Life in progress

Category Archives: stories


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Four Dauntless Boy

Eyes sealed shut. Panic seizes, throat closes; gasp! Hush, little boy, don’t cry. Strange hand offers a warm squeeze of reassurance that you still are. Frantically scratch apart the crusted eyelashes. MOTHER!

Hush little boy…

The room is white, clean, sterile but for one miniscule element. Daylight streams through the window illuminating a thousand tiny dust particles that float carelessly, irreverent of the void where mother should be. In her stead is a doctor, occupying the spot on the shiny gray stone floor where the sun would otherwise lazily lay down her rays. Nothing in the scene reflects the unease that builds in boy’s chest.

“The patient was admitted last night with lacerations to the face, neck…”

Boy assumes the doctor is talking about him as he and the young, worry-eyed but healthy nurse are the only ones in the room besides a group of students in white coats carrying clipboards and looking eagerly at the droning doctor in charge.

“…and a crushed collarbone…”

Boy doesn’t know what a collarbone is, but the area below his throat shrieks in his ears of white hot pain

“…surgically extracted fragments of bone…”

compared to all the other little pinches he feels when he moves.

The nurse helps him to sit and offers him a straw with water at the other end in a blue plastic cup.

“Where’s my mom?” boy whispers to the nurse.

She smiles sadly and pats boy’s arm and he’s not sure if she heard his question. Then everyone is gone.

Boy’s eyes begin to leak great tears that splash upon his blue gown, darkening it like so many bruises. He wipes violently at his silliness and stares at the motes of dust until they vanish, the sun obliterated by the menacing shadow of a cloud.


To go to the beginning of this series click here

To Five click here

Disclaimer: This story (and series) is semi-fictional, and is in no way connected to persons alive nor dead. Apart from certain facts, it is a product of the author’s imagination.


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Three Angry Brother

Fear: writhing serpentine ineffectiveness slithers from your pores. Go deep, angry child. Father’s affection stings like the buzzing of a hot summer hive. Mother is soft, weak, an open sore. Go deep, angry young man.

In the heat of the night brother arrives home. His fists ache, his legs, from miles in his shoes, tremble. Above the whine of cicadas brother hears a chunk! chunk! staccato as he reaches for the door. Apprehension tingles at the bridge of his nose.

“Ahhhh,” cries father.

Brother tiptoes around the house aware of each blade of grass he crushes underfoot.

“Ahhh, hu hu hu,” cries father.

Chunk! Chunk! Chunk! Relentless is the shovel as it lacerates the innocent ground. Brother hurries back to the door and steps inside. He senses the absence of life all around and the silence grips his throat.

The hairs rising from his scalp precede brother up the stairs to his room. He slips closed the lock. Under the covers he shivers to the faint chunk! chunk!, rhythm to father’s lament.


To go to the beginning of this series click here

To Four click here

Disclaimer: This story (and series) is semi-fictional, and is in no way connected to persons alive nor dead. Apart from certain facts, it is a product of the author’s imagination.


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Two Dear Mother

Bless the little ones for they cannot be helped. Seen through his eyes there is love; love is pain. Mother comforts the fragile. Frozen quick as zero’s sudden chill, life shatters, close your eyes. Hide from the pool’s crimson darkness. Bleed for them; in ways you always have.

Father sits at the kitchen table, rays of sun inspiring rainbows from the crystal of his tumbler. He contemplates the dark liquid inside: it clashes with the stench of bleach from mother’s cloth. The stinking cat is rubbing against his leg.

“Where is that little shit now?” asks father.

“He is at a friend’s house,” replies mother.

Mother doesn’t look at father. She keeps her right profile from his sight knowing the bruise will enrage him. Mother hopes boy has indeed gone to his friend’s house.

A door opens as though on cue.

“Lying to me again,” says father under his breath.

Father turns to boy.

“Why can’t you do as your mother expects of you?” father bellows.

Father scoops up the cat and throws it at boy, knocking boy off his feet.

To Three click here

Disclaimer: This story (and series) is semi-fictional, and is in no way connected to persons alive nor dead. Apart from certain facts, it is a product of the author’s imagination.


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One Poor boy

Father’s love glitters enticingly like shards of glass. Reach out, poor little boy. Father reeks of love, for mother, for baby, for the liquid that consumes. Big brother has flown, anger in his wake. Draw back, poor little boy.

He’s eight years old and he’s rushing home from school in his uniform, his lunch bag tucked tightly under his arm. Because he stoops when he walks, the first thing he sees of brother are his shoes. He tries to step around them but a solid forearm contacts at the level of his chest. He pushes against it but it doesn’t budge.

“He’s home,” brother says.

“Where’s mom?” asks boy.

“Home too.”

Boy, more determined than ever, attempts to get around brother. This time he is held back by a hand, painfully grasping his arm.

“You can’t,” says brother.

“No, you can’t,” boy says bravely, stupidly, because he knows what is coming.

In broad daylight, with cars passing on the quiet street on the way home from school, brother passes on father’s lesson to boy.

To Two, click here

 
Disclaimer: This story (and series) is semi-fictional, and is in no way connected to persons alive nor dead. Apart from certain facts, it is a product of the author’s imagination.