Writers Block Challenge #34 - SNAP!

Writer's Block Challenge #34

Snap!

She is so beautiful. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have this woman in my life. In the simplest things her beauty shows. The way the sun’s rays bounce off the kitchen table and illuminate her eyes as she drinks her coffee. I have the morning paper hiding my face as I steal glimpses of her. She laughs as she catches me peeking. I watch her pick up the breakfast dishes and take them to the sink. Lust filled thoughts swarm my brain as I look at the curve of her backside hidden by her pink fluffy robe.

Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap.

I wake up and see her pink fluffy robe hanging on the bed post. She slipped out so quietly. I can hear her in the kitchen banging around. The music is playing on the oldie station. I can see her holding a spoon like a microphone and dancing around the kitch...

Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap.

Ahhh, this is what I like the best. She’s in the bathtub with bubbles all around her. She is so lovely and young. She blows a handful of bubbles at me and I laugh as I catch a few. I lean in to kiss her on the forehea.....

Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap.

A room. Concrete walls. An orange chair. A man across from me is telling me something I can’t get my head around.

Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap.

Sweet mercy, there she is holding her arms out for me to snug up in. I can always count on her for comfort. She knows me best. She doesn’t ever back down we I need her.

Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap.

"Blood?" "Where blood?" "Who’s blood?" "What are you talking about blood?"

Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap.Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap.

She’s next to me holding her hand out for me to hold, I can’t seem to reach her...

Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap.

Straps hold my wrists to the chair. "Knife?" "I did what?" "To who?"

Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap.

She's laying on the floor, her hair is spilt across the floor. There’s red everywhere, it’s spilling from her arms, her legs, her chest....

Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap.

"Murder?" "I killed her?" "I murdered my sweet love?"

Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap.

I’m standing above the mayhem. My breaths making my body heave. There’s blood everywhere. It’s dripping from the knife in my hands...

Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap. Snap, SNAP. Snap.snapsnapsnapsnap.

Oh my God! What have I done? Oh, my love... I lay with her on the floor. I hold her in my arms ... till death do we part...

Snap! SNAP! SnapSNAPsnapsnapsnasnapSnap.......

tjs© March 30, 2008

 

Writer's Block Challenge #32 - No Better Life

 

Writer's Block Challenge #32

 

No Better Life

It was the summer of my sixteenth year. In just four months and three days I would be 17. I came to the city to fulfill my dreams. No more will I get up before dawn and help momma make the biscuits for the farmhands. I was going to be somebody. I stole away all the money I had made selling honey at the county fair for the past three years, ever since I heard my daddy talking to Harold Maynard’s pa. I heard that conversation. I was supposed to be shucking bushels of corn on the porch, but the porch made me sticky with sweat under my new tits, (Lordamighty I hated when them things busted out of my chest. Momma said it was normal, but at the time I didn’t believe her) so I took to the barn where it was cool, writing secrets in my notepad. "They’d make a handsome couple." "My Harold will treat her right good", then my daddy’s voice of reason, "When she turns 17. I want her growd up a’fore a man takes her". I know I should have stayed but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to marry Harold Maynard. Being Mrs. Harold Maynard was not who I wanted to be. I wanted to taste something more than this farm's dirt had to offer me. I was scared, sure I was. The trembling showed in the letter I left on my pillow for momma. I would miss her most.

I had rode on that bus for nearly three days, eating out of the basket I had packed and cleaning up in the ladies room at the stations and diners along the way. I wrote in my notebook about the times I would have in the city. I struck up a conversation with a really nice lady with a baby in her arms. She was taking her little baby home to visit her mother. Her mother lived in the big city, and this lady was born and raised right here in this big city. Come to find out she had moved out to the bleak place I was running from. She had married a farmer and was loving being a farmer’s wife, and raising farmer’s kids. I looked at her hands. They looked just like mine. Calloused and cracked from hard work and more hard work. Odd that we would come together on the bus ride. Two souls with contradicting dreams. I wanted what she had, she wanted what I had. It was inconceivable to me that anyone would want that life.

The bus rolled into town at 7:50 in the morning. I had never seen the city before ‘cept for in the magazines at the dime store in our dusty little town. It made the night look like day. Lights twinkling in the morning mist. Cars and busses lining the streets. Buildings taller than old man Lyman’s silo. His silo was the tallest in nine counties, but these building touched the sky. My word, I thought, wait till I write momma about the buildings. The bus driver pulled to a curb and stood up, stretching his back and scratching his head. The smell of a bus is unmistakable. To me it was a smell that filled me with excitement. I collected my suitcases from where he put them at the curb and headed to the diner I saw as we pulled into town. My face lifted high, my spirts lifted higher, I was ready to make my mark in life.

I opened my pocketbook and put a couple of quarters on the counter to pay for my pie and coffee. The waitress directed me to the boarding house for women. I was taking in the sights. I collected a newspaper on my walk. Fourteen city bocks sounded like a long walk, but in reality it weren’t no further that where the cows hang out at the back fence. Miss Mitzi’s Boarding house was a small yellow house with bright red flowers flanking the windows. My first thought as I looked at it was, sunshine. I took a deep breath and knocked at the door. Miss Mitzi answered. She had a quick smile and after I told her about the waitress sending me to her she showed me the room. All through the walk and tour of the house I heard the rules. "No men. Ever. Rent due on Wednesday. Not Thursday. No rent paid, no room no board. Period. Bathroom is shared, be quick. Roster for cooking and cleaning is posted in the kitchen. Everyone pitches in. No exceptions." I sorta stopped listening. I wanted to take a bath, put on my Sunday dress and shoes and go get me a job. Miss Mitzi looked at me and gave me an odd little smile. I wasn’t really sure what she wanted to say, but she shrugged her shoulders and with a quick laugh she said, "You might last out the month before you run home to momma."

I found the Tribune Building just where Joanie said it would be. She was a dear at the diner. I had tuna sandwich on rye bread for lunch with a Vanilla Coke. I wanted to splurge and celebrate. I never ate Tuna on Rye, even though we had a diner in our town nearby, daddy said it was sinful to waste our money buying food in a diner when we had all we needed on the farm. I felt rebellious and a little naughty as I ate the last crumbs of my sandwich. I paid for my meal and waved as Joanie wished me luck. I had to be very careful with the money I had left. I had paid Miss Mitzi for two weeks and bought 2 meals at the diner and a newspaper, all in one day. I only had half of the money from my honey stash left. I prayed I could find work at the Tribune.

There wasn’t. No matter that I could write. There was nothing I could do to convince that woman to let me talk to Mr. Harmon. He hired everyone Joanie told me. I couldn’t get past the woman who answered the phones. I told her I would do anything they had for me to do. Nothing. She just stared at my hands. I tried to hide the callouses behind my pocketbook, but she knew I was just the daughter of a farmer, raised on a farm. She told me I belonged down at the 'chicken farm'. I was humiliated and embarrassed. Now what?

I went into everyone of the buildings on that street. No one was interested in a little ol' cowpoke of a girl working for them. It was heading toward dark when I turned the corner by the diner. I didn’t expect to see Joanie, her shift would be long over by now. I walked back to the boarding house taking my time to think the situation over. I climbed in bed on my first night away from home, away from momma and cried myself to sleep. I was alone in the big city. Just where I wanted to be. I was scared. I wanted to look out my window and see the tree that had my old tire swing on it being pushed by the breeze. Instead there were cars honking and people walking the streets making noises all night long. Once I woke up to a siren rushing by. Was there a dream here for me? I slept a fitful night that first night.

I finally found work in a factory. I’m disgraced beyond words to say what my job was. I plucked chickens in a cannery. At the furthest reaches of the city there were factories. Joanie had mentioned them to me telling me to steer clear of them. After three weeks of no luck, I was out of money and nearly out of options. I just knew I would be one of the fine ladies that I saw walking into the shops uptown. I would wear high heels and lipstick to work everyday. Instead I trudged myself down to the chicken farm as it’s was called round the city and I pulled out the feathers from hot wet dead birds. I got paid enough to pay Miss Mitzi every Wednesday, and had enough left over to buy notebooks and an occasional piece of pie and coffee at the diner.

On my seventeenth birthday I bought a bus ticket. It took me nearly three days, but I walked up past the barn and smelled the dirt. Ain’t nothing in this world that smells like that. It smelled like home. Daddy saw me. He walked over to me and put his hand on my shoulder, he looked me up and down, and then looked me in the eye. He said, "You’re home." I said, "I’m home." I walked up the back steps and opened the screen door. Momma was lifting a ham out of the oven and after she put it on the table she turned and looked at me. I put my suitcases down and waited for her to say something to me. She came over to me and hugged me. I hugged her fierce. When she let go of me she looked me up and down. She said, "I knew you’d come home." I didn’t know what to say. I just shrugged my shoulders and said, "I’m home." I put my suit cases on my bed and walked back into the kitchen tying an apron on as I went. There were farmhands to feed.

It’s hard for me to look at those old notebooks and recognize me in them anymore. I think sometimes that I wrote about someone else all those years ago. My husband and I have taken over farming daddy’s land. Momma helps me out in the kitchen with the cooking. Daddy is outside with my kids. He loves to tell them stories of how he used to farm this land before all the newfangled equipment came along. Never once have we ever spoke of the time I left to find a better life. What I found in that excursion of my lifetime was there is no better life than farming this land, raising these children with love, being a good daughter to my parents and loving wife to my husband. I have to run now, I hear Harold Jr. slamming that old screen door ... his daddy ain’t far behind him, and I know they’re hungry. . .

tjs© March 4, 2008

 

Writer's Block Challenge #30 - Through Jaundiced Eyes

Writer's Block Challenge #30

 

 

Through Jaundiced Eyes

The protestors stood in the dark. The only illumination was from what was left of the burning rubble of literacy they refused to allow the children to read. I watched the smoke curl up from the ashes of accomplishment. It started this afternoon at 4:30. It began to unfold as they stormed the front of school house. Arms full of books and cans full of fuel. I was dumbfounded, frozen in place as I watched.

I simply cannot understand such an alien, utterly bizarre mindset. Just about everything on earth rouses the holy ire and outrage of fundamentalists book burners. Everything they don't understand, everything outside their narrow little circle, which means just about anything you can think of, is evil and Satanic in their jaundiced eyes.

These protesters, who are not parents of children in this school are denouncing this community as a den of iniquity, why they don't even live in this school district, or even in this state. In fact, I found out later, the two rabble rousers who instigated this war of the words are a Texas couple who run a well-organized and bottomless-pocketed book-banning organization that has a devoted following among fundamentalists.

Our school district has policies in place if ever a book is challenged. They’ve never had to memorize the policy. A book has never been challenged. A parent must fill out a complaint form. No one else has a right to complain - and the book must stay on the curriculum or the library shelves until it has been reviewed by a committee.

Time after time, I have since read, bigger school districts are yielding in the most cowardly and craven manner to fundamentalist bullying, withdrawing the books immediately, and sometimes summarily dismissing the teachers who used the offending books in their classes. When parents complain, the school will offer them the option of letting their children read an alternate book, but the fundamentalists rarely accept any compromise. They don't just want their children reading "Satanic" books, they don't want anyone to read them!

In fact, in Warsaw County, Indiana, the school board simply handed the disputed books over to the protesters, who then publicly burned them, which brings me to where I am today watching, in perplexed fascination. One minute, doing the business this town brought me here to do, the next minute frozen to this place in time.

I am pondering over the question in my head whether parents really have an absolute right to instill their children with such frighteningly hateful, bigoted and backward attitudes?

As adults we have a right to believe as we choose, however outlandish and flat-out wrong our beliefs may be. But when adults seek to trap their (and everyone else's) children in a bizarre world of darkness, hatred, blind fear and anti-intellectualism, it seems to me to be a very perverted use of parental rights, let alone Constitutional Rights.

To quote Annie Kinsella from the movie Field of Dreams, "They're talking about banning books again! Really subversive books, like "The Wizard of Oz" and "The Diary of Anne Frank".... This is the kind of censorship they had under Stalin!.... Who wants to spit on the Constitution? Who thinks the Bill of Rights is a pretty darn good thing?... All right America - I love ya!"

tjs© February 4, 2008

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Writer's Block Challenge #24

Writer's Block Challenge #24

Decisions, Decisions

He always headed to the beach alone when he sought solace and comfort. The seagulls were the best for helping him through a rough time. He was having a rough time right now. He had a major decision to make. He wanted none of his friends with him, none of the cheerleaders or his teammates around him when he mulled over this life altering decision.

He had a passion that none of his high school comrades knew of. A hidden talent that he secreted away so securely that it would stun everyone if they knew. Everyone that is except his parents. It was what made him feel alive. Then there was the college scholarship he was offered last night.

After the crowd’s cheers died down, after he made that last shot of the game, the winning shot, he was offered a full ride. Oh, what a shot that was! He pulled it out of a prayer, a full court, nothing but net shot. He was very, very good at basketball. He was celebrated in his hometown for what he could do on the court. Prestige, fame, money (eventually) he could have it all. He could go pro. It wasn’t his dream though.

Oh what to do? Take the course in life that gives him money, fame and security? Or take the path that feeds his passions? A heavy load for a young man of eighteen. He screamed out to the water, kicking the sand as far as it would go. The seagulls flew up and shrieked there disapproval. It did no good, he still had no answers. He began to walk the water’s edge. The waves skirting up and flowing back. His feet started moving to the waves rhythm. He felt the beat of the pounding waves, heard the music of the shore and the sky and he began to dance.

Hours later, spent and exhausted from dancing with the ocean, he had made his decision. He hung up his basketball shoes on the way home. He chose his passion.

He would dance.

tjs© November 11, 2007