To clean dirtying waters...
A short story I made in high school for a contest. I did not win, some art girl won, this is how these things usually go. Still had fun writing it though, sort of cheesy. It was fun to describe how the water got worse.

I sit in my room with my earbuds in and stare out my window. My room shines and hosts the clear skies outside. I hear the TV blaring, as it always does on the weekend, and turn up the volume of my music to overpower the TV. A battle of distractions.
My mother should be home now. I take out my earbuds and start to leave my room, seeing my dad, a large man with a kind smile turning down the volume to enter reality again to shove his pile of junk food together so he can pick it up and tuck under a blanket.
“Don’t tell your mother, son. Alright? She’s been on me cruel lately, can’t deal with that. Judging me. You understand? I’ll go wash up.”, he tells me while standing up and dusting the crumbs off his shirt, walking away.
“Okay Dad.”, I tell him in a uncompassionate tone, words of filler. I sit on the couch and see the particles in the air through the sunlight in the window, all moving in unpredictable and unstable directions. Going wherever the wind and the forces of anything take them.
My mom, a skinny and clumsy lady, comes home carrying large bags, one with lunch for us and one with clothes. “Hi sweetheart. Where’s your father?”, not even a glance in my eyes.
“He’s washing up.”, I state with no confidence. She pulls out a red jacket and lays it over herself. A price tag reading $112.99 dangling on it.
“This looks good on me?” She asks in an almost rhetorical way, looking me in the eyes for the first time today.
“Yea.”
She sets the bag down and tucks it secretively under a table. “You won’t tell your father, would you? Your father would kill. You want us to not fight right?”, putting the pressure on me, a lonely child with an intense responsibility. I shake my head with an unstable wobble, my little obligation.
“Good. Good.”, the words pour out of her as she goes to the kitchen and sets lunch.
We sit down and open the packaging for lunch, “It’s ready! We are eating! Come on!”, Mom screeches. “Coming!”, Dad yells from the other side of our home.
He comes and sits down, his hair wet, “You started without me.”
In silence, Dad and Mom in the same room; in different worlds. To break the silence that overpowers all my family meals, I ask “Do you think we could all go camping sometime? Like we used to?”, no response.
“What? Sorry?”
“Um, never mind.”
After eating, I go back to my room before hearing Mom turn on the tap in the kitchen sink, “Davey! Dishes!”, I stand and speed-walk to the kitchen. A pile of dishes next to the sink, in the sink a nice and clean water, greened by dish soap. Comforting and nice smelling water. Another little escape.
I stand over clear waters and its oscillations with the sunlight outside and the shiny metallic sink and grab the first plate. There’s a silent comfort in the warmth of the water and the calmness when my parents are both doing their own thing. I hear Mom enter the living room and sitting down on something crunchy. Something is about to happen, the inevitable endless conflict, between loving Mother and Father. I stare out the window, trying to confine my interest in the random people outside. A lady with a stroller, a kid with a basketball.
“What the-? Do you mind even trying to justify this?” She exclaims loudly, her words fiercely echoing off the drywall.
Dad enters, “That? I don’t know? It’s too much sometimes; I work all week! I deserve a snack.”
“Snack?” She lists the junk food angrily, “Cheese pops? Tongue sizzlers? Sugar sticks? Monty, I keep telling you, a big problem. A repetitive trend of wanting. Setting examples like this on our son? You need help.”
I briefly close my eyes and prey they simply keep me out of this, I wish to escape as they do, as do they. No music could help me escape from the fighting. I introduce a bowl covered in chip crumbs into the clean water, it breaks the godlike cleanliness.
“Alright! Maybe if you weren't so hard on me this wouldn't be a problem!” Dad proclaims, looking down in regret for losing his temper. He then notices a shopping bag under the table.
“What’s this here? Helen. Have. You. Been. Shopping. Tell. Me. Now.”
No going back, it’s going to be harsh. I introduce some cutlery covered in sauces, which infects the water with buoyant oil bubbles, a division with the waters. Brace for the yelling. The screaming. The tainting. The dirtying.
“Yes. Just a little, you know it’s hard for me.” Mom says.
“Making me feel all guilty and horrible and you are even worse Helen!”
“I am not worse! That's so cruel. You make me feel bad too! I get the food, do the errands and everything!”
Dad escalates, “Do you even care? Does that justify spending my money I work for on stupid red coats? What about holding a standard?”.
“Your money Monty? Am I not allowed to be treated to some spare money on occasion? Do you want me to beg for you like a hobo?”
“Stop. You have your own problem Helen, you spend and don’t think of the consequences, do you regret at all woman?!”
“Do not woman me, fat man!”, words like cutlery sent straight through each others’ hearts, another Saturday. I put in stained plate after plate into the waters, allowing miscellaneous foods to blur and distort the waters.
“Yeah. Go there! I feel like I’m talking to a child. Do I have to take away your little allowance? Sometimes when out I’m with you, I feel shame Helen. Because when I get home, I have to deal with all this! A living hell!”
“You’re serious? My husband is ashamed to be with me?!”, the yells of Mom compress into cries of exaggeration. “What does that mean?! Why are you like this?! Do you even love me?”
I drop a metal dish covered in the greasy lardy fat of bacon and burnt charcoal into the already cloudy and chaotic water as it splashes lukewarm water over my shirt and the peripheral counter-tops, the sound resembling thunder and the water, a yellowish brown, almost unrecognizable compared to before.
The maniacal yells of my father, “Stop crying Helen! How could you even ask that, what do you think? Insanity!”.
“Davey! Do you hear what he’s saying? Look what he is doing to us!” They both storm into the kitchen and stand behind me, the dishes almost done. An indescribable smell and a chunky light brown.
“Don’t make me the bad one! Do you hear this?! Your mother is questioning if I love her, as psychotic as that is! Sucks to say, if you try to tear us all apart, then me and Davey can just go. If that’s what you want.”, Dad goes from screaming to a more calm but serious consideration.
“What is wrong with you?! Davey!“. Mom screeches like nails on a chalkboard.
The last item, I give a deep scrub to a sharp knife. The endless back and forth. A vision of a helpless dog having to choose which owner to run to comes to my mind. The dog loves them both equally. I daydream a nightmare and feel helplessly unaware of anything I’m doing. I’ve slipped up and the sharp knife down has sliced my hand with a sharp pain, pouring red into the waters, a vat of despair. Now, waters of a deep red and black void and I am lightheaded. I fall backwards into my parents’ arms and see the caring shock in their countenance as they look to my hand.
“Davey!”, they both yell in tandem, as it is realized why they are together to being with.
“Oh my, Helen! go grab the first aid stuff. I’ll put pressure!”
“Okay!”
Seconds of bliss pass. Dad push on my cut and Mom run to get a first aid kit. A few moments later, they both work as one to stand me up as I try to explain my mistake. They look towards the disturbing black dish water as Dad removes the plug and it disappears down the drain. We rush with passion, out the front door, in the car, still warm from shopping, and towards the hospital.
“I’m sorry Helen. I’m sorry Davey. We all stowed away. I love you both.”
“Yeah, we need to work together, Davey is our treasure. I’m sorry. I love you both as well.” says Dad.
Words never came out so clear, “I love you both too.”
“Lets us do stuff together more, appreciate each other.”
Maybe the waters need to be dirtied for cleanliness to prevail. To clean dirtying water, to sustain, constant care and affection is crucial.