Discover Prompts, Day 11: Bite

Oddly, my mind just went blank.

Maybe that’s because there are so MANY directions one could take for this one-word prompt.

Let’s see. How about a bite of fiction?

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Peanut butter and jelly. The ultimate American sandwich champion. For kids, at least.

Lizzy watched her ten-year-old champion eater take a huge bite of his sandwich. Grape jelly, always. Leaving a circle around his mouth, always. Which he swiped at with his arm, always. Topped off with a milk mustache, always, as he ran out the door to continue his important project of the moment. He’d be back inside within an hour, looking for cookies or an apple or whatever he could wheedle out of her. Always hungry, always on the move.

She loved him more than she had ever understood a mother could love her child.

Taking her after-lunch tea into her living room, she curled up in her reading corner. Taking a bite of her own sandwich, a much smaller bite than Jeffie would have taken, she relished the combination of salt-and-sweet. Her husband teased her about still loving her favorite childhood sandwich, but it didn’t bother her. He never turned down a pb&j, either.

Her book open on her lap, Lizzie let her mind drift to five years earlier, when Jeffie didn’t want anything at all to eat. He would pick listlessly at every tempting morsel she could create. One bite, maybe, but no more.

He was pale, losing weight, and had no energy. Finally, they took him to his pediatrician, who dropped terror into Lizzie’s heart when he referred them to a pediatric oncologist.

Lizzie didn’t dwell very long on the next couple of years. Tubes, needles, surgery, fear, cold sweat, sleepless nights, terror-driven trips to the ER. The feeding tube was unbearable to her. How she longed to see him take a huge bite of his messy sandwich, wiping the residue on his sleeve. She swore that if he survived this monster, she would never fuss at him again for wiping the jelly on his sleeve.

He did survive. He was a tough little kid, even at only five years old. He was eight before he really started to return to normal. Now, at ten, he was unstoppable. It was glorious!

And she never, ever scolded him again for wiping that last bite of pb&j off his mouth onto his sleeve.

Heart Song

Oh, Joy! WP is offering us a daily one-word prompt all through April to help us avoid boredom (I’m never bored) or to relight the fire of our muses.

The word for today is Song. **********************

Carrie didn’t remember, of course, but her mother often told her she’d been singing since the day she was born. “You always calmed and quieted if you heard music,” Mama said. “You would look into my eyes and coo right in the same key as the music! We thought it was just a coincidence but by the time you were six months old we knew better. You were recognizing songs and you could follow the melodies of songs you heard often. We knew you were special!”

Mama had a sweet soprano voice herself, and it wasn’t long before she and toddler Carrie were harmonizing simple songs as they went about their daily routines. The house was always filled with song, a delight for nearby neighbors and friends.

It wasn’t long before Carrie was singing every evening for her neighborhood, and through them the word spread. Soon their yard was far too small, and they moved to the park in the central square. Carrie stood on the bandstand, her voice soaring across the park and beyond.

As she grew, so did her voice. Strong, rich, with an incredible range and a lovely vibrato, she knew every song she was asked to sing. Flowers and other small gifts arrived at her door every day.

One day, when Carrie was 17, a loud knock rattled the door of the small cottage. Mama opened the door, and was rudely pushed aside by a handsome man in a dark uniform.

“Where’s the girl? The singer? I want to see her!” demanded the man.

Mama drew herself upright and glared at the man. “Who are you? What do you want with my daughter? You have no right to barge into my home!”

“I have every right! You are Jews! I am an officer of the SS! Now, bring your daughter out here, or you both will suffer!”

Mama died of typhus in the camp. Carrie, broken-hearted, lost her desire to sing. There was nothing to sing about in that dark, miserable place. Her song was stilled. She kept her head down and endured, along with hundreds of other starving, helpless women.

One day, there was no roll call. There were no officers, no guards with clubs and rifles. The women fearfully peered out the doors of their quarters, wondering at the silence. They spent the day getting showers, washing their filthy prison uniforms, and cooking from the supplies of the German officers.

The next day, the Americans arrived. Usually boisterous and friendly, they were silenced by the rows of gaunt, bruised, bleak-eyed women. The silence seemed to go on without end, until one woman, just as gaunt as the rest, her head shaved, lips cracked, a huge bruise along one cheek, stepped forward. She raised her head, took a deep breath. To everyone’s surprise, she began, softly at first, to sing.

“America, America! God shed His grace on thee! And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!”

When she finished, there was silence once more. Briefly. Before the cheering, crying and laughing erupted.

Freedom was going to take some getting used to, but once again the air was filled with glorious song.

Mommy?

Sorry, I’m Busy

Tell us about a time when you should have helped someone… but didn’t.

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“Mommy?  Can you read to me?”

“Not right now.  I’m in the middle of cleaning this kitchen floor.”

“When can you read to me?”

“Maybe after your nap.”

“But you’ll be fixing supper then.”

“Well, how about after supper?”

“Daddy will be home. You don’t read to me when daddy’s home.”

“I know, we’ll set aside time to read in the morning, okay?”

“Okay, I guess.  If you remember. If you don’t have something you want to clean or wash or cook or bake or sew or iron or. . . .okay, Mommy. I’ll go read to myself.”

“Wait. Wait.  This floor can wait.  Let’s go read a book!”

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/sorry-im-busy/

The Note

Everything Changes

Walking down the street, you encounter a folded piece of paper on the sidewalk. You pick it up and read it and immediately, your life has changed. Describe this experience.

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“Help Me!  555-6349”

Maddie stood with the scrap of paper in her hand, not even knowing why she’d stooped to pick it up.  One of those serendipituous moments?  Or just a fluke?

Well,  what on earth was she to do now!  Anyone with an ounce of common sense would toss the scrap in the nearest trash bin and forget it.

Maddie had never been famous for caution or common sense. Following her instincts, she pulled out her cell phone and punched in the numbers. She figured she was safe, standing in the middle of a sidewalk crowded with scurrying Christmas shoppers intent on their next purchase.

The phone range once, twice,  and the beginning of a third time when it was picked up. A breathy voice, whispering, said , “Yes?  Yes?  Are you calling to help me?”

“I found this scrap on the sidewalk,”  said Maddie. “Are you in trouble? Do you need the police?”

“Oh yes!  Please! No sirens, though.  They have to come quiet and quick. I live  right above where you’re standing, over the bakery. Look up.  Look up!”

Maddie glanced up to see a curtain twitch, and then the phone went dead.

She wasted no time in dialing the operator, asking for the police, and reporting what had happened.

“Ma’am, are you sure this isn’t some kid playing a prank?”

“I have no way of knowing that!  I only know the voice sounded desperate, afraid.  Please!  Can’t you send someone?  Quietly?”

“Okay, lady, but we’re going to need you to stay right there.  Don’t leave!  And I want your cell number.”

Maddie gave them her number, and backed up against the window of the bakery.  When the cruiser slid up to the curb, she waved to let the police know who she was.  One of them made a “stay there” motion with his free hand, pulling out his weapon with the other.  He and his partner opened the door to the apartment above and went into the buidling.

Maddie’s heart stood still.  She couldn’t imagine what might be happening right over her head.

Suddenly, there was a lot of  yelling, a loud scream, the sound of pounding footsteps.  A man in dark clothing came flying out the door, and Maddie moved purely on instinct again, sticking out her foot as he ran past her.

He sprawled, and the two officers were on him instantly, cuffing him and reading him his rights.

A woman  carrying a one-year-old baby came out of the stairway entrance, crying and holding the child as if she’d never let go. She spotted one of the officers talking to Maddie.

“Are you the one who saw my note?  You saved my life, and my baby as well!  That was my ex-husband, and he’d been drinking.  He was drunk enough that I was able to drop that scrap before he shoved me up the stairs. Thank you!  Thank you more than I can say for stopping, for caring enough to risk your own safety.”

Maddie’s life was changed.  She became close friends with Julie, met Julie’s brother and fell in love with him.

And yes, they all lived happily ever after 🙂

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/everything-changes/

Guilty!

The Guilt that Haunts Me

Share a time when you were overcome with guilt. What were the circumstances? How did you overcome you guilt?

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Elise fought the memories day and night.  During the day, she had to deliberately block them from her mind, replacing them with other thoughts.

At night, though, when she was asleep, there was no defense.  Over and over again, she struggled and tossed and turned through the events, waking up in a sweat, often with tears pouring down her face and onto her pillow.

Jed, her husband, didn’t have a clue.  She’d never told him, never revealed what it was that so often tormented her dreams and robbed her of sleep. She shrugged off her miserable nights with, “Just a bad dream.  I don’t even remember what it was.”

The lie compounded the guilt, of course. Jed didn’t deserve to have such a weak, deceitful woman for his wife.  He was a strong, godly man; a man of character and infinite patience.

“Elise, there’s something.  Something you’re not telling me, something you  need to tell me.  The sooner you do, the sooner we can get past this nonsense.  Why can’t you trust me?  Don’t you know that there’s nothing you could tell me that would stop my loving you?”

The tears would flow afresh, and she would always burrow her face into his broad chest so he couldn’t see the pain and confusion in her eyes. He would hold her, comfort her; but she began to feel a distance opening up between them. She knew she was the one who had to bridge the gap. Finally, one night after the dream was particularly vivid, she broke.

“All right!  All right, I’ll tell you, but you’ll never be able to love me again, and you’ll never want me in your life.  You just don’t know. . . .

“I was raped when I was 15 years old.  It was my own fault.  I went sneaking out with a man who was 25, and my parents had forbidden me to see him.  One night, when I met him at his apartment, he’d been drinking.  I didn’t know anything about that, because Dad never drank.  Anyway, we started to make out, and I was so dumb. . . .I really didn’t get what was happening.  When he started pulling at my clothes, getting really aggressive, I tried to tell him to stop.  It enraged him.

“It was awful.  He really hurt me.  And after it was done, he pretty much threw me out and told me never to come back, that I was just a stupid little girl and he needed a ‘real woman.’

“So now you know.  If you want me to leave, I will.  I wouldn’t blame you.”

Jed was silent.  He gathered her up against him, gently but firmly.  She could feel his chest heaving, then felt the hot tears he was shedding as they dropped onto her head and her face.  She was shocked!  Jed was crying?  Why?

“Elise.  My poor Elise.  It was NOT your fault!  Sure, you were wrong to disobey, to sneak out, to meet that jerk.  But it was HIS choice to rape you, and HE is the guilty one.  We need to talk more about all this, and if you think it will help we can go to the pastor or a counselor and get you some help to get past this.  But know this:  I will always love you.  You are not defined by what someone else did to you.  This changes nothing between us, except that I’m glad you finally told me.”

It took time.  Months.  But gradually Elise was able to forgive her attacker, to let go of her guilt, and to trust in the love of her husband and her God.

No guilt has to be permanent.

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/the-guilt-that-haunts-me/

Another Day on the Beat

Ripped from the Headlines!

Head to your favorite online news source. Pick an article with a headline that grabs you. Now, write a short story based on the article. 

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New York Daily News A suspected Oklahoma DUI driver plowed a stolen SUV into a cop and his squad car, called herself God as she was Tased and sang Christian hymns while handcuffed — a bizarre saga chronicled on the officer’s body camera. http://nydn.us/1O1K5tq I don’t really have a favorite news source, since they’re all questionable in my mind–liberal or conservative, it doesn’t matter.  There’s always more than one truth.   This article caught my eye on my Facebook feed this morning, and I haven’t read the whole thing, but it sure triggered my imagination. . . . _______________      It had been a long, tiring day for Luke and his partner, Chad, as they patrolled their beat in the racially charged city. It seemed to Luke that there was just constant, unrelenting anger and hatred bubbling up from the very pavement of the streets and sidewalks.  It was a tough time to be a cop.  It was a tough time to be a white cop or a Black one, it really didn’t matter.  You couldn’t do anything right, and there was always the likelihood of some  fruit loop out there taking a couple of head shots at him and his partner.  They knew they risked their lives every day.  It wore on you after a while.      During the course of the day, they’d written up the standard traffic stops, dealing with  people who were either irate, nervous, hateful, or contrite. Sometimes, all of the above.      Then there were the hysterical calls from people who had injured themselves and needed help RIGHT NOW!  The truly serious injuries, the nothing-to-it stuff, all had to be handled with professionalism and dispatch.  And of course there were always the groups of “I’m a tough guy and no cop can scare me” young hoods who were so brave that they could only operate in gangs.  Catch one of them alone and you had a different kid on your hands, scared to death and willing to rat out all his buddies.      Well, their shift was almost over, and Luke was looking forward to home and a shower, and time with his family.      Until the big SUV came roaring straight at their squad car from what seemed like nowhere.  Luke immediately hit his lights and siren, hoping to wake up the oncoming driver.  He  pulled his weapon out of its holster, ready to shoot out a tire or whatever else he needed to do.  At the same time, he tried to figure out what direction to swerve his vehicle into without doing damage to other cars on the road.  He quickly pulled to the right,  other cars giving him room, and the SUV whizzed by on his left, too close for comfort.      The SUV kept going, so Luke did a quick turn-around and went in pursuit. He came right up on the  speeding vehicle, pulled alongside, and motioned for the driver to pull over.  Something–his lights, the siren?–must have gotten through to the driver, because she did slow down and pull over. Rolling to a stop,  she put her head down on the steering wheel and began to sing  Amazing Grace in a gravelly, tuneless voice. When Luke approached her side of the SUV, she looked up at him and said, “Hi, I’m God!  What can I do for you?” Then she started to laugh hysterically. Without warning, she whipped her door open. Luke stumbled backward, nearly fell, but managed to keep his balance. As the woman,  obviously drunk, rolled out of the car with her arms flailing and hands balled into fists, Luke drew his taser.  She kept coming at him, laughing and yelling that she was God. When she got close enough to land a punch, he warned her again and let go with the taser.       Bam!  She went down hard, twitching and drooling.  He and Chad, who had come up on the other side of the SUV, rolled her over and cuffed her.  When she came around, they would put her in the back of the squad car and take her in.  Drunk driving, assault on an officer–that would be for starters.      Of course, quite a crowd had gathered.  They were your standard looky-loos, along with some folks who just always seemed to show up with their race-baiting venom.      “Hey, man, why didn’t you shoot her?  ‘Cause she’s white?”      “Hey, Cop, how come you didn’t beat her up?  No Black woman would have gotten away with that!”      “Police brutality!  I saw the whole thing!  Nobody deserves to be tased like a dumb animal!  I want your names and badge numbers!”       Luke and Chad let it flow over their heads while they finished securing the SUV, and then getting the woman up on her feet.  She continued to sing, laugh, cry, and talk crazy. She reeked of liquor and was stumbling drunk, seeming to be unaware that she was cuffed and in custody.      Just another day, and a perfect way to end a long shift.  Luke was startled, though, when a young woman approached him and place her hand on his forearm.      “Officer, I just wanted to thank you for getting this person off the road.  You probably saved her life, and maybe the lives of other people. Good job.  Thank you.”      Yeah.  A good way to end the day. https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/ripped-from-the-headlines/

You Win, You Lose

The Perfect Game

You’re set to play poker (or Scrabble or something else . . .) with a group of four. Write a story set during this game. Or, describe the ideal match: the players, the relationships — and the hidden rivalries.

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Reenie had always loved word games. She hated strategy games, but at word games she won most of the time. She had been reading way beyond her age level since she first learned to read. Words were like candy to her, and she loved learning new ones.

All well and good, but when she played with opponents who were older than she was, it made her pretty unpopular when she won. She didn’t understand it. She lost regularly at Monopoly or checkers and no one got upset with her; however, if she won at Scrabble, she was  frowned at for hours afterward. Hardly seemed fair.

One lazy summer afternoon, she decided she would deliberately lose just so no one would be angry. Several neighborhood friends had gathered for an afternoon of games on the enclosed front porch, because it was raining hard. The porch was cozy, and they all looked forward to a couple of hours of good play.

The game started slowly.  Reenie drew  all vowels except for the “X” that was her final choice.  Uh-oh.  That was worth a lot of points, and she was the starter.  Should she put the “X” on the center square and make axe her opener?  Well, she had to use it, so she took a deep breath, knowing the others would be unhappy. And sure enough, the minute she put the “X” down, someone hollered,  “You cheated! How could you get the “X” on the first draw?  No fair!  You ALWAYS cheat!”

Reenie was, finally, completely discouraged. “No, I didn’t cheat!” Tears formed and dripped from her eyes, “I can’t help it! Every other letter I drew is a vowel, so I had no choice!  Why are you always so mad at me when we play word games?  It’s no fun for me, win or lose, because you’re all always mad if I win, and you make fun of me if I lose. So I’m done.  Go ahead and play without me!”

She left her chair and went inside the house, climbed the stairs to her room, and threw herself on the bed.  Her tears dried pretty quickly, but her heart hurt for a long time. She just didn’t understand it. At all.

Half an hour later, someone tapped on her bedroom door.  She didn’t respond, and the door opened just enough for whoever it was to peer inside.

“Reenie.  You’re awake.  Good.  Can I come in and talk with you for a minute?”  It was Rosie, a neighbor girl who was a couple of years older than Reenie. She came in and sat cross-legged on the end of Reenie’s bed.

“Reenie, I’m sorry you were upset.  I don’t think you cheated, and I don’t think anyone else really thinks so, either. It’s just that you seem to always be lucky when you draw your tiles, and you almost always win. It makes us feel stupid. We’re all older than you except for Kathy. We should be able to beat you, but you’re so smart with word games that we can never win.”

“Today I decided to lose,” replied Reenie. “I was going to put up simple words, and lose on purpose. And then I went and drew that “X” and I KNEW you’d all be mad at me. I don’t know what to do!  I guess I just won’t play word games any more. I’ll play checkers and other stuff that I almost never win, and then you’ll all feel better.”

“Well, yes, you could do that.  But don’t you think we’d catch on after a while?  Reenie, you need to understand that we don’t hate you or anything. We just don’t like to feel stupid.  No one does.”

“Well, then, what’s the answer?  It seems to me that if I win, I lose!”

“Look, the others sent me up here to talk to you. We all talked about what happened, and everyone knows it was wrong for us to accuse you of cheating. We all feel bad, and we want you to play. We’ve decided that it will challenge us to find a way to improve. And if you’ll play Scrabble with us, we’ll try to help you figure out the strategy games, okay?  This is supposed to be fun, not a battle. Come on.  Let’s go back downstairs.”

Reenie sighed, slid off the bed, and looked at Rosie. “Okay. That sounds fair.  Maybe we can turn this into a win/win.  Let’s go.”

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/the-perfect-game/

In My Dreams!

Tell us about a time when everything actually turned out exactly as you’d hoped.

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As Dani drifted off to sleep, her mind was filled with the romance of the novel she had just finished reading. Beautiful heroine meets hunky hero;  they set sparks off each other, disliking each other intensley.  But, of course, time changes all that and it isn’t long before other kinds of sparks begin to ignite. After working through some misunderstandings that involve a cast of secondary characters, they realize they’re crazy about each other and end up having a dreamy wedding and jetting off to the Bahamas for the perfect honeymoon.

Dani sank into deep slumber, enjoying the luxury of her down comforter and her perfect pillows.

She’d been asleep for exactly three hours and twenty minutes.  Of course, she didn’t know that. All she knew was that a loud, clanging noise woke her rudely from her delicious slumber. Sirens were screaming, glass was breaking, and she realized she was choking on thick, viscous smoke. What on earth. . . .?

She sat up, rubbing the fog from her eyes, when a huge apparition in a funny hat emerged from the darkness.  The thing scooped her up in both arms, and she realized it was a fireman in full gear, face mask and all. She wanted to giggle because he looked like ET, but she was coughing too much to laugh.

Embarrassed, she grabbed her comforter from the bed as ET carried her out of the bedroom and through the living room of her apartment, which was on the ground floor. When he took her outside,  the fresh air was like nectar sliding down her scratchy throat.  Nothing had ever felt better.

Coughing, Dani wrapped the comforter around herself and squinted up at the fireman, who had removed his mask.

Oh, wow.  Talk about hunky!

“No, wait, I must be dreaming still,” Dani thought.”This is way too much like one of those formula story romances.”

A stern voice interrupted her thoughts. “Lady, it’s a good thing your smoke alarm went off and alerted your neighbors!  You must have been sleeping pretty hard not to hear it.”

“Wha–what happened?  Where did the fire start?  How–”    

“Don’t know yet.  You weren’t smoking in bed or anything stupid like that, were you?”

“What?  Of course not!  I don’t even smoke!  Are you saying this is MY fault?”

“Like I said, we don’t know yet. We won’t know for sure until the investigator comes in after everything cools off. But it looks like it was something in your apartment, lady, and you could be in a lot of trouble if you were careless with something. Did you turn off your stove?  Leave your curling iron turned on?  Stuff like that can be a firestarter, you know.”

Hunky looked down at her from what seemed like a terrible distance, regarding her with unfriendly eyes, like she was a dumb blonde or something.  It made her furious.

“Look, ET, I don’t know why you’re picking on me, but you’re wrong!  I’m very careful, and I always double check stuff like that.  You’re going to eat your words when they find out this was NOT because of anything I did!”  It wasn’t easy, wrapped in her comforter, and barefoot, but Dani managed to turn her back with great dignity and stalk away from her “hero.” What a jerk!

The next day, as she worked at cleaning up her dirty, smoke-damaged apartment, her doorbell rang. ‘

“Great. Now what?  The fire police, coming to arrest me?” she thought as she brushed hair out of her eyes. She was filthy, tired, and discouraged. But she made her way to the door, and there was a man standing there. A big man, and as handsome as any fictional hero she could imagine. He was holding a huge bouquet of roses.

“Hi.  I’m ET, from last night?  Look, can I come in for a minute?”
“Uh. Um. Oh, yeah, ok, I guess. . . .”

“I came to apologize. It wasn’t your fault. Bad wiring that should have been repaired months ago. The landlord’s going to be in a truckload of trouble. So, well, I felt bad about upsetting you.  I know how awful it is to get caught in a fire, and I made it worse. But, you know, so many times a fire starts because of simple carelessness, and I just jumped to a conclusion. So. Anyway. These are for you, and I’m sorry.”

He held out the roses, and Dani took them. She held them in both hands, stood there looking up at him–he really was very big–and couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“Hey, well, okay, I’ll just take off now, unless–well, it looks like you could use some help with all this mess?”

“Oh! Um. Yeah, sure, of course!  Thank you, and thanks for the flowers. Really.  I mean, you just really caught me off guard.”

As they worked together for the next several hours, Dani’s mind wandered back to the book she’d been reading the night before.  “Wow.  I’m sure glad this wasn’t really a dream.  Sure would make a great plot for a good story, though.” She smiled to herself, then glanced up as she felt Hunky’s eyes on her. He grinned.

“What are you thinking about that makes you smile like that?”

“Oh, nothing. Just a story I was reading.”

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/all-its-cracked-up-to-be/

At Last!

You’ve been given a key that can open one building, room, locker, or box to which you don’t normally have access. How do you use it, and why?

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Linda trembled with excitement when she picked up the small golden key. It felt warm in her hand, as if it had a life of its own. Never had she had such an opportunity, and she was almost afraid to use it. What if she were disappointed?  What if she discovered nothing that would be of any help? 

Still, the opportunity was there, and it would never be given to her again.

She watched Terry for several minutes. He slept deeply, breathing regularly. He was comfortable, completely at rest.  For 45 year she’d been married to this complicated man. For 45 years she’d tried to understand the convoluted trails in his brain. He was brilliant in so many way.  He was so talented with his hands, able to fix anything that was broken. He was trained as a mechanical engineer, and he loved solving functional problems. He could make old things look brand new, and he loved to work above all things.

These things she knew.  These things she tried to understand, and for the most part she did. She felt very blessed indeed to have a man who made calls to repairmen and mechanics unknown in their household. She couldn’t even imagine the money they had saved over the years because of his abilities.

But there was  a part of his brain that was locked up tight. Even Terry himself didn’t open it up, and Linda was now able with a flick of her wrist to open that secret place and look inside to understand the mysteries of his most intimate thought.

Her heart was beating like a trapped bird against the bars of a cage. She held the key just above his head to lay it gently against his skin. Just as she leaned in to place the key on his forehead, she froze!

“No! No, I can’t do this.  I can’t sneak inside his mind while he’s helpless.  This is wrong, and I can’t–won’t–do it.  He’d never understand, never forgive me for going where he himself doesn’t go.”

Linda stood, breathed deeply, and held the key at arm’s length.

“I don’t want it,” she said. “I won’t use it.”

The key shimmered and disappeared, and Linda lay back down beside her husband, reaching for his hand as she drifted off to sleep herself. She was secure, safe, and probably saved from committing one of the worst crimes ever–intruding into another person’s mind.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/golden-key/

Poetic Justice

Today you can write about anything, in whatever genre or form, but your postmust include a speeding car, a phone call, and a crisp, bright morning. (Wildcard: you can swap any of the above for a good joke.)

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It was an inauspicious way for the work day to begin.  Normally, Leigh started at 10 a.m. and worked until 5 p.m., except for Tuesdays.  That was her long day. On Tuesdays, she saw clients until nine in the evening, and went home exhausted and ready for bed.

That day, however, her phone woke her out of a sound sleep.  It was a client who was struggling in an abusive marriage, and when Leigh picked up the call, the woman was sobbing so hard that Leigh couldn’t understand her.  Working to calm down her distraught caller, Leigh finally understood that the husband had just beaten her up and then grabbed the two little kids and hauled them to his car.  Leigh was terrified that he would hurt them. His parting words had been, “You’ll never see them again–and you have no one to blame but yourself!” 

Leigh promised to meet her client at her office within the hour, as soon as she could get herself up and moving.  The first thing she did was to call the police, reporting the domestic violence situation and the husband running off with the kids. She gave the police his license plate number and made sure they had both her office number and her cell. They’d worked together before, and knew each other by name.

Clicking her phone off, Leigh dressed quickly and gulped down some orange juice. She grabbed her purse and jacket on the fly, knowing she was going to be battling rush hour traffic. She quickly charted a backroad route instead of her usual  way to the office.  Tossing her things into the car, she pulled out of the garage and backed up to the road running in front of her house. She counted ten cars going by before she could back out.

Leigh put the pedal down as soon as she was clear of neighborhood traffic, school buses, walkers and joggers. She flew around the twisting country road, praying no one would come roaring up behind her to pull her over for speeding.  She couldn’t even take the time to enjoy the crisp, clear November morning as she tried to think through the best steps to take for her client.

Shelter. She needed to get her into a shelter, because the husband would  be back. He was addicted to abusing her, couldn’t go very long at all before the need to attack her would drive him back to the house they lived in.

Find the children. Was he planning to harm them, or just to scare his helpless wife?

Leigh had a hard time understanding the helpless part. She would never allow her own husband to bully her and abuse her, not that he ever would.  The victim of such behavior, it seemed to Leigh, also had some kind of addiction to mistreatment, believing it was all she deserved.

As she neared the turn-off to her office, Leigh’s cell rang. She pulled over quickly, picked up, and heard the officer from the police station give his name.

“Leigh, we’ve just had an accident call from over in the next township. It’s him. The license plate is the same.”

“Oh, no! The kids?  Are the kids okay?”

“Banged up, but he’d taken the time to belt them in. They’ll be all right.  Mr. Jones, however, is in pretty bad shape. They’re taking him by helicopter up to the trauma center.  He’s unconscious.  Listen, is there anything we can do to help with the wife and kids?”

“No, no, but thanks. Today, they can all just go home and stay there until we know what’s going to happen with that bum. I’m sitting outside my office right now, and the wife just pulled in.  Listen, thanks for letting me know.  She doesn’t have a cell–he won’t let her, so I know you couldn’t get in touch with her.  I’ll let her know what’s happened. What hospital are they taking the kids to?”

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