Short Story Sunday

There used to be an online site that would issue a weekly writing challenge.
One week to write a flash fiction story no longer than 1500 words which incorporated a word, phrase or situation of their choosing.

I was always excited when the new prompt was posted. My mind would scramble and conjure and race in every direction. I would entertain many ideas and dismiss many, many, many more. I would spend the week percolating, jotting notes on scraps of paper at work, backs of receipts in the grocery store parking lot.

And then…….

The anxiety and self doubt would kick in.
I would spend all day Sunday with the “deadline countdown clock” ticking away in the back of my head while I questioned all of my ideas and came up with any reason and excuse I could to put off writing or back out all together.

And then…..(again) the sun would start to set and I would feel my inhibitions start to slip away. I would feel the need to write and give life to something, anything.

Pasta would boil over onto the stove. Garlic bread would burn.
My poor husband would scramble around behind me as the laptop came out and dinner was well forgotten.

I always, always, always hit “submit” with one to three minutes to go. Cursing slow WiFi and my clunky old computer.

This (and most of the stories I will post on Sundays) are a result of that.

The prompt on this one was to include the phrase “And that is how it ended. At the beginning.”

Checking in at 1495 words, this is what I came up with.

I hope you enjoy.

ROSEBUD

Sarah sat on the rocking chair in the corner of the of the nursery, quietly surveying the room. She smiled her approval, a look of satisfaction on her face. Her hands resting reflexively on her abdomen she rocked to a primal rhythm instinctively heard and used by all mothers including Mother Earth to soothe and calm and quiet and quell. The calendar on the wall with the baby’s spring due date circled in red winking at her from across the room. The teddy Peter brought home the day after he learned they were expecting stared jovially at her, Goodnight Moon opened on it’s lap. The walls were just the right shade of rosebud pink accented with gender neutral butter cream. She and Peter had debated good naturedly about the color scheme of the nursery with the well intentioned and “scared to make a mistake” ferocity that all first time parents feel.

“The experts are saying that it’s detrimental to put labels on children” Peter cited one night while laying with his head on Sarah’s belly, listening to what they now knew to be their daughter Aida move and swim and kick. Beginning to outgrow her current accommodations, she was getting restless and attempting, from what Peter could tell, to fight her way out from any area in Sarah’s body willing to stretch and yield.

“I think we should keep her room neutral” he continued. “You know, not paint her into a corner so to speak with too much pink and frills.” Although she could not see his face, Sarah knew he was smiling at what he perceived to be a clever play on words.

She lovingly stroked his sandy hair and acknowledged that she too had seen the article on one of the trendy parenting websites that crop the chaos of real life out, and focus instead, on tightly shot images of perfectly folded cloth diapers arranged in neat stacks with heirloom quality silver pins artfully arranged on top. Images where piles of unwashed dishes and laundry are blurred and relegated to the edges and sleep deprived mothers are replace by yoga pant wearing models cradling cherubic infants. Infants completely unaware that their lives have been forever altered and ruined by the presence or absence (depending on the article) of a binky. Websites designed to make parents feel like failures, destined to muck up their children if they don’t swaddle them just right, or puree baby food from scratch. Websites that scared the life out of Sarah, who was not quite sure how she was ever going to be good enough to live up to these made up expectations.

In that moment however, with the weight of Peter on top of her and Aida inside of her, she felt heavy with life and love. In that moment, she felt safe and she felt sure. Sure for one thing that Aida’s room would be, for the most part pink. She had waited too long for her little princess to come along to let a group of super moms and experts take away her joy at celebrating her daughter’s girlishness. She would give them the puree but she would be damned if she would let them take pink from her.

She didn’t argue her point with Peter. He wouldn’t put up much of a fight anyway, his love for Sarah always demanding that he allow her her needs and most of her wants. Sarah closed her eyes instead and focused on the perfect peace she felt for her perfect growing family.

“Hun,” Peter’s voice startled her awake. She had allowed the momentum of the rocker to gently lull her to sleep and now found herself in the disoriented state between dreaming and awake. “Honey” he repeated stopping in the doorway, drying the wooden spaghetti spoon on the hem of Sarah’s old apron. He looked ridiculous and she would have told him as much had she not still been caught between the moon and New York City. “Do you want a glass of wine with dinner?” She looked at him like he had lost his mind and gestured to her belly.

In the weeks before she knew she was pregnant, in that unaware time before she realized that everything she did would impact a life of her making but not of her own, Sarah had several glasses of wine. Blissfully unaware. In a panic, when the doctor confirmed what that second parallel line on the first, second and third OTC test and her body had already told her, she blurted out all of her sins and concerns. The beer she had at happy hour earlier in the month. The glass of Merlot she had sipped at a birthday party for her friend Shelly.

Doctor Sanderson had assured her that everything was going to be alright. He advised that a glass of wine during pregnancy would not be an issue. Medicine was becoming more lenient these days. Science unveiling fallacies long held true.

Looking at Peter now, her sleep stupor beginning to lift, Sarah realized that she couldn’t fault him. He could be absent minded these days and she knew he was doing his best to adjust to the new normal and learn the rules of this new life.

Sarah turned her gaze from Peter to the window. She realized that dusk was beginning to fall. Street lamps had come on. Nightlights and North Stars to comfort and guide last minute holiday shoppers home. People were hurrying down the sidewalk heads down, bundled up against the chill. Neighbors had begun to turn on their porch lights in anticipation of welcoming their loved ones home.

Sarah remained rooted to the rocker, the stuffed bunny she had absently picked up upon entering the room cradled lovingly in her arms. There was no reason to pad to the door and flick the switch on.

Sarah wasn’t expecting anyone.

Not anymore.

“Honey!” Peter’s voice commanded her back to the room. He was before her now. Kneeling. Turning on the politically correct, gender neutral, guaranteed not to fuck up your kid elephant lamp on the table next to the rocker. He locked eyes with Sarah. Haunted circles erased her once maternal glow. She clutched the bunny close to her and shook her head violently as he tried to take it from her fiercely guarding hands. “No….please” she murmured. Then demanded. Then plead. Finally succumbing to a chain of “No…please. Please…no” that circled and cycled around and around and around again until it became a lullaby of repeated rhetoric bordering on hysteria.

Her resolve weakened as his determination grew and the bunny was finally wrested from her grasp. Relieved of it’s position, it betrayed the secret of Sarah’s concave abdomen.

*****************************************

The baby had slowed down her search for freedom. Content to wait Sarah had reasoned. Spots of blood on her giant maternity panties? She was sure it was one of those things doctors were becoming more lenient about these days.

“Yes,” she laughed.

Wine was okay. Blood was okay Blood to wine. Wine to blood. Dr. Sanderson said wine was Okay. Everything was Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay….. Her mind repeated the mantra as Peter sped through traffic to the ER.

Nuchal Cord. Cord death. She had seen the terms in one of the many “What to Expect” books she had devoured. She had glossed over the them. They were meant for other people. She was focused on papoosing and co-sleeping and “back to sleep” and “tummy time.”

The umbilical cord had one job to do and she left it alone to do it. Trusting that they were a team; this cord and she. Trusting it would nourish and nurture and provide sustenance to the life they were growing together. Instead it had turned on her. It had forsaken them all; Aida, herself and Peter. While she slept, let down a guard she never knew she had to keep up, the cord had tightened its noose around the vulnerable vessel she had vowed safe harbor to and killed all their dreams in one fell swoop.

And that is how it ended. At the beginning.

At the beginning which should have been filled with firsts but was ultimately filled with lasts. First breaths that were caught eternally on the inhale. A line on an axis where here and there meet. Where firsts and lasts become one. Down the rabbit hole where everything becomes nothing and nothing becomes everything.

Peter held Sarah’s hands and glared at the calendar opened to March.

March had betrayed him.

While the rest of the world prepared to celebrate the birth of a Holy child, they were stuck eternally in spring. Peter wanted to tear the calendar off of the wall, wanted to stomp all over those mocking baby animals. Lambs playing in the meadow without a care. Unaware that Easter was coming early this year and that they were ripe for the slaughter and no one was raising the dead here.