Aftermath

   This is some of the back story a character I've been working with.  Annag is pronounced Anak, Scottish Gaelic for Anne.




    Annag, the lone surviving soul of Clan MacClarren, awoke in the unfamiliar bed, trying to die.  Escape.

    Escape the terror that began as her wedding feast.

    Trying not to believe her betrothed had been torn apart in front of her.

    Escape the vision of savaged flesh that had been her mother.

    Trying not to remember her father being pulled down and slain.

    Escape the scream of her young sister before her head was ripped from her body.

    Trying not to see every one of her clansmen dismembered, bloodied.  Dead.

    Escape the soothing voice that kept repeating, "It will be alright."




This is my offering for Lance's #100wordsong.


The track this week is The Beatles; Revolution

Each Alone

I couldn't just leave Mary and Duke hanging.     




     Mary dragged herself toward the front door.  It had been an exhausting day, all she wanted was a hot shower and her bed.  She needed to rinse away the odor of barely concealed decay that permeated the funeral home.  Then she needed to be unconcious.

    She reached for the doorknob. Mary gazed at the door of the house where they'd spent so much time together.  On the other side of that door was loneliness.
 
    Then she saw the dog. Duke still stood watch at the front window, waiting.  He glanced at her momentarily, then looked around and beyond.  He was always John's dog, her only interaction with him had been keeping him off the furniture.

     Finally, closing her eyes, Mary opened the door and stepped into the empty house. Duke wagged his tail briefly, acknowledging her entrance, his eyes still focused outside. Mary sighed and shuffled toward the living room.

     She wavered a moment, lost in her own home. There was no routine for this new chapter of her life. She sat, back rigid, on the edge of the sofa, still clutching her purse. Her memories of John drifted on the tears puddling behind her lashes.

     Mary hadn't seen Duke come into the room. He whined softly as he sat in front of her.  She supposed he was hungry, or needed to go out.  She laid aside her purse and forced herself to her feet.

    In the kitchen she found Duke's dry water dish.  The sound of the water filling the bowl echoed in the dark kitchen. She set the dish in front of the dog, then returned to the edge of the sofa.  Without the purse, her hands clutched themselves.

    Duke stood in front of her again.  Mary drew a breath, she wasn't ready to deal with his needs.  She looked away, he leaned into her legs with sigh.  Her drawn breath released a flood of loss and frustration.  The tears broke through her exhaustion.

    She felt warmth against her shoulder, could smell a lingering hint of John's aftershave in the heavy fur.  Duke sat beside her on the forbidden sofa, his eyes focused on hers.  Mary wrapped her arms around the dog and cried her pain into his neck.  He sat quietly beside her until she could cry no more.

     Mary, too tired to move, fell asleep, curled into the corner of the sofa. Duke cast one final look at the front door, then drifted to sleep beside her.



I linked up with a Story Dam prompt: Write fiction or non-fiction, tell us what lies on the other side of the door.

Vigil

He twitched an ear, listening for the familiar rumble of the old pickup.  His nose pressed to the window as people came to the house.

Every click of car door, every tap of heel brought him to his feet.

He acknowledged each new face politely, then returned to his post.

Voices from the other room.

"Mary, I'm so sorry."

"Mary, can I do anything?"

Another car door, another face, a word for him.

"Hey Duke, how you doing boy?" He accepted the pat with a perfunctory tail wag.

He quickly returned to the window, watching, listening. Waiting for his friend.


                                               *****************



I tried something new,  I took a shot at the 100 word song with Lance.  This week's track is 

Her Heart

For this week, the prompt is the word “core” and 450 words to explore any meaning of the word in a work of creative non-fiction/memoir or fiction.


 She stands under the steaming water, her thoughts integrating this latest bit of medical information with all that has come before. 

Fifteen years ago, she stood by him through the cancer treatments. The chemo-induced puking. The hair loss. Finally the surgery that removed enough bowel to ensure a lifetime colostomy.


Ten years ago, she fretted by his side as he apologized for the heart attack. Two years later, she cried as they fought to keep him alive through the second.  


 She helped him track the cocktails of medication that finally triggered his genetic predilection for diabetes.   

The diabetes that has finally taken a toll on his kidneys. That has introduced words like "dialysis" and "high potassium levels". 

 She begins to accept his mortality.  Accepts that sooner than she imagined, she will be alone.  That there will be stresses.  Mental, physical, and even financial.

 But the heart of her weeps already,  dreading the loss of her partner. Her lover.   

Change

The prompt:  It’s time for a change in outward appearance, be it a character, yourself, or someone in your life. In 500 words or less, write about a makeover of your choice (hair, clothes, makeup, facial hair for the menfolk), fictional or memoir/creative non-fiction. Let’s think about how physical appearance changes can affect the inner landscape.

She remembers sitting in the old kitchen chair.  A shiny, plastic apron tied behind her neck. Daddy has his scissors, the ones left from when he used to have a beauty shop.

Snip, snip. Bits of hair fall to the floor. She is getting a pixie cut before starting kindergarten. Her hair is kept this way for a few more years.

After third grade she lets it grow. It grows long, straight, and fine.

The body perm in early high school gives it some life. She uses a curling iron every morning to make the face framing bangs do something. Even if that something requires a can of hairspray, and perhaps resembles a slinky. The back is still long, if a wee bit wavy.

By her senior year, she sprays and back combs those bangs into "big" hair in the front. Nothing can convince the long hair down her back to do more than hang there.

Later, in her twenties' comes the tight curly perm that lasts three or four months. She has it re-permed regularly for several years.

And has it frosted. Gets the ends trimmed. Lets the bangs go.

By thirty, she has a daughter. Her own mother tells her it's time to cut her hair. "You're too old to wear it that long."  She laughs and lets it grow.

She is still ignoring her mother's opinion after she turns forty. Though she returns to the bangs, to hide the new lines on her forehead.

The fifties arrive with gray. It frames her face. She accepts its presence. Brushes it into the light browns that still fall to her mid-back.

At fifty-five, the gray rebels. It has body. It refuses to blend quietly.

She looks at her reflection. Her mother isn't there anymore to tell her it's time to cut her hair. 

She knows.

She sits in the vinyl chair, the apron tied behind her neck. "Cut it, just above the shoulders. And keep the bangs." She says.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. It's time"

The Shopping Trip

The prompt: Introduce a romantic interest or opportunity and see what happens.


Part of Jonah's story is here, 












     Jonah took Katie’s advice and walked two doors north to the dollar store. The interior was bright. The light was welcome as the aisles were narrow and shelves packed with all sorts of items. There was pet food on one side of an aisle, vitamins and common over the counter medicines on the other.

    He picked up a new toothbrush and toothpaste, soap, deodorant, and after searching several shelves, found the underwear he’d thought of earlier that week. He also put a couple of new t-shirts into his basket. 

    He made his way to the cash register. The young woman behind the counter had short brown hair, and brown eyes behind black rimmed glasses. Her jeans were just tight enough without being trashy, she wore a fuzzy green sweater over her black t-shirt.

     She smiled as he set his basket on the counter. “Hi! You must be Katie’s new dish boy, uh guy.” She blushed and looked at his purchases, ringing them and bagging them. “I’m Shelly Harrison,” she said.

     “Harrison like in the hardware?” Jonah asked.

     “Yep, Uncle Randy has the hardware. I got the junk store. After Aunt May died, I came to see if I could help out. I used to spend a lot of time here when I was a kid. And I had just got laid off my job. So it was mutually beneficial.”

     “Well, you’ve got some useful junk here, and I hear your prices are the best in town.”

     Shelly blushed again, “Katie must’ve sent you, then. She spends a lot of time in here. She says Marshall’s is over priced.”

     Jonah grinned, “that’s about the same thing she told me. And I think the grocery store probably doesn't carry underwear.” She blushed again.

     “I’m sorry, I’m being a smart ass.” It had been a long time since he’d carried on a conversation with anyone close to his own age. “I swear it’s a defense mechanism, I’m working with some real characters at the Kitchen.”

     Shelly laughed at that, “Not to mention the crazy customers. Don’t get me wrong, they're my customers too, and I love ‘em. But, yeah, character is a good description,”

     “So you stay in town or do you commute from the big city?”

     “Oh, I stay with Uncle Randy. He’s got a big place outside of town. He’s not much for talk, but he treats me well.”  She finished his order and collected his money. “You're staying at Missy McKay’s, right?” he nodded. “It’s a small town. And most new comers end up with Missy, for a while anyway.”

     Jonah saw one of the other shoppers heading for the register, “It was nice to meet you, Shelly Harrison, I’d better go now. Or the characters will have something to talk about.” He winked and Shelly blushed one more time as he left.  

A Secret Path

Show me an anti-hero. It can be a character sketch or a scene, but try to establish how and why this person is the obstacle to the protagonist’s goals.

Write a piece, fiction or non, in which your character suddenly finds themselves somewhere and have no clue how they got there.


I've tried to handle two prompts at once here. Let me know if I succeeded. More of the Elementals' story can be found here


       The kitchen was busy. And noisy. Beth was teaching Barry more games using his power of air. Her mother, Tam was watching and talking about how she should really go home for a while.

       Darren felt left out. He was only a little boy. A little human boy. He couldn’t move the air like his brother and mother. He couldn't make the earth work for him like his grandma. He was not special. Just human, like his daddy.

      But Daddy was a grown up. He got to leave and go to work. Darren was just a little boy, he was not special, he was nothing.

He sighed and left the kitchen. His feet slowly dragged him upstairs to his bedroom.  Once there, he picked through his toys and books, looking for something to do. Nothing interested him because he was nothing.

He was nothing, so he climbed to the back corner of his closet. With his arms wrapped around himself, in the dark he could be nothing and pretend he was nowhere.

>>>>>>>>>>>

                          

Tam was rambling on about trees she knew and flowers that she loved. Suddenly she stopped mid word.

“’Bet.” She tried to get her daughter’s attention, “Lyabet!” she called, using her daughter’s given name. “Did you just feel that?”

“Feel what, mother? Barry! You dropped the feathers. Pay attention to what are you doing.”

“They just falled, mommy! They just falled!”

“They don’t just fall, Barry." Exasperated, Beth finally answered her mother, "Feel what Mother?”

Tamryn Leafeyed, earth elemental, Lady of Treecairn, sat still and felt the earth beneath her. She’d lost touch with her element, for just a moment, she believed her young grandson had just had the same experience.

She sighed at her daughter’s distraction, “Never mind, ‘Bet. It was nothing.”

“Okay, Mother, whatever. Barry, good job! Your feathers are floating again, now you…” Beth, as she was called by her human husband, was focused again on her youngest son.

Tam quietly left the kitchen, troubling memories from her youth swirled just out of her grasp. Still, she followed her instincts up the stairs. Standing outside her other grandson’s bedroom, she called, “Darren, it’s Grandma. May I come in?” There was no answer. “Darren? Sweetie?”

         Reaching for the doorknob, she realized she was holding her breath  She exhaled and scolded herself for overreacting, with a twist of the knob, she threw the door open.

Tam stifled a cry of horror. On the other side of the door was…nothing.

Tam closed her eyes to the emptiness beyond Darren’s door. The light is off, nothing more she told herself, but when she opened her eyes, there still was nothing. Just black, empty space. She put her hand through the doorway and watched as it disappeared. She yanked it back quickly, then stared at her fingers, wiggling them to reassure herself.

“Darren?” she whispered, “Darren are you there? Answer me baby, are you okay?” Tam started to panic. Should she call her daughter,what could she do? 'Bet was too young to have any knowledge of this. This void.  Blackness.  And elementals had no power here, their elements no existence. She reached again toward the emptiness.

This time the blackness held her, sucked her into itself. Tam felt herself falling, she knew she was screaming, but her voice made no sound in the void.

Yet, she wasn't falling, she could almost feel ground beneath her feet, but there was no connection to it as with the earth. The blackness wasn’t  complete, she could make out a bleak landscape of various shades of black and gray. “Darren?” she whispered, her voice almost soundless to herself.

Close by, Tam heard a voice chanting, “Fall. Fall. Fall.” She could just see the outline of a small figure in front of her. She recognized the muted voice and gently touched the young boy in front of her, “Darren? Darren, please stop.”

Darren flinched at her touch and voice. “Grandma, what are you doing here? I just want to be alone!” he yelled. His focus shattered, his bedroom began to reappear around them, color and light quickly filling the shadowy void.

Tam threw her arms around the boy. “Oh Darren! You're okay, I was so afraid…”

“Afraid? Afraid of what, grandma? I was just playing, by myself.” Darren rocked side to side in his sneakers. Guilt warring with anger at being caught.