Tears of guilt

• Christopher Boaden, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2006

Tears were streaking down my face as I looked at the coffin. Feelings of guilt and loneliness sprung up in my chest. I realised I was holding something. It was a comic book with a tomato sauce stain on it. I frowned down at it as I remembered…
When we first found out that John had something wrong with his brain, nobody reacted with deeper disgust than me. After I heard the news I barely even looked at him, except an occasional glance of disgust.
I stared blindly down at the comic and remembered. I remembered how I lay gasping with agony, on the side of a cliff with the comic book clutched tightly in my hand. That was the day I lost my ability to walk, and the day I lost John.
I remembered how John got the attention, noticed for everything he did right. Everything he did wrong was immediately ignored. With me it was the opposite, I was never noticed for the good things I did, but I was immediately pounced upon if I got into trouble.
It was the last straw when John stole one of my comic books. He wanted to look at the good pictures, because he didn’t know how to read. He smeared it with tomato sauce, and I was filled with rage. My parents defeated him, saying how I should have hidden the books so that he could not find them. Why should I hide my things in my own room?
I packed some food and my comic books and ran away to the cliffs on the hill outside of town. I only wanted to hide out for the rest of the day, just so my parents would notice me. I breezed up the hill, and sat panting on the side of the steep cliffs that showed a view of the town. I took out my comic books and began to read.
A small wind picked up and blew my comics off the cliff onto a ledge a few metres below. Desperately, without thinking, I tried to climb down to pick them up. I fell, screaming in agony as I landed on my back.
I looked up at the face of John, my brother. He looked terrified, but gritted his teeth and climbed down to rescue me. Somehow he picked me up, and pushed me onto the top of the cliff. He attempted to climb up with me, until he noticed my comics.
He picked the comics up and pushed them up onto the cliff. There was one comic left, right on the edge. The front cover had a tomato sauce stain on it. My brave saviour bent down to pick it up, and somehow he stumbled as the wind picked up again. He fell out of my sight as I heard a heart-rending scream.
I cried many tears since then, but the most I ever cried was at that funeral. It was my fault that he died, and I paid the price. I wheeled up to the coffin in my wheelchair, and placed the comic on it. I didn’t want to see it ever again. It took me a wheelchair, to realise how unfair I had been to John, and I would rather lose my arms as well, to tell John how sorry I was.