Losing Plato

The hollowed-out smell of bleach wafted up from the floors, stretching to the ceiling like cleansing ghosts. In between the walls was a thick silence that lacked the sound of the yip-yap barking of Plato’s usual greeting. He lay coiled in a pile of bones and sucked-in flesh, his skin taut and eyes red, the sun shining through the open window like a spotlight on his frail body.

The harshness of the bleach burned my nose and throat and made my eyes itch. His copper-penny­ eyes followed me as I sanitized my small apartment, the smell of Clorox replacing the scent of Jasmine, waiting for death to strangle the air.

“Parvo,” the vet said five days prior, and I was confused at first, because it sounded like nothing more than a game children play. “Is there a cure?” I’d asked hopefully, but he’d looked at me with sympathy, and I knew the answer. As I left the vet’s, the sky had opened up and cried for Plato.

I finished mopping and sat down on the too-clean floor, Indian-style. Plato’s ribcage protruded from his body, a scallop-edged accordion inside his torso. I ran my fingers against his chest, his breath shallow beneath my fingertips. He let me cry, watching with sympathetic eyes, as if I were the one with the sickness and he the caretaker.

 I reached over, picked him up gently, and sat him on my lap. His fur was soft, his body pliant. His eyes—brown, deep, and soulful—searched mine, looking for answers, for comfort, for permission.

I nodded as he licked my palm for the last time.

Mother says...

Mother says that when I start talking I never know when to stop. Sometimes it takes five or six licks of the belt to get me to shut up, the imprints of the buckle making intricate patterns on my skin, lacey welts that look like spider webs. I wish the spider would spin its silk around her and suck her dry, a wingless fly.

Mother says children should be seen and not heard, and sometimes I don't see her for days, not until another uncle comes by to pay a visit, or pay for a visit, if she's feeling nice. Mother says I look just like Daddy, but he looks a lot like the man in all the picture frames at CVS. Sometimes I pretend he's an officer, knocking on the door. "Ma'am, can you come to the door please? I need to ask you a few questions about your daughter." I hear the wind-chime sounds of his handcuffs clink-clinking on his belt, and for just a moment, I feel secure.

Mother says don’t talk back, but then she asks me a question, like do I still love her, would I still love her if she cut off my tongue and fed it to the cat? She asks me while I'm eating breakfast: bacon, toast, and eggs. I press the food to the roof of my mouth, real hard, so I know my tongue is still there. It tastes like the iron bars of a bird cage. She smiles, her cheeks stained with the knuckle-love her men gave. "Don’t worry, I'm just kidding. There'd be too much blood."

Mother says I wet the bed, but sometimes I don't. Sometimes I sleep in the closet, sometimes I sleep in the shed, if I can sleep at all, from the loud bang bang bang on the wall. It's cold out there. My teeth rattle, chattering, make noise and tattling, telling where I am. When she finds me, Mother says, I'm no good. I have to go, she can't take this anymore. I'm just another mouth to feed, another warning to heed, she should have listened before. "I should have done it, the dirty deed. I should have told the doctor to shut you up while you were still a fetus, a tiny seed."  When I start talking, I never know when to stop. That's what Mother says. 

This is my first Friday flash in probably two years. It's the result of a writing prompt from Imaginative Writing by Janet Burroway. 

Lucky Seven - Untitled WIP

It's been a long time since I've posted anything on here for reasons not worth mentioning. But I was tagged on Facebook by two pretty awesome people, Eric J Krause and Icy Sedgwick, for the Lucky Seven meme and I figured it was time to dust off the old blog and make a go at it.






So here are the rules of the meme:

1. Go to page 77 in your current manuscript
2. Go to line 7
3. Copy down the next seven lines as they are – no cheating
4. Tag 7 other authors (Done on Facebook)


While I'd love to say I have a page 77, I don't. So I chose page 7 of my yet-to-be-titled YA novel. Keep in mind, in MS Word, this equals 7 lines. :)

The loud knocking brings me back to the present. I can hear her outside the door, muffled words strung together with sadness and vodka. I try to ignore her, but the knocking and the mumbling becomes more insistent. I finally get up and open the door.

“What?”

“I’m making dinner,” she says slowly, her eyes glazing over as she looks past me.

“No thanks, not hungry,” I say, trying to close the door. I have no desire to share a meal with her tonight, especially in her condition. Not that her “condition” is better on any other night.

She pushes on the door as I try to close it. “Iss almost ready. Making your favorite. Friedchicken and macaroniandcheese,” she says, her speech slurring so much that some of her words come out jumbled together. “Wash up and get your . . . get . . . get Sean.”

It’s the first time she’s said his name out loud in four years. I am too shocked to move. She’s still looking past me, some long-ago memory playing out in the space behind me. There’s grief lurking in the bags under her eyes, etched into her face, tangled in the lacy red lines of inebriation in her eyes. Her pain is a mirror of my own. I can almost feel sorry for her, almost see the humanity in her grief. Almost.