Hate

• Andrew Murray, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2006

HATE

As I walk down the bare, lonely street, I think to myself that there are some things put in this world for us just to hate. Hate all hell out of it. Hate it so much you just want to burst out and wreck it.

Hatred. It’s a deep down depressing word. It’s over used. A little boy at the corner store says to his mates, ‘Oh I hate that flavor’. Nothing deep. Nothing true. Nothing real, down to the soul, hatred. This is the real hatred that I feel.

I continue my slow, pointless plod along the road. It has been raining. Cold, dampening rain that chills the soul. The dim street lights paint wandering figures on the well kept grass and it all continues on as if I’m not there. I feel ever so small. I reach the park and remember the fond memories of family times here. It is so far away, so distant.

I move away and walk down the middle of the sleek, black road. I shudder, not only from the cold and lack of warm clothes, but from the thought of what is going to happen to me now. I nearly forget about it as another sheet of stinging rain engulfs my already frozen body but it is still always there, niggling at the back of my mind.

I wander off the road, onto a badly kept piece of property. My shabby shoes crunch the cold, long, crisp grass as I venture through it. A tiny mouse scuttles noisily away from the crunching and I wonder how it feels. What is it thinking? What is it feeling? Do they even process thoughts? Feelings? If it doesn’t then how did the human species evolve? How did they get this new characteristic, of feelings? It makes me wonder, and worry.

I sit down under a well established, old, almost alive gum tree. It’s funny I say that, because by rights it is alive, but does it have feelings, share experiences, love and hate? In response it shakes its lanky branches and tickles me with tiny droplets of water. I move closer to the thick trunk. I feel it, sense it; it becomes a part of me.

I comfortably sit there for a while and listen to its soft murmur, its talking, communicating, and breathing. It is alive. I slip into a light slumber, then a deeper, more serious sleep. I share experiences with the tree, we relive our past adventures. I wake up thinking of my hate. It feels my hatred. It responds by abusively and destructively thrashing its thick harmful branches. I get quite afraid but it comforts me with its shelter and being. I slip back into the land of dreams, knowing something is looking out of me, caring for me, helping me through these times. It might not be something, it might well be someone. It knows as well as me, I’ve got to go back. Nowhere else to go. Just back.