THE CHAIR NOBODY WANTS (short story)

I’m the chair nobody wants. I live in every school. You can find me in the corner of a classroom. I’m almost useless, but no one minds me, so they don’t throw me away. My life is pretty chill but also sad, and although I’m surrounded by young and beautiful people, I’m alone. You see, I’m the chair nobody wants. I could be broken, maybe with a curved leg, I could be a little unsteady, I could simply be too high or too low. I’m often ignored, but sometimes people notice me and write on me. If I’m lucky, they’ll write meaningful quotes from books or songs; if I’m unlucky, they’ll write bad words. Sometimes youngsters are nasty to me, and they try to break me even more; sometimes they do this to other students too.

Nobody knows, but I can feel and see and hear. When they write on me, I know whether they are using a pen or a marker. I can feel their feelings through the words they use. I can hear them when they talk too, when they shout, when they whisper. I can tell the difference between younger and older students. I can tell that the younger are scared and the older are bored. I feel the anxiety during tests. I know everybody’s secrets because everyone murmurs them in my corner, where they think no one and nothing will hear. But I do. I won’t betray them, though. I’m a good listener since I can’t speak. Sometimes I’m able to feel happy; this happens when someone manages to use me for a purpose, to see me as if I weren’t damaged. Today, for example, someone moved me from my old spot. For a moment I feared my end was near, but I immediately relaxed when I felt the weight of books being put on me. I had almost forgotten the smell of books. It’s so weird. I’m near the teacher’s desk. It had been a long time since the last time someone found me useful. It was two or three years ago, when a child got hurt, and he used me to hold his casted leg up.

These are the times I forget I’m a simple, broken, smudgy chair. Sometimes I feel I’m much more. However, something always reminds me who I am. This happens during the holidays, they are the worst. Everything is dark and quiet and almost creepy and boring and lonely, all at once. I get dusty, and I fear to die. I know that technically I’m just an inanimate object, but I have a conscience, and my worst fear is to lose it. I can bear almost every treatment, good or bad, I receive. I don’t fear pain; I fear the possibility of losing myself. During the holidays I’m left alone with myself, and the absence of humanity makes me stiff, as a chair should be. I don’t want to be a simple chair. I’d rather be a melancholic old chair with a conscience than a perfect functioning chair but soulless. During the holiday I cling to my sadness to stay alive. I cling to the knowledge that everyone will come back, and I cling to my memories. However, during summer and winter holidays, everybody leaves and I don’t. Because I can’t. I usually feel alive, but from this point of view I’m not, I’m not a person who can go everywhere, I’m not a book which can be carried around, I’m not a breath of wind which can fly above the earth. I’m  a broken chair, in the corner of a classroom, at the end of a long hallway, in a school, in a city. It doesn’t really matter the specific place, I could be everywhere, because everybody knows me, everybody has seen a broken chair that nobody wants at least once. I’m that chair.

(my story was published in a website! http://www.germmagazine.com/?s=the+chair+nobody+wants )