Ideas and Thoughts-47-50

Submitted by E on Mon, 10/18/2010 - 19:06

*A/N* The Box is just a random-writing thing. It's not supposed to make sense :):) just to let everybody know.

47-The Old Man’s Wife “The old man held his wife’s bony hands gently, rubbing her wrinkled fingers between his own rough ones, callused from years of fishing rods and nets. He could see the veins in her hands, running every which way like a map of rivers. ‘Do you remember when we first met? Do you remember where we were?’ his wife smiled weakly. Her hair was as snow white as the hospital pillow, the old man observed. Funny how you notice the most subtle things in the worst situations, he thought. ‘Can you tell me where we were? Please, please tell me, Doris,’ the old man said, a pleading note in his voice. His wife closed her eyes and shook her head, shaking all over. The old man sighed. His wife hadn’t spoken for a week now. Then, the wife squeezed his hand slightly and whispered, ‘Please tell me, John,’ in a voice barely audible. The old man stared at her, dumbstruck by the sound of a voice that wasn’t hers anymore, and smiled. ‘Of course,’ he said, and he began to tell the story.” 48-Excerpt from novel “The Wood is Lovely, Dark and Deep”. Scene-Spiderweb “Evangela sat down on a moss-coated rock and rested her head in her hands. Her brain pounded against her skull like pouring rain in a storm. Her throat was parched of all water. Her legs and feet hurt from all the walking. She was beginning to think that the Wood Mother was just making the path more difficult for her, though she tried to block that from her thoughts. The Wood was much quieter than it had been a couple of days before, so the Wood Mother might actually hear her. Eve heard the gentle beating of wings and looked up with a start, her hand going to her knife she kept at her belt. A butterfly was all that was there, a bright orange one. Eve relaxed her hand and marveled at the fact that she could hear butterfly wings. She watched it weave around slowly and erratically and wondered if it had a path it followed. Then, before she had time to snatch it out of the air and save it, it flew into a gigantic spiderweb that Eve swore hadn’t been there before. She tried to make herself get up, but the rock had dark vines wrapped around her legs. She watched sadly as a huge golden spider scuttled up to the struggling butterfly and bit it sharply. The butterfly’s wings crumpled like pieces of paper and it fell limp. The spider began to bind it. The vines released Eve’s legs. She rubbed the place where they had been, standing up quickly, and looked away from the spiderweb. Life could be cut out so quickly in the Wood. She turned back in the other direction to find Forester.” 49-Why Don’t You Care? “I study her face, never feeling more envious as she sits beside you, laughing, making you laugh, flipping her lank hair. What is it that she has that I appear to be missing? Is it my lack of freckles, of reddish-brown hair? Is it that my nose isn’t noble or that my teeth aren’t perfectly straight? What am I missing? You pull her off of the fence, locking your arms under hers. She laughs and pretends to struggle, her cheeks flushing. Why does it make you smile when she laughs but not when I do? I look away determinedly, clenching my jaw. Why don’t you wish to make me laugh the way you want her to? Why not?” 50-The Box “I find myself in a box, though I don’t know how. The box is broad and its walls are thick. I run my hands along the sides, gently thumping. I can see through the box, see the water trickling gently down a shallow stream, a rainbow and then the beast that drinks from a pool of clear water. Its fur is matted and its eyes are wild and gray. I sit back in the box, unsure of what to think or do, so I sleep.”

Author's age when written

Genre

Fiction