The Red Sofa | Teen Ink

The Red Sofa

September 3, 2011
By Alipal BRONZE, Murrieta, California
Alipal BRONZE, Murrieta, California
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
"If I had saved all the tears I cried for you I would have drowned you in them."


There must have been a thing very special about your red sofa; because every day of the year and every hour of the day you would lie in that same place, on that same red sofa. It was comfortable, I must admit, as I am sitting on it at the moment. It swallows its sitters, I notice; especially the smaller ones. A man-eating sofa is how I would describe it, so terrifying it is despite the shiny buttons and curved stitch lines that seem to form grinning cushions. Yet aside from its demonic color and tendency to swallow, all it ever seemed to do for you was provide comfort, warmth, a place to lie, a place to sleep, a place to think of only the best things in life. I am sure that it was only the best things in life that ever crossed your mind while sitting on this sofa. I am sure that it was only the best things in life that ever crossed your mind while sitting on this man-eating sofa. That is because every single time you laid upon this red sofa, I would tell you a single lie. I could not help it. They were excellent lies, the lies that molded your incorrect viewpoint of I, your incorrect son, to be rather quite the excellent child, rather quite the proper child. But in truth I was a terrible child, a terrible child who thanked the mother who prepared his lunches and buttoned his shirts with his sick and twisted lies. I remember the first lie I told you. It was about the footprints of mud I had trailed on the floor. I was sure you would see right through it all then and there. But you believed me, nodding in naievety, even though I could have sworn you sensed my anxiety. My lies only worsened, became sicker by the sitting, more twisted by the day. The next time, you told me you loved me. You called to me, I remember, from your red sofa, saying how much you cared. How awful of I to reply that I did as well, even though at that particular moment I did not truly mean it. It was only at that particlur moment though. I hope you believe me. But you never knew and you never will know the truth, regardless of how many times I tell you, regardless of how many ways I tell you. Because the last time I lied to you , the last time I gave to you your daily dose, or rather I worry, overdose of ignorance, I found you lying dead, dead with such a pained expression upon this same red sofa. Perhaps the sofa tried to eat you. I hope that was it.


The author's comments:
This is about a boy who habitually lied to his mother. I hope people understand that the sofa in the story is not actually a sofa that eats people. It is just so plush that it, in a way, swallows its sitters. The sofa symbolizes the comfort of living in a lie. In the end when the boy says, "I hope that was it," he means to say that he'd rather have that the cause of his mother's death rather than the pain of his lies that he suspects his mother saw through the entire time. But since everyone, including the boy, knows a sofa cannot eat people, he obviously, with guilt, suspects it was the pain of his lies that killed his mother.

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