Distress Signals

This is what I'm currently working on.  Maybe one day I'll actually finish somthing instead of having a billion works in progress...

-----

It was in there.

She felt it when she woke up, before she even opened her eyes.

It was always there anymore, hibernating.  Sometimes she felt it in her stomach, sometimes in her chest.  It was heavy when it was asleep.  A weight she had to breath through.

Today it moved.  It wasn’t awake, at least not fully.  It would be soon though, awake and gnawing, clawing, twisting.  It would burn when it was awake, as it moved up from her stomach, up from her chest, forcing its head up her throat, out of her mouth.

It would happen soon, and she did not feel strong enough anymore to swallow it back down again.  This time she thought it might actually escape.

This time she thought she might actually let it.

Not now though, because somewhere in the house a baby was crying.  Her baby.  Her big boy.

He was always crying.  It wasn’t what she thought it would be, motherhood.  It was louder, wetter, harder.

She hadn’t meant to get pregnant.  She had been happy about i because she thought she should be happy about it.  They had been married four years now, and he wanted a baby.  Her friends said she should want a baby.  She didn’t have a career so she needed a baby.  Child birth would define her as a woman.

So she told everyone she was pregnant and she celebrated it and he had come screaming into the world, and hadn’t quit screaming since.

She thought it would come naturally, being a mother.  It was what women had been created to do after all.  Right up there with cleaning the house and spreading their legs when it was called for.  Motherhood was demanded of women by nature and by society, so it would have come naturally.

It was hard.

Whenever possible she ignored the fact that her body had produced this tiny alien thing that she was supposed to not only know how to care for but also want to care for.  She missed their life before.  She missed her own life before most of all.

And inside her chest it moved again as her door opened, the crying got louder and her husband said, “You’ve got fifteen minutes,” then he and their child diminished down the hall again and she took a deep breath and tried to pull herself out of bed.

I don't have a copy of this one.

NaNo Novel thus far

Current wordcount: 2332

“It stinks in here,” Ricky said.

“Smells like an old empty shack,” Simon said finally turning around to blink at its shadowy interior.

Ricky knew the smell of old buildings and had to disagree that this was the same smell.

It reminded him of the smell of animals, and of sickness.  Like the way the dog house had smelled when the puppies all caught distemper and died.

Maybe some animal had been sick in the shack.  There was a large pile of pine needles and leaves in one corner.  Something like a raccoon or an old possum might have curled up there to die.

Or maybe even something bigger, like a stray dog or even a coyote.

He thought about digging around in the pile for a skull or any bones but decided not to.  It did not smell like dead things, but he would hate to stick his hands in the pile and into something fresh dead.

“This place is neat!” Simon said.  “I bet nobody knows its here anymore.  It’d make a neat clubhouse.”

“Did you know it was here,” Ricky asked.  “Is this where you were heade3d today?”

“No.  Never seen the place before.”

“How come?  Don’t’ you come hunting out here all the time?”

Simon walked over to the pile of debris in the corner and kicked some of it around.  A moth fluttered out of the mess, but nothing dead was revealed.

“Never been this far before,” he admitted.  “I think I got turned around somewhere.  I usually come out in the Deacon’s pecan grove.”

“You mean we’re lost!”  The youner brother had yelped.  Suddenly he felt like crying and really wished he had stayed home.

Neither boy had spoken again until the rain let up and they started walking again.

Now they stopped to rest under a large tree, night was coming on and Ricky felt like crying again.

“Don’t start that,” Simon said, “Its not like we’re lost in a jungle or something.  All we’ve gotta do is keep walking and sooner or later we’re going to come out in somebodys cow pasture or soybean field.”

“But we’ve already been walking all day and haven’t come out anywhere yet!”

Ricky sat down in the wet pine straw at the base of the tree they were resting under.  His bottom lip began to tremble.  He didn’t want to cry. Only babies cried and he didn’t want Simon to call him a baby, but suddenly he just coudln’t handle it anymore.

He begain to wail.

“We’re lost and I’m wet and I’m hungry and I’m thirsty and its getting dark and I’m getting cold.  I.... want.... to.... go.... HOME!”

“Get up and quit crying like a big baby.”  Simon said.  “We’ll get home, we’re not lost forever.  Tomorrow we’ll just spend all day walking back the way we came today and we’ll be home again.  You’ll see.”

“Tomorrow?  What about tonight.”

“Its getting dark.  If we keep walking in the dark we really will get lost.  So tonight we’re going to go back and stay in that shack.”

“It stinks.”

“But its dry isn’t it?  And warmer than sleeping out here on the wet ground.”

Still sniffing and very unhappy, Ricky followed his brother back to the shack.  He curled up in a corner far from the smelly pile of leaves and fell asleep with his tummy growling for want of supper.

NaNo '09 Days 5 and 6

NaNo Update: Day 5 = 363 words Day 6=444 Total so far: 1765 I can't get any writing done because of my husband and I'm about ready to give up.

--

Of course she could not think of any reasonable reason for someone to be in her house, uninvited.  Strangers did not usually break in just to sit and rock in old rocking chairs.  Strangers broke in to steal things.

Maybe it was not a stranger at all.  Maybe someone she knew had dropped by for a visit in the middle of the night.

Sure, she thought, and maybe its Nannie herself down there, sitting alone in her rocker waiting on me to come down.  I will sit on her knee like a child and she will sing me lullabyes just like old times.

Appealing yet unlikely.

Below her the old rocking chair gave another hushed squeak, then groaned in protest.

Whoever had been sitting down there had just stood up.  Her time to flee was running out.  She tried to make her legs unfreeze so she could retreat upstairs, but they did not want to obey her.

She strained to hear footsteps, to hear if her visitor were coming closer or leaving but her carpets swallowed whatever sound might have been made.

Then she saw him.  A black silhouette at the bottom of the stairs.  A man shaped shadow standing with its arms by its sides, chin tilted up, looking towards her.

Did he see her?

She thought for a moment that the deeper shadows of the stairwell might keep her invisible if she could stay motionless.

Then he spoke.

“Why are you afraid of me?”

So much for him not seeing me, she thought.

She puffed out her chest and tried to make herself feel braver than she really was.

“Who are you?” she called down.  “Why are you in my house?”

The man shadow took a step up the stairs towards her.

“I can smell your fear.”

“I’ve already called the police.” she lied.  “They are on their way.  You better get out of here.”

The man shadow moved up another step, then another.  He could almost reach out and touch her.  Still, she stayed frozen on the stairs.

“You smell like a trapped animal.  A dainty little fox in a great big bear trap, about to chew off her own leg to escape.”

Suddenly the power was back on.  She kept a dim light by the stairs so she wouldn’t break her neck in the night, but even its slim light was almost blinding.

The man below her seemed almost to still be a shadow.  He was dressed in black pants and a shirt with long black sleeves.  His hair was black too, and his skin a dark tan.

She could not make out the features of his face.  Her eyes were drawn down to the one bright spot on his body.  Below his upturned chin a clerical collar seemed to glow bright white.

He did not advance another step upwards, but reached one hand towards her.

“Why are you afraid of me?” he asked again.

Then he faded away.

This time Molly did come awake slowly, morning light softly lifting her lids.

Odd dream, she thought briefly before tucking it away in the back of her mind.

****

The forest dripped with moisture from the recent rain.  Drops fell from leaf to leaf, causing tyhe greenery to talk to itself in wet whispers.

It was near dusk, the sun falling low, already unseen behind a curtain of clouds.  Two boys moved among the bushes, trying to stay as dry as possible.

“I can’t believe you got us lost,”the smaller of the two boys complained.  “Lost and rained on.”

“Hey!” the bigger boy defended himself, “I didn’t make it rain.  Rain just, you know, happens!”

“But you DID get us lost,” the smaller boy reminded him.

“You didn’t HAVE to come, Ricky.  I was gonna make you stay home, but then you would have just tattled on me.”

“Would not!”

Early that morning he had caught Simon headed towards the woods.  He was wearing his hunting clothes, camouflage so old it was almost all faded to grey, and he had his bow with him.

Ricky, who was doomed to a day full of monotony, saw his chance.

“Where we going,” he had asked his older brother.

“Nowhere,” Simon had mumbled.  “Just gonna shoot at some squirrels.  Go back to the house.”

“Awwwww, Simon,” Ricky had whined.  And he really had not planned to tattle, but Simon had quickly changed his mind anyway.

“Never mind, you can come.  But you’ve gotta do what I say and be quiet.”

Ricky adored his older brother and was overjoyed to be invited on the hunt.

Except Simon did not seem to really be hunting anything.  They just kept walking deeper and deeper into the woods.  The squirrels they were supposed to be hunting scampered overhead and alongside them, unmolested by Simon or his arrows.

Ricky, who had hardly ever been deep enough in the woods to lose sight of their house, was lost quickly.  Positive that his older brother knew where they were, and how to get them home again, he never worried.

Then it had started raining.

Neither boy had come prepared for a downpour, and soon both were soaked.  There was nothing they could do but trudge along.

Ricky had stayed quiet just like Simon had told him, until he saw the shack.

“There’s a house, Simon,” he had yelled and ran ahead of his brother for the first time, into the dryness offered by the old building.

They had huddled in the door way for a while, watching the rain come down.  Ricky had been the first to turn around and go deeper in the shack.

“What is this place, Simon?”  He asked, but Simon hadn’t answered.

The shack only had the door way they had come in.  There were two windows, neither with glass in them.  Rough wooden shelves had been nailed around the walls.  A bird had nested on one of them, the rest were empty.

Day 4

NANO UPDATE: Day 3 count = 0. Day 4 count = 182 Total = 928

Of course she could not think of any reasonable reason for someone to be in her house, uninvited.  Strangers did not usually break in just to sit and rock in old rocking chairs.  Strangers broke in to steal things.

Maybe it was not a stranger at all.  Maybe someone she knew had dropped by for a visit in the middle of the night.

Sure, she thought, and maybe its Nannie herself down there, sitting alone in her rocker waiting on me to come down.  I will sit on her knee like a child and she will sing me lullabyes just like old times.

Appealing yet unlikely.

Below her the old rocking chair gave another hushed squeak, then groaned in protest.

Whoever had been sitting down there had just stood up.  Her time to flee was running out.  She tried to make her legs unfreeze so she could retreat upstairs, but they did not want to obey her.

She strained to hear footsteps, to hear if her visitor were coming closer or leaving but her carpets swallowed whatever sound might have been made.

NaNo '09 - Day 2

Day 2 Word Count:354
Total Word Count: 776
I'm sooooo far behind

--

Day 2's Writing:

A soft creak, like a tread on a stair, only she was on the stairs all alone.

Only one other thing in her house creaked like that.

Downstairs, sitting in front of the same big picture window that was letting in the moon light, was a wooden rocking chair.  Old, but not old enough to be an antique, it had belonged to her grandmother.

As a child she had spent hours sitting in her Nannie’s lap while the old woman rocked and sang soft lullabies.  The songs were always accompanied by the chair, whose left rocker had a squeak.

It was a sound she would know anywhere.  She was willing to bet she could even pick it out of a room full of other squeaky rockers.

Now, in the unknown hours of the night, in her powerless house, someone was sitting in her Nannie’s rocker.  Whoever it was was not rocking, just sitting, waiting.  Only a tiny shift of their body and an old rockers squeak told her anyone was there.

Nervously she chewed her bottom lip, unsure what to do.

Her cell phone, she was sure now, was downstairs on the table beside her computer.  She could go for it, call for help.

But the old rocking chair, and whoever sat in it, would be facing the stairs.  She would not get down without being seen and would not be able to call for help in time.

She could go back upstairs as quietly as possible and barricade herself in the bedroom.  The power would be back on eventually and she could call for help from the land line then.

Unless they came up after her.  Nothing in her house was heavy enough to hold a door forever.

Neither option was very appealing.

That was all assuming whoever sat in her favorite chair downstairs meant her harm at all.

She did not know how long the power had been out.  She did not know how long the person had been sitting downstairs.  Maybe they did not even know she was here at all.  Maybe some other reason had brought them into her house.

NaNoWriMo '09 - day one

“Why are you afraid of me?”

Sleep did not leave her in slowly shed layers as it usually did.  She woke suddenly and fully, eyes flying open to a still, dark room.  Dream fragments danced away from her, shattered by her sudden waking.

She blinked at the darkness around her.  It was still night then, or early morning.  The sun was not up yet.  Dark, but too dark.  No light shine came in her windows from street lamps outside.  There was no minute red glow from her alarm clock’s face.

The power was out on her street again.  Probably the whole neighborhood.

The only reliable thing about her power company was its unrealibility.

Groaning, she reached out in the dark and groped on her bed side table for her cell phone.  She would have to call in the outage, then sit around in the dark waiting on them to fix it. 

If they ever did.

Meanwhile, by the time they restored her service it would probably be time to get up anyway.

Why did these things always happen on work nights, she wondered, then I could just sleep through it.  And where was that phone?

Probing blindly in the dark her fingers had encountered the useless alarm clock, her glass of water, and the spine of the novel she had been reading before bed.

No phone to be found.

Downstairs then.

Silently she cursed having never brought a flashlight upstairs, or even some candles.  Even a scented aroma therapy candle would be better than the darkness offered by the center of the house.

If I don’t kill myself going down, she thought, it will be a mirical.

She paused briefly at the top of the stairs.  A thin grey light filtered in from the large picture window.  Moonlight, she realized.

Something so rarely seen in the city.  Normally its white light was overshadowed by the harsher yellow lights of the street lamps and dozens of homes and businesses burning their thousands of electric bulbs.

Natures flashlight, she thought, and started down.

Halfway to the bottom she froze with one foot on a step and one foot hovering in mid air.  Her right hand gripped the railing tightly.

Something was wrong in the house.

It is just quiet, she told herself.  You are just hearing the night noises.

Still she did not move, just strained to hear what she thought she had heard.

Nothing.

She was about to start down when she heard it again, and knew what it was she was hearing.