unedited.

a story inspired by shawn curtis. and when i say inspired by i mean he said, "hey lauren, write me story...now" and i said, "a'ight"
written in 25 minutes.

“I hate my life” a young girl sighed. Her exhale was so forceful that a Starburst wrapper that had formerly been resting in front of her fluttered across the table. It was a gross exaggeration. She did not even believe the words as she said them, but it was a desperate attempt to get someone to pay attention to her. Her mother, cooking dinner only a few feet away, was lost in her own thought gesturing to herself in between stirring something on the stovetop. The rest of the family was scattered about the house. They were on the computer in the den or playing video games downstairs.

Luckily there was the dog to acknowledge her presence. The large, white, mixed-breed was notorious for licking people’s elbows when they least expected it. On occasion she would even manage to lick people’s faces if they were in reach. The blitz attack would be followed by an innocent look from brown eyes and then the dog would pad back to her bed in the corner and in a short time would begin snoring. The girl at the table sighed again, this time the Starburst wrapper fluttered off the side of the table and to the ground. The girl’s brown eyes (they matched the dog’s) shifted from left to right and paused a moment. It was not much more than a moment before her conscious told her no one else was going to pick up the wrapper and she pushed her chair back and crawled under the table to retrieve it.

Once under the table, she was met with a surprise. The dog had somehow awoken and reappeared, tangling her leash in the table legs, and quickly licked the girl’s nose just as she ensnared the wrapper in her fist. “Thank you.” She muttered before giving the dog a shove. Her actions were futile and the sixty pound dog hardly budged. “I hate my life.” She backed out from under the table and carefully ducked so as not to hit her head. The movement protected her head but she knocked her elbow on the table leg and felt the all too familiar tingling that comes with the unfortunate collision of an elbow and a hard object. “G. D. I hate my life!” Though it was said a bit louder this time her motif was still ignored.

Once dinner time came they were having steak and barbequed vegetables. She hated steak and the skewered vegetables took much longer than necessary to eat. She chose not to complain because she knew her mom put in a lot of effort for dinner. She slipped over to the refrigerator and milk out. On the way she stepped on a small pool of water from an ice cube that someone had dropped earlier. It soaked through her socks. I hate my life, she thought, but she did not really mean it. She sat down once more at the table and chomped off a bit of zucchini. The pointed part of the stick holding the vegetables tilted its way toward the back of her throat and she tried to choke discretely.

The dinner conversation was average and the dog slunk around looking for fallen tidbits. In a few minutes all the food was gone from her plate and she drank milk slowly while the others finished. There was something comforting about drinking milk slowly. Not for everyone, she thought, because milk was one of the most common allergies. And if you’re allergic it must not be comforting at all. She finished her milk and loaded the dishes in the dishwasher.

Then she trudged off dragging her feet along. She got on her computer and decided to complain to the internet world about small annoyances that add up, but in the end don’t really matter. They certainly aren’t enough to write a whole page about. But she did. "I love my life." She laughed to herself after reading over what she had written.