Highly Commended Story - Poetic Justice

“Poetic Justice” by Isaac Gabriel Ng Chung Wing, Sri KDU Primary School, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, is the Highly Commended story in the junior category of the first biannual Short Story Contest 2019.

Isaac is a fan of David Walliams, Agatha Christie, and Roald Dahl. Apart from their books, he also tries to catch their stage and film productions. Isaac's other interests include playing the piano and dancing. He looks forward to participating in the concert and sports performances held annually at his school, Sri KDU Primary School, Malaysia. Isaac hopes to be a teacher when he grows up.

Poetic Justice

My name is Daniel. Since I was born, I lived with my mother in a grand old house in the countryside. My mother and I were never close. It was not because I did not like her. In fact, I always wished she paid me more attention. She was a painter, you see, and on top of that she was also a prize-winning gardener. If mother wasn’t painting, she was growing her pumpkins. And, if she was not painting or gardening, her attentions were given entirely to her best friend, Miss Lansburry the cat.

Well, you can imagine what little time mother had for me. By the time I was ten years old, I hardly saw her more than ten minutes a day. I naturally blamed the cat and even the paintings and pumpkins for my loneliness. Because of them, I was no better than an orphan. How I often wished I could get rid of them all and have mother for myself. Indeed, I often imagined poisoning the feline fiend, slaying the pumpkins, and slashing the paintings.

So, it happened that one fine afternoon I went looking for mother in her studio. “Mother! Where are you?” I called out loud. As I entered the room, I saw a new painting that mother had begun. I walked towards it, and a large white cat leaped out at me suddenly from behind the painting. I jumped startled, and fell into an instant rage. Impulsively, I grabbed the cat by its collar and with my other hand, I snatched a tin of turpentine that was sitting on a window ledge. In a moment of madness, I forced the turpentine down the cat’s throat.

Mother found Miss Lansburry in a lonely field that evening. The cat was dead as a log. Mother cried for hours. I pretended to take no notice and proceeded to the kitchen to have my dinner. It was, as always pumpkin soup. Mother did not have her dinner. She was utterly heartbroken. I went up to bed and that night I experienced the most excruciating pains in my stomach. By the stroke of midnight, I had died.

Never would I ever know, that just before I entered mother’s studio that fateful afternoon, Miss Lansburry had tipped over the tin of turpentine on the window ledge. “Oh you, naughty cat!” mother said, as she picked up the tin and placed it back on the window ledge. “Now, I shall have to wash my hands,” she said and left the room. But the turpentine had spilled over the pumpkin under the window, the very pumpkin which I had for dinner.