Mark and his dilemma - A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

This is my entry for the A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words contest.
The picture of the cheese made me think of someone desperate for food, doubting whether the cheese is still edible or not. The thought of this brought back memories from my childhood and gave me the idea to write this story. The story below is partly made up and partly based on my own experiences from my childhood. Hope you all will like it!

The photo was taken by @wakeupkitty host of this contest on behalf of @freewritehouse.

I wrote this story in Dutch and it translated with https://www.deepl.com/en/translator.

Mark woke up screaming and immediately sat upright on the couch where he had fallen asleep crying the night before. Slowly it dawned on him that he had been dreaming. What a bad dream it was! He was sweating like crazy and...what was that? Were his pants wet or...?
He had peed! Yikes!

He jumped off the couch and took off his pants, running to the bathroom where he threw the pants on the floor. For a moment he stayed still and thought. Was there any point in searching the house? If his mother had returned by now, surely she would have woken him up? He sighed and took off the rest of his clothes as well. Then he tried to take a shower, and without wiping himself properly, he dragged underwear and some clean clothes out of the closet and put them on. How many days had it been now? Two? Three? Two he thought, but he wasn't sure.

His stomach let out a grumbling sound. Mark walked over to the refrigerator and opened it. It was a narrow, tall refrigerator and 7-year-old Mark was not that tall. He pulled out a kitchen chair and dragged it to the refrigerator. He had done that so many times in the past few days!
The refrigerator looked almost empty. Mark climbed on the chair to see if there was anything left to eat.
On the top rack there was a large piece of cheese. In front of it there was a piece of a apple and 2 half-rotten grapes. Mark scratched his forehead for a moment, thinking of his mother. Hesitantly he grabbed the 2 half-rotted grapes and put them in his mouth.
The apple and cheese he wanted to save for Mom. Surely she would also be hungry when she got back.

He got off the chair again, pulled it a bit away from the refrigerator and closed the refrigerator door. He stared at the door that usually opened into the open garage from where you could walk into the yard.
Over the past 2 days, he had tried numerous times to force that door, but his mother had locked it from the outside. So he couldn't get out. He had checked all the windows of the house, but everywhere there were bars and so he could not escape. He didn't understand. After all, Mom had said she would come right back. Mark walked slowly into the living room, thinking about that one evening.

He and Mom had eaten some fried krobia (krobia is a swamp fish in Suriname) together. They were poor and in fact there was almost never any food in the house. A house that didn't belong to them either. They were allowed to live in it temporarily by an aunt who was abroad. Most of the stuff in the house belonged to that aunt.
Mark had been super excited about the house! He was not used to so much luxury. Never in his life had he had a refrigerator or a television in the house and now he could just watch television all day or step up to the refrigerator to grab something out of it! Well, as far as there was something to eat in it.

Very often the refrigerator was also just empty because Mom didn't have money to buy food. Dad used all the money to buy alcohol. It had been that way for years. Mark couldn't remember if there was a time when his father didn't drink alcohol. It had been the same that night.

Dad had come home drunk after he and Mom had just eaten the fish. Dad got angry because there was no more food. Mom and he started fighting and Mom sent him to his bedroom. She always did that when there was an argument. Mark sat down on the bed, anxious about what would happen again. Would he hit Mom like always? He heard only curses, something fell over: apparently a chair and then a loud roar from his father. Mark stiffened on the bed. What was happening?

He ran outside. There his father lay floundering on the floor in the kitchen, with a knife in his stomach. Mark screamed and his mother ran to him and pulled him into the living room, where they cried together.

Mom told him that Dad wanted to hit her and that was why she had to hurt him back. When no more sound came from the kitchen and Mark also stopped crying, Mom asked him to stay in the living room. She herself went to the kitchen.

After a while he also sneaked into the kitchen anyway and there he had watched his mother wrap and tie his father's body in garbage bags and drag him outside. Then she cleaned up all the blood on the kitchen floor. After she finished, she told Mark that she was going to take Dad's body away. Mark cried. Don't leave me alone! But she spoke sweet words and told him that he was a brave boy and therefore should sit and wait in the living room. She would come back soon, she said. Don't open to anyone! She had hesitated for a moment to leave her cell phone behind, but had finally taken both cell phones, hers and Dad's. She locked the door from the outside and took the key so Mark could not open for anyone. She promised him she would return soon.

But now a few days had passed and she was still not back. Mark didn't know what to do. He believed that Mom would come back, because she had promised.
He could not call anyone and standing at the window and screaming did not help either, because the house was surrounded by trees left and right and the houses of the nearest neighbors were far away, at the back of the house there was forest and the street was also very far from the house.

He had spent the past few days eating every bit of bread, rusk, cereal and whatever else was edible.
He thought about the apple and cheese in the refrigerator. He was scared and his stomach ached with hunger. He looked at the clock. What time would Mom come? Would she bring food? Would he still eat that apple? Yes, maybe he could. Then there was cheese left and when Mom came, she could eat thar.

He walked wearily to the refrigerator and climbed onto the kitchen chair for the umpteenth time. He stayed on the kitchen chair and stared at the piece of cheese in the refrigerator as he ate the apple. The cheese looked strange. He picked up the cheese and looked at the red and green-white spots on it. He only knew yellow cheese. Not this one. The red spots looked like pepper. Was there pepper in the cheese? But the green and white spots looked nasty! What was that? Was the cheese no longer good? No! What would Mom eat when she came back! He had eaten everything.

Panicking, he looked around the kitchen and made a misstep, causing him to tumble off the chair and the cheese to fall to the floor. There was no food for mom! No, what had he done! With his hands in front of his eyes and the cheese at his feet, he began to sob and cry out loud.

The end

Thank you for visiting my blog and for reading this. I appreciate that very much.❤️