Death of a Mermaid

Writing Club
April 3 2012

Prompt: I don't remember the exact prompt for this tale. I know it had to do with using colours to describe details of the story and we probably had 15-20 minutes to work with it….

Into the depths of indigo blue the corpse sank.  From his perch on the slate gray crags above, he watched her sink, swallowed into darkness.  Gray like the colour of her irises once, before the gulls had plucked them out.  Gray like the somber sky reflecting off the churning surface.

Her ivory dress waved round her as the water rocked her to and fro, rolling her round, sending her on her way to her resting place on the bottom.  He had sent her away to the sea.  Better that no one saw her that way.  What good would it do?  The bright red sash rippling along the current like the lifeblood had flowed from her wrists. 

Auburn hair waltzed and washed round and over her pallid face, hiding those hollow eye socks.  She rose once more in the surf almost as if to say goodbye, not wanting to be forgotten. 

He had seen her fall, yes, he hadn’t pushed, not physically anyways.  The stories he would need rolled round his head now.  Suicide, damnation, it wasn’t acceptable.  Better to say she went away, left him.

The fall had been a long time coming.  Many had seen her going, but withdrew their arms instead of holding them outstretched to grasp at her as she passed by.  A few could have helped pull her to safety.  Instead they avoided her darkness like the plague, avoided the fumes of her heartbreak.  Had he not done the same?  Been in the same house, slept in the same bed.   But she was already a ghost to him then, haunting his space with the black cloak of depression until it was almost unbearable.  But then, one day, he had chosen not to drink from the same bitter cup. 

By the time he went back, to unlock the door, key in hand, she was gone.  The windows left wide open, the house empty.  In the backyard, he was greeted with by corpse gracefully dangling over the wicker settee placed among her flowers, roses red and vibrant, scent pungent in the air mingled with the smell of rot. 

A wheelbarrow full of flowers lined her funerary procession to her burial at sea.  The shell of his once doll-faced bride once more burdened in his arms until he set her free for her brief flight.

Now he stood alone, facing the sea.  The sea, with its broil of dark waters, frothing and foaming, it had accepted her willingly.  Claiming her body for food for the crustaceans abiding along its floor.  Unlike the church, it would willingly provide a resting place for her tired bones.

            For a moment, his feet almost took flight to join her.  The draw of the wash of the waves, pitching and rolling, felt like a millstone tied neatly around his neck.  He felt her last kiss upon his lips, rough and sweet, yet stone cold, as the salt air caught his face and ruffled his hair.  She was gone.

Deluge

Writing Club

Mar 1 2014

Rain like tears and rage

Prompt: Write about the time the rain didn’t stop...

            It started as a gentle shower and we were all so thankful as the droplets landed with puffs of dust into parched topsoil bringing with it the life giving promise of a harvest and green grass again.  The corn had curled straight in a last ditch effort straining towards the cloudless sky in dry desperation and the grass had long baked brown and crunched underfoot.  We ran outside to revel in the rain's refreshment.  Revitalized, hand in hand we retired to the porch, hopes of a harvest renewed.  With the refreshing drink the fields themselves seemed to sigh with relief.  
            A blessing become a curse as the unending patter on the tin roof above became a pounding racket lasting through the sleepless night and on into the next day.  The million dollar steady rain grew into an outpouring as the vast dams of the heavens broke and that’s when the deluge began.  Gathering waters rushed down through the river lands in torrents, the fingers of the catch basin stretching over towns and fields to claw lock, stock and barrel away a harvest of destruction for itself. The murky brown surge mercilessly striping the land bare, rending trees from roots, home from foundation, child from mother in its wake. All lost as fodder for the beast itself, debris added to debris arming the flood waters, building to a crescendo as the scourging swell in came to fall in torqued embrace upon the levee.  Rise and wash, spill, foam and froth, all awash and sent a sea.

Trigger Fingers

May 1, 2012

Writing Club

Prompt: Write a short story using these words.

Gun

Photograph

Wheelchair

Soft

Slippery

Anguish

Elated

Watch

Sam sat in the wheelchair sliding his fingers over and over the smooth surface of the rifle, staring at the clock.  The silent room came to life, “Tick, tick, tock.”  The click of the muzzle followed.  The gun rose to life with a red flash, metal burrs and a sting.  Force flipping the chair back on its large wheels, horizontal to vertical, his vision danced in a whirl as he fell limp to the floor, then black.

One hand sliding through something soft and slippery, as the haze of his sore head began to lift.  Light filtered down through the PVC blinds to reveal a blurry pool of red spread across the tiles.  His glasses had disappeared in the tumble.  Lifting his head farther brought sharp pain to his back.  In anguish, he stretched forward groping for something, anything to help him roll onto his back.  A table leg brought success.  One flailing hand grazed his glasses, grabbing hold he pushed them neatly upon his nose. 

Still a bit dazed and sore, as he sat up, he could make out the word Heinz amid the mess of glass.  Neither the ketchup or mustard fared well.  The checkered tablecloth hung haphazardly over the table, mustard running down the side in a slow drip, drip, drip near his head. 

His face still stinging from its close encounter with the butt of the gun as it kicked back.  His wheelchair seemed twice as high with his aching back, but he managed to haul himself back up to sit. 

Molly would be none to happy that he had shot out the kitchen window.  He should have checked to see if it was loaded.  She hated his antique gun collection as it was and she was none to elated with his latest piece.  The old war rifle had been a steal at two thousand.  He smiled at the photograph of the two of them at the gun show.  Though she purely went for him, the broad smile didn’t let on. 

Where was she anyways?  She should have been home by now.  As he let of the brake, and rolled around the table to the screen door, he saw her lying amid the brown paper bags she had been carrying, oranges and onions scattered about the ground.

It's all about Paddington.

April 19, 2015

    It's funny how memory works.  A friend told me she watched the Paddington Bear movie on her flight.  With just one word, I was reliving my Kindergarten orientation experience vividly all at the mention of Paddington Bear.  (Do I dare mention that this memory is 32 years old?  Now you know my age if you do the math.)

   Mostly, it was a memory of my introduction to the school library.  I also remembered all the poking and prodding and the eye testing I had to go through in the gym to check us over as we passed through different booths set up with dividers.  I had to tell which way a shape like a capital "E" was facing in the eye test which resulted in a prescription for glasses to help my right eye.  I used to see double when I got tired and being a 5 year old, I didn't think much of it because that was my normal.  Thankfully I only needed them for around 6 months.

  I remembered the wonder of walking into that enormous room with all those books, all sorts of stories just waiting to be read.  I had never seen anything like it.  (At that point, the only books I knew were the ones my mom had bought me and those of the tiny church library.)  We were allowed to look around the room, the various books on the shelves and then Mrs. Thoman, the librarian read us a story about Paddington Bear and his marmalade.

   I remember the way her crooked fingers curled around the cover to hold the book out for us to see the pictures.  (Mostly likely due to arthritis, but I wouldn't have known that back then.  The only other person I had seen with fingers like that was my grandmother's friend Mrs. Hancock, the one who called me Minnie Mouse when I hid under the table as she and my grandma took tea.)  Mrs. Thoman's fingers seemed perfectly shaped to grip the book.  I figured her fingers were that way because she was old and had read so many books to so many children.  Hey, I was 5.

  Mrs.Thoman even had a stuffed Paddington Bear which once we started attending school we were all given a turn at library time to hold.  I remember how important I felt when it was my turn to hold the coveted stuffed toy.  

  The memory was like candy.  It made me happy as the disappointment and complexity of adulthood slipped away for a few minutes.  I remembered the excitement I felt at starting school.  It might be laughable now, but in my simple life then, school and the promise of what looked like thousands of stories waiting to be read was enough to awe my five year old self.  My world was expanding.  I was going to learn so many things, see so many new things.   Perhaps it was the emotion tied to the memory that I needed to remember: hope and joy about the future, anticipation that things are going to be great.  I have been running short on these lately.  It seems to be a more a rare commodity in adulthood.
Perhaps a person craves hope just the same as a body craves physical nutrients.  We need it.

  The way memories rise from the depths of subconsciousness with just one word or image is incredible.  The more the connections that can be made in a web of ideas, the easier it is to bring an idea of item to mind.  And then there are those little things that you don't even know you still remember that just bubble up surprisingly with the right trigger and make you smile.  Perhaps everything we experience is all still there resting somewhere in the subconscious.

  

  

Fighting Aquification

April 12, 2015

Down into the haunting depths she plummeted.  Awakened to find herself surrounded by copious amounts of stringy tendrils, some grasp blindly and some that stung.  Eyeless morphing mushroom heads billowed elegantly in the deep blue.  Their translucent bodies danced in rhythm along the undulating wash and ebb.

An alien she, a morsel for the taking, beating breathless wound in strands of kelp.  A foreign sunken forest seated amid the unending blue.  Waving, winding fronds cover the shadowy towers leading to the sandy bottom lost below.  A mortal creature with a life measured in few heartbeats throbbing loud in her ears….

Do you ever feel like you are drowning, not literally, but wound up in the necessities of life so tightly that who you are as an individual is pulled into the depths?  I do. Obligations have a way of sucking the life out of a person if permitted.  I bear and have borne many titles.  Some of the more pleasant being: mom, wife, daughter, athlete, artist, seamstress, bookworm.  Some titles I have desired more than others.  Some come with what you're dealt in life, like cancer patient, cancer survivor, and totally derail your best laid plans that lead to those sought after titles like: master's degree, veterinarian, scientist, doctor or even physicist.  Nerd, loser, geek, dog, horse are those slapped on by others and hard to shake.
I never did fit in well in school post kindergarten.  I learned to hide my emotions pretty quick.  Build a wall and crawl into your shell.  The problem is that when you suppress sadness, you don't feel happiness to its truest heights either.  When you block pain, joy doesn't radiate as brilliantly.  Bring on in fatigue and you begin to feel numb.

And the constant tug-o-war means that eventually under the pressure of life, duty and necessity either something has to give or one's sanity will snap.  That or you keep at a driving march until you drop.  So the intellectual me got shoved now deep into a box and stored for later when I had time to do more than just survive life.  I put me up on a shelf so long ago so that I could care for those I love.  I became less so they could grow.  Motherhood, while one of the greatest experiences, can be all consuming.  The problem is that part of me that so long ago that in youthful exuberance dreamed dreams of writing grand stories and filling huge canvases with masterpieces awakes to find that these grand plans for the future have not come to fruition, but rather seem to have drifted even farther away from the shores of possibility what with all the responsibility and heaviness of life, my little boat of dreams is in threat of sinking into oblivion under the weight of its heavyhearted cargo.  My faith has kept me afloat.

 To dissuade any perceptions that I would have done anything differently, I state the following: I love family and I would do it all again.  Our family has more than our fair share of health issues.  The biggie being Hirschsprungs Disease.  Our son had a rough start to life.  It took all I had to help him survive through those first few years of life.  He is a tough, determined little fellow and I am proud of him.  Maybe I'll tell his story in a blog some day soon.  He is one amazing kid. (Of course I am totally biased.)

This is where I take this blog in a different direction.  Thus far dear reader, I realize that I have kept you at arms length.  Allowed only a few glimpses at who I am lest I be rejected as an unworthy read or being found to be made of glass and entirely fragile, not to mention see through.  Appearing weak isn't anything anyone wants and yet, sometimes it's necessary to be vulnerable in order to be understood. Fear of failure and fear that I do not make the bar have kept me from expressing personal opinions other than those impish inklings leaking out through my fictitious little darlings I dare share.

And thus I find myself fighting aquification, attempting to untangle myself from the kelp forest of self-doubt and struggle to the surface to gasp for air and maybe find a way to that golden shores of balance between my stay at home mommy life and intellectual satisfaction.  And perhaps, I'll stop writing in circles in order to build up a wall of words to protect myself.

(And maybe I will admit that I too, just like the rest of the human race have been conditioned to take up the quest for the golden goblet of success though I am not entirely sure I know what it actually looks like or if it actually holds any water.)

Fine Tuning

Oct 15, 2013

Fine Tuning

Fine tuning and fine tuning,

Only to find its all made of sand.

A lifetime’s work turned to dust,

All in a moment’s breath.

What is humanity to the Hand of God?

The tides turn, pitch and roll.

We scurry like ants as the sun

            And moon go round.

All to find and gather the things

            We most desire.

As they scatter like ashes in the wind.

Leaving loved ones tender moments

For labour in hopes of earning more.

But all that glitters is not gold,

Fire destroys, wind blows down

And plagues strike.

The most precious things,

The time with those that matter

Will be what is missed most

When the hourglass runs empty.

For autumn leaves fall

And winter comes for all.

No one knows the number of breaths

They will draw.

Store up the golden moments,

Hold your child’s hand.  Hug them tightly,

For they will grow and one day soon away

True treasures worth is to raise them right.

Wandering

June 10 2006  

Broken, but sombrely beautiful.

Breeze blowing through

Dark corners, mysterious unknown.

Hope hiding somewhere.

Fluttering leaves, shaken but standing firm.

Roots deep down in the secret place,

Heart broken and mended over and over again.

Love comes in and washes the dirt away.

Life starts again.

Routine restored, then broken,

Valleys and hills, He is there for all.

Waves wash away the sandcastle,

Rebuild on the rock.

Constant flow and ebb,

Time and time again, Eternal One,

God never changes.

Nothing else is stable.

Nothing else is permanent.

Hope helps me rise again.

All on my way home,

The narrow road is not easy.

My Guide is surefooted, but I am not.

I trip.  I fall.  I stand up.

I trip.  I fall.  I stand up.

I should stay in his footsteps.