't feel like anything bad could happen. But then it did.

There was a knock at the door, I though it was the pizza delivery pony, even though we hadn't ordered pizza and already had dinner, but it wasn't. I opened the door to find a tall stallion who was completely shrouded in a large black overcoat and had a big flat rimmed hat on. Almost completely resembling the stereotypical look of a serial killer or child abductor. But he was neither, he was just a random stallion who had come to have a little "fun".

He pushed me to the floor and rushed straight past me and into the living room. He fought with my dad first and wound up knocking him out with a quick smash over the head with the flower vase in the corner. Then he tied up both my mother and my father, and waited. He waited until' my dad came back to consciousness. Then he started talking to them as if he had known them for a long time.

"You have screwed me over for the last time Melony, you and Craig will never be together again. You have taken advantage of my leniency for too long, its time to pay for your actions."

While my mother just kept trying to tell him the they didn't even know anypony by those names. For their names were Kell and Brigett. But regardless of how much she pleaded with him, he wouldn't stop. Then the worst happened. He looked at my mother and gave her a wide, sinister smile. He started walking closer to her while my dad fought against his bonds, fearing what was about to happen. He raped my mother in front of both me and my father. That night I heard words from my father that I had never even heard before.

My father started screaming meaningless threats and curses at him while he continued with his task-at-hoof. He just kept raping her and then he started beating her. He just kept beating her, she had been screaming so loud that her voice was beginning to crack. After he was finished he quickly produced a medium sized knife of about five to six inches from inside his coat and started slashing at my mother, over and over he slashed, cutting her more than fifty times, the screams that she emitted were borderline blood curdling, I still don't know how nopony else on the block heard it. Then, after he insured that she was dead, he moved on to my father. He walked up to my father, still dripping with my mothers blood, he got right in his face. He looked straight in my fathers eyes for a few seconds with blank expression. then he got back up and stood over him. He reared his head back and slung it, putting one deep gash in his throat that produced a thick gurgling sound as my father bled out and drowned in his own blood. The look of pure horror in his eyes will haunt me forever.

Then when he was done with my parents he looked at me, crying and rocking on my hind hooves in the corner of the room. He started walking toward me, and with one of his large blood soaked hooves, he ruffled my mane and said something that will haunt me for life: "That was fun, huh kiddo?"

The next morning a concerned neighbor came over to check on why the front door had been open since she had woken up, five hours prior. I still remember the screams of terror that she produced when she came into the living room. Only fifteen minutes later the police arrived to find a blood soaked colt crying in the corner of a room with two brutally murdered ponies in it.

"You have been through a lot." she said with a sniffle.

"Don't try to make me feel better by pretending that you know my pains and sorrows, and definitely don't try and assume that you know the nature of my being." I said this in more of an angry tone than I wanted it to come through on

"I'm not trying to assume anything."

I don't know why, but a question that I have never adequately answered popped into my head. "You know what I could never understand? The police found the stallion, and found that he had no connections to my parents in any form, he knew nopony by the names of Melony or Craig, or that he had any real reason to do what he did besides that he wanted to do it. But for eleven years I still haven't understood...Why? What pushed him to doing this to a completely random couple? What could ever push anypony to do that to anypony at all?"

"I don't know how to answer the question." she said, cocking her head at the sudden change in tone of the conversation.

"The answer is simple. Some ponies are just completely bad."

There was a long silence after that. My teacher broke the silence by saying,

"Is there anything else that you would like to share with me today?"

I thought very hard on that question. But I had already been throught enough emotional turmoil in the past two hours so i declined.

"No. I think that I have shared enough for now, i'm going to go home."

Comments

[bandgeekjim]

Well, ok. First the good. I did not see any spelling or grammatical errors and the formatting was good. This has already put you above many people I have read so far.

Now for the, well, bad. PACING! each of the sections could have been it's own chapter. This too felt rushed. I didn't feel any real connection to the characters. The story is intriguing, but the characters fall flat. also the dialog feels too stilted, not at all how people would actually talk. Also, it's usually easier to write more than you need and cut than to have to add more in.

Keep writing, keep posting, keep improving.

[Steampunk Starlight]

Needs more descriptive lines. Slow down a bit. I didn't feel the intensity of the the story enough. Some 'i's should be I. Change the word 'man' to 'stallion'. 'Craig' is more suitable for a human name than a pony one. Writing short is okay in my opinion. It's too early to judge since it's just Chapter 1. Good luck for later ones.

[ImpendingDoomxXx]

First I would like to apologize for the complete lack of capitalized "i"s i'm just a bit more accustomed to having my "i"s capitalized for me, and I plan on fixing that problem asap(probably right after this comment).

Next i would like to elaborate that while not many people would be this blunt with each other, especially with an elder such as a teacher, i am trying to portray the attitude of a highly neglected teenager that views his life as a series of tragic and highly misfortunate events that have made him angry at the world.

Next. I do not mean to make things so short and bitter sweet as things that could have had so much more detail, but instead are read through in a matter of a few mere sentences. I am again trying to portray a beaten down teenager relaying a tragic scene that causes him a lot of emotional grief (even though i didn't write that in) and is trying to tell an entire story without breaking down on his teacher.

With this being said i can say that as this story progresses I will be putting in much more detail, and trying to remember to capitalize my "i"s.

Thanks for the feedback
-ImpendingDoom

[bandgeekjim]

323407
Ok, I think I see what you're trying to do with pacing. I'd still like a bit more detail, like in "'Why can't it be? No problem in too difficult to fix.'
'Ok then, if you seem to be able to fix all of your problems.....'" why did he launch into an explanation? it feels out of the blue. A quick line of internal dialog in between them speaking, i.e. "And then something inside me snapped." would help put us into the character's mindset and feel connected to him. Just a few things like that. This should also help a lot with it not feeling intense enough like ShadowFax pointed out. Right now I feel a little left out on what is going on and why.

On the dialog feeling stilted, it's more the wording that I don't like rather than the content. In the last section "'You truly are a tortured soul.' she said clearly still sobbing from my story" doesn't feel like something a person would actually say. Same thing with "'No. I think that I have shared enough of my life for now, lets save the rest for a later date in time.'", the second half of the sentence doesn't feel natural.

But, on the other hand, if your characters are already strongly developed in your own mind and these are dialog choices based on what they would say you should definitely keep it as is.

Oh, and one more thing I missed the first time, Please indent the start of your paragraphs. But I'm just nitpicking now.

[ImpendingDoomxXx]

325880

Thanks for the idea with the dialog issue. I was also thinking that it felt a bit too bland, even for what i was trying to do.

As for the indentions, i must also apologize for usually I use MS-Word and it indents for me...but i will start indenting in future chapters.

Thanks for more feedback
-ImpendingDoom