Photo: Silas Baisch on Unsplash
It was not quite a smile.
It was born not in joy
Nor in any enchantment,
But in desperate
Hope
To forestall
Shame
As it loomed,
A storm
In the fast shrinking distance.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Grimace in 33 words
Photo: Luma Pimentel via Unsplash
“I’ve written it all down,” she’d said.
“Anything you need to know is there,” she’d promised.
“It’ll a breeze,” she assured me, one hand already on the door handle. “I won’t be too long. It’s just a short gig. A few hours at most. He’ll likely sleep right through to my return anyway.”
But the baby slept through about five minutes and then would not stop crying and I had no idea what half of the terminology for baby-brand stuff meant or what “up to the spoon line” was supposed to be when I couldn’t find any spoons with lines, and no clue how to “keep a hand on the baby at all times” while also needing two of them just to untangle the tabs on the darn diaper and another two to keep the baby’s feet from kicking it away … And the clean bottles came separated from nipples, which had multiple unrelated parts that needed assembly like an Ikea cabinet from hell … And what on earth is a spit-up cloth and how is it different than a towel or a blanket?
Speaking of, how does one swaddle a baby without dislocating something in the process of making it into a mummified burrito?
And did I mention the baby would not stop crying?
“You’re a saint, Rick!” she’d said. Even kissed me on the cheek like I was some long lost brother and not the neighbor who happened to live next door and perhaps smiled a few times at the baby on the elevator.
“I know it is last minute but I’ve been waiting months for the opportunity … I’ll make you dinner,” she’d promised, and her relief at having a solution for the baby was so palpable that I felt guilty extricating myself from what she’d misunderstood as “yes” when at the very most I’d meant “maybe, but not really.”
“It was a breeze,” I said.
“He woke up but is now sleeping like an angel,” I assured her, ignoring the baby’s heft on my desperate bladder. I hadn’t dared to move, lest the baby woke again.
She looked tired and worried and sad and a little worse for wear, and I wondered how the gig went but didn’t want to ask after she appeared to hold back tears when I’d asked if she had a good time.
“Did the instructions help?” she asked instead.
I nodded. “Perfectly.”
For the SoCS Prompt: Instructions
“You might as well open your eyes now.”
His gravely voice was somewhat amused but carried in it the edge of impatience she’d recognized from her own father. A dismissive tone that simultaneously mocked and tolerated females’ flair for the emotional while also warning said females to not mistake momentary patience for leniency.
Muriel swallowed any sign of sigh. Her body ached from three days rattling on wooden wheels over rocks and gravel and muddy ruts and unexpected pits. To make matters worse, the girl-servant who’d been her companion since childhood, hadn’t been allowed to accompany her, and the rough hands of service women who did not know her, had tied her stays too tight and left the knots digging at her ribs and the small of her back.
She’d closed her eyes in part to manage the ever present nausea of travel forced on her at the opposite direction of movement. However, a goodly bit of it was in order to allow herself at least a semblance of private space in the confines of the carriage. His eyes undressed her either way, but at least she could pretend to not see it.
Her time for privacy was up.
She forced her eyes open and nodded the politest smile she could manage at the man who would be her lord and father-in-law (and if his leering told her anything, also the master of her body, son or no son).
He scared her and his eyes were cruel, but she’d learned at a young age to hide revulsion under a lowering of lashes and to nod compliance as means to reduce inevitable harm.
“You are a girl-child, Muriel,” her mother would soothe and scold her as she gently rubbed salve onto what new welts and bruises another lashing had left on the child. “No matter what they do or ask of you, you must not disobey.”
And yet even her mother, the mistress of the manor, who embodied the balance of stately conduct and humility before her betters, sported the occasional split lip from her husband, Muriel’s father, along with other wounds in areas best left unmentioned. All a female could do was walk the tightrope in attempt to limit scope and frequency of pain.
Muriel raised her eyes to meet the heavy brow of the man who occupied the seat across from her. She calmed her voice so it not reflect her fretting mind.
“Have we almost arrived, My Lord?”
His eyes flicked to the window and she leaned to look through the opening, acutely aware that this brought her body perilously close to his lap.
The lake sprawled at the side of their conveyance, the water undulating lightly in the breeze as afternoon clouds gathered. Into it grew a spit of rock and on top it a castle, stout in stone and strong in somber presence. It was far larger than the house she’d left behind. Gloomier and more glorious, too.
She wondered how long it would be before she could once again see it from this or any vantage point. Some lords did not allow their women to leave their rooms, let alone the courtyard. Especially not the newly arrived, who might attempt to steal a path out of marriage by seeking the luring company of nymphs at the bottom of lakes.
She let her gaze linger on the castle before straightening.
“It is beautiful, My Lord,” she said.
His eyes narrowed then relaxed and she was glad she didn’t need to lie about it. He’d probably know if she had.
“Your new home,” he noted, almost kindly.
Her stomach lurched. Home or jail, there may not really be a difference. Still, as the carriage continued toward the future that this man had proposed and her father had accepted, she felt she may have passed some test that if she managed to maintain the credit of, could bring her — if not safety or protection — then perhaps a lesser measure of misery.
For Sue Vincent’s WritePhoto challenge
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
As the shadows lengthened
At the end of day,
She paused,
Reflecting,
On the direction
Of her way.
For Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Shadows
And while we’re at it, for today’s Which Way Challenge
“Your grandfather must be turning in his grave.”
She’d made bitterness her trademark, so finding meaning usually entailed having to decode gradients of dismay.
He figured this one was a 67 out of 100. Enough disgust to call attention to how the “good old days” were better than modern progress, while not completely dismissing the comforts of advanced technology.
“Clean power is good for the lungs,” he cajoled, half-hoping for an argument. It was his Grandma’s genes he carried, after all.
“Pah,” she wrinkled her nose. “Nothing wrong with a bit of soot to get people appreciating real power.”
For Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers
Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein
How many did these laboriously
Hewed walls
Close in on
As they trudged endlessly
With buckets laden
And arms weighted
Up and down
And up and down again
For more?
How many did they shelter
Under siege
Of catapults and
Rusted arrows
As the walls shuddered
Dust
Onto the bitten lips
And rounded shoulders
Of those crouched below?
How many hastened feet
Did these walls keep secrets for
Under the cover of
Night
And sentries’ snores
As lovers met
In darkened corners
To remember
Life before?
For the Tuesday Photo Challenge: Wall
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
White puffed blue
Spreads above
To the wide horizon.
For the Sunday Stills Challenge: Blue
Photo: Lancaster Ohio 1938
He was enthralled.
His fate decided
By those who bought
And sold
The humans they preferred
To see as lesser than,
In order to exact a price
For their own
Self-aggrandizing,
Once freed,
His slavery was still
Held against him
In deliberate inequity,
His struggles mocked
As ‘proof’ he hadn’t been trying
Hard enough.
For Sammi’s Weekend Writing Prompt: Enthrall in 54 words
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
He had never been so hungry.
Not even when he’d gone without food for three days to win a dare. Perhaps because at least then the food was there, available to him had he gotten too weak or ravenous enough to render the challenge unappetizing.
He’d won that bet. And the mountain bike his friend was cocky enough to suggest as the prize.
The same bike — and all his gear atop it — that now lay twisted at the end of some ravine he had no hope of reaching. The bike that would have dragged him down to the same end had he not, in some unknown reflex of survival, thrown himself off the seat and against the rocky walls of what he’d thought was a sort-of-trail.
It first it was the abrasions that caused him the most suffering. The skinless arms and cheek. The raw wound on his shoulder where his shirt had ripped.
Then night came and it was the cold.
And the next day, the hunger.
He had nothing on him. No knife. No phone. Not even a lighter. He’d been so proud to dress the bike with a complicated harness to carry everything he needed for his week-long trek. Now he was naked of supplies. Bare of any protection or wherewithal, alone in the wilderness, and ignorant of how to make do without the gadgets he’d never given a thought to the possibility of not having.
Ignorant, too, of the consequences of veering off the path “to test the bike’s capabilities.” He had told a couple of friends he was planning to go for a bike ride, but he had planned to surprise them with his accomplishment post-trek, and in his hubris did not notify them when, where to, or how long for.
Off the trail and into the “uncharted.” He’d felt strong. He’d felt courageous. He’d felt the braggadocio reverberating underneath his ribs.
Now no one knew where he was.
Or when to expect him.
Or that he deseprately needed aid.
He’d never been so hungry. Or so tired. Or so hurting. Or so scared.
He couldn’t help thinking of how someone would one day find what was left of him. That is if some animal did not find him first.
He stopped to rest when the new blisters on his feet had burst and the pain of another raw place was too much to manage.
His shoulder throbbed. His head. His hand where it had slammed against the rock and left two of his fingers black and unbending. He checked the sky and realized a third day was about to end and he was just as lost as he had been the ones before. And hungrier.
He cried a bit. There was no one in front of whom to be ashamed.
Or so he thought.
He woke to warmth and thought he’d died already. The weight of something on his torso must have been the earth, though he couldn’t bother to try and consider who’d have dug a grave.
Then a smell wafted to him and his stomach clenched in painful hunger. Surely not even hell would torment so in death!
He cracked open an eyelid to the view of a lively fire and a shadowed figure stirring something over a corner of coals. He blinked. The figure was still there. He swallowed, and his mouth was not as dry as it should have been. There was a taste of sweetness on his tongue, as well. He coughed just to hear his own voice.
The head swiveled toward him and he could not discern any of its features against the brightness of the flames. A hand reached back into a pack and rummaged, then the legs straightened and the person unfurled and stepped toward him. He squinted but still could not see the face. He wasn’t even sure it was a man.
“Here,” the voice confirmed. A woman, and not a young one. Not warm but by her actions so far, not unkind. “Jerky. Chew on this until the stew is done.”
For Linda’s SoCS challenge: Chew/Choo
Photo: Na’ama Yehuda
Serpentine line
Undulates across planes
Amidst the snowed patches of
Rugged terrain.
Spread below
To horizon
Of blue onto blue
This one planet
We share
All of us –
Me and you.
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