Moxie Monday: Rebuild
Kick start your week with a lil' moxie!
Fiction Friday: [I'm Still Here]
I hate the beeping.
I know I shouldn’t
since it’s a
constant reminder
that I’m alive.
But I do.
I do because
it also reminds me
that no one believes
I’m still here.
My mother visits.
She holds my hand,
but I know.
I know she thinks
I’m just a shell.
The lifeless body
of the daughter
she doesn’t know,
doesn’t realize,
is still here.
If she knew,
she wouldn’t
talk about
how close she is
to giving up hope.
She wouldn’t lament
over all the things
she never
had a chance
to tell me.
She would know
I heard her.
Every word. Every time.
Even over
the relentless beeping.
Moxie Monday: Grow Everyday
Kick start your week with a lil' moxie!
Fiction Friday: [A Change of Scenery]
[This week's Fiction Friday is my submission for Scene Stealers #21. Scene Stealers is a fun writing prompt from Write to Done where they provide the first two--or in this case three--sentences and limit your word count to 350. Unfortunately this time I blew past the word limit. Enjoy!]
She looked up from her writing. Was that a creak? But she’d oiled the hinges just yesterday.
Sallie’s fingers froze over the keyboard. She held her breath and listened intently in hopes of dissipating the fear. As the sound of her heart pounded in her ears, she really started to regret leaving the city.
Go to the country, her agent suggested, get a change of scenery.
A sense of dread, lurking just below the surface, had struck her from the moment she arrived. She’d attributed it to her overblown imagination and gone for a walk, hoping to combat her anxiety. Strolling along the quiet dirt road, she was drawn in by the hypnotic flow of the rolling hills and the graceful beauty of the grazing horses. In her trance-like state, she felt a sense of calm wash over her.
Then she came upon the sign. Spotted with rust and partly covered by vines, it should have been easy to miss, but she’d seen it, clear as day.
Friendship Cemetery 1773
Suddenly, she was standing on an overgrown path with no recollection of how she’d gotten there. At her feet, weeds snaked their way through cracked pieces of stone. In front of her, a short, stone stacked wall surrounded long forgotten tombstones. Her mind told her to run, but her body had other ideas.
The pebbles crunched beneath her feet—screaming through the quiet—as she breached the entrance to the cemetery. Her panic growing with each step. Her desperation to turn around growing even faster.
She finally stopped in front of an arched tombstone that had broken in two. It was weathered, but she could just make out the inscription across the bottom piece: April 1778 – Dec 1862. Her breathing grew shallow as she looked down and found her toes touching the top half that lay face down, on the ground. Reaching out to pick it up, her mind screamed in protest. She read the inscription and her blood ran cold. Her hands shook as the stone slipped through her fingers, breaking in two as it hit the ground.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
The banging brought her back and she jumped at the sound.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
It was coming from beneath her feet. It was coming from the grave.
She scrambled out of the cemetery, jumping over the wall. Too afraid to look back at the broken tombstone that lay on a bed of dead leaves. The tombstone that bore the name Sallie Fleming.
Her name.
Now, sitting at her laptop in the quaint little farmhouse, Sallie clasped her hands over her mouth to hold in a blood curdling scream. She could taste the saltiness of the tears that seeped their way to her palms. Closing her eyes, the sound that had followed the creaking felt even closer.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
As she opened her eyes, a scream ripped from her throat right before her heart stopped.
Moxie Monday: Knowing is Half the Battle
Kick start your week with a lil' moxie!
Fiction Friday: [Toeing the Line]
Just the thought of standing too close to the platform edge scared her. She’d heard the stories, although rare, of some demented psycho pushing a fellow commuter onto the tracks. There’s no way to survive getting hit by a New York City subway train. No way.
Across the platform a woman stands so close to the edge that both feet are on the bumpy yellow strip. The yellow strip you’re supposed to stand behind. Behind. How does she not know this?
The sound of the metal beast nearing causes a tightness in her chest and a shortness of her breath. As much as she didn’t want to die via subway collision, she didn’t want to witness it either.
Regardless, she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Away from the calm that never left the woman’s face. Her nonchalance as she teetered on the brink of death. She couldn’t comprehend the woman’s bravery. Couldn’t imagine what it was like not to flinch in the face of danger.
But she wanted to. She wanted to understand. She wanted to know what it was like to live, for one moment, not drowning in fear.
Screeching rocks her back to reality--surrounded by commuters plugging their ears against the grating of wheel to track. She watches as the woman, head aloft, disappears into the crowded car. She’s gone. Lost within the sea of black wool coats and free newspapers.
The intercom crackles above and, through the static, she knows her train will be arriving soon. Heart thumping and mind racing, she makes a decision her mind hasn’t quite registered. The platform vibrates under her feet as the train growls into the station blowing her hair back and away from her face. Startled and confused, she looks down. A sense of hope whirls around her--mixing with the gust from the train--as she finds her right foot firmly planted across the yellow line.
Moxie Monday: Heal Strong
Kick start your week with a lil' moxie!
Fiction Friday: [The Trouble With Caring]
Lights from street lamps sparkle and spread into abstract shapes as the rain pours down on the windshield. The urgent squeak of the wipers echo through the car, but do little to help Oliver see the road ahead. It hadn’t rained in weeks and the roads were slick, but he had no time to think about it.
Time was ticking, of the essence and every other cliché related to life or death situations. Slick roads were the least of his concerns.
The message was clear and if he was late, she would die.
He pulls himself closer to the steering wheel and scrunches his neck, hoping to see how far he’s gotten. A beam of light penetrates the curtain of rain and travels across the windshield. The lighthouse.
He’s close.
Vivian had gotten dressed and left for work, as usual, without a word. Their marriage had been slowly disintegrating for years now. And as the kids grew older and left home, it had become a competition of who cared less.
He no longer hid the affair he’d been having with their former nanny—and Vivian invited her for dinner. She started stepping out with the tennis instructor at the clubhouse—and Oliver signed up for lessons with him. The volleying, he knew, had gone on for too long. He’d grown tired of the antics and was ready to file for divorce.
He was surprised when she’d called him that evening, and even more so when she’d left a voicemail, after it had gone unanswered.
She'd had enough and decided to take her life. At 5 ‘clock she was going to jump from the lighthouse. The lighthouse that had once been their special place. She’d only given him the details because she knew he wouldn’t care enough to stop her—their love too far gone.
Oliver had reached the elevator before the message ended, his secretary calling behind him about a meeting in ten.
The message.
Sitting in its cradle, he reaches over to his phone and hits the voicemail button. As Vivian’s voice fills the car, he realizes she’d left a new one.
“Oh, Oliver. I can’t believe you were foolish enough to think I’d let you file for divorce. I haven’t suffered these last years of our marriage to be dragged through the mud and come out with nothing in the end. Now, I don’t want you to worry. I will wear the mask of the grieving widow for the sake of our children. I do need to thank you for them. And the weatherman for an accurate forecast. I can only imagine how recklessly you’re driving through this downpour. Oh…and I also have to thank the makers of the hedge trimmers I used to cut your brakes.”
Before he can react, the car hits a watery patch and hydroplanes. For the briefest of moments, he gets lost in the feeling of weightlessness before trying to right the vehicle. Jerking the wheel back and forth, the car doesn’t respond and his hands grip tighter as it slides across the road until it ends. Tumbling over the embankment, Oliver feels light as a feather.
A revelation fills his mind before he has a chance to truly grasp that these are his last moments.
Vivian has won.
Not only had she led him to his death, she proved that he had, in fact, cared more.
