Omnipotent For A Day

• Stephanie Vejar, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2011

1. My apartment was cold and dreary. The cold grey bricks never brought any heat; it was the Manhattan lifestyle. I had painted the walls grey and furnished my apartment in black or grey to show no optimism. I felt I should not demonstrated moods that I did not feel. I would sit by the window all day and watch the people pass by and watch the misfortunes that occurred outside in reality. It’s been this way for years. I loved to sit near the window, in my high-rise apartment watching the people go by. I was like a child praying on an anthill.

2. I was married to John for a short while before this all happened. I was nineteen years old, I was youthful and content. John was in the army, a handsome taller, broad shouldered man. We were married the year after and he was sent to war after eleven months and twenty-three days of marriage. He was killed. I miss John.

It has been over twenty years since he was killed. I rarely leave the house. What would I want if I were omnipotent for a day? Perhaps it was John. Perhaps it was not to think such wicked thoughts upon others unknowingly. Who knows? Perhaps I wished that someone would know what I want. But they didn’t. I miss John.

3. He stared at me. Grey plaid and another alluring gesture and I would be his. His blue eyes stared at me as they darted across the room. The red velvet armchair in the corner of the room vividly contrasted with his fair skin. He stared at me. He understood my thoughts. Although that was only an assumption I had made. He enjoyed my thoughts. It brought a tear to my eye and a smile to my face like receiving a gift I had always wanted.

4. WHY WAS HE STILL HERE?

5. It stared at me. It was no longer him. It was someone else although it didn’t quite seem like a person. It was feeling I felt staring at me. Constantly staring. I was frightened but it also had this strange niceness to it. The crimson dripped as I stared at a photo of John and sat in the red velvet chair. It harmonized with the chair. Its darkness stared clearly into my eyes and said a line that sent chills to my soul. “The bones of a best man is all that will remain”.

With that, a tingling sensation filled me as if Gabriel the angel was walking with me. I was lead down a path of cold white stones until suddenly they felt hot and changed to a charcoal grey. I felt myself sinking through the rocks and hit the pit of heat. I look up for a way out but all I saw was an empty box sitting on top of my red velvet armchair. Engraved on the front of the tiny empty box it had engraved; coward. I now understood.