Dangerous Scene

• Taeha Dahlenburg, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2020

“Mother, I’m so bored.” I whined. She looked at me coldly and put her fingers to her lips and shushed me. How dare she! Me her only beautiful daughter, was being turned away, all for some fashion magazine with Harry Styles on the front. Or as I like to call him, Hairy Stylus. Mother was being so obnoxious, but I just couldn’t leave without at least getting her debit card. So I poked her on the shoulder, once, twice, three times. I felt her stiffen. You know when you’re in a dangerous situation, like when a strange man approaches you, or a vicious dog growls at you from the end of his flimsy-looking chain. This situation was like that, except in those situations it’s not guaranteed you’ll die. In this situation, it is. Mother’s lip curled, and she rose silently out of the chair. I tried to squeak out an apology, but she was having none of it. As she stalked towards me, my whole life flashed before my eyes. Parties, dinners, times with friends. It was all going around my head like a never-ending slideshow. Mother reached out her hand and lifted me up like I was a rag doll. Her hand forced me to the front of the room, where we took a bow to an applauding audience. Mum let me go and we walked off the stage. In the wings, we high-fived and hugged. We totally nailed that performance. I’m pretty bummed out to realise that tomorrow was the performance. No more friendly practices. Tomorrow was the real deal.
Fast-forward to tonight. I peeked out of the curtain to look at the HUGE audience. Parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. You name them, everyone and their uncle were out there in that audience. To me it seemed, anyway. I looked at my mum, talking to the stage manager about the props for our performance. She seemed a bit sceptical about the idea of doing the talent show together. Her initial reaction was “YOU WANT TO DO WHAT?!?!?!?” After I explained the idea I had in mind, she was in. It looked like she went “Yes, my plan is coming together now. They won’t even see it coming… MWA HA HA HAA!” That last bit actually sounded like and evil laugh, but I’m sure she was just getting into character. Back in the dressing room, I put on my fancy dress, and was getting myself into the snobby mindset, when the stage boy came through to tell me I was on soon. Me and mum got into our positions and then… the curtain rose.
As we started our scene, I noticed that mum was really getting into it. In the part of the scene where she lifts me up, she tightened her hand across my throat, I knew that this was no joke. This was real, not acting. As my windpipe began to close, the world started to fade to the colour of her eyes. Black.