Grade 12 -  a short story written for homework inspired by given stimulus

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It’s funny how your life sometimes does a loop. Here I am back at the house I had tried so hard to get away from. There is the same timeworn dust covered windows, that I had on several accounts planned to escape from. The tear stained bed laid silent, surrounded by years of sleepless nights. Now here, in my hand the one friend who I had forgotten. His chipped glass eyes smiled weakly through scratched lens and whose poor arm is only hanging on by several threads. The one who kept me together all these years. Good old faithful Bears-Worth.

My childhood, a sore part of my mind was now playing out like an old film, a little hazy but perfectly decipherable. My parents had died early on in my life, but I still remember feeling the joy of opening the oddly shaped blue parcel and finding a brand new teddy with amber coloured eyes and a smile forever stitched in place. His fur plush and soft unlike the matted and patchy toy I currently held in my rough scarred covered hands.

I remember after the endless days of shouting and abuse from my grandparents, we’d race out to the garden and play in the mud and pretend to be soldiers. If I only knew then that was where and how I would end up.

After another round of screams and a long painful thing called a ‘bath’, we would be out there again, going on a grand adventure battling the ‘Wart-freds’. The reality of this was a trip to the end of granddad’s garden hunting toads in an over dramatic sequence of swinging my wooden sword. Of course Bears-Worth would be safely watching my conquest from the sidelines and be the first to congratulate my heroic victory over the retreating amphibians, who had reluctantly left their slaughtered comrades behind.

But not all my childhood battles were a victory. The brutes I dare to call my grandparents would call me a colourful array of names or whip me till my hands and feet went raw. I’ll never know why they were like this to me.

 I still remember waking up in the middle of the night, tying my sheets together and flinging them out the window. Bears-Worth had always been the wisest of the pair of us, and told me to stick it out, to just hang on just a little while longer. He was right. For starters I had forgotten to tie the sheets to anything. I guess you can say my first attempt went literally out the window. Bears-Worth was always right.

Sure the abuse went on but that didn’t stop Bears-Worth and I from adventuring in our own realm. Here I was the fearless knight and he was my loyal squire or we pirates sailing the six C’s: the cupboard, the courtyard, the closet, the conservatory, the creek and the kitchen. Ok so what if kitchen doesn’t start with C, I was only six, give me a break. First mate Bears-Worth would man the helm while I used my trusty spyglass searching Six C’s for our next port of call, the cookie jar, arrr me hearty’s.

Of course my hands would be swatted by a wooden spoon for trying to attempt such a devious plunder, but we stuck together. Through thick and thin and fur and skin. We would occasionally be raiders discovering ancient artefacts in the gloom of the treasure ridden attic, before running to nanna for medical attention from our various wounds of war.

I would usually only require a band aid, but Bears-Worth more times than not, needed to go in for surgery. I guess that’s why he looks so mangled now, just like me. The veterans of war never come back unscathed.

I search around the room to see if nanna had left her medical instruments in the top draw after all these years. Skilfully  I treaded the needle and took a seat by the window. My crippled hand moving slowly, pulling and tugging. One stich…two stitch…three. Like I said, it’s funny how life sometimes does a loop. Only now it was I who was keeping good old Bears-Worth together.