The Fine Line

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction (meaning that none of it exists anywhere except in my head) and any resemblence to people or actions, living or dead, past, present or future, is PURELY coincidental (Once again, all the nice things, and the not so nice things, and the crazy people, including Stanley, live IN MY HEAD, nowhere else and when I do accidentally find people out there who look like someone I invented...it tends to spike my paranoia level through the roof! **jams tin foil hat on a little tighter**) All rights belong to Murray the Leprechaun, (that's me) the author, and any unauthorized duplications or reproductions are prohibited by law(not only that, I will hunt you down with my bopping stick and make you wish you'd kept your sticky fingers to yourself, you naughty plaguerizer you) so if you like a piece of this story and would like to quote it somewhere, please, ask me first.

Warning: Bad stuff will happen

A/N: Hey all, Murray the Leprechaun here. Some of you know me, some of you don't, but those who do know that I'm always talking about this original thing that I've written and that novel I'm working on. Those who do also know I really want to be a published author, but that getting anything through a submissions process can be difficult for a first timer. It sorta lowers the self esteem to get a ton of rejection letters with no particular reason as to the rejection except that you've never been published before. It's a vicious, vicious circle, you can't get published until you've been published and you cant be published until you get published....dizzying. Anywho, to boost my self-esteem a bit, and to prove that I really do have original ideas, not just ones I borrow from JK and Maki and whatnot, I am going to start posting this original that I'm writing in my usual daily chapter basis. I would really like some constructive criticism, or hell, even a beta if one of you would be so willing, but as always, I will love anything you guys say in a review. I even like flames ^^ they're good for roasting marshmallows. So read, review, let me know what you think. Thanks!


(Vincent)
I was fifteen when my mother died…but no, that’s not right. I was 15 when my mother was murdered, but perhaps that’s not the right way to start this story. Let me try again. My name is Vincent. Vincent Mitchell. Up until I turned 15 I lived with my mother in a small two bedroom apartment complex in San Bernardino, California. My father had abandoned us when I was born but he sent my mom weekly envelopes with anywhere between four and five hundred dollars inside to raise me on. I didn’t know it then, but she never touched that money. I did know, even when I was little, that there was no way my mother could pay all of our bills on just the money she made at her temp jobs, but we never went hungry and I never needed anything so I just assumed that his money went towards paying rent or buying groceries. I didn’t have any reason to assume anything else.

Among other things, my mother taught piano and gave voice lessons to anyone willing to learn, even the ones who couldn’t always pay. Like Aaron. Aaron, the perfect golden haired angel who could do no wrong and even if he did all he had to do was turn big doe eyes on whoever was offended and all was forgiven. Aaron, the superstar athlete and the model student. Aaron the apartment complex’s pity case. He moved in downstairs with his older sister and younger brother when I was 11. God I hated him. Clara, his older sister, loved to drink and often forgot that she was supposed to be taking care of her little brothers. So Aaron was always going around the complex offering to do jobs for everyone, his silent little brother Matthew tagging along and looking tragically sweet. I used to do that to earn extra money for mom. It was never much, but it meant that she could get a sandwich or a soda or something from the vendor on her lunch break and I hated him for taking that little thing away from her. I expected her to hate him too, but she never did. No, my mother felt sorry for him and his little brother and whenever she baked cookies or something she always took it downstairs for them to share.

Once when she did this she even asked him if he could come back upstairs with her and help her hang a new photo on the wall. She could have asked me of course, and it hurt that she didn’t, so I went out on the patio to avoid them the moment I saw him and his creepy brother come through the door. I watched as Mom left him in the front room where the piano was while she went next door to borrow a hammer. He must not have seen me outside watching, otherwise he would never have dared to sit on the bench and start playing, but his little brother did see me. As soon as Aaron’s hands touched the keys I started forward to make him stop, but his little brother, who had never in my knowledge raised his eyes from the ground, glared at me. I froze just from the shock of actually seeing Matthew’s eyes, which weren’t dark brown as I had assumed but black. Pitch black, and for some reason, really familiar and really…. When I had snapped out of it again, my mother was back in the room heaping all sorts of praise on Aaron, as if he were some sort of piano virtuoso instead of the sneak he was and Matthew was looking at the ground again. Granted, what he’d played hadn’t sucked, but I was sure I could do a hell of a lot better.

After that, mom set aside two days each week to teach Aaron the finer points of playing the piano and then she added another day to teach him how to use his voice. Even when work started to get harder for her and she needed to stay later she always made time for his lessons, though she asked if I wouldn’t mind practicing on my own without her. She said that I’d already learned everything she could teach me and that there were other students that needed her help more then I did. I tried not to let mom know how jealous I was that this little do-gooder punk was stealing her precious time away from me. I knew that would just upset her, but the only way for her to stay ignorant of my pain was to stay away from her. So I started staying late after school, hanging out with all of the after-school-special types that I’d never had much time for before. Then when mom started to worry about me hanging out with the wrong people, I offered to help out the tiny video store owner who lived in our apartment building instead and always offered to work late. That’s why I wasn’t there when it happened. I wasn’t there when my mother died because I was worried that I was losing her. It was Wednesday the 19th of October.

I offered to stay late that night because the sweet old man who owned the store wanted to go home early to celebrate his billionth wedding anniversary. I offered to stay late because on Wednesdays she helped Aaron practice for the interschool talent contest, something she hadn’t even asked if I wanted help with this year. Sometimes he stayed on that piano until mom literally fell asleep on the bench, and then like the perfect polite young man he was, he would carry her to the couch, find a blanket and let her sleep, always locking the door on his way out. If I had known what was happening to my mother I wouldn’t have re-alphabetized the horror movies for the 6th time that night, I wouldn’t have walked instead of accepting a ride from the new girl who left an hour earlier, I wouldn’t have worked that night, or any night, ever. I would have punched pretty perfect Aaron the first day I saw him and I never would have let him in our house. I would never have let him take up so much of her time; I would never have let him kill her.

When I finally made it to our door, the paramedics were already finished. Perfect Aaron was telling them that she had collapsed coughing while they were practicing breathing for his voice lesson. Perfect Aaron was explaining that she had told him a few months ago that she had been diagnosed with lung cancer, but that we didn’t really have enough money for really extensive treatment or all of the doctor’s visits so she hadn’t bothered to tell me because she didn’t want me to worry over something that couldn’t be changed. Perfect Aaron said that he had tried to convince her to use the money she’d saved from my father’s envelopes but that my mother had insisted that that money was for me in case something happened to her and I had to take care of myself. Perfect Aaron cried when they lifted her onto the gurney, perfect Aaron wanted to know if there was anything that he could do to help; perfect Aaron wanted to stay and clean up so I wouldn’t have to. Perfect Aaron wanted to comfort me; I wanted perfect Aaron to drop dead.

Perfect Aaron murdered my mother. Not in the traditional sense, but it was his fault all the same. No, he murdered her by making her give him lessons until she collapsed from exhaustion three times a week; he murdered her by not paying for those lessons so that she could see a doctor. He murdered her because he knew she was sick even though I didn’t but still came and selfishly made her push herself too hard just so he could win some stupid talent contest. But I killed her too because I wasn’t there to notice that her hands shook even when she played chopsticks, and because I didn’t notice how little she was eating. Because I didn’t notice her cough, because I didn’t see that she was sick, because I didn’t know she was keeping that money for me, because, because, because.

I lost my mother that day because I didn’t want her to see that I thought she was being taken from me. Life is a bitch.