She stood by the window, looking out at the falling snow, feeling alone and if she was truthful with herself, in a state of near panic. But there was nothing to be done, how you can undo the past? You can't. You either get on with it or wallow in a pool of self pity until you drown.
Rolling her shoulders to try and clear some of the tension from her neck she turned away from the bright and cheerless view, determined to set events in motion: there were things to do and not much time to do them in. It takes time to plan a murder, well it takes time to plan a murder that you want to get away with, and tempus fugit: he was coming home tomorrow and from experience she knew he would not be happy and when he wasn't happy he made sure those around him felt his displeasure, but of course those who he purportedly loved bore the full force of his stormy temper. According to him, she was the only person he loved. Lucky me she thought.
But Sarah was no longer the same woman she was yesterday, today she had been told she would be a mother for the first time and that six letter word had re-arranged her prioities quicker than any blow to her body had ever done in the past.
Her reasons for staying with him dissolved like mist in the morning sun and now for the first time in years she could clearly see the future and she was going to make sure that future did not include a man who liked to strangle her to with in an inch of her life during sex and who thought foreplay was was a euphemism for beating someone black and blue.
Sarah, asked herself one more time, could she kill another human being, even to save her unborn child?
"Yes I can", the softly spoken words floated out into the empty room and as they left her mouth so did any doubts that remained.
There was a definitive course of action, in reality it was the only option open to her. Kill the man she had once loved with all her heart to save her child's future.
Now that she had made the decision she just had to come up with a way to kill the President of the United States and get away it.
There was a way, there always is, you just have to be strong enough to walk down that road; once you set foot on it there was no turning back and no seconds chances.
"Am I strong enough?" Sarah asked herself.
Placing her hands on her flat stomach, she knew there was life growing inside her and she felt the strength flowing into her hands, running up her arms and race around her body like a jolt of white-hot lightning.
"For you child, I would tear down this building, even if I had to rip it apart stone by stone with my bare bloody hands."
The steel in her voice suprised her, for she had thought that part of her was long gone, chipped away over time until there was nothing left of her spirit but a small pile of rubble destined to be be crushed into the sands of time.
Maybe if Obama wasn't in, ah well :-)
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Sleeping it out
Slept it out this morning. Pressed the snooze button every 9 mins for 2 hours, now that's dedication!. So I've invested in one of them new fangled sunlight simulator clocks to that gently wakes you up. So here's my ode to the propect of a new dawn (bad pun, but what do you expect from a bad poet... er I mean verse making person).
http://neildixon.com/reset-your-body-clock-with-a-dawn-simulator-alarm/
The land of Nod
I sleep perchance to dream,
racing against the siren's scream,
that sound that rips and tears at my consciousness stream.
But now I must lay the siren to rest,
I risk it all with fear beating a drum upon my chest,
for she smiles in her sleep knowing her voice will always be best.
So what do I do now for my get up and go?
Why I do what is needed and capture the suns blazing glow,
now the dawn's light is mine for I can program it to show.
Tomorrow morning is it's biggest test yet,
will the digital sun rise, it will I bet,
but there's doubt in my heart and I still fret.
I've the slightest notion I'll miss the siren's fair call,
for failure of the dawn's bright light will cause me to fall,
for I will not wake, at all, at all, at all...
http://neildixon.com/reset-your-body-clock-with-a-dawn-simulator-alarm/
The land of Nod
I sleep perchance to dream,
racing against the siren's scream,
that sound that rips and tears at my consciousness stream.
But now I must lay the siren to rest,
I risk it all with fear beating a drum upon my chest,
for she smiles in her sleep knowing her voice will always be best.
So what do I do now for my get up and go?
Why I do what is needed and capture the suns blazing glow,
now the dawn's light is mine for I can program it to show.
Tomorrow morning is it's biggest test yet,
will the digital sun rise, it will I bet,
but there's doubt in my heart and I still fret.
I've the slightest notion I'll miss the siren's fair call,
for failure of the dawn's bright light will cause me to fall,
for I will not wake, at all, at all, at all...
Friday, December 12, 2008
Another poem... I mean verse.
I'm going with verse from now on, sounds more manly. I need all the help I can get :-)
I've never been drunk! I hate the taste of alchohol and there's only so many malibu rum and cokes you can stand in a night. I'm still looking for my drink, not that I get the chance to do it much anyways, so here's my ode to the national Irish sport that if it became an olympic event the paddies would win gold every time, in every category. The booze up!
Imbibe
The first tastes sweet,
the second is a treat.
But the third is different,
my buds become reticent.
By the fourth I become numb,
the sensation stripped from my tongue.
After the fifth my mind wanders,
the coin begging to be squandered.
But post sixth the switch flips and then it's water sips,
for the control never truly ever slips.
My mind forever anchored ashore,
never seeing if there's anything more.
While all the others drift out to sea,
I can only think "What about me!"
I've never been drunk! I hate the taste of alchohol and there's only so many malibu rum and cokes you can stand in a night. I'm still looking for my drink, not that I get the chance to do it much anyways, so here's my ode to the national Irish sport that if it became an olympic event the paddies would win gold every time, in every category. The booze up!
Imbibe
The first tastes sweet,
the second is a treat.
But the third is different,
my buds become reticent.
By the fourth I become numb,
the sensation stripped from my tongue.
After the fifth my mind wanders,
the coin begging to be squandered.
But post sixth the switch flips and then it's water sips,
for the control never truly ever slips.
My mind forever anchored ashore,
never seeing if there's anything more.
While all the others drift out to sea,
I can only think "What about me!"
Monday, December 8, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
The Routine :, a poem. Duh!
The Routine:
My consciousness leaps to the beep,
torn from the pleasues of the dreamers sleep,
the snooze is denial, the small rebelion begun.
But needs must and so do bills,
the 10th circle of hell awaits,
the M50 conveyor belt as broke as ever.
The days unfold the same:
work; eat; sleep; repeat.
Hell is a job to fill the virtual account.
But then, a break from the norm,
the brains lightening fires in the storm,
tears the sheeps fabric from the wolfs eyes.
Life is but natures cycle,
sometime she up and sometimes she cries,
but each day is different you just need to look with fresh eyes.
My consciousness leaps to the beep,
torn from the pleasues of the dreamers sleep,
the snooze is denial, the small rebelion begun.
But needs must and so do bills,
the 10th circle of hell awaits,
the M50 conveyor belt as broke as ever.
The days unfold the same:
work; eat; sleep; repeat.
Hell is a job to fill the virtual account.
But then, a break from the norm,
the brains lightening fires in the storm,
tears the sheeps fabric from the wolfs eyes.
Life is but natures cycle,
sometime she up and sometimes she cries,
but each day is different you just need to look with fresh eyes.
Color of...
I think I'm starting to like this poetry stuff, who knew!
Color of...
As a baby,
I was white,
pure radiance transferable.
As a man,
I'm not white,
I'm not black.
Shades of grey,
forever in flux,
never to return?
Purity of birth,
darkened with life,
until the end.
Grey becomes white,
the cycle reset,
the Journey complete.
Color of...
As a baby,
I was white,
pure radiance transferable.
As a man,
I'm not white,
I'm not black.
Shades of grey,
forever in flux,
never to return?
Purity of birth,
darkened with life,
until the end.
Grey becomes white,
the cycle reset,
the Journey complete.
Life Tattoes
This was my first poem I wrote a few months ago as a counterpoint to someones pessimistic take on life, so I tried to approach the subject from a more positive point of view to try and cheer her up.
Life Tattoes
The tears.
The blood.
The pain.
The ink that stains.
The time to rest.
The time to heal.
The time to mend.
The end.
The work,
the Art.
Life Tattoes
The tears.
The blood.
The pain.
The ink that stains.
The time to rest.
The time to heal.
The time to mend.
The end.
The work,
the Art.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Metamorphosis, a short story. Ok maybe the copy and paste formatting issue lies with microsoft and not blogger. Blogger I apologise.
Metamorphosis
The viscosity as it flowed through his half-spread fingers felt different, even the feel of it pulsating around his body had changed as if it had risen in temperature. The rhythmic movements of his hands created a continuous explosion of silver orbs that broke against his face as his momentum propelled him forward towards one of the barriers that defined the extend of this realm.
Forced to retreat back along his path with the small liquid steel spheres for company, he relished the easy at which his arms rose and fell, slicing, carving, almost clawing his way forward, battling for every inch of locomotion that his mind and body could create.
Gliding through the muted audio of the underworld, all was peaceful here but he knew such paradise was fleeting as his body betrayed him yet again and forced his face from this inverted heaven to the hellish babble that awaited his consciousness in that other plane of existence as if his soul were trapped in purgatory and he could only sample the delights of nirvana before being cast out once again into the waiting bedlam cursing his constant need to return to that forsaken place.
His stay in that reality was mercifully brief, the time it took to fill his lungs and he was once again immersed is that solitary existence where the sounds of the anarchy that raged above only reached his ears once it had been filtered by the untold billions of molecules that now separated him from perdition.
He was once more captivated by the ease at which he thundered through this environment, the motion of his arms and legs in pure synchronicity, it was as if his old form was being sloughed away and his body was been remolded into a new unknown configuration. He could feel the alteration in his surrounding, as if the change was not occurring within in but was instead coming from the Elysium that enveloped him.
He was enjoying the contradiction that this murky netherworld was more appealing than the actuality that awaited his return. He once more marveled at the subterranean illuminations that lit his path from barricade to barricade and how he wished those walls did not exist and he did not constantly need to deviate from his heading that he could instead just concentrate on the next rise and fall of his arm and kick of his leg, distilling his awareness to that single repetitive movement.
He heard a piercing shriek that sounded like the cry of a banshee and knew his time in this Eden had come to an end and he would have to journey back to the surface of reality. But he was not going back a boy, he had been reborn a man, baptized in the waters of euphoria.
Breaking the layer above him he grabbed the edge of the swimming pool and pulled himself up onto the cool ceramic tiles in one graceful motion. He looked around at the other students laughing and talking, theirs voices echoing in the large space, like harpies screeching at each other.
“Good work there Daniel, you really seemed to be improving. I’m thinking I might get you to sub in for Toby at the friendly tomorrow night, just to see how you are in competition”, Coach Morgan said to the sixteen year old boy.
“What the hell Coach! My knee’s fine I don’t need to rest it up, I can swim in tomorrows meet, we don‘t need that loser” said Tobias Mercer looking over at Daniel.
“Shut it Mercer, I say who’s on the team and who’s not, got it. Now get showered and changed before the girls team gets here, you‘ve got class to go to”, bellowed the Coach.
Daniel did not even bother to look in Toby’s direction, for he no longer mattered to him, the Daniel that was afraid of Toby and his sycophants had been washed away in the cleansing.
Daniel just nodded at the coach and walked into the locker room to shower and change, he had a study period next and wanted to get a start on the mountain of homework he received today so that he would manage to get some free time for himself over the weekend.
Striding into the locker room he spotted two of Toby’s minions from the swim team leaning against the half wall that separated the showers from the tall narrow metal lockers that the boys used to store their school clothes and swimming gear. Daniel looked at them, something he would never have done in the past, usually he would slink around these roving packs of jackals in search of a safer route to his destinations, but not any more, he felt the power flowing through his body almost to the point of what it must feel like to have an out of body experience, his flesh felt electrified, his senses heightened.
Daniel had always been a pudgy boy and an even chubbier teenager, but underneath the few extra pounds he always had a fitness level to rival many of the top athletes in the school, he was not built for the sprint but had the stamina of an endurance competitor.
As a solitary young teenager most afternoons he would cycle far and wide around his locality, from the nearby forests to the seafront that was only a stone’s throw from where he lived, and on the weekends with more time available to him he would ventured as far as the mountains climbing as high as he could in order to look down over his town, at that distance it looked no bigger than a child’s toy and it helped him put his worries into perspective, that little town was only a speck on a map and there were bigger and better things awaiting him.
He enjoyed the diversity of these locations, they made a change from the day to day life inside a concrete and stone battlefield populated by individuals who he could not seem to connect with. His peers only wanted to assert their positions in this society with petty attempts at power plays as they all sought their place in the world.
Daniel for his part had been content to let them have their jibes and took the occasional push or verbal attack as they would wish any potential victim to, with out reply or attempts at defiance.
But that was before today, he had been training hard at swimming over the summer months and now that a new year was starting in school he was ready to contest for the leadership in all things, his daily exercise routine had dropped most of the extra weight he carried and had improved his swimming ability from merely just been able to go from one end of the pool to the other without drowning to feeling at home in the water.
Today was a new day, a new year and Daniel was a new man. They had killed that young boy with their small hatreds and now like a phoenix from the flames rose something else in that boy’s place, something that did not contain the lost boy’s empathy for all life, this boy forged into a young man by the heat of a thousand insults now saw his peers as nothing but obstacles in his life path, and once he revealed his new stronger id those obstructions would remove themselves from his consciousness or be removed from it forcefully, the choice was no longer his to make. It was a simple equation, an either/or scenario.
Ignoring the two boys he turned the corner into his aisle and came face to face with Toby and another of his henchmen.
“Hey asshole, you’re gonna call the coach tomorrow morning and tell him how sick you are and can’t make the swim meet, otherwise I’m gonna break your nose, got it”, Toby said leaning against the metal door of Daniel’s locker. Daniel’s clothes were strewn all over the wet floor and the contents of his schoolbag had been tipped out at the foot of his locker.
“I don’t think so Tobias”. Daniel said.
“What the hell did you just say,” Toby snarled at Daniel pushing himself off of the locker and raging into the aisle with his fists clenched as his side and sniggers of his so called friends reverberating in his ears.
Daniel knew the time had come to reveal his nature reborn and weighed up the consequences of creating the enmity of one or generating the fear of many. That question had already been answered the moment he had called Toby Tobias, a no-no since kindergarten, one of the iron rules of the law in this jungle and to break it meant an example would need to be made of him so his course of action was laid in stone as soon as he uttered the word Tobias.
Daniel move a step closer to Toby and whispered, “Tobias”.
The enraged boy moved at Daniel with speed and his fist raised to strike a blow into Daniel’s face. Daniel had studied long and hard over the summer and practiced the required movements enough that they were burnt into his sub consciousness, he had trained his mind in this way as much as he exercised his body in the pool.
Daniel shot his right foot out driving his heel into the soft tissue below Toby’s knee, the knee that had been supported in the pool with a strapping that Toby had removed once back in the locker room. Toby’s menacing advance crumbled just as he did as he went crashing down on his knees onto the wet ceramic floor of the changing room with a strangled cry of pain, the boy’s cry turned into a wail of agony as his damaged knee further crushed itself against the hard tile surface, Daniel stepped forward and grabbed the crying boy’s face in his hands and drove his knee into the nose of his enemy with enough force to break it but not to send shards of bone into the boy’s brain.
“What the hell is going on in here,” the Coach shouted as he walked into the room to hears the cries of Toby as he lay on the floor in a semi-conscious state.
“Tobias slipped on the wet floor and he hit his face off one of the lockers,” Daniel calmly told the coach while he looked at the three other boys, each in turn, daring them to contradict him.
“Jesus but you’re a bloody fool Mercer, looks like you’ve screwed up your knee in the process. You two pick him up and get his to the nurses office, I’ll follow you down when I get the chance,” Coach said to the two boys now standing away from the shower wall in a state of shock. Their world had just been flipped on its head with two blows to the alpha male that had left him whimpering like a lost puppy.
“Well, move it dumb asses before he bleeds to death all over my locker room floor,” Coached said rousing them from their catatonia.
“And on your way back from the nurses office drop into the janitor and tell him to get up here and clean this bloody mess up.”
Jumping at the coach’s commands they picked the crying Toby up and proceeded to half carry, half drag him miserably down the aisles of metal corridors on the way to get some medical aid.
The coach looked over at Daniels clothes and school books lying on the ground and turned to the last remaining member of Toby’s posse.
“Now I don’t think Daniel here dumped his own stuff on the wet floor, so what I’m suggest to you Charlie Moore is that you place every last item back the way you found them and then take yourself down to the principles office and explain what you did here, got it boy?” the coach asked Charlie, turning away without waited for a reply.
“Daniel, back to the pool, I checked and you’ve only got a study period next class so I want you in that pool training hard for the next hour, it looks like we’re going to have a full time opening on the team and you’re gonna have to fill that spot for now.”
Daniel looked at Charlie as the boy began picking up his clothes and noticed that he would not make eye contact with him. The fear of many he thought to himself as he walked back out to the poolside and moved to the middle lane and began some stretches.
The girls swim team moved out from the dressing room and he watched impassionedly as they filed pass him, some snickering as they believed they were looking at the Daniel of old, and some sticking there noses in the air ignoring him.
But Daniel was not interested in these girls for he had caught sight of Grace Monroe walking towards him, she had pushed her long raven black hair up into her swim cap and was hiding away the remaining errant strands when she noticed him.
“Hi Daniel,” she smiled as she moved past him.
Daniel smiled back and as watched her dive into the pool barely causing a ripple on its surface. Grace smoothly carved her way through the water and effortlessly flipped into a turn and returned to her starting point. She stopped briefly, looking up at Daniel.
“Are you going to stand there all day or were you thinking of swimming?” she asked, winking at him and diving back under the water. Daniel smiled at that and executed a perfect dive back into his domain.
The young Poseidon had found his Amphitrite.
The viscosity as it flowed through his half-spread fingers felt different, even the feel of it pulsating around his body had changed as if it had risen in temperature. The rhythmic movements of his hands created a continuous explosion of silver orbs that broke against his face as his momentum propelled him forward towards one of the barriers that defined the extend of this realm.
Forced to retreat back along his path with the small liquid steel spheres for company, he relished the easy at which his arms rose and fell, slicing, carving, almost clawing his way forward, battling for every inch of locomotion that his mind and body could create.
Gliding through the muted audio of the underworld, all was peaceful here but he knew such paradise was fleeting as his body betrayed him yet again and forced his face from this inverted heaven to the hellish babble that awaited his consciousness in that other plane of existence as if his soul were trapped in purgatory and he could only sample the delights of nirvana before being cast out once again into the waiting bedlam cursing his constant need to return to that forsaken place.
His stay in that reality was mercifully brief, the time it took to fill his lungs and he was once again immersed is that solitary existence where the sounds of the anarchy that raged above only reached his ears once it had been filtered by the untold billions of molecules that now separated him from perdition.
He was once more captivated by the ease at which he thundered through this environment, the motion of his arms and legs in pure synchronicity, it was as if his old form was being sloughed away and his body was been remolded into a new unknown configuration. He could feel the alteration in his surrounding, as if the change was not occurring within in but was instead coming from the Elysium that enveloped him.
He was enjoying the contradiction that this murky netherworld was more appealing than the actuality that awaited his return. He once more marveled at the subterranean illuminations that lit his path from barricade to barricade and how he wished those walls did not exist and he did not constantly need to deviate from his heading that he could instead just concentrate on the next rise and fall of his arm and kick of his leg, distilling his awareness to that single repetitive movement.
He heard a piercing shriek that sounded like the cry of a banshee and knew his time in this Eden had come to an end and he would have to journey back to the surface of reality. But he was not going back a boy, he had been reborn a man, baptized in the waters of euphoria.
Breaking the layer above him he grabbed the edge of the swimming pool and pulled himself up onto the cool ceramic tiles in one graceful motion. He looked around at the other students laughing and talking, theirs voices echoing in the large space, like harpies screeching at each other.
“Good work there Daniel, you really seemed to be improving. I’m thinking I might get you to sub in for Toby at the friendly tomorrow night, just to see how you are in competition”, Coach Morgan said to the sixteen year old boy.
“What the hell Coach! My knee’s fine I don’t need to rest it up, I can swim in tomorrows meet, we don‘t need that loser” said Tobias Mercer looking over at Daniel.
“Shut it Mercer, I say who’s on the team and who’s not, got it. Now get showered and changed before the girls team gets here, you‘ve got class to go to”, bellowed the Coach.
Daniel did not even bother to look in Toby’s direction, for he no longer mattered to him, the Daniel that was afraid of Toby and his sycophants had been washed away in the cleansing.
Daniel just nodded at the coach and walked into the locker room to shower and change, he had a study period next and wanted to get a start on the mountain of homework he received today so that he would manage to get some free time for himself over the weekend.
Striding into the locker room he spotted two of Toby’s minions from the swim team leaning against the half wall that separated the showers from the tall narrow metal lockers that the boys used to store their school clothes and swimming gear. Daniel looked at them, something he would never have done in the past, usually he would slink around these roving packs of jackals in search of a safer route to his destinations, but not any more, he felt the power flowing through his body almost to the point of what it must feel like to have an out of body experience, his flesh felt electrified, his senses heightened.
Daniel had always been a pudgy boy and an even chubbier teenager, but underneath the few extra pounds he always had a fitness level to rival many of the top athletes in the school, he was not built for the sprint but had the stamina of an endurance competitor.
As a solitary young teenager most afternoons he would cycle far and wide around his locality, from the nearby forests to the seafront that was only a stone’s throw from where he lived, and on the weekends with more time available to him he would ventured as far as the mountains climbing as high as he could in order to look down over his town, at that distance it looked no bigger than a child’s toy and it helped him put his worries into perspective, that little town was only a speck on a map and there were bigger and better things awaiting him.
He enjoyed the diversity of these locations, they made a change from the day to day life inside a concrete and stone battlefield populated by individuals who he could not seem to connect with. His peers only wanted to assert their positions in this society with petty attempts at power plays as they all sought their place in the world.
Daniel for his part had been content to let them have their jibes and took the occasional push or verbal attack as they would wish any potential victim to, with out reply or attempts at defiance.
But that was before today, he had been training hard at swimming over the summer months and now that a new year was starting in school he was ready to contest for the leadership in all things, his daily exercise routine had dropped most of the extra weight he carried and had improved his swimming ability from merely just been able to go from one end of the pool to the other without drowning to feeling at home in the water.
Today was a new day, a new year and Daniel was a new man. They had killed that young boy with their small hatreds and now like a phoenix from the flames rose something else in that boy’s place, something that did not contain the lost boy’s empathy for all life, this boy forged into a young man by the heat of a thousand insults now saw his peers as nothing but obstacles in his life path, and once he revealed his new stronger id those obstructions would remove themselves from his consciousness or be removed from it forcefully, the choice was no longer his to make. It was a simple equation, an either/or scenario.
Ignoring the two boys he turned the corner into his aisle and came face to face with Toby and another of his henchmen.
“Hey asshole, you’re gonna call the coach tomorrow morning and tell him how sick you are and can’t make the swim meet, otherwise I’m gonna break your nose, got it”, Toby said leaning against the metal door of Daniel’s locker. Daniel’s clothes were strewn all over the wet floor and the contents of his schoolbag had been tipped out at the foot of his locker.
“I don’t think so Tobias”. Daniel said.
“What the hell did you just say,” Toby snarled at Daniel pushing himself off of the locker and raging into the aisle with his fists clenched as his side and sniggers of his so called friends reverberating in his ears.
Daniel knew the time had come to reveal his nature reborn and weighed up the consequences of creating the enmity of one or generating the fear of many. That question had already been answered the moment he had called Toby Tobias, a no-no since kindergarten, one of the iron rules of the law in this jungle and to break it meant an example would need to be made of him so his course of action was laid in stone as soon as he uttered the word Tobias.
Daniel move a step closer to Toby and whispered, “Tobias”.
The enraged boy moved at Daniel with speed and his fist raised to strike a blow into Daniel’s face. Daniel had studied long and hard over the summer and practiced the required movements enough that they were burnt into his sub consciousness, he had trained his mind in this way as much as he exercised his body in the pool.
Daniel shot his right foot out driving his heel into the soft tissue below Toby’s knee, the knee that had been supported in the pool with a strapping that Toby had removed once back in the locker room. Toby’s menacing advance crumbled just as he did as he went crashing down on his knees onto the wet ceramic floor of the changing room with a strangled cry of pain, the boy’s cry turned into a wail of agony as his damaged knee further crushed itself against the hard tile surface, Daniel stepped forward and grabbed the crying boy’s face in his hands and drove his knee into the nose of his enemy with enough force to break it but not to send shards of bone into the boy’s brain.
“What the hell is going on in here,” the Coach shouted as he walked into the room to hears the cries of Toby as he lay on the floor in a semi-conscious state.
“Tobias slipped on the wet floor and he hit his face off one of the lockers,” Daniel calmly told the coach while he looked at the three other boys, each in turn, daring them to contradict him.
“Jesus but you’re a bloody fool Mercer, looks like you’ve screwed up your knee in the process. You two pick him up and get his to the nurses office, I’ll follow you down when I get the chance,” Coach said to the two boys now standing away from the shower wall in a state of shock. Their world had just been flipped on its head with two blows to the alpha male that had left him whimpering like a lost puppy.
“Well, move it dumb asses before he bleeds to death all over my locker room floor,” Coached said rousing them from their catatonia.
“And on your way back from the nurses office drop into the janitor and tell him to get up here and clean this bloody mess up.”
Jumping at the coach’s commands they picked the crying Toby up and proceeded to half carry, half drag him miserably down the aisles of metal corridors on the way to get some medical aid.
The coach looked over at Daniels clothes and school books lying on the ground and turned to the last remaining member of Toby’s posse.
“Now I don’t think Daniel here dumped his own stuff on the wet floor, so what I’m suggest to you Charlie Moore is that you place every last item back the way you found them and then take yourself down to the principles office and explain what you did here, got it boy?” the coach asked Charlie, turning away without waited for a reply.
“Daniel, back to the pool, I checked and you’ve only got a study period next class so I want you in that pool training hard for the next hour, it looks like we’re going to have a full time opening on the team and you’re gonna have to fill that spot for now.”
Daniel looked at Charlie as the boy began picking up his clothes and noticed that he would not make eye contact with him. The fear of many he thought to himself as he walked back out to the poolside and moved to the middle lane and began some stretches.
The girls swim team moved out from the dressing room and he watched impassionedly as they filed pass him, some snickering as they believed they were looking at the Daniel of old, and some sticking there noses in the air ignoring him.
But Daniel was not interested in these girls for he had caught sight of Grace Monroe walking towards him, she had pushed her long raven black hair up into her swim cap and was hiding away the remaining errant strands when she noticed him.
“Hi Daniel,” she smiled as she moved past him.
Daniel smiled back and as watched her dive into the pool barely causing a ripple on its surface. Grace smoothly carved her way through the water and effortlessly flipped into a turn and returned to her starting point. She stopped briefly, looking up at Daniel.
“Are you going to stand there all day or were you thinking of swimming?” she asked, winking at him and diving back under the water. Daniel smiled at that and executed a perfect dive back into his domain.
The young Poseidon had found his Amphitrite.
The way of things:, a poem I guess. For some reason I think coldplay lyric's inspired it.
The way of things:
They walked in his shadow,
men of little consequence,
sheep following the Shepherd,
speaking of him in hushed tones.
But at the end of all things,
they jostled with each other,
a place of high vantage,
for the fall of a titan.
The rise of a star,
beauty of a moonless night,
followed inevitably by morning sun,
sears the starshine from sight.
And then. The king is dead. Long live the king.
They walked in his shadow,
men of little consequence,
sheep following the Shepherd,
speaking of him in hushed tones.
But at the end of all things,
they jostled with each other,
a place of high vantage,
for the fall of a titan.
The rise of a star,
beauty of a moonless night,
followed inevitably by morning sun,
sears the starshine from sight.
And then. The king is dead. Long live the king.
Internal combustion enginer, a poem - we learned about writing poems in creative writing class so I thought I'd try it out, go on it's ok to laugh!
Internal combustion engine
At first the warmth of her smile,
fleet of foot but heavy of fall,
a treasure that required the tease,
the work insignificant to the reward.
Then came the heat of her body,
her passion igniting my soul,
not too hot to handle,
merely part of the whole.
Finally her inferno of love,
burning away any doubts left,
fusing my being to hers,
smouldered with an everlasting fire.
Spark to an eternal torch,
warming my spirit for scores,
sometimes it's a slight flicker,
and sometimes a bright flame.
Purgatory, a short story - forgive bloggers crappy copy and paste, I ain't gonna realign that sucker, no no!
Purgatory
Will heard the knock at the front door and turned over to see that it hadn’t woke Sarah and she was still breathing softly in her sleep. He quietly got up and picking the flashlight of the bed stand beside him headed down the stairs to the front door feeling the chill in the unheated house, it was only October and already the need for central heating was becoming apparent, well that would just be one more hardship they would have to endure he thought trying not to feel overwhelmed by the situation they were in.
The security chain was already on the door and he opened it without hesitation so another knock might not fall and wake Sarah up.
Standing outside in the cold night air was his neighbor Jeff Morgan, his face lit up ghoulishly by a small lantern he was holding up to his chest with his left hand.
“Was is it Jeff, it’s two-thirty, is everything alright?” Will whispered removing the security chain from the door and opening it up for the man.
As soon as the door opened Jeff swung his right hand up and plugged the large kitchen knife he had been hiding against his leg into Will’s chest and pulling Will back from the door he fell on top him of the stricken man as he collapsed onto the hall mat that had welcomed his murderer into his home on so many occasions.
“It’s the end of the world didn’t you know and I mean to get me some of that wife of yours before we all starve to death. Well that and I’ll be taking your generator with me, you or that haughty bitch upstairs won’t be needed it,” Jeff said to the dying man with his mouth close to Will’s ear.
Jeff slowly pulled the knife from Will’s chest and climbed up the stairs to the bedroom with Will eyes following him every stealthy step of the way.
Will couldn’t so much as whisper a warning to his sleeping wife and all he could do was look at the empty stairs almost invisible in the darkness and feel his life blood slowly spill from the wound in his chest. He heard the bedroom door quietly open and then close and felt an anguish he never thought possible as the frigid air flowed in from the opened door and the night sounds prevented him from hearing anything more from upstairs.
#
Sarah woke to the feeling of cold steel against her neck and the warm wet slobber of someone licking her face, coming slowly out of a deep sleep she thought to herself that we don’t own a dog and Will would never lick her cheek like she was a lollipop.
She then smelt the sour body odor and her gag reflex brought her into full consciousness as a mans weight fell on her pinning her to the bed.
“Scream all you want bitch, there’s no one around here that’s gonna help you,” Jeff said to Sarah slapping her across the face.
His weight falling on her had knocked the air out of her lungs and she was in no condition to speak let alone scream. Her survival instincts kicked in and she reached under the pillow behind her head for the small knife sheathed in its leather scabbard. Feeling her breasts been roughly fondled through her night shirt and meaningless grunts from her intended rapist Sarah raised her left hand to draw Jeff’s attention in that direction while with her right hand she plunged the knife in the side of his neck with all the strength she could muster.
Jeff fell onto his back on the bed making gurgling sounds as his feet scrabbled on the bedclothes as if he could somehow escape the sudden bloom of pain in his neck, quickly the strength left his body as the blood flowed out through the knife wound and the hand that was clamped there around the base of the blade still sticking out of his neck, trying to stem the blood loss.
A lantern that Sarah had never seen before was sitting on her bedside table and she could see the macabre spectacle of Jeff Morgan’s looming death, she wrinkled her nose at the smell as the man lost control of his bladder and bowels.
He looked near death so she picked up her now useless bedside lamp and swung it around by its cord and brought it crashing into Jeff face breaking his nose and shattering the light into a hundred pieces that cut a myriad of bloody wounds on the mans face. She looked at his ruined face and saw his eyes roll back into his head. That was good enough for her, she quickly clambered across the bed and pulled the knife from her neighbors neck with a sickening slosh.
“Will!” Sarah shouted grabbing her sweatpants, quickly putting them on and heading for the bedroom door.
“WILLIAM!”
#
The sound of something breaking woke Will and he found that he had passed out and had let his hand fall from his wound causing untold blood loss.
“Will!” he heard Sarah shout and a brief flower of hope blossomed inside him that maybe she was ok, thought how he did not know.
“WILLIAM!” he heard her scream from the landing at the top of the stairs and finally he saw her bathed in the glow of the a lantern she was holding in one hand that caused a crimson glint to flash of the bloody knife she held in her other.
“Oh Jesus, Will, no!” she said rushing down the stairs to his side and gently picking his head up and laying it in her lap and pressing her hand onto the wound that was now only trickling blood while tenderly brushing away his thick brown hair that was plastered to his forehead with sweat.
“Tell me you killed that bastard,” Will said surprised to find his voice had return, weak and coarse, but his voice none the less.
“I killed him, now hush, save your energy, I going to get help,” she said.
Will looked up into her green eyes and thought how beautiful her strawberry blonde hair looked in the soft light tussled with sleep. He tried to move his hand to run it through those locks but found that it would not move. Neither did Sarah despite her intentions.
“I love you Sarah, I loved you before I met you and I’ll love you long after I’m gone from this world,” he said softly.
The tears spilled from her eyes and splashed down onto his cheeks, they felt cool and clean and her hand felt soft as she brushed them from his face. He caught her smell among the many others that battled for acknowledgement, that curious combination of jasmine and lavender that had accompanied them when they made love; fucked; laid in each other arms in sleep; holding hands while talking a late evening walk. A thousand other times in other situations, that smell meant Sarah to him. He had never told her that.
“Tell my daughter I love her and I‘ll always be with you both, looking over you,” Will said closing his eyes for the last time.
Sarah placed her fingers against his neck checking for a pulse and finding nothing dropped her head onto her husband's chest and cried for all that was and all that might have been. She stayed that way for the next twenty minutes holding the man she loved with all her being until she heard a thump from the upstairs bedroom.
Sarah gently crossed Will’s arms across his chest and closed the open front door. She moved into the sitting room with its bay windows looking out onto the large green area shared by all the houses in the estate, a place where the local kids banded together to play every game imaginable and where only a month ago they had enjoyed a barbeque with all their neighbors basking in the unseasonal heat of a welcomed Indian summer. The grass was empty now and the pitch black of the night just reminded her of the dire trouble she was in.
Five days ago Will and Sarah had woken up to a commotion outside in the street and had looked over at their alarm clock to find its screen was blank. Will had checked his cell phone but that too was dark and his digital watch was in the same condition. Sarah’s spring wound gold watch had the time at 7:30, the sun was already starting to rear its head for the day and was sneaking in where the curtains met in the middle.
They had gone outside to find the world they had known had come to an end, something had happened to cause all the electronic devices in the town to stop functioning, that first day had been one of pure terror as everyone realized their cars wouldn’t start, their cell phones wouldn’t turn on and there was no electricity coming to their houses. People had been up for hours and had found that this was not just a problem in their estate but in the entire town and someone remembered from the previous nights late news that countries in the western hemisphere were experiencing power blackouts due to unusual solar conditions.
The next five days had been one of increasing uncertainty as shops were looted in the dark of night and the police were no where to be seen, and there was no way to call for them.
The first news of atrocities had reached them yesterday and they weren’t sure whether these were just the fear addled ramblings of some confused minds or actualities that would soon be visiting their quite town.
Last night Will had given her the small knife that belonged to his father and asked her to keep it with her at all times, as first she had baulked at the idea of carrying a lethal weapon around with her everywhere she went but she'd seen that it gave Will some peace of mind so for his sake she had kept it close at hand and even went to sleep with it under the pillow at his insistence tonight. Before they went to bed last night Will had made her go some through kata they had learned in the martial arts classes they had taken over the last two years.
That though brought a wry smile to Sarah’s face as she brushed the tears from he cheeks and unceremoniously flung the coffee table off the sitting room rug. She dragged the rug out beside her dead husband's body and remembered how they had come to be in the martial arts class in the first place as she delicately moved him onto the golden-red colored rug they had picked out together last Christmas.
They had agreed to join up for some night classes to keep themselves entertained during the winter months but could not come to any consensus as to what class they should take, Will wanted martial arts 101 and Sarah had wanted creative writing. They had compromised and decided to go to both and had enjoyed themselves, when last winter came around they decided to join up again for some more classes and the same debate had ensued. Finally they had decided to go to the open night for the classes and to separate and pick a class that both of them would have to attend. This time Sarah picked the advanced Martial arts class as she had found she enjoyed the almost balletic movements involved in learning the various routines or kata as their instructor called the training routines. She had been waiting by the refreshments stand when he had come up to her with his choice, advanced creative writing, she remembered how hard she had laughed at that and the look of bemusement on his face before she told him about her pick. That was how they were together, they just complemented and completed each other.
Sarah had dragged the rug with Will’s body on it out into the back garden and she had begun digging his grave there, this was their place, they had chosen this house and fallen more deeply in love here over the last four years than either of them would have thought possible and she could not think of any place better that he would like to be buried and now as the niceties of society were slipping away she guessed no one but her would care where she buried her husband, the only man she had ever loved.
#
She toiled long and hard into the night with at first only the starshine to light her task, and then nearer the end the dawning day began helping out.
Just as the sun broke the horizon over the nearby ocean Sarah pulled her husbands body down into the hole in the earth, and before wrapping him up in the rug she tenderly kissed his now cold lips and cut a lock of her hair off and tied it around his wedding finger, just so he would have something of her while he slumbered here and then she cut a lock of his hair and placed it into the pocket of her night shirt, an old shirt belonging to Will that she liked sleeping in, just so she could carry a piece of him with her on he hard road ahead of her.
Climbing out she began the process of replacing the sods of earth back from where they came, turning a hole in the earth into a grave. The tears fell from her onto the dark moist soil and she shoveled it onto the rapidly disappearing shroud. Her blurred vision mixed with that of the early morning sunlight to create a blinding white radiance that spoke of god and obscured the object of her task until finally the strength left her body and she fell to her knees beside her husbands grave and wailed her anguish at the sky, at god, at anyone that would listen.
The sounds of neighbor’s concerns roused her from an almost catatonic state as she picked herself up off of the ground and wiped the tears from her eyes that had left trails down her soil covered cheeks as if her sorrow would be forever tattooed on her face for all to see.
She ignored the queries from the people leaning out of their windows and picked up the shovel and walked into the garden shed to pick up some supplies for her final trial.
#
Sarah opened her bedroom door and found Jeff where she had left him, he had come to and knocked over Will’s night table in an effort to get out of the bed, but he did not have the energy and had fallen back against the headboard and now looked at her with baleful eyes curiously untouched in his ragged face.
The hours it had taken Sarah to bury Will had not been kind to the murder and he looked like a resurrected corpse, the blood on his face had congealed into a horrendous sight and the room stank of feces and urine.
He tried to talk but all that came out was a guttural grunt that caused bubbles of blood to form in the area that had once been his nose.
Sarah felt her fury ignite burning away her sorrow and replacing it with a rage that seemed to fill the room with electricity. She dropped the gas can and hemp garden sack on the floor of the room she once loved spending time in, and swung the shovel with all the force her soaring rage gave her at Jeff’s neck, the sharp edge of the tool biting deep into tissue and bone and burying itself in the bed’s headboard.
The decapitated head fell from the bed and out of her sight.
#
The crowd had gathered outside Sarah and Will’s house but no one had entered to see if she or Will needed their help and it was a sign of the times Sarah thought to herself as she strode from the house out into her driveway in the bright morning sunshine and stood before the assembled neighbors, smoke bellowed from her bedroom where she had dowsed the corpse in gasoline and set it alight.
She was a sight to behold, her clothes were filthy from digging the grave and were covered in Will’s blood and her dirt streaked face gave her an almost demonic look. Choking black smoke curled from the house behind her and cast a rolling shadow over her.
“This is the end of times and only the righteous will survive to be taken to heaven and the rest of you will burn in the lake of fire,” Sarah screamed as she tipped open the cloth bag and Jeff Morgan’s severed head feel onto the ground at her feet.
Some in the group screamed and ran to their homes, other just stared in shock, Tracy Morgan howled in horror at the sight of her husbands decapitated head and then ran at Sarah, who punched the woman in the face knocking her unconscious.
Sarah looked down at the unconscious woman and the head of her husband and felt her tentative grip on reality slipping even further from her. There was a light touch on her arm and flinched at it Sarah turned to see her sister moving in to pull her into a hug.
Sarah’s sister Michelle lived more than one hundred miles away and with no transport and method of communication she thought she had lost her. But Michelle and her husband Mark had been on their way to give her sister a surprise visit as once Michelle had heard she was going to be an aunt she had to see her younger sister and give her a hug. When the solar event had happened there were only twenty miles outside of town and it had taken nearly five days to get to Sarah through the sparse country side, but they were here now and they would take Sarah back home with them, there was nothing for her in this town anymore.
#
The sixteen year old girl stood by her father’s grave and watched as the workmen methodically placed brick after brick in the building that would soon be her new home. She had her father’s brown hair and her mother’s fiery spirit and she would be damned it she was gonna let any reformed government tell her Mother where her husband should be buried. Her name was Hope.
Will heard the knock at the front door and turned over to see that it hadn’t woke Sarah and she was still breathing softly in her sleep. He quietly got up and picking the flashlight of the bed stand beside him headed down the stairs to the front door feeling the chill in the unheated house, it was only October and already the need for central heating was becoming apparent, well that would just be one more hardship they would have to endure he thought trying not to feel overwhelmed by the situation they were in.
The security chain was already on the door and he opened it without hesitation so another knock might not fall and wake Sarah up.
Standing outside in the cold night air was his neighbor Jeff Morgan, his face lit up ghoulishly by a small lantern he was holding up to his chest with his left hand.
“Was is it Jeff, it’s two-thirty, is everything alright?” Will whispered removing the security chain from the door and opening it up for the man.
As soon as the door opened Jeff swung his right hand up and plugged the large kitchen knife he had been hiding against his leg into Will’s chest and pulling Will back from the door he fell on top him of the stricken man as he collapsed onto the hall mat that had welcomed his murderer into his home on so many occasions.
“It’s the end of the world didn’t you know and I mean to get me some of that wife of yours before we all starve to death. Well that and I’ll be taking your generator with me, you or that haughty bitch upstairs won’t be needed it,” Jeff said to the dying man with his mouth close to Will’s ear.
Jeff slowly pulled the knife from Will’s chest and climbed up the stairs to the bedroom with Will eyes following him every stealthy step of the way.
Will couldn’t so much as whisper a warning to his sleeping wife and all he could do was look at the empty stairs almost invisible in the darkness and feel his life blood slowly spill from the wound in his chest. He heard the bedroom door quietly open and then close and felt an anguish he never thought possible as the frigid air flowed in from the opened door and the night sounds prevented him from hearing anything more from upstairs.
#
Sarah woke to the feeling of cold steel against her neck and the warm wet slobber of someone licking her face, coming slowly out of a deep sleep she thought to herself that we don’t own a dog and Will would never lick her cheek like she was a lollipop.
She then smelt the sour body odor and her gag reflex brought her into full consciousness as a mans weight fell on her pinning her to the bed.
“Scream all you want bitch, there’s no one around here that’s gonna help you,” Jeff said to Sarah slapping her across the face.
His weight falling on her had knocked the air out of her lungs and she was in no condition to speak let alone scream. Her survival instincts kicked in and she reached under the pillow behind her head for the small knife sheathed in its leather scabbard. Feeling her breasts been roughly fondled through her night shirt and meaningless grunts from her intended rapist Sarah raised her left hand to draw Jeff’s attention in that direction while with her right hand she plunged the knife in the side of his neck with all the strength she could muster.
Jeff fell onto his back on the bed making gurgling sounds as his feet scrabbled on the bedclothes as if he could somehow escape the sudden bloom of pain in his neck, quickly the strength left his body as the blood flowed out through the knife wound and the hand that was clamped there around the base of the blade still sticking out of his neck, trying to stem the blood loss.
A lantern that Sarah had never seen before was sitting on her bedside table and she could see the macabre spectacle of Jeff Morgan’s looming death, she wrinkled her nose at the smell as the man lost control of his bladder and bowels.
He looked near death so she picked up her now useless bedside lamp and swung it around by its cord and brought it crashing into Jeff face breaking his nose and shattering the light into a hundred pieces that cut a myriad of bloody wounds on the mans face. She looked at his ruined face and saw his eyes roll back into his head. That was good enough for her, she quickly clambered across the bed and pulled the knife from her neighbors neck with a sickening slosh.
“Will!” Sarah shouted grabbing her sweatpants, quickly putting them on and heading for the bedroom door.
“WILLIAM!”
#
The sound of something breaking woke Will and he found that he had passed out and had let his hand fall from his wound causing untold blood loss.
“Will!” he heard Sarah shout and a brief flower of hope blossomed inside him that maybe she was ok, thought how he did not know.
“WILLIAM!” he heard her scream from the landing at the top of the stairs and finally he saw her bathed in the glow of the a lantern she was holding in one hand that caused a crimson glint to flash of the bloody knife she held in her other.
“Oh Jesus, Will, no!” she said rushing down the stairs to his side and gently picking his head up and laying it in her lap and pressing her hand onto the wound that was now only trickling blood while tenderly brushing away his thick brown hair that was plastered to his forehead with sweat.
“Tell me you killed that bastard,” Will said surprised to find his voice had return, weak and coarse, but his voice none the less.
“I killed him, now hush, save your energy, I going to get help,” she said.
Will looked up into her green eyes and thought how beautiful her strawberry blonde hair looked in the soft light tussled with sleep. He tried to move his hand to run it through those locks but found that it would not move. Neither did Sarah despite her intentions.
“I love you Sarah, I loved you before I met you and I’ll love you long after I’m gone from this world,” he said softly.
The tears spilled from her eyes and splashed down onto his cheeks, they felt cool and clean and her hand felt soft as she brushed them from his face. He caught her smell among the many others that battled for acknowledgement, that curious combination of jasmine and lavender that had accompanied them when they made love; fucked; laid in each other arms in sleep; holding hands while talking a late evening walk. A thousand other times in other situations, that smell meant Sarah to him. He had never told her that.
“Tell my daughter I love her and I‘ll always be with you both, looking over you,” Will said closing his eyes for the last time.
Sarah placed her fingers against his neck checking for a pulse and finding nothing dropped her head onto her husband's chest and cried for all that was and all that might have been. She stayed that way for the next twenty minutes holding the man she loved with all her being until she heard a thump from the upstairs bedroom.
Sarah gently crossed Will’s arms across his chest and closed the open front door. She moved into the sitting room with its bay windows looking out onto the large green area shared by all the houses in the estate, a place where the local kids banded together to play every game imaginable and where only a month ago they had enjoyed a barbeque with all their neighbors basking in the unseasonal heat of a welcomed Indian summer. The grass was empty now and the pitch black of the night just reminded her of the dire trouble she was in.
Five days ago Will and Sarah had woken up to a commotion outside in the street and had looked over at their alarm clock to find its screen was blank. Will had checked his cell phone but that too was dark and his digital watch was in the same condition. Sarah’s spring wound gold watch had the time at 7:30, the sun was already starting to rear its head for the day and was sneaking in where the curtains met in the middle.
They had gone outside to find the world they had known had come to an end, something had happened to cause all the electronic devices in the town to stop functioning, that first day had been one of pure terror as everyone realized their cars wouldn’t start, their cell phones wouldn’t turn on and there was no electricity coming to their houses. People had been up for hours and had found that this was not just a problem in their estate but in the entire town and someone remembered from the previous nights late news that countries in the western hemisphere were experiencing power blackouts due to unusual solar conditions.
The next five days had been one of increasing uncertainty as shops were looted in the dark of night and the police were no where to be seen, and there was no way to call for them.
The first news of atrocities had reached them yesterday and they weren’t sure whether these were just the fear addled ramblings of some confused minds or actualities that would soon be visiting their quite town.
Last night Will had given her the small knife that belonged to his father and asked her to keep it with her at all times, as first she had baulked at the idea of carrying a lethal weapon around with her everywhere she went but she'd seen that it gave Will some peace of mind so for his sake she had kept it close at hand and even went to sleep with it under the pillow at his insistence tonight. Before they went to bed last night Will had made her go some through kata they had learned in the martial arts classes they had taken over the last two years.
That though brought a wry smile to Sarah’s face as she brushed the tears from he cheeks and unceremoniously flung the coffee table off the sitting room rug. She dragged the rug out beside her dead husband's body and remembered how they had come to be in the martial arts class in the first place as she delicately moved him onto the golden-red colored rug they had picked out together last Christmas.
They had agreed to join up for some night classes to keep themselves entertained during the winter months but could not come to any consensus as to what class they should take, Will wanted martial arts 101 and Sarah had wanted creative writing. They had compromised and decided to go to both and had enjoyed themselves, when last winter came around they decided to join up again for some more classes and the same debate had ensued. Finally they had decided to go to the open night for the classes and to separate and pick a class that both of them would have to attend. This time Sarah picked the advanced Martial arts class as she had found she enjoyed the almost balletic movements involved in learning the various routines or kata as their instructor called the training routines. She had been waiting by the refreshments stand when he had come up to her with his choice, advanced creative writing, she remembered how hard she had laughed at that and the look of bemusement on his face before she told him about her pick. That was how they were together, they just complemented and completed each other.
Sarah had dragged the rug with Will’s body on it out into the back garden and she had begun digging his grave there, this was their place, they had chosen this house and fallen more deeply in love here over the last four years than either of them would have thought possible and she could not think of any place better that he would like to be buried and now as the niceties of society were slipping away she guessed no one but her would care where she buried her husband, the only man she had ever loved.
#
She toiled long and hard into the night with at first only the starshine to light her task, and then nearer the end the dawning day began helping out.
Just as the sun broke the horizon over the nearby ocean Sarah pulled her husbands body down into the hole in the earth, and before wrapping him up in the rug she tenderly kissed his now cold lips and cut a lock of her hair off and tied it around his wedding finger, just so he would have something of her while he slumbered here and then she cut a lock of his hair and placed it into the pocket of her night shirt, an old shirt belonging to Will that she liked sleeping in, just so she could carry a piece of him with her on he hard road ahead of her.
Climbing out she began the process of replacing the sods of earth back from where they came, turning a hole in the earth into a grave. The tears fell from her onto the dark moist soil and she shoveled it onto the rapidly disappearing shroud. Her blurred vision mixed with that of the early morning sunlight to create a blinding white radiance that spoke of god and obscured the object of her task until finally the strength left her body and she fell to her knees beside her husbands grave and wailed her anguish at the sky, at god, at anyone that would listen.
The sounds of neighbor’s concerns roused her from an almost catatonic state as she picked herself up off of the ground and wiped the tears from her eyes that had left trails down her soil covered cheeks as if her sorrow would be forever tattooed on her face for all to see.
She ignored the queries from the people leaning out of their windows and picked up the shovel and walked into the garden shed to pick up some supplies for her final trial.
#
Sarah opened her bedroom door and found Jeff where she had left him, he had come to and knocked over Will’s night table in an effort to get out of the bed, but he did not have the energy and had fallen back against the headboard and now looked at her with baleful eyes curiously untouched in his ragged face.
The hours it had taken Sarah to bury Will had not been kind to the murder and he looked like a resurrected corpse, the blood on his face had congealed into a horrendous sight and the room stank of feces and urine.
He tried to talk but all that came out was a guttural grunt that caused bubbles of blood to form in the area that had once been his nose.
Sarah felt her fury ignite burning away her sorrow and replacing it with a rage that seemed to fill the room with electricity. She dropped the gas can and hemp garden sack on the floor of the room she once loved spending time in, and swung the shovel with all the force her soaring rage gave her at Jeff’s neck, the sharp edge of the tool biting deep into tissue and bone and burying itself in the bed’s headboard.
The decapitated head fell from the bed and out of her sight.
#
The crowd had gathered outside Sarah and Will’s house but no one had entered to see if she or Will needed their help and it was a sign of the times Sarah thought to herself as she strode from the house out into her driveway in the bright morning sunshine and stood before the assembled neighbors, smoke bellowed from her bedroom where she had dowsed the corpse in gasoline and set it alight.
She was a sight to behold, her clothes were filthy from digging the grave and were covered in Will’s blood and her dirt streaked face gave her an almost demonic look. Choking black smoke curled from the house behind her and cast a rolling shadow over her.
“This is the end of times and only the righteous will survive to be taken to heaven and the rest of you will burn in the lake of fire,” Sarah screamed as she tipped open the cloth bag and Jeff Morgan’s severed head feel onto the ground at her feet.
Some in the group screamed and ran to their homes, other just stared in shock, Tracy Morgan howled in horror at the sight of her husbands decapitated head and then ran at Sarah, who punched the woman in the face knocking her unconscious.
Sarah looked down at the unconscious woman and the head of her husband and felt her tentative grip on reality slipping even further from her. There was a light touch on her arm and flinched at it Sarah turned to see her sister moving in to pull her into a hug.
Sarah’s sister Michelle lived more than one hundred miles away and with no transport and method of communication she thought she had lost her. But Michelle and her husband Mark had been on their way to give her sister a surprise visit as once Michelle had heard she was going to be an aunt she had to see her younger sister and give her a hug. When the solar event had happened there were only twenty miles outside of town and it had taken nearly five days to get to Sarah through the sparse country side, but they were here now and they would take Sarah back home with them, there was nothing for her in this town anymore.
#
The sixteen year old girl stood by her father’s grave and watched as the workmen methodically placed brick after brick in the building that would soon be her new home. She had her father’s brown hair and her mother’s fiery spirit and she would be damned it she was gonna let any reformed government tell her Mother where her husband should be buried. Her name was Hope.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Something new... for me at least :-)
I have found the road and now I must make my choice, do I have the strength to walk upon it or will the fear inside steer me back towards the river. The road untraveled lies ahead, awaiting a decision, a single step sending me on a new course, down the uncharted blacktop, the desert for company, with a break in the clouds showing me that coveted cerulean view, the window to all that is possible.
For so long I floated on the river, letting the vagaries of faith decide my destination, the burden of decision surrendered willingly for fear was my ferryman and I just a passenger. The craft in which I drifted did not belong to me but I had entered it of my own free will and that in it's self was a choice, one made by me, though a score of years had to pass for me to recognize it as such.
The test of my fortitude. My driftwood existence has come to an end and I find the earth beneath me. It feels good to stand on my own two feet again. The question: Do I have the capacity for change? Am I to willing to surrender my free will and dive head first back into the river and continue my aimless floating on the surface of life; or do I place that first step upon the road.
The road beckons and I step forward, bare feet feeling the warm road beneath me, the gentle breeze blowing the red desert sands from the rocky soil that will be my companion for now as there is nothing much growing in this land, but the road winds through it and recedes off into the distance, the clouds on the horizon are dark and formidable. That storm is far from here, in the direction I must travel, but for now I am content to take one small step after another, slowly moving from my old life in the direction of my new one. And there it is again, a break in the clouds, the sun pouring through it from the cerulean view beyond.
Signs and portents. A good omen. A smile on my face, I stride forward.
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