Fiction Friday: [In the Shadow of the End]

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Rachel watched her daughter run around the yard in awkward, drunken circles. The five-year-old’s arms and legs, already too long for her body, flailed out of control and added to her fun. Emma tossed her head back and the giggles flowed.

Rachel’s heart caught a tumultuous wave.

There was nothing more soothing, more perfect than the sound of her child in the throes of joy. But knowing what her life was to become cast a dark shadow. A shadow that dug deep into her as a mother, cracking her ribs apart and attacking the last vestiges of what had been their normal life.

It was the sudden silence that pulled her from her thoughts. The air grew cold in it. Jolting to attention, Rachel’s eyes fell into Emma’s, whose gangly arms were still raised a bit having stopped mid twirl. By the time she reached her mother, her face had morphed from curious to crumbled. Glassy eyes and quivering lip. It was a look that Rachel had dreaded.

Emma reached up and gently caressed her face and it was then that Rachel realized she was crying. Tears released without permission. Tears she had sworn never to shed in front of her daughter.  

Emma’s eyes held the question she didn’t know to ask. Rachel’s broken heart hung heavy with the answer she didn’t know how to give.

By the time she heard her husband drive up, Rachel had soothed her daughter. By the time her soon-to-be ex’s keys were in the door, Emma was already back to twirling with reckless abandon. 

Moxie Monday: Good, Better, Best

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Kick start your week with a lil' moxie!

Fiction Friday: Treadmill

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Bare feet pound against dry, cracked earth.
Each step leading to nowhere.
The horizon never changing.

Heartbeats pound against tight, stitched ribs.
Each pulse leading to the last.
The horizon too far to care.

Despair pounds against ever-waning hope.
Each second leading to the end.
The horizon stares on, aloof and distant.

Faith pounds against the impatient horizon.
Each thump a call to believe.
The horizon swells. The horizon cheers.

Moxie Monday: Never Give Up

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Fiction Friday: At the Cliff's Edge

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My legs dangled over the edge of the cliff. As far as I could see frothy peaks dotted the pulsing waters. Whispers skated on the wind all around me. I strained to hear them over the waves crashing below and the frenzied whip of my hair.

The sky, a marbled gray, vibrated with an angry energy and threatened to crack open. There was a connection. I was the sky. My exterior was merely the dam holding back everything I had held in for far too long. So much inside of me pounded against my sanity like the waves against the cliff. Relentless.

Sentences were impossible to make out, but the occasional word pushed its way through.

Do.
It.

The words came softly, but pelted my skin like daggers. I had no illusion to why I was here. What I came to do. But the encouragement from familiar voices was a slap to the face. A chorus of the people I loved: my mom, my dad, my sister.

The wind picked up and snatched away my tears before they could travel down my cheeks. I stood up knowing that the wind would do most of the work. With my toes hung over the edge, I raised my arms, breathing in the salty spray of the water. So caught up in the moment, I barely even noticed the gust of wind that took me over.

With the ocean racing toward me, the voices screamed to be heard. Desperation and heartbreak underscored their need for me to hear the truth:

Don’t do it.

The words warmed me against the chill of the ocean. But clarity stung my heart. All I could be now was thankful that I had no time left for regret.  

Moxie Monday: Do Not Stop

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Kick start your week with a lil' moxie!

Moxie Monday: Build

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Kick start your week with a lil' moxie!

Fiction Friday: [A Few Years]

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Barton Marshall’s tooth slipped from its gummy pocket and hit the porcelain sink with an unceremonious clunk. Every sign he’d ignored before now took center stage in his mind. Releasing a long, sour sigh, he knew no matter how hard he tried, there was no denying that he’d been duped.

“You’re an old man,” he said to the reflection in the bathroom mirror. His eyes, nestled atop bulging dark folds, stared back and, through the fading steam, offered a wordless agreement. Lightning bolts of pain chimed in from his lower back with a “Here. Here”. His creaky joints extended the only audible notes of solidarity.

He shuffled his way out of the bathroom and into the sterile room he woke up in. Lifting his feet seemed like an inefficient use of the little energy he had left and his well-worn slippers scuffed across the tiled floor. Reaching the bed, he plopped down, allowing gravity to do most of the work.

Barton’s friends and family had begged him not to do it. But to him, they were overreacting. Back in the twenty-first century it wasn’t uncommon for people to donate blood for some extra cash. He’d even read about people going as far as donating their sperm. Their eggs. So what was a few years?

A few years.

When he woke up, he had a bad feeling, but chalked it up to post-surgery haze. And even though making it to the bathroom had been a chore, he swatted away the thought that they had taken more years than he had agreed to. Hours ago, he would have had the strength to fight. To allow his rage to run the show. But hours ago he was a twenty one year old with his whole life in front of him.

Staring at the spots on the back of his wrinkled, fleshy hand, he figured he must be somewhere north of eighty. The thought added eighty pounds of tired on top of his already exhausted, fragile frame. His head hit the pillow and his body softened atop the stiff mattress.

As his mind drifted and sleep wove its way through every part of his rapidly aged body, Barton hoped when he woke, he’d discover this had all been a nightmare. Or at the very least, that he had enough money to buy some of his years back.

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