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Year Nine - English Narrative Task 

I can’t hear anything. 

I don't know when I stopped being able to hear. I guess I’ve never been able to clearly hear over the incessant trickling of water echoing up the well and pulsating in my ears. Even worse now with the scraping of trowel and clay against brick. The well was demolished. I’ve had to rebuild it. 

The consenance of the flowing water was sometimes overwhelming, it caused a painful ringing in my ears until the pain felt numb. Now I feel a profound calmness resonating within me. It’s like a meditation bowl, the Tibetan bell one. 

I know it bothered my mother when I didn't listen to her. She used to worry, I knew because her already alabaster skin would pale, almost translucent, everytime she looked at me. The irate frizz in her hair mimicked the shaking of her head and tutting of her throat. 

What she didn’t know was that the more she yelled at me, the more she screamed, the more the water would trickle into the well. I never worried about it overflowing though, before it got close she would relax and the flow would cease.

I know she sees herself in me, that's why she liked Olivia so much. Olivia always had a certain demeanour everyone liked. What I didn’t have in my pale grey eyes, Olivia had vibrant cobalt blue, a whole abstract of azure and flecks of teal. The freckles that brandished her cheeks created constellations that were awe inspiring and studied. Her neat porcelain teeth were almost a perfect white. Olivia’ perfection was all natural, all her. Olivia’s hair had an effortless sheen to it, a soft lustre. Her raven black hair followed behind her, lifting and tilting in the wind to really emphasise her power. She somehow still holds power over everyone. Even me … I guess.

I couldn’t even hate her, though I really, really wanted to. I think most people really, really wanted to. But then she would flash you those meticulously straight teeth and the charming dimples in her cheek. If her smile, her hair and her eyes weren’t enough to enchant you the trickle of soft notes when she laughed definitely would. She was like a lighthouse, luring sailors into the hidden rocks beneath.

It really is my mother’s fault though. She’ll deny it but my mother always hated me, what I did to Olivia just rationalised how she felt about me. Olivia was back from the city and as soon as she walked through the door it just reminded my mother of how much I lacked. My mother’s screams began to overpower the bubbling of the well in my head. And then it wouldn’t stop. 

The well started to overflow.

The water thrashed out, washing over my mind. I couldn’t hear over the bombardment of waves crashing onto me and sweeping me under them. I tried to repel and kick against the current.

Until I stopped. 

I welcomed the blissful oblivion that drowning in it offered and sank into it with an embrace. They took me into their current. The icy waves stabbed my skin and dragged their nails down my back, leaving harsh chills down my spine. 

Disrupting the violent waves, an ear splitting scream reverberated in my head, a hellish chorus of screeches became white noise around me, paralysing me in my action.

Mourning has always been a strange concept to me. I have always known it was meant to be there, but it existed just beyond my reach, an almost foreign concept.

I had barely realised what I had done until I had already done it. The waves broke, clearing my vision. I could finally see the rings of crimson under my nails glaring back at me. My body moved on its own accord and I crouched down to Olivia, her eyes, those Ceylon sapphire eyes, stared blankly back at me, bloodshot bolts struck outward from her irises. Searching for a pulse, for a breath… I was frozen in place and the soft waves came crashing back with my mother’s screams.

I meant it when I said I really, really did try to hate Olivia and the guilt rose threatening to drag me under the currents I had just escaped.

It’s okay though, I’m now somewhere I’ll be able to rebuild my well. And it won’t overflow this time. It won’t happen again. 

Shirine Nehme