mhtucker | Entries tagged with short story

The person I stole these icons and layouts from is someone very close to me.

They live with chronic pain from a freak incident that resulted in emergency surgery.

Their spouse also suffers from severe depression. Won't admit it. Doesn't see the signs. Or the pain this depression has brought to the lives of others.

That's the nature of depression. This is a mental illness. Keyword? ILLNESS. This doesn't just go away. It needs treatment.

It also needs a spotlight shined on it so people can understand it.

The couple's combination is one of the most heartbreaking that can occur. While one person needs physical attention due to pain and disability, the other needs help that can't always be given because of pain and disability. While one person needs mental attention and time to focus on themselves to help the healing process, the other needs someone to pick something up from the floor because it fell out of reach.

It's a story I wanted to tell because people need to know. Understanding is a central part of this age we live in. We can't growing we don't understand.

This isn't a military family, but I can't help thinking about all of the soldiers who return with life changing injuries and the spouses and children whose lives are also changed forever.

I have permission to share this story.

It's nothing publish worthy, just a rambling writing of some moments in someone's life.

My Life In A Day

Imagine hearing the alarm go off and feeling absolute exhaustion. You listen to the screech, pondering the snooze button, weighing your options.

Do I hit snooze and stay in bed to desperately try and catch a few minutes more of rest?

Do I get right out of bed and start my day?

I'm a fucking morning person. I WANT to get up.

I've slept 5 hours in 1 hour spurts.

And my body is alive with electricity.

Imagine your body being stretched to the limit while each of your limbs is being twisted a full 360 degrees. Imagine this happening while a knife is wedged in your back, lengthwise, hilt resting on your ass, tip pointing to your distant brain. Now have someone stick forks along your spine, playing connect the dots from the knife to your skull.

While this is happening, get out of bed and walk.

Feel the forks swirl your nerves like spaghetti and the knife carve your flesh.

Feel you legs respond backward to what you intend, shooting bolts of pain as they continue to twist and contort.

If that sounds like too much, stay in bed and lie on the forks and the knife, or turn so you are off of them, but they jiggle every time you breathe.

Time to choose your own adventure.

Do you hit snooze and stay in bed to desperately try and catch a few minutes more of rest?

Do you get right out of bed and start your day?

Beside me, the person I love complains that they haven't slept, complains to the dogs that they don't want to walk them for another ten minutes, sighs of their desperate need for an early bedtime in the night to come.

I want to walk the dogs. I LOVE walking dogs. My spouse needs the rest. They work so hard to help me do everything I used to do without thinking.

Standing takes time. When it finally happens gravity forces me to the bathroom.

Let's get real here. This is one of the mindless tasks people do every day. You sit, you shit, you clean, you get on your way.

Not in the life of my day.

I sit, I shift, I move one leg, another. Concentration and physical awareness is a must in this crappy puzzle. Two hours later, I hope to be done.

Don't forget the forks.

And the knife.

Spoons? It's early enough that I can pretend I have an infinite supply.

But hey, by now all my pets are fed. My clothes are set out for me, whether I want them or not. My things for work are packed. All I have to do is shower, dress, do the rest, and get out the door.

My dogs look at me with large round eyes. "Pet me goodbye. Don't you love me?"

I think about the knife, the forks. I give up a spoon and bend to caress their heads and play with their soft ears. I smile to keep myself from crying.

A work day begins and ends. It's all the same.

Do I stand on tired legs that are more unsure of their surroundings the longer they are in use?

Do I sit and let the handle of the knife jar against the seat?

Then I have to stand. The forks dance as I do.

I refuse to run out of spoons. People need me here. They rely on me. I find more spoons tucked away in memories of friendship and love, and keep going.

Home.

The dogs greet me. "Can we play? Can we? We love you. Don't you love us?"

What the hell, we have spoons in the kitchen.

We have knives and forks too.

The one human I love more than any other is already working on the evening meal. There is laundry. There are chores. I look at the pile of soft fabric and think about lifting it, moving it.

How many steps to the wash room?

How many dogs to step over?

Are there toys in my path?

I love to do laundry. I'm weird that way. My spouse needs help to do what needs doing and love makes me lift. Love pushes my numb legs blindly along the distance to the completed task. Danger be damned. Love always wins.

Depression is like a cloud between us, a fog that I can see, a fog that creeps a cold, wet touch along my skin. But I can't push it. I can't move it. It surrounds the one heart that is the most a part of me and I can't move it away to see the purity beneath.

Dinner sizzles.

I drop the pen I was using to to pay bills.

I think about the distance from my seat to the floor.

How many forks will move if I reach for it?

Can I do this without hitting the handle of the knife?

What the hell, I'll get a spoon with diner.

My eyes water as I reach to reclaim what gravity stole from me.

I look to the kitchen, to the person I live for and who lives for me. We smiled once, we laughed in the past, now we ask short questions for the sake of hearing shorter answers. The fog thickens with every breath between us.

Forced to sit, I am useless.

Forced to stand, to move, to work for two, they have no peace.

I cause it all. And I am unable to take it away.

"Do you want me to help with dinner?" A meaningless question, but what else can I do? Life is too much for the person I love.

It weights down.

It overwhelms, it pushes them to the limit.

What time do they have for themselves? The little joys slip away, squeezing out between the gaps of an infinite fence.

The dryer stops, but the knife and the forks have finally won the day's battle against my spoon supply. All I can do is announce the event and be thankful as dinner is brought to me.

My mind repeatedly hits specks of knowledge as we eat, as the dishes get done. A sigh. A stretch. There is too much weight on the one I love and I can't lift it. I have no fan for their fog, my will to do can not push their own will into being.

I love to wash dishes, but dishes come with knives and forks.

There are too many in the sink this night. Or any other.

The fog thickens and crawls on me, seeping into my space from the next room. No words disperse it. When we finally sit for an hour of mindless peace, no touch can brush it away.

Bedtime approaches. We stumble through routines and I hold tightly while I can, squeezing as much togetherness into a minute as my body will allow before I can no longer endure the pressure on the parts of me that are full of useless utensils.

I roll over and prepare for an hour of sleep before my body wakes me with the movement of forks.

Why didn't I save just one more spoon?

Take this with you.

Use it.

May it help many.

If you came to this journal before, you have read this introduction, but it's here for the people who are new.

Also, please take a moment to love your pets today. One of mine died just before I wrote this.

- - - - - - - - - - -

A friend of mine has created a writing journal that is all inclusive!

I honestly can't tell you how happy I was to see this AND to be invited to participate.

It is based off of a local magazine in her state that gives four prompts a year and lets writers submit any number of stories they like with the prompts as the first sentence. Apparently the amount of diversity in those stories alone is amazing.

This blog includes fiction, non fiction, and FANfiction! You actually can write whatever you want... though I don't think they accept poetry... post it anywhere you want, then link it on their site.

- - - - - - - - - - -

I figured everyone was going to do spy stuff, so I ignored that line of thinking all together and went with something new.

Word to the reader: This is rushed because someone challenged me to write something as fast as I could so they could do the same and we would see who came up with what.

Took about an hour from first revision to last.

So don't judge.

Or do. Your thoughts aren't up to me, they are your own.

His contact said that by this time of the year he would have better vision.

Milton blinked, staring at the small round container in his hands and the floating object inside of it that was /supposed/ to be inanimate. “What did you say?”

“I said that by this time of the year you will have better vision.” The clear film opened and closed like a tiny, translucent pair of lips. It gave him the creeps. It also made no sense.

“This /is/ 'this time of the year',” Milton insisted, glancing at the bathroom window as if his eyes could pierce through the fogged and rippled surface to whatever was on the other side. “How can it be anything else?”

“Well, it's spring here,” said the contact, pausing in it's announcement as if waiting for a response.

Milton didn't at all know what should be said, so he just nodded in agreement.

“And it's summer where you fell asleep,” the thing added as if it had seen his nonverbal reply.

“I have a month... maybe two?” The young man blinked into the mirror, took in his reflection and said to himself. “Until what?” After a pause he added, “And who am I talking to?”

“To me,” said the contact, drawing Milton's gaze downward again.. “As for the rest, I already told you.”

Milton put the pieces together suddenly. “By summer I won't need you any more?”

“No one said that,” burbled the contact, making ripples in the solution as it spoke and occasionally spitting out a droplet or two onto the counter. “All I said was you'd have better vision.”

“Better vision, better vision...” Milton mumbled, then slapped himself on the arm. He could hear the thwack, but didn't feel the pain. “Somebody wake me up....”

* * *

In the hospital, Sergeant Milton was mumbling in his sleep. Sonya, his wife, gently patted his hand and traced lines up and down his rough fingers. They had only been married a few years, they were /just/ talking about having children, then he had been sent to the desert, where even soda cans exploded if you looked at them the wrong way.

Right before he left he had kissed each hand, each cheek, the top of her head, then promised to come back to her. He had kept his promise. He was home. He just wasn't whole.

Sonya glanced at the opposite side of the bed, where most of the damage had been done to her husband's body. She hadn't been able to sit there, facing his pain, so she had taken the visitor's chair and moved it around to a tight spot on the opposite side, against the wall, where the bandages and absences would be hidden. At least for a little while.

“Can I get you anything?”

She glanced up to see a nurse hovering nearby and wondered how long the man had been standing there. She swallowed her fears down and answered simply, “No, thanks.”

“My husband came back without his legs,” the nurse said. “I know that's random to say, but I just wanted you to know you're not the only one.” He gave a little smile of reassurance.

“Thanks,” Sonya managed.

The nurse's mouth quirked in a shy smile. “It's just... When I sat where you are sitting I felt like I was all alone. I didn't know how I was going to get through it. They go off to war, but so do we, in a way. It's just a different kind of battle.”

Sonya felt her forehead wrinkle. “I'm afraid I don't understand.”

“From now on it's going to be the soldier saying he /can/ do it or the soldier saying he /can't/ do it versus you insisting that he take it easy /or/ push himself.” He must have read the confusion on her face because he chuckled in at her silence. “Trust me, it's gonna be one or the other.”

The man reached out and handed her a card, slightly larger than a regular business card, but not exactly a pamphlet. She couldn't force herself to read it, just held it numbly in her free hand.

“It's for other spouses,” he said. “Somewhere to find people to talk to.”

As her husband woke, Sonya slipped the card into her purse. She quietly shushed him and caressed the hand she held, mumbling all of the usual nonsense she imagined people mumbled as their loved ones woke in beds like this all over the world.

“Sergeant Milton?” The nurse adjusted the drip at the side of the bed and rested a gentle hand on the man's shoulder. “Try and stay still. Don't worry if you can't see right now, there are some bandages on your head, but they'll come off soon, okay?” He gave a smile to Sonya and gestured to the door. “I'll go get the doctor.”

“Thank you, mister...”

The nurse grinned. “Tatt. But you can call me Connor.”

That's all, folks.

Now I have to come up with something for the next prompt, which is about a subdivision not being on the map.

I actually am giving some thought to stealing a scene from something I am currently working on, so you'll get a sneak peek at a publication that may or may not be in my future.

Do I have your attention now?

Join me here:
The Writer's Block

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Fans. Everywhere.

A friend of mine has created a writing journal that is all inclusive!

I honestly can't tell you how happy I was to see this AND to be invited to participate.

It is based off of a local magazine in her state that gives four prompts a year and lets writers submit any number of stories they like with the prompts as the first sentence. Apparently the amount of diversity in those stories alone is amazing.

This blog includes fiction, non fiction, and FANfiction! You actually can write whatever you want... though I don't think they accept poetry... post it anywhere you want, then link it on their site.

Naturally I jumped on the bandwagon, but I surprised myself by having my first post be inspired by a moment in history.

Below you will find my baby steps into the world of historical fiction.

Or at least creative writing of history.

You get the idea.

The explosion that lit the night sky reflected in the water below. The resulting concussion of sound pushed the common folk from their beds, knocking some to their knees in prayer and scattering others to the rooftops. Picnics were ordered by masters who sent slaves to their tasks as rapidly as the cannons ejected their charges. Such unmistakable brilliance would not be seen every day and the citizens turned a blind eye to their futures as each found some way to partake of the hellfire in the heavens.

Those on their knees were the wisest of the witnesses, for history would begin this day, though it had been happening all along and would continue on into the future. While spectators marveled at the predawn display, the crush and crumble of brick across the bay seemed to cry warnings to the the men they protected.

“War! War is here!”

The soldiers bravely followed their strict routines: loading, aiming, firing, ignoring all but their duty. Few would believe their fate then, but the dying walls would be proven right, given time.

Above the defiled sanctuary, smoke and fire rose to the stars. In desperation, light and dark danced around each other in their ascension to freedom, declaring liberation to be worth all that was happening below and all that would come tomorrow, and all that would come one hundred tomorrows from now.

Beyond the water, Charleston sat peacefully in the distance, watching the spectacle as only a city could, unmoving and untouched by the madness. Did the buildings rattle in fear or were they simply settling for this night as they would any other? As their caretakers celebrated the demise of their stoic brother in the bay, could the homes be aware that in years to come, each would find itself deprived of someone deeply loved?

Along the shore, where cannons bellowed, the whispers of war washed up with the tide and the soul of a steed rose to meet its maker. Only one life would begin the count of so many departed, a blessing that would not last into the next day. Many years and a month from this passing, at the end of this bloody grievance between brothers, the numbers would not be counted, death having settled into the lives of the country like the dust from the crumbling fort, unworthy of notice.

Born from the water, the war did come, cast out into history on the 12th of April, at four-thirty in the morning, as locals hurriedly climbed to the tops of their houses for a better view. Finding its death beside the water, the war did end, on the banks of the Rio Grand at eight in the evening on the 13th of May, with the retreat of an army that was never meant to be fighting. The dates alone begged for fate to be kind, but the five years that separate the waterside events held in their bloody hands the lives of more soldiers than in any other to come, along with the deaths of countless others, human and animal alike.

So came to life the promise of freedom, born in the sky with an explosion that reflected into the water below.

And there you have it.

I might put some other things up there, but I can't promise that I will do it all under this secret account.

Gotta keep the mystery alive somehow.

Join me here:
The Writer's Block

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