Category: Daily Prompt

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Ten Years in One Night

How did I get here? I got home last night in a drunken haze from whatever party came after the party I actually got invited to. At least I thought I was home, but this bed feels strange, hard and lumpy like old oatmeal, and my eyes are slow to open. When they finally do I can see a ceiling fan blurry above my head. It’s whirling around so fast I wouldn’t be able to make out the individual blades even if my vision were normal.

My back hurts, too. Not a shooting ache but a dull one that usually comes from having slept on it wrong for too long. When I passed out I must have landed awkwardly on this strange bed, or perhaps it’s a futon. I slowly sit up in bed and force my eyes open more than just the slits they were. I stretch my arms above my head and notice they seem to have lost some definition. Instead of my firm biceps I see some give to them, as if gravity is fighting to drag them down, and is doing a good job of getting it done. It doesn’t compute.

The old, threadbare slippers I’ve had for years that don’t fit me anymore are gone from the foot of the bed, not that I thought they’d be there anyway, but I have to find out where I am. And suddenly I hear a noise behind my back, like a muffled thump, and I turn to see what’s over there. To my shock the thump I heard is identified as a small, mousy woman with stringy brown hair who is on the floor on the other side of the bed. I find my glasses on the side table and slip them on. When did I start wearing glasses?

Everything comes into focus then — the woman, who has obviously just been woken up by her fall from the bed, the ceiling fan above my head, and the sounds of running feet in the hallway outside of the closed door.

“What the…” says the woman in a gruff voice, obviously startled by the fall.

“Who are you?” I respond, still out of it myself.

She looks at me as if I’ve grown a second head.

“Don’t get started this morning, Murray, not until I’ve had my cup of coffee,” she says, dragging herself up from the floor. I notice she is naked, and I quickly look away, first because I don’t know her, and second because she is older. Quite a bit. By at least ten years. And those ten years have not been kind. Continue reading “Ten Years in One Night”

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Cream Cheese and Honey

203571_350589240124_1545788_nI despise peanut butter. Always have, always will (unless aliens come down and completely rearrange my taste buds). From day one I couldn’t stand the stuff, and even the smell of it now drives me insane. Yet when I was young my mother would routinely pack my school lunch with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which I would then pawn off on some other youngster jonesing for PB&J when her mother sent her cheese instead.

Of course I was quiet back then, so I don’t quite blame my mother for not getting it straight for me when it came to peanut butter. And help came from the oddest place. My sister, who I don’t think would have ever stood up for me in any other circumstances at the time, decided to use her bold nature to inform my mother in no uncertain terms that her youngest child was trading in his sandwiches. I think it was meant to be a tattle but instead it helped me break that vicious cycle. I mean, even just carrying around the sandwich in my lunch bag was physically repulsive to me.

So, she came to me and asked me what I would like to take instead, and then it was my turn to think. I hadn’t ever considered it possible that I would get to decide so I hadn’t come up with anything. As I wracked my brains for ideas a bevy of possibilities came to mind. Macaroni and cheese on bread. Some type of applesauce and yogurt combination. I even thought about taking soup in a thermos, but I eventually dismissed all of them out of hand.

Then something even better came into my mind. It was at breakfast one day when I had a plain bagel with cream cheese to eat, and while eating it my mom poured a cup of tea with honey in it. As the honey slid from the honey bear into the mug it hit me. Honey was one of the sweetest things, and cream cheese had a bit of a bite to it. What if I put the two together? So I did, and the infamous cream cheese and honey sandwich was born. Continue reading “Cream Cheese and Honey”

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Chocolate Nostalgia

Mmmmmm. There’s no better smell than the scent of freshly baked chocolate chunk cookies, directly from the oven. You know the ones, with huge chunks of chocolate instead of those tiny chips, chunks that spread out in the rising heat of the enclosed environment, making the cookies moist and soft. When I’ve finally stopped smelling … Continue reading Chocolate Nostalgia

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Fear Of The Thing Itself

fear“No one is absolutely fearless. Many of us have simply learned to be good at facing our fears.” ~Theodicus

I fear that moment before someone says something I don’t want to hear. I can usually see it coming a mile away, by the expression on their faces, by the furrowed eyebrows, the subtle downturn of the lips, and then by their lead-in. “I hate to be the one to have to tell you this…” You know, that moment when you haven’t yet heard the negative but your disposition is no longer sunny because you know it’s coming. In that moment, every single time, I wish I could pause time and fast forward to the process of dealing with the news instead of having to hear it escape their lips.

I fear the dark, the pitch black dark that completely swallows me whole so I can’t even see a fraction of a millimeter in front of my own face. When there’s no light for miles around, or at least it seems that way. I remain sane through it only because I close my eyes and imagine there is a muted glow on the other side. I pretend the pitch black darkness is by choice and not because it was forced upon me instead. It makes it a little more tolerable, but we can’t truly trick our bodies to accept what we know isn’t true, not for long stretches of time anyway. Or can we? I wish we could.

I fear rejection — rejection of me, rejection of my work, or rejection of others who are close to me. When people honestly have a problem with me for whatever reason, or they dislike something I’ve spent a lot of time working on, or they dislike my family, it makes me want to scream, to holler, to lash out. But I don’t because somewhere deep down inside that fear controls me more than I’d like to admit. I would rather someone feel negatively about me but never say anything about it, to put on that fake face, but one that I believe, and go through life oblivious of their feelings than to have to face that rejection head on. And I know it makes me a weak person, and I’m trying to change it, but that’s how it stands right now. Continue reading “Fear Of The Thing Itself”