Flickering Light

The yelling stopped.  Then I heard loud footsteps and the living room door slam shut.  

I sat up in bed as the family car started up and quickly drove away.  I stared at my candle as it flickered spastically‎‎ at its end. Suddenly darkness engulfed the room.  I slowly lay back down and heard the faint sound of my mother crying. My heart sank and my body became numb.  I felt powerless as I heard words through her tears.

“Why?  Why God?  Answer me dammit!  Why?”  

Yelling and crying was nearly a nightly occurrence through my youth.  But I never heard her talk to herself before that night.  Soon after I fell asleep I was awakened suddenly by my mother.  

“Let’s go Joshua. Don’t ask any questions.”  

God must have answered her that evening.  We never went back home.

This fiction was written for Friday Fictioneers.

Visit and read the rules and join in the fun!

Till we meet again.  Good day.

Mind of Shoo

Together through Music

As a young kid, Marty and his mama spent weekend nights in rural southern bars listening to dad play with his band.  As a teen he learned to play under countless hours of alcohol-induced instruction and degrading comments from his dad.

The family went through financial hardship.  There was no playing catch in the back yard.  No family nights huddled by the radio. Divorce left young Marty alone with his dad in a run down shack on the edge of town.  Through it all,  music bonded the two of them like chords and lyrics do a song.

Marty went on to become a successful musician. He played on stages around the world. It brought him financial stability.  However,  his greatest joy was playing alongside his dad in the smokey bars back home.

_________________________

This fiction was written for Friday Fictioneers.

Visit and read the rules and join in the fun!

Till we meet again.  Good day.

Mind of Shoo

Man or Monster

Her father laughed uncontrollably as he sipped his beer then gently placed the can on the arm of the chair. Jeanie didn’t dare look up at him from her spot under the cushions. With her eyes closed she prayed while pondering the laugh. Was it a laugh of anger coming from him? Or simply a playful laugh of a loving father?  Jekyl and Hyde was the daily game she played her father.

He grabbed the beer can and chugged what was left then tossed it aside. She now understood the inevitable. Slowly she peered from behind the cushion and glanced up at the monster above.  

Today was not her day.

This fiction was written for Friday Fictioneers.

Visit and read the rules and join in the fun!

Till we meet again.  Good day.

Mind of Shoo

An Audience Of None

“Good Morning students,” the instructor says profoundly. “Welcome to the first day class for those who survived childhood with an abusive alcoholic unscathed.”  He looks out into the empty desks before him.  He paces a few steps with his head down and hand on his chin.  His eyes are as vacant as the scene before him.  “I will raise my voice so those in the far back can hear!” he yells into the void.  “I am Professor Minnefield. Survivor of physical and mental abuse from an alcoholic parent,” he projects in a booming voice of confidence.  “If I can go through life and succeed….”

“Mr. Thomas, keep your voice down,” the nurse abruptly tells the man standing in front of the picture on the wall.  “You can’t go on yapping like that.  This is the quiet zone of the ward. Here, let me help you tie the back of your hospital gown.”

This fiction was written for VisDare 146: Vacant

The picture to me was haunting.  This is what came to mind.  I was limited to 150 words so ends upbruptly.

Till we meet again.  Good Day

Mind of Shoo

Tattered

One could search a century and not find an answer.  His life is one of aimless searching and lost dreams.  He hopes the man in charge recognizes something inertly good in his tattered and beaten soul.

This fiction was written for Trifextra: Week Sixty-four.

This weekend we’re asking for exactly 33 of your own words plus the following three words:

• charge
• century
• lost

So 33 of yours plus 3 of ours means that everyone will have a 36 word response this time around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pain and Beauty

Woman With a Towel, 1898, Edgar Degas

 

Off with the layers of sadness.

Painfully peeled one by one

with reflections of my storied past

and a future of hope and healing.

Time to bear my soul

to those few I hold close to me.

Re-open old wounds and ugly scars

that are physically present for public consumption.

View them and draw your own conclusions

yet look beneath the skin you see

and see the real hurt lying deep below.

View with open mind and open eyes

not with eyes closed protecting you

from these unsightly pains before you.

These wounds are mine.

Earned from alcohol and abuse

during the years of innocence we call youth.

Look deeper till you see my heart

injured and still bleeding yet

still pumping the very life that is me.

Search deep within me

and find the love and caring

that I know exist within me.

For you my dear friend

are the one that can help me heal

with your gentle ear and sensitive nurturing.

Only then will my bare skin become

soft and beautiful.

And I will find my peace

in the life that is before me  

and beyond.

 

This was written for The Mag #163

She Reached Out

There are many like us out there.  We all look the same. We are those who suffer at the hands of the alcoholic.  You would not recognize that we suffer.  We hide it well.  We often seek shelter inside our shell yet can’t escape the pain inflicted upon us. A pain received at the hands of someone we love.  Both emotional and physical pain.

I was one of the many. However, one person extended a hand.  Understood my reality. Sacrificed herself in order to make our life somewhat more manageable. Tried to make normal of the abnormal. A shield of sorts.  Often taking the abuse upon herself so it may bypass me.  All in the name of love.  A love for her only child.  A protector till the very end.  

She was more than a protector.  She was my loving mother. She did all she could do.  For me. And I thank you.

This is fiction written for VisDare 10: Whimsy.  No PFC Patterson this week.  The picture didn’t allow it.  It was difficult to come up with something.  This is all I could bleed today.

The Kite

I grew up in a small town in the heart of Cajun country of south Louisiana.  I was an only child on a sugar cane farm with an alcoholic father, a loving mother and a chaotic household.  My mother, a seventh grade drop-out, did everything she could to keep things normal for me and most likely for herself as well.  My father drank daily.  And yelled daily.  We lived in an old farm-house that we rented for twenty dollars a month. This is in the seventies mind you, not the early 1930s.  The house had no heating or cooling. The roaches pranced around like they owned the place while the rats danced in the attic. Often I heard them fighting. At times they would fall down the walls of my room.  Not exactly a place you wanted to invite friends.  My days were spent alone, in my own world.  I played with toy tractors and football by myself in the pasture. Our closest neighbors were an old and kind black couple. Behind my house were acres and acres of sugar cane fields.  They were my escape from the chaos of my home.  My favorite time of the year was spring. The cane had grown to three feet in height at this stage of their growth. That is just a bit shorter than I was at eight years old.  The winds would blow swiftly yet silently across the fields.  Often in the spring I would walk into the cane fields and fly my kite. The vast expanses of openness along with the spring winds were ideal for this activity.

One particular spring I purchased a baby blue paper kite from the local Ben Franklin. This was a departure from the more cool plastic bat kites of the time.  Owning a paper kite would surely bring ridicule at school had my classmates found out.  My father helped me construct the simple kite. Four light pieces of grooved wood and the paper itself was all that was needed for assembly. He added a long strip of a worn bed sheet, yellowish in color, as a tail. One spring Saturday morning in 1973, at age of nine, I was ready to launch my kite on its maiden voyage.

I left the house late that particular morning.  My mother had prepared a lunch for me and placed it in a small brown paper bag. In the bag was a ham sandwich with mayonnaise, a bag of lays chips and a cold Winn Dixie brand of grape soda.  Off I went across our pasture behind our house.  Over the ditch and into the cane field I marched till I found the perfect location. I was alone.  The wind blowing briskly across the tops of the sugar cane.  The long leaves made a slight hissing sound as they danced in the breeze.  Armed with two reels of kite string spun around an old broomstick handle, I flung my kite in the air.  Up it went into the sky, the breeze lifting it skyward. Quickly it reached the end of the string. There it flew above me, its tail waiving in the wind.  I pushed the broomstick handle into the ground to free my hands. I looked into the clear sky, dotted with fluffy white clouds, at my kite flying so majestically. It was simply beautiful.

I don’t remember the amount of time I spent in the field that day.  It felt like an eternity.  I spread my small body between two rows of sugar cane with my feet just barely touching the infant stalks of cane.  The ground below me was cool against my back.  It was slightly hard from the drizzle of rain the day before. The cool ground was a sharp contrast the warm sun shining  from above onto the front of my body.  I ate my lunch there, carefully placing the trash back into the bag.  My dog Flag visited me at one point.  I even napped.  All the time, my kite just flew above me. When the wind picked up I could hear the rustling against the paper. I felt so free. So at peace. I felt my house of chaos was a million miles away when in reality, it was only a few hundred yards south of me.

I remember that day vividly, even to this day.  The memory is a short film captured for my mind to play whenever I want to revisit. I can still feel the cold ground below me.  I can still hear the kite rustling in the breeze.  I remember the cold can of check soda, the outside of the can covered in beads of water caused by condensation.  When I want to relax I just hit the start button and play this moment in time.  It soothes me even these many years later. I often hope that when I pass on that I can revisit that day. Perhaps I can hover above that scene and see the happiness, if just for that day, in my eyes. It was for me, at that time, a heavenly day.  

It was the best day of my life. 

This was written for Yeah Write Week #99.

Beyond the Picket Fence

This is where I grew up.  The house, once holding victims of alcoholism, now the victim of age and the elements.  Once an entanglement of chaos, violence and alcohol is now overrun with tangled vines and other plant life.  The exterior splintered as if it can no longer hold the secrets that once were within its walls.  Heartache and fear have burst through the siding like the screams years before.  The home a tattered reminder that those closest to your heart never understood your suffering.  The white picket fence, a symbol of an all American home to many, a symbol of imprisonment to me.  A symbol of a family lost.

This is fiction written for FRIDAY FICTIONEERS

THE CHALLENGE:

Write a one hundred word story that has a beginning, middle and end. (No one will be ostracized for going over or under the word count.)

THE KEY:

Make every word count.

Join the fun!

My Sentence

A hush descended over the room.  She stands and clears her throat.  Then she reaches over to the center of the table to take some grapes out of the glass dish.  Everyone watches as she slowly places one single grape in her mouth.  She put the remainder of them on her paper plate.  Again she clears her throat and says, “Hi I am Beth and I am an alcoholic.”

Everyone responds “Hi Beth.”

“I am here cause I believe in myself.  After years of drinking, two husbands, over twenty-five tattoos and lots of alcohol it is just time.  Life has exhausted me.  I have no control.  I never have.  Honesty is the hardest thing to face. I have drowned honesty with gallons of alcohol.  That has cost me my kids, two failed marriages and my professional life.  I know I am not alone in this self-destructive behavior. When does it end?  I am scared of where I have awakened sober. I am no friend to emotion.  I express love through physical contact and nothing more.  I am a sad state of affairs.”

Beth sheds no tears during her introductory speech.  She listens as others comment.  She sits nearly motionless through each visitor’s talk in the meeting.  Daydreaming. Agonizing. Regretting. She slowly finishes her grapes as the meeting draws to a close.  She savors the sweet taste of each.  She has brief conversations after the meeting then heads out the door.  Waiting for her outside are her kids. They were granted a quick visit.  She hugs each kid tightly. Her tattooed arms hold each kid tight, tears flowing from her eyes.  She kisses each kid and reaffirms her love.  Then she stands and turns to a female officer, waiting with the door of her car open.  The officer places handcuffs on her. Beth takes her place in the back seat.

As they drive off she waves to her kids.  She then says, “You know officer, my jail sentence is short. Only two months along with rehab and AA.  But my true sentence was handed down not by a judge but by alcohol.  A life sentence.”

This is a work of fiction.  Written for the speakeasy at yeah write #95.