Expectations In The Dark

 

            She had always expected grandchildren.  She had expected, even as a young girl, to live deep into her twilight surrounded by chittering, smiling faces.  Even before she had thought of having children or even knew what that meant, she had expected grandchildren.  She had expected full tables at thanksgiving and long lists of names at Christmas.

She could always see it so vividly.

Sitting next to a man who would have looked remarkably like a potato whose skin had gone loose after too long in a cupboard.  She would have borne the years with more grace and would have had tight skin that shone like a mirror as it stretched across her forehead.  She had expected to buy him little sweaters that he would have worn as he sat in front of a typewriter, or sat in his favorite chair reading the paper or a book that he loved.  The sweaters would have always been soft against her face when he hugged her unexpectedly in the middle of a frigid morning. 

Helios 12 – Second Draft

            She lay there in the dark chill of her bunk and tried to ignore the grating beep of her alarm.  It had pulled her out of the deep dark hole of sleep a few minutes before but she always hated that damned sound.  It might have had something to do with the fact that she slept so much better out here.  No traffic noise, no birds to wake her, no sun coming up and invading her room through her windows.  The sun was always up out here, but it only came in when she wanted it too.

Trifecta Prompt – Crude – (warning – violent content)

So it’s been a little while since I’ve written anything.  A lot of stuff going on and I was honestly just a bit of a breather over the summer.  Let’s get back to it shall we.  

I watched them hack him into pieces that no longer looked like they came from a human and shove them into their mouths.  Their tools were crude misshapen gouges of nearly black iron, and I knew by the grunts that accompanied their thrashing blows that they were not sharp.  The jagged metal was tearing more than it was slicing.

A Place to Rest Your Head – 33 word prompt

Down the wheezing stairs–to the right, the moth-eaten sack hangs on a hook.  Every night I crowd into the moldy burlap and hug my knees until my stomach aches me to sleep.

My prompt came from Trifecta Writing Challenge.  

 

The Empty Country (150 word flash fiction – Visual Dare)

His legs felt like overstretched elastic and his lungs crackled and burned like a campfire.

He had been pedaling for hours through the cobblestone streets.

His hands had grooves worn in them from the grips on his handlebars.

He had been riding for days through this burnt out husk of a country.

Twice this week he had been woken up by the terrible feeling of a pack of feral dogs trying to make a meal of him. He had run then, too shocked to get to his bicycle in time. Climbed onto a balcony where they couldn’t reach  until they lost interest.

He was almost out of food now.  The canteen he had pulled off of a dead corpsman and filled with rusty green fountain water was nearly gone as well.

He hadn’t seen anyone alive for nearly two months.

Even then he had to run to survive the blows.

Again a prompt from another blog.  This from VisDare and the prompt was the picture above.  I’m pretty sure the originator asked for whimsy, but I felt it going another way.  Then again, I just like dark prose so… sue me 😉

 

100 word prompt – Wall

It is grey here.  It is always grey here.  On the other side I’m sure there are days filled with yellow and green.  I can feel the faded reflections under my fingertips.  I can sometimes hear things from the other side.  Not like the gaping shrieks that fill the yawning nights.  Different sounds.  They make my palms itch and my neck sweat, frightened. If only I were taller I could maybe see the things making the sounds.  Or see the yellow and green.  But this side is grey.  This side will always be grey.  What else could it be?

This is based on the prompt walls and a 100 word writing about that prompt.  follow the link here to see what I’m talking about/

That’s all I can remember.

That’s All I Can Remember

That’s all I can remember.

Showing up fifteen minutes early to make sure I didn’t miss you.

Standing in front of La Forchetta alone. Checking my watch. Making small talk with the valets.

Their blue vests, red ties, white shirts, and neatly creased black slacks.

Looking for and seeing a dozen red dresses. You said you’d wear a red dress.

The dress because I could only imagine how great you would look in red.

A Prequel To: The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.

It’s been a great couple of days for writing.  I got a prompt from another blog I stumbled across Master Class  the prompt was “Desperation had given him authority.”  It reminded me of my recent story about Gregorim, so I thought I’d expand on the universe a bit.  Let me know what you think :).  Here’s a link to the other story 

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The flames licked at the edges of his vision.  Smoke hung thick in the air, carrying with it the smell of burning wood and flesh alike.  His mind was frenzied.  His breaths came in ragged choked gasps.  His eyes stung with the combination of smoke and tears.

He hadn’t meant for it to go so far.  He hadn’t meant to do all of this.

He gaze drifted from the husk of one building to the next.  The shells of what used to be homes and shops leering at him, flames staring from behind the empty sockets of their sagging window-frames.  There was no movement in the streets aside from the hungry fire.  The screams had stopped.  The only thing to be heard was his own heart, sounding like an army of angry blacksmiths, destroying his ears.  The time passed with the slow crawl of tar on a cold day.  He was numb.

Finally he looked down at his hands.  They were covered in blood so thick it looked black.  His once white clothing was also mostly reddish-black.  He let his focus slip for a moment, at his feet were three torn and battered shapes.

Small shapes.

Children.

The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.

Dust flew in wisps around his feet as he stood at the edge of the rocky peak.  He stared down into the deep valley below the mountain, fury gripping him in tight bonds.  The smooth features of his face were taut, frozen in a grim snarl.

“Not now.  Not here!”  He focused on the small figures far below.  They scurried like ants around a small, newly forming building with a symbol perched on its sharply peaked roof.  A symbol he recognized.  A symbol he did not want to believe was in his village.  

Papa and Me.

This is a series of vignettes that make up the larger piece that is Papa and Me.  I wrote this a little while ago, and I had it posted on another blog, so I thought I’d move it here.  It should also be said that this piece won me the Grand Prize from Bergen Community College for Creative Non-Fiction, an honor I dedicate specifically to my Papa, Joyce Wensel Schmidthuber.

Papa and Me

First Impressions

To say that my start was a rocky one might be an understatement.  My parents were married young and I came into a family of alcoholics and addicts.  Inevitably, the relationship went downhill and my mother called home to her parents for a way out.  They bought us a plane ticket, and put us on a plane home when I was only six months old.  Now of course I don’t remember any of this, but my mom tells me that the flight went well and that I wasn’t fussy on the plane at all.  An older man sat next to my mom and I on the longer of the two flights and when she was given her meal, he held me and kept me entertained while she ate.  It’s funny to me now, but my mom seems to remember that the man looked exactly like an actor that was in a Norelco Shaving commercial.  She said she wanted to ask him, but never did.   She’s been curious ever since.