"Sophie's Burden" by Emma Kynaston
-
ShortStoryContest
- Posts: 41
- Joined: 01 Mar 2007, 07:47
- Bookshelf Size: 0
"Sophie's Burden" by Emma Kynaston
The following story has been selected as a featured runner-up in our 2015 short story contest (Contest Theme - "The Self-Destructiveness of Vengeance and Hate")
"Sophie's Burden" by Emma Kynaston
Sophie sat in the rickety wicker chair in the corner of her tiny room. Through eyes that could barely see, or barely be seen, due to the loose folds of skin surrounding them she watched the world outside.
The lawns were clipped short like the artificial turf from the golf section of Sports Equip. A man having afternoon tea with his wife underneath the great oak tree. Another group further along playing lawn bowls. Behind them above the lush rolling hills clouds lay strewn across a rich blue canvas.
Surrounded by a wooden frame the exquisite image looked like a picture of Sophie’s dream hanging on a wall. In truth, it was everyone else’s reality.
Sophie spent her life sitting in that chair, staring out of the window. Looking back on her life and on the three events she used to destroy herself.
She hated Layla and Robert, she hated change, and she hated what she had done to Mrs Dulcea.
But she couldn’t get up or walk away, for she was still being weighed down by me. A heavy burden formed in the mind but weighing down the heart.
I’ve been with Sophie for a long time, ever since she was a young girl.
Sophie sat on the swing, swaying idly to and fro. Her long golden hair loose and flying out behind her. Layla had run off to the drinking fountain.
“Hi.”
Sophie glanced upwards at the shape blocking her sun. He was good-looking and rosy-cheeked, hopeful and confident. He was the young man both she and Layla had admired from afar.
“Hi” said Sophie, smiling up at him eagerly.
“I have to go” he said. “But could you give your friend this for me?”
In his hand was a note. He held out the piece of paper, hastily ripped from an old notebook. On it were ten digits and a name.
"Please tell her to call me."
Sophie managed to swallow that first thought of jealousy. Instead her immediate reaction was intense dislike. How dare he think it was okay to give her a number to give to someone else? She took the paper and gave it a brief glance.
“Sure Robert.” She pursed her lips but forced the corners upwards to imitate a smile.
“Thanks” Robert replied. Sophie took the note and Robert left. He turned and jogged back to his mates who were waiting for him in an open-top jeep. Sophie watched him slide into driver's seat and pull away.
She clutched the offending note in both hands and stared at it. There was no glare or wrinkled brow or teeth clenching. She simply sat and swung and stared.
Two minutes later Layla came running back. Sophie turned her head at the sound of the pitter patter of Layla’s bright red converse hitting the rubber matting. Her longer golden hair streamed out behind her like a horizontal waterfall.
This time Sophie couldn’t stop the green-eyed monster rising from within. And that’s when I too, was born.
Sophie stuffed the scrap of paper in her shorts pocket.
“Anything exciting happen while I was gone?” Layla took the seat next to Sophie and swung next to her.
Sophie had three choices here. Either she could give Layla the number, which Jealousy wouldn’t let her do. She could say nothing, which I wouldn’t let her do. Or she could lie, which Vengeance was urging her to do.
“Not really” said Sophie. “Some guy came up and told me he didn’t like your hair.”
Layla was taken-aback. First by the fact that someone would say that. And second because Sophie told her.
Meanwhile Sophie was revelling in the sudden understanding of the saying ‘sweet revenge’.
The boy may not know what she had done to him but he would spend his life wondering why Layla didn’t call, wondering what might have been, and unknowingly having stories told about something that he didn’t do.
“Why would you tell me that?” Layla derailed Sophie’s train of thought.
“Huh?”
“Why would you tell me that?” Repeated Layla. “That was totally unnecessary.”
“Well you asked…” said Sophie.
That was the last time Sophie and Layla ever spoke to each other. After Layla stalked away from the swing set, Sophie rejoiced in the hurt she had caused. But the novelty soon wore off and like cocaine she crashed from one extreme to the other.
She never called to apologise. It was easier to remain in denial. Because once one moves past me, the next thing they have to deal with is pain. So Sophie chose to let me feed off her jealousy and eat into her heart.
Mrs Dulcea shuffled down her front path and into her small garden. Once tightly mown lawns, beds of flowers, not a leaf on the ground to be seen. Now as Mrs Dulcea got older she found it harder and harder to manage. The grass was long and wild, weeds shot up all over the place entangling themselves in the sunflowers and the daffodils and the snapdragons. Dry brown leaves layered the ground beneath the old apple tree.
"Good morning Sophie" Mrs Dulcea raised a shaky hand in greeting to her young neighbour.
Sophie put down her book and walked over to the fence.
"Hi Mrs Dulcea" she said. "What can I do for you?"
"Well, I was wondering..." Mrs Dulcea's voice cracked on every syllable, like she had a dry throat water just couldn't fix. "If you would come and take care of my garden for me. Just mow the lawns every once in a while and rake the leaves. I have a lady coming in to do my flowers but I can't push a lawnmower anymore."
If Mrs Dulcea hadn't offered anything in return Sophie probably would have asked for something. But she didn't have to.
"In return you may take your fair share of firewood for the winter" said Mrs Dulcea. "I know there's a shortage at the moment and I have just enough for both of us this year. And you may take apples from the tree as well, I can't put them all in pies."
Sophie didn't take long to think about it. Free Firewood and fruit for mowing the lawns every few weeks and raking a few leaves.
"Sure Mrs Dulcea."
So Sophie popped over to Mrs Dulcea's every few weeks to do as she asked. And each time she did she made a trip to the woodshed with a wheel barrow. She would fill the barrow full with logs and wheel it to the fence. There she tossed each one into her garden, then went home and picked them up on the other side.
However, as time when on, Sophie couldn't help herself. When she returned the barrow to the woodshed she picked up an extra three or four logs and took those too. This was when Greed was born.
Righteousness whispered from Sophie's subconscious mind, telling her it was wrong. But Greed was stronger and Sophie continued to take more and more wood each time without a second thought for the 85 year old woman indoors, curled up in a blanket with her trembling crinkled hands wrapped around a cup of herbal tea.
As winter approached the air became bitter cold and sharp as ice. Sophie took to wearing a hat and gloves, even indoors. She didn't mow the lawns or rake the leaves during the winter, but she continued to take the logs although she had two large stacks already. Mrs Dulcea never saw her.
Through greed Sophie became selfish. She didn't think to take a barrowful of wood to Mrs Dulcea's door for her fire, or visit her at all. She only thought about the warmth and the strength of the fires her family would have thanks to the piles of wood Sophie had taken.
Mrs Dulcea managed. She asked someone from the village if he would bring the woodpile to her door for her and he did it for the price of an apple pie, insisted upon by Mrs Dulcea. It only took him four trips with the wheelbarrow. Even then she didn't noticed how diminished the pile of logs had become.
At the end of Winter Sophie stood in the small church, listening to a young village boy speak about Mrs Dulcea and how tasty her apple pie was, how the village will miss her but never forget her. Sophie's stomach was a bottomless pit of guilt and regret.
Because in the last few days of winter, no smoke had risen from Mrs Dulcea's chimney.
"Hey Sophie."
"Hi All" said Sophie. She took a seat next to Max at the almost decrepit picnic table. It was lopsided, a couple of screws were missing and the paint was peeling off in long green strips. But it was their picnic table. For over a year Sophie and her friends met there every Sunday morning for a coffee from the cart across the park.
This time though, fluoro orange road cones were dotted throughout the park and various men in hard-hats were standing around with their hands on their hips.
"What's going on?" Asked Sophie.
"This'll be our last coffee here" said Max, taking a sip from his own steaming cardboard cup. "The park's being demolished and replaced by office buildings."
"What?"
"It's alright" said Adam. "We'll have coffee somewhere else. No big deal."
But it was a big deal for Sophie. Like life, her friends moved on. They asked her to come for brunch with them at The Coffee House many times, but each time Sophie declined. Eventually they stopped asking and Sophie stopped seeing them.
Sophie couldn't adapt to the offerings Change brought because the key to change is letting go of fear.
Sophie sat in the rickety wicker chair in the corner of her tiny room. Looking back on her life, regretting the things she didn't do but should have, and the things she did do but shouldn't have.
She destroyed herself the quickest possible way. Using excuses of jealousy, greed and fear, she pushed away the people she cared about most. What she didn't do, was forgive.
Sophie thought she hated Layla and Robert, thought she hated change, and thought she hated what she had done to Mrs Dulcea.
But as an 85 year old woman, in hindsight, Sophie could see where everything had gone wrong.
She didn't hate Layla and Robert, didn't hate change, and didn't hate what she had done to Mrs Dulcea.
She hated herself.
Sophie died at 20 but was buried at 85. Her death was natural, but not peaceful. For I was with her until the very end.
I am Hate.
"Sophie's Burden" by Emma Kynaston
Sophie sat in the rickety wicker chair in the corner of her tiny room. Through eyes that could barely see, or barely be seen, due to the loose folds of skin surrounding them she watched the world outside.
The lawns were clipped short like the artificial turf from the golf section of Sports Equip. A man having afternoon tea with his wife underneath the great oak tree. Another group further along playing lawn bowls. Behind them above the lush rolling hills clouds lay strewn across a rich blue canvas.
Surrounded by a wooden frame the exquisite image looked like a picture of Sophie’s dream hanging on a wall. In truth, it was everyone else’s reality.
Sophie spent her life sitting in that chair, staring out of the window. Looking back on her life and on the three events she used to destroy herself.
She hated Layla and Robert, she hated change, and she hated what she had done to Mrs Dulcea.
But she couldn’t get up or walk away, for she was still being weighed down by me. A heavy burden formed in the mind but weighing down the heart.
I’ve been with Sophie for a long time, ever since she was a young girl.
Sophie sat on the swing, swaying idly to and fro. Her long golden hair loose and flying out behind her. Layla had run off to the drinking fountain.
“Hi.”
Sophie glanced upwards at the shape blocking her sun. He was good-looking and rosy-cheeked, hopeful and confident. He was the young man both she and Layla had admired from afar.
“Hi” said Sophie, smiling up at him eagerly.
“I have to go” he said. “But could you give your friend this for me?”
In his hand was a note. He held out the piece of paper, hastily ripped from an old notebook. On it were ten digits and a name.
"Please tell her to call me."
Sophie managed to swallow that first thought of jealousy. Instead her immediate reaction was intense dislike. How dare he think it was okay to give her a number to give to someone else? She took the paper and gave it a brief glance.
“Sure Robert.” She pursed her lips but forced the corners upwards to imitate a smile.
“Thanks” Robert replied. Sophie took the note and Robert left. He turned and jogged back to his mates who were waiting for him in an open-top jeep. Sophie watched him slide into driver's seat and pull away.
She clutched the offending note in both hands and stared at it. There was no glare or wrinkled brow or teeth clenching. She simply sat and swung and stared.
Two minutes later Layla came running back. Sophie turned her head at the sound of the pitter patter of Layla’s bright red converse hitting the rubber matting. Her longer golden hair streamed out behind her like a horizontal waterfall.
This time Sophie couldn’t stop the green-eyed monster rising from within. And that’s when I too, was born.
Sophie stuffed the scrap of paper in her shorts pocket.
“Anything exciting happen while I was gone?” Layla took the seat next to Sophie and swung next to her.
Sophie had three choices here. Either she could give Layla the number, which Jealousy wouldn’t let her do. She could say nothing, which I wouldn’t let her do. Or she could lie, which Vengeance was urging her to do.
“Not really” said Sophie. “Some guy came up and told me he didn’t like your hair.”
Layla was taken-aback. First by the fact that someone would say that. And second because Sophie told her.
Meanwhile Sophie was revelling in the sudden understanding of the saying ‘sweet revenge’.
The boy may not know what she had done to him but he would spend his life wondering why Layla didn’t call, wondering what might have been, and unknowingly having stories told about something that he didn’t do.
“Why would you tell me that?” Layla derailed Sophie’s train of thought.
“Huh?”
“Why would you tell me that?” Repeated Layla. “That was totally unnecessary.”
“Well you asked…” said Sophie.
That was the last time Sophie and Layla ever spoke to each other. After Layla stalked away from the swing set, Sophie rejoiced in the hurt she had caused. But the novelty soon wore off and like cocaine she crashed from one extreme to the other.
She never called to apologise. It was easier to remain in denial. Because once one moves past me, the next thing they have to deal with is pain. So Sophie chose to let me feed off her jealousy and eat into her heart.
Mrs Dulcea shuffled down her front path and into her small garden. Once tightly mown lawns, beds of flowers, not a leaf on the ground to be seen. Now as Mrs Dulcea got older she found it harder and harder to manage. The grass was long and wild, weeds shot up all over the place entangling themselves in the sunflowers and the daffodils and the snapdragons. Dry brown leaves layered the ground beneath the old apple tree.
"Good morning Sophie" Mrs Dulcea raised a shaky hand in greeting to her young neighbour.
Sophie put down her book and walked over to the fence.
"Hi Mrs Dulcea" she said. "What can I do for you?"
"Well, I was wondering..." Mrs Dulcea's voice cracked on every syllable, like she had a dry throat water just couldn't fix. "If you would come and take care of my garden for me. Just mow the lawns every once in a while and rake the leaves. I have a lady coming in to do my flowers but I can't push a lawnmower anymore."
If Mrs Dulcea hadn't offered anything in return Sophie probably would have asked for something. But she didn't have to.
"In return you may take your fair share of firewood for the winter" said Mrs Dulcea. "I know there's a shortage at the moment and I have just enough for both of us this year. And you may take apples from the tree as well, I can't put them all in pies."
Sophie didn't take long to think about it. Free Firewood and fruit for mowing the lawns every few weeks and raking a few leaves.
"Sure Mrs Dulcea."
So Sophie popped over to Mrs Dulcea's every few weeks to do as she asked. And each time she did she made a trip to the woodshed with a wheel barrow. She would fill the barrow full with logs and wheel it to the fence. There she tossed each one into her garden, then went home and picked them up on the other side.
However, as time when on, Sophie couldn't help herself. When she returned the barrow to the woodshed she picked up an extra three or four logs and took those too. This was when Greed was born.
Righteousness whispered from Sophie's subconscious mind, telling her it was wrong. But Greed was stronger and Sophie continued to take more and more wood each time without a second thought for the 85 year old woman indoors, curled up in a blanket with her trembling crinkled hands wrapped around a cup of herbal tea.
As winter approached the air became bitter cold and sharp as ice. Sophie took to wearing a hat and gloves, even indoors. She didn't mow the lawns or rake the leaves during the winter, but she continued to take the logs although she had two large stacks already. Mrs Dulcea never saw her.
Through greed Sophie became selfish. She didn't think to take a barrowful of wood to Mrs Dulcea's door for her fire, or visit her at all. She only thought about the warmth and the strength of the fires her family would have thanks to the piles of wood Sophie had taken.
Mrs Dulcea managed. She asked someone from the village if he would bring the woodpile to her door for her and he did it for the price of an apple pie, insisted upon by Mrs Dulcea. It only took him four trips with the wheelbarrow. Even then she didn't noticed how diminished the pile of logs had become.
At the end of Winter Sophie stood in the small church, listening to a young village boy speak about Mrs Dulcea and how tasty her apple pie was, how the village will miss her but never forget her. Sophie's stomach was a bottomless pit of guilt and regret.
Because in the last few days of winter, no smoke had risen from Mrs Dulcea's chimney.
"Hey Sophie."
"Hi All" said Sophie. She took a seat next to Max at the almost decrepit picnic table. It was lopsided, a couple of screws were missing and the paint was peeling off in long green strips. But it was their picnic table. For over a year Sophie and her friends met there every Sunday morning for a coffee from the cart across the park.
This time though, fluoro orange road cones were dotted throughout the park and various men in hard-hats were standing around with their hands on their hips.
"What's going on?" Asked Sophie.
"This'll be our last coffee here" said Max, taking a sip from his own steaming cardboard cup. "The park's being demolished and replaced by office buildings."
"What?"
"It's alright" said Adam. "We'll have coffee somewhere else. No big deal."
But it was a big deal for Sophie. Like life, her friends moved on. They asked her to come for brunch with them at The Coffee House many times, but each time Sophie declined. Eventually they stopped asking and Sophie stopped seeing them.
Sophie couldn't adapt to the offerings Change brought because the key to change is letting go of fear.
Sophie sat in the rickety wicker chair in the corner of her tiny room. Looking back on her life, regretting the things she didn't do but should have, and the things she did do but shouldn't have.
She destroyed herself the quickest possible way. Using excuses of jealousy, greed and fear, she pushed away the people she cared about most. What she didn't do, was forgive.
Sophie thought she hated Layla and Robert, thought she hated change, and thought she hated what she had done to Mrs Dulcea.
But as an 85 year old woman, in hindsight, Sophie could see where everything had gone wrong.
She didn't hate Layla and Robert, didn't hate change, and didn't hate what she had done to Mrs Dulcea.
She hated herself.
Sophie died at 20 but was buried at 85. Her death was natural, but not peaceful. For I was with her until the very end.
I am Hate.
-
PookaLovesBooks
- Posts: 2
- Joined: 04 Apr 2015, 18:11
- Bookshelf Size: 0
Hey! Nice story. I really liked it but I didnt understand what you meant that "sophie died at 20 but was buried at 85". Do you mind explaining it to me?
-
Emma7
- Posts: 1
- Joined: 04 Jan 2015, 18:50
- Bookshelf Size: 0
Hi, thank you for your interest in my story, I'm glad you liked it! So sorry for the late reply, it means Sophie figuratively died or 'died on the inside' when she was young because she was so full of hate. She refused to live the life she could have had, but she literally lived until she was 85.PookaLovesBooks wrote:Hey! Nice story. I really liked it but I didnt understand what you meant that "sophie died at 20 but was buried at 85". Do you mind explaining it to me?
-
Silasjuma
- Posts: 1
- Joined: 27 Feb 2018, 13:26
- Bookshelf Size: 0
I like it, very nice!
-
Ekah Emmanuel
- Posts: 11
- Joined: 07 Mar 2018, 08:28
- Bookshelf Size: 0
This story is not just nice, its perfect because it tells us what we do and later regret, this story tells us to avoid letting any heavy Borden weigh our hearts down because if we do? We would never find rest even in death, if we let any borden weigh down our hearts we would die but still be living. After reading this story carefully I now know that we (human beings) are the devils of ourselves, we are the ones who kill ourselves. Sophie lost her friend layla because of a guy, which teaches us that we should hold on to any good friend we have and never let anything come between you and that friend. Sphie lost a good friend because of jealousy, but at the end she could not blame jealousy for that, she could only blame herself. Which should teach us never to let jealousy or any negative feeling into our lives because if we do, we would have only ourselves to blame. And as the story continued you would notice that after jealousy took layla away from Sophie it also opened her life to accomodate greed which started gradually by making her steal wood from an 85 years old woman which was the second step to her downfall.
Which should also teach us never to let greed take a place in our lives, because if we do? We would blame no one but ourselves.
The problem Sophie had was, she gave negative attributes vacant spaces in her life instead of giving those vacant spaces to positive attributes. There would have been no space for those negative attributes in the life of Sophie if positive attributes had already taken the vacant spaces in her life, so all we need to know is that no one would be able to kill you faster than you yourself. I think that would be all I have to say, I love this story, I love the way the writer creatively crafted it because it has so much lessons for youths and the society at large. I love this work
Which should also teach us never to let greed take a place in our lives, because if we do? We would blame no one but ourselves.
The problem Sophie had was, she gave negative attributes vacant spaces in her life instead of giving those vacant spaces to positive attributes. There would have been no space for those negative attributes in the life of Sophie if positive attributes had already taken the vacant spaces in her life, so all we need to know is that no one would be able to kill you faster than you yourself. I think that would be all I have to say, I love this story, I love the way the writer creatively crafted it because it has so much lessons for youths and the society at large. I love this work
-
francineagus11
- Posts: 2
- Joined: 16 Apr 2018, 09:31
- Bookshelf Size: 0
Very nice 
