Legacy Collection: Free Short Stories From my Student Years
This collection features pieces I wrote during my college years for writing assignments. A few of these stories are ones I’m genuinely proud of: built around ideas I loved and written with everything I had. Others? Well… they were turned in because deadlines exist and grades were on the line. Either way, they each mark a step in my growth as a writer. I’m sharing them here as a way to honor where it all started.
Content Warning: This story contains themes of domestic abuse and medical amputation. Reader discretion is advised.
This wasn’t the kind of silence Colin wanted from his wife. The woman never cried—not when he broke her arm last winter, or her nose in the middle of summer, or when he gave her a black eye this morning—but that wasn’t what bothered him.
It was the way she stared at the ragged wound above his knee, as if she could pick at the edges with her eyes. He knew she wouldn’t talk to him until after the surgeon came to look at his leg, but her eyes said the same thing she told him this morning: “I told you it was getting worse, you big lout.”
Like he told her right before he hit her, he would decide what’s best for him. It didn’t matter that she was right; she only cared about how long it would put him out of work. He hadn’t needed a surgeon to pull the wood from his leg when he fell through the bridge a few weeks ago. Hell, he even cauterized the wound himself.
He swallowed the wave of nausea as the smell of burning flesh taunted his memory.
Unable to stand the weight of her gaze any longer, he limped to the kitchen in their small, painfully clean cabin and found a bottle of whiskey. He settled back into the chair before the fireplace, wondering how much he could drink before the surgeon arrived.
Half the bottle later, the heat of the fire and the drink dragged him to sleep.
***
Colin woke the first time to darkness. His eyelids were too heavy to open. And why the devil was he so hot? Had the bitch pushed him into the fireplace while he slept?
He flailed blindly and tried to sit up, but something pinned him down. He cried out in pain as he fought against the invisible force clamped around his wrists and ankles, but he was too weak. Pain and exhaustion overwhelmed him, pulling him into darkness once again.
***
The second time Colin woke, he was surprised his arms were no longer pinned to his sides. He tried to roll over, but fell back with a groan.
“Easy lad,” an unfamiliar voice said.
Colin opened his eyes again, blinking as an old man’s face came into focus. His sluggish mind was slow to realize it was probably the surgeon his wife sent for. His wife was not in the room. A pile of bloody linens and unwashed dishes sat on the bedside table.
“Where is my wife?” he asked, his voice gravelly and strained.
“She left not long after I arrived.”
“Left? Where?”
“I didn’t ask, sir. Your leg was my first concern.”
Colin groaned, remembering why the man was there in the first place. With some effort, he pushed up on one elbow. “How is the damn thing?” he asked. His saw the blanket thrown over him and the lump of one leg beneath it.
For more about this story, I invite you to see what my classmates had to say about it in my post Best and Worst of Critique Comments #4. More modern-day reflections on craft and the process behind writing this piece are in Reflections on Writing “Splinter.”
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