I still can't believe she gone.

Every Wednesday I participate in the Indie Ink Writing Challenge. This week I challenged Sunshine, and Bewildered Bug challenged me with: 'I can't believe she's gone.' 

Edit: The original story I posted was the same story, but I attempted to write it with a dialect that didn't work. I didn't like it at all, but felt rushed to post it because it was Wednesday! So I edited to how I liked it, and here is the result. I'm too much of a pansy to leave up the crappy version of it, so if you want to read it for some reason, just email me...

I’m not going lie and say my mom never tucked me in at night. There were some nights where, just before we were getting into bed, she would come knocking on my nana’s door where we lived. Words would always be exchanged between my nana and my mom with my nana saying that it was too late; she should come back another time. My mom always insisted on seeing us kids though, saying that it took quite a lot for her to get herself over to this part of town.

When my nana would let her in she’d make a beeline for the room I shared with my brother and sister. She would go around to each of our beds and sit her skinny bum on the edge of the hard matress and tickle our backs. Oh, how we loved getting our backs tickled. She would run her long fingernails up and down our bare skin, and it always felt so good because they were those ugly fake plastic ones. 

On the nights I could smell the alcohol on her breath, which was most of the nights, I knew it wasn’t going to be a very good back tickling. She would usually nod off as she was running her fingers down our backs, causing us to shout out to her to wake up and keep on tickling.

One night she kept nodding off and it was making me mad. I asked her if she could just please, for one night, stay awake and let me be the one to fall asleep. She didn’t like my attitude, though, and slapped me across my face. I started crying and my nana rushed into the room, demanding to know what happened. My mom started yelling and screaming saying she knew how to raise her own kids, and why couldn’t my nana just leave her alone.

My nana was full of her shit though, and told her to leave and to never come back.  I never again saw my mom after that night and I still can’t believe she gone. 

Thank you, thank you very much.

Every Wednesday I participate in the Indie Ink Writing Challenge. This week I challenged K. Syrah, and Carrie challenged me with: 'Pick your favorite Elvis song and write a 500 word story using the lyrics as inspiration.' 

As an awkward kid who hadn't yet figured out how to handle his body, I was capable of doing two things really well: the Elvis lip curl and his well-known phrase of, ‘Thank you, thank you very much.’ You know the one that the ladies supposedly would swoon over and that only a select few can pull off? Granted, I could only achieve it when I was alone and in my bathroom in front of the mirror, but hey, to me that still counted.

Even though most of my friends never actually listened to Elvis, it was the cool thing to try and do at recess. We would all sit in a circle in the large grassy field, looking at each other and screwing our faces up, hoping that maybe, just maybe, one of us would pull it off in front of someone so we could be considered the coolest kid ever.

One day, after sitting in front of the mirror for hours the previous night, I decided at recess that I would tell everyone that I had perfected it: I was totally capable of doing the Elvis lip curl and sounding exactly like him.

Everyone stopped scrunching up their faces and focused completely on me, and me alone. No one was practicing their lip curl, no one was trying to perfect the tone of their voice; all eyes were on me and this was going to be the best glory moment of my young life.

Not one of us in the group had ever made such a big deal as I. Most of the time the other kids would say, ‘I’m getting a little closer! Can you tell? Can you?’ But me, being the cocky person that I am, straight up said, ‘Hey guys, I can totally do the lip curl and sound like Elvis, it’s like the easiest thing in the world. You seriously can’t? Ha!’

And honestly, in front of the mirror I could! I would reach into the little throat of mine and out would come the growly voice of the King himself and my lip would curl in the most perfect of ways that, had the King still been alive, would have made him jealous.

But in front of a group of friends where I was already the ‘loser’ of the group? Ya, it was a little harder.

So I sat there, with my butt getting damp from the green grass, with all eyes on me. I tried to block everyone from my view. I tried to imagine them naked or in their underwear. Heck, I even tried to imagine them in granny panties complete with a wig! But it didn’t work. I attempted the lip curl and my face completely froze up. NOTHING. And that deep growly voice that was supposed to come out didn’t show itself. Instead, a tiny squeak emitted from my throat. My glory moment was officially ruined and after that day I never tried to channel my inner Elvis again.

So, funny story: When Vince and I were talking about music for our wedding last week, I said that my only rule would be NO ELVIS. I don't know why I don't really like his music, but I just don't. I know, I'm probably the only person in the world, but I can't help it! So imagine my surprise when my prompt was about none other than Elvis himself. And it had to be 500 words. (Which I got exactly right!) I was a little worried that my writing would be crap, and I was actually dreading it! I guess that's where the word 'challenge' comes in...

I know I didn't follow the prompt to a 'T' because I was supposed to choose a song as inspiration, and I instead chose to use the phrase after his songs, but I had a lot of fun writing this. It isn't exactly a story from my childhood, but as a kid I did always try to perfect that little trademarks of Elvis'!

And with that, I was done.

Every Wednesday I participate in the Indie Ink Writing Challenge. 

This week I challenged Beth Hegde and T challenged me with: 'A dozen roses.' 

I sat in the front seat of his truck, a beat up old Bronco with the front fender a different color than the rest of the body because a friend had hit a deer in it the previous year. I had my feet pulled up underneath me, my chin resting on my knees with my arms wrapped around them pulling them in tight. It was raining outside, too cold for a sweater, but too warm and humid for a full-on winter jacket. The heater was blasting in my face causing my eyes to dry out, but that wasn’t the cause of the tears streaming down my 16 year old face.

Earlier in the day I heard my boyfriend had been cheating on me for a while and I was aching to know if it was true. He had been acting a little strange the past few weeks, and I knew something was up. I had asked him what’s been going on and after he explained some bullshit reason about how his mom had been going through a tough time and she wanted him to hangout with her, it made me even more weary. I know this boy, and I know he wouldn’t let his mom be the reason we didn’t hang out.

I bluntly asked him if he cheated on me, and he laughed in my face. That should have been the first clue. And the second clue? Continuing to laugh while calling me stupid for even thinking that. I asked him to just simply answer the question, yes or no, as I continued crying, almost to the point of sobbing. ‘No,’ he said, looking into my eyes. ‘I would never cheat on you. Not in a million years, babe.’

Would you guess that I believed him? That I believed him as I looked into those big brown eyes and felt his cool hands on my clammy ones? Because I did, if only for a moment. I said ok, opened the truck door, and walked away. I knew that in that moment, I was letting go of him. I was walking away from him for forever because we both knew what he had done.

After sneaking back in my house and hoping my parents didn’t see my poofy red eyes, I heard my phone ring signaling me that I got a text. It read, ‘I’m sorry,’ and I knew what he was sorry for. I knew right away that he wasn’t sorry for what had just happened in the car; he was sorry for cheating on me, for not telling me to my face, and for breaking my heart.

I ignored the text and instead just laid in my bed the rest of the night questioning everything. The next day a dozen roses showed up at my door and it was hard to tell my parents that they were from my wonderful boyfriend, for no reason at all. I didn’t want to tell them that we broke up, or that he cheated on me, or that I was devastated. I just wasn’t ready for that.

I brought the roses to my room, took each petal off one by one, and flushed them down the toilet. I grabbed my phone and shot off an angry text: “A dozen roses? You think that’s going to solve everything? You cheated on me. You kissed another girl, you stuck your dick in her, and worst of all you fell for her. How could you possibly think a dozen roses is going to change or solve any of this? Go fuck yourself.”

And with that, I was done.

So this was sort of a nonfiction piece with some fiction thrown in. My boyfriend in a beat up Bronco did cheat on me, the whole scene pretty much panned out like that, and he did send me flowers the next day, though they were way prettier and more expensive than roses! We didn't break up right away, but our relationship was 'over' way before this happened, so it was something I was expecting. Oh, to never be in young love again...

What I Didn't See

Every Wednesday I participate in the Indie Ink Writing Challenge. 
This week I challenged Michael Webb with 'You have to move unexpectedly.' Ace challenged me with: 
'She looks out of the window all day, not moving, not making a sound. What does she see out there?' 

She lost everything: her husband, her son, her mother, her will to survive. She had me, of course, but I was the daughter who could never live up to her expectations; the one who was just never good enough. She didn’t approve of my tattoos, of my ‘alternative’ lifestyle, and she definitely didn’t approve of my girlfriend whom I loved so much. It didn’t come as a big surprise that she just stopped caring when I came around, ignoring my every word and staring out through the big clean window that looked out onto the street, never making a sound.

When I would visit her on a rare occasion, she would always be sitting there in an old rocking chair that belonged to her mother, just staring out the window. I worried constantly about when she would die because I knew it wasn’t very far off, and I always hoped it would be the nurse I hired to take care of her that would find her limp in that chair and not me.

She loved the nurse more than she loved me. It was the nurse’s gentle touch that awoke my mother every morning, ready to give her a bath. It was she who fed her like a baby three times a day, asking her to open her mouth and wiping the food away after it spilled back out. It was her steady voice that read aloud my mother’s favorite books, hoping that one of them might ‘awaken’ her and bring her back to our world.

Last week the nurse called to tell me my mother passed away. I never thought I would feel such a deep sense of loss. I definitely didn’t expect to feel like I missed out on something incredible, like I could have made the relationship with my mother better. I felt like I was the one who should have been taking care of her this whole time, like I should have been there for her despite her negativity and hatred towards me. I was her daughter who was supposed to be there for her, no matter what.

I went to her house today to pack some things up and I sat in that old rocking chair. I looked out the old window, hoping to see what she saw. Was it really that wonderful to just sit here and stare all day?

I saw a father walk by, attempting to teach his daughter how to ride her new pink bicycle. I saw a young boy walking his overweight German Sheppard, thinking about how the dog could escape its owner easily if it wasn’t so loyal. I saw birds, so many birds. They ate from the bird feeders that surrounded the yard in the tall trees, on the gutters, and in the green grass. I saw car after car drive by with businessmen going to work, parents taking their children to school, and teenagers who were newly navigating the road.

What I didn’t see was how my mother could throw her life away and settle for this instead. Life was much more beautiful and it made me grieve for her, knowing she missed out on it so much. When she lost the ones close to her, she lost herself. I lost my brother, my father and my grandmother, and along the way I ultimately lost my mother, the woman who should have been my favorite person in the whole world and the person I should have always been able to turn to.

I luckily haven’t lost my mother or any close family yet, but I think this story came from a place in my childhood. She was an alcoholic so there were times when I didn’t see her for a long time as I lived with my dad or grandparents. For a kid things are usually out of sight, out of mind, but not when it came to my mom. I always wondered what made her choose alcohol (or the ‘rocking chair’) over me, and it’s something I will never know. As an adult, I definitely feel like I missed out on a lot with my mother. Out relationship isn’t as great as it could be because of that, but it’s coming along. She’s been sober for quite a while now, but it’s still hard to get over the past that you’re reminded of every day.

Tomorrow.

Every Wednesday I will participate in the Indie Ink Writing Challenge. This week I challenged Jen O., and Head Ant challenged me with: 'Today you decide to walk to work and take the stairs instead of the elevator. How does this impact your day?' I gave myself an additional set of rules, and allowed myself a time limit of 5 minutes. 

Every day, I walk through the swinging doors of the front lobby.

Every day, I wave to Lee at the front desk.

Every day, I make a beeline for the elevator.

Every day, I push the ‘up’ button 5 or 6 times, wishing the doors to open faster.

Every day, I cross the threshold into the elevator and push the round button with the number three.

Every day, I arrive in my office with seconds to spare.

Every day, but today.

Today, I took the stairs because I had a few extra minutes.

Today, I pushed open the big white door and heard the metal on metal as it slammed.

Today, I started up the first flight of stairs, step by step.
Today, I realized I am out of shape.
Today, I felt the sweat drip down my face, bead by bead.
Today, I arrived at the office 7 minutes late with sweat marks under my arms, ready for a nap.
Tomorrow, I will definitely take the elevator again.


*I also want to assure you that this is fiction, because I would rather take the stairs any day. Elevators make me nauseous! Hehe*