Category: Stories Around the Fire

Once upon a time,

Five little lasses were playing in the garden one sunny spring morning.  They were quietly sitting in the grass making daisy chains out of sweet smelling flowers. As they sat there surrounded by the tiny little petals, they began to chat about what they wanted to do and what they wanted to be when they grew up

The first little lass spoke up and said when she grew up, she wanted a bright red car and the biggest mansion in the entire kingdom.

The girls all sighed as they dreamed about the glittering gated mansion with the bright shiny car parked outside framed by a magnificent garden and ornate golden draperies in the crystal windows.

The second lassie soon spoke up, wistfully saying she wanted to be the most beautiful girl in the whole kingdom when she grew up. The most beautiful boy in the kingdom would take one look at her and fall deeply in love with her sweeping her off to his palace.

The other little girls all ooh’ed and ah’ed as they day dreamed of the handsome prince riding up to sweep their little friend off her feet and take her away to the land of happily ever after.

The third little girl didnt have to think about her dream, she already had it planned. She wanted to be a star on tv and in movies and have every one in the kingdom adore her and love her. The other little girls excitedly thought of fame and fortunes and signing autographs for worshipping adorers.

It was the the fourth little girl’s turn next and she announced with a smirk that she wanted to rule the world and own diamond mines with slaves and minions at her beck and call.

The other girl’s eyes all sparkled as they imagined maids in stiff starched white linen uniforms wheeling polished silver service trays full of delectable temptations with handsome men offering their friend riches beyond their wildest dreams.

The four little girls then turned to the fifth little girl and waited expectantly to hear what her dream was.

The fifth girl thought for a moment before she spoke.
“I want to be wise” she said quietly with a gentle smile on her face.

The other girls looked at their little friend. There was silence. The only audible sound was the steady drone of the bottle green blowflies gathering and buzzing around four little mouths that had by now fallen gapingly open. Four litle faces in shock, after listeniing to their little friend’s rather bizarre and horrid sounding dreams.

The first little girl smiled. Then she giggle and then the first little girl started to laugh her head off, while she turned to the other little girls. One by one the four girls started laughing. They all laughed, and they laughed and laughed.

Those four little girls laughed at the fifth little lass until tears welled painfully up in her eyes.

Then they laughed some more when they saw her tears of distress.

The fifth little girl scrambled up from the ground, wiping the hot tears that were pouring down her face in twin waterfalls away on her sleeve, as she took one last glance down at all the beautiful flowers in her hand.

She turned and tossed the pile to the wind and then turned and ran home as fast as her tiny little fae legs would carry her.

Arriving home, she raced into her bedroom, slamming the door hard behind her. She threw herself on the bed and sobbed.

She sobbed and sobbed until she had no tears left to sob.

Picking herself up off the bed, she walked sadly up to the dresser and sat down. Her eyes rose to face herself in the mirror.

She picked her music box up from her dresser and turned the key before setting it back down, with the sounds of Puccini’s La Boheme now soothing her tortured soul.

Glancing down at the remaining daisy chain entwined around her wrist, she slowly brought her arm to her face, nuzzling the tiny petals and drawing the sweet aroma deep inside her soul.

She removed the flower chain gently from her wrist, taking care not to damage the tiny tender petals then softly placed it inside her music box.

She looked down in silence at the heart shaped music box, watching the purple faery dancing merrily and proudly around her circle.  a single tear running from her left eye and dropped into the box.

Sadly she closed the lid of the music box on the bright and beautful purple ballerina, crushing her and forcing her to fit  down in the darkness of the box.

The echo of the  lid slaming down bounced softly off the wall before slowly fading out. Until that moment she had been dancing merrily around on the dance floor, happy, bright and beautiful.

Now there was silence in her stillness.

The silence grew. She never told anyone her dreams again. She kept them locked deep within her heart along with that ever forgotten daisy chain in the music box.

Her dreams were hope  and she didn’t want to share them when there were so many of those four other little princesses just waiting with hatred in their hearts, to crush all hope that grew.

The room is sterile. In the centre of the room stands the cold steel mechanical outline of a bed, surrounded by three uncomfortable hard seats and four stark white walls. The aroma of disinfectant and bleach hangs heavy in the room, cloying the senses with the chemical smells.

You are lying in the bed, unconscious, with pads and tubes all over your pale fragile form, hooked up to various machines with beeping noises and bright colored lights flashing intermittently. I stroke your hand gently as you stir and groan, setting off yet another endless light flashing on the machine closest to your head. The tears pour down my face unchecked as melancholy memories of the two of us flood through my senses.

We were four, it had been raining and it was the first time in days we had been allowed outside. We were in the yard playing and I was running towards you trying my best to control the soccer ball I was kicking between my legs. You moved towards me, I skipped sideways and lifted my boot to kick. Suddenly I slipped and lost my balance and I ended up face planted in the sloppy dirty mud at your feet. You laughed

We were five and you got into big trouble at school for chasing that stuck up girl with the golden pigtails. You caught her and then tossed her unceremoniously into the sandpit. I laughed

We were six and we got our first bikes for Christmas off Santa Claus. We went outside to ride them along the street and proudly show them off to the neighboring kids. We both laughed.

We were seven and we were riding those bikes to school. You were just ahead of me when a car came screeching around the corner on two wheels, drove up onto the gutter and straight into you. Nobody laughed. We never laughed again.

Pain floods my senses as my mind travels through time to another place. I couldn’t look at you lying there broken on the grey cement or at the bright red liquid stain slowly spreading about your crushed body. Even now today I still can’t open the box in my mind that contains those pictures. It is still too raw, still too graphic and still too real for me to view.

Your life stopped there that day as mine was just beginning.

I was eight and I was chosen for the state soccer team. You had the first of many surgeries to repair your broken body. Your pelvis was rebuilt and jaw wired, with bone taken from your hips to replace the shattered shards of cheekbones. Your broken back was set in traction and the doctors finally persuaded the family to remove what was left of your left leg.

I was nine and won “dux” of the school. That was the year when they found out the blood they had given you was contaminated and your liver began to fail. Your organs shut down and you had swelling on the brain. That year was the beginning of the psychosis and torment that dogged you forever more and that was the year you begged me to help you to die.

I sat by your bedside back then in a room not unlike the one I was now seated in. The same cold, white and sterile feeling permeated every fibre of my being then as it does now. I told you I loved you. I pleaded with you to live. I cried for you to keep going. I encouraged you to have the strength to continue. I asked you to make the best of what you had and keep living. You still begged me to help you die. I remember my anger as I told you never to speak of it again. You didn’t, those words never passed your lips again. Instead yet another light faded from your eyes.

My teen years were full of achievements while your teen years were full of hospitals, doctors and more agonizing pain. I met a pretty girl, fell in love and we got married. You met with many specialists and psychiatrists. I got promoted to manager of my division and you got another assortment of pills to keep you quiet and relatively pain free.

We had our first baby as you had your first breakdown. My little girl took her first steps and stumbled into my arms as you began new therapies on your damaged brain. Our second baby was born around the same time the doctors told you that you had a tumor. I watched him laugh and coo and run around on his stumpy legs. I watched the tears pour from your eyes and I watched you wipe them away. I watched you grimace in pain and I watched you turn away in solitude.

Your broken back had never mended and your only mode of transportation was a motorized wheelchair but even that now is castaway back deep in the dark dusty shed at home gathering cobwebs. You haven’t been out of bed for nearly a year now. The tumor was found to be inoperable, growing insidiously and evilly inside your already damaged head.

Tomorrow is the big day though. A new medical procedure is to be trialed. It requires the implanting of tiny electrodes into your brain that will send electrical impulses into the tumor. According to the new team of specialists, combined with a weekly course of intense radiotherapy it should shrink the tumor. They haven’t said too much about the side affects, although they tell me that it will be “uncomfortable” for you. I vividly remember your last course of radiotherapy, which if anything had made the tumor grow. I remember how your face was burnt with the skin peeling off in strips and I remember how the inside of your mouth and throat were raw with weeping blisters. I remember how you ended up being tube fed directly into your stomach when you could not longer swallow food or water.

Suddenly the loud incessant beeping of one of the machines pervades my senses, bringing me back to the stark reality of now. Your breathing has slowed, each breath seemingly requiring a great effort from your heaving weakened body. The machine sounds louder now as more lights flash. Medical staff come running into the room and I am pushed away to the corner shadows.

I stand stricken as I watch them work on your withered shape. For a few minutes there is frantic activity and people yelling instructions. The voices take on a panicked tone and then everything falls silent. A nurse turns to me and looks sadly into my eyes. Nothing needs to be said as she turns back and slowly pulls a sheet over your head. The machines are switched off one by one and the medical staff quietly leave the room.

I am left alone with you but you are no more. I am alone. For the first time in my life I am truly alone. I kneel down by your side and I am stone faced as I gently touch the sheet that covers you one last time. I stand up and then walk into the tiny bathroom that is attached to the hospital ward. Leaning over the bowl I try to gather my thoughts. It is hopeless. I am blank. I cannot think. I cannot feel. I am numb.

My hand mechanically reaches onto my jacket pocket and pulls out a plastic wrapper. I barely glance at the label with “morphine” written across the front in bold black letters as I drop it in the toilet bowl. I press the button, staring into nothingness as the wrapper is flushed away through the sewage system.

I look up into the mirror. It is your face that staring back at me. I step back into the room for the final time. It seems dark and still, an emptiness within an emptiness. The cloying smells and aromas appear to have vanished as I walk slowly out of the room and head off up the corridor towards the nurses station.

Goodbye my brother. Goodbye my twin. Goodbye to half of me.

You see Bro, when I was a little kid, I kinda had this problem… I loved you too much to let you go. Now that I am older, I kinda have a problem… I love you too much to make you stay.

Sarah stopped and straightened, wiping the sweat from her brow as she looked around at the mountains surrounding her. It was a steamy spring day in the tropics of Australia. On the horizon threatening foreboding stom clouds gathered and slowly drifted inland.

She turned to review her morning accomplishment in the garden and walked back slowly towards the farmhouse to make lunch for her herself and her small son Bailey, who was playing quietly under the mango tree which was bursting with pre season fruit nearby.

As she stepped into the house, she stopped a moment and frowned, peering outside again into the sunshine. It was so still, unusually so for this time of day, calm and very silent. No birds were chirping away in the trees that were gently swaying on the hills nor were the rabbits skipping over the meadows and playing hide and seek with each other. “Eerie”.

She shrugged as she stepped inside and went to switch the television on as she made the sandwiches.

She froze as the picture came on and the voice boomed into the room. The midday newscaster was highly agitated as he spluttered out his lines. Sera listened and watched intently, trying to grasp exactly what she was hearing.

“I repeat, New Zealand has been totally destroyed by a massive volcanic eruption and numerous deathly shockwaves that have caused the island country to sub duct between two tectonic plates. It is believed that hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost in the catastrphic disaster”

“No, thought Sarah and shook her head, this cannot be happening and leaned forward to hear more.

The newscaster continued, Sarah’s face and body was beginning to register the horror and enormity of what she was hearing. A chain reaction had occurred along the Pacific plate, starting with deep quakes registering in the New Guinea region and after a period of calm it seemed all hell had broken loose. Volcanoes spewing molten lava had suddenly sprung up along the pacific and nazca plate edges where it intersected with smaller plates, instantly creating new islands where none had previously existed. The stresses caused from the plates shift had caused quakes all over the planet at it’s weakest spots, culminating in a massive horizontal slide of two plates intersecting south of new Zealand.

Shakily while still listening to the newscaster Sarah ran and called Bailey inside, stopping a moment to reflect and observe the dark formations on the horizon, they took on new meaning now, she thought as an ice cold chill ran up her spine.

She lived inland about 200 kilometres from the sea, on a mountain meadow, which seemed at the moment to be a safe spot as the newscaster began to list the areas affected by the massive tsunami’s that the series of seismic events had created. Her face fell as the television switched to footage of a massive wall of churned up muddy, dirty brown water barreling towards the Sydney Harbour Bridge, swallowing the Opera House, with just the peaks of the sails visible as the water consumed everything in it’s path.

What was happening here, she hugged Bailey to her chest, He seemed to sense something was wrong and he looked quizzically into her eyes, His own deep blue eyes staring innocently and questioningly at her. “Mummy” he said and touched her face with his tiny warm hand. “What is making you sad”.

Sarah choked and couldn’t answer him, she kissed him, then held him tighter as the voice and images droned on and on through her senses. The newscaster was fairly yelling now, his face was beet red as he told of the currently happening destruction of California. Ten minutes beforehand Mt St Helens had exploded, blowing a nearly a kilometre off the top of her and spewing lava miles into the sky, the shocks had triggered the San Andreas fault to give way in a reaction of quakes through to southern California, each measuring over 9 on the Richter scale.

The newscaster stopped as a hand came into camera view and passed him yet another sheet of paper. He frowned and sighed as he turned to face the camera. It was almost with a dull monotone that he read from the latest item to hit the desk.

“Due to the massive series of seismic events along the pacific rim of fire, the earth has created such a wobble that it is now believed the moon has been thrown erratically out of it’s normal orbit around our planet. It seems that these events will continue and it is as yet unknown when the events will subside. Emergency marshal law has been enacted all over the country. Please stay tuned for instruction bulletin to follow.

Suddenly the earth beneath Sarah’s feet became unstable. She squealed loudly as she felt a rush of power come towards her. She felt like she was on the edge of a high cliff, with a steam train rushing at her full steam, a roar rang in her ears as she ran to escape the confines of the house, Bailey still held tightly against her chest. Sarah fell out of the front verandah and laid there as the Earth rendered, shook and screamed beneath her. The air around her rushed and roared. Bailey started screaming, his voice blending in with the screams of the earth. The wrenching and tearing continued as the sky darkened and a thick orange brown cloud filled the air. Inside the house the TV became silent, but the shaking continued, getting stronger and stronger.

Sarah pulled Bailey closer and crawled away from the house as behind her the foundations of the 150 year old farmhouse tore away and the building collapsed with a screech of torn metal. The ground tore apart in front of her and she stopped crawling and she watched in seemingly slow motion as the garden she had tendered to so lovingly that morning slid away down into a pit that had appeared, swallowing it all in one long movement. Sarah screamed now as on the distant mountain peaks, bright red rivers of molten lava appeared, bursting into the heavens like New Year’s fireworks against the darkened skies.

Bailey stared transfixed as steam vents sizzled up in geysers and all around cracks appeared on the ground like a maze of spider webs over the area. Trees were uprooted and crashed back down with an almighty wrenching sound

The roar was louder now, the shaking seemed to be building to a crescendo, a symphony of horror and Sarah found she could not move or make a sound and then it happened. The crescendo peaked, there was a flash, a crack of sound, blinding colour and in that instant of agonizing pain Sarah called Bailey’s name. Then there was nothing as an explosion ripped through the solar system and the Earth was no more.

 

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Well I wrote this for a contest but do not wish to kill the storyline by cutting it in half to fit the 600 word criteria …so i thought I would post the story again for you all to read and hopefully enjoy. This is only the first draft. It still needs refinement. I like to write and then leave my piece for a bit and come back all fresh to do the second draft as I always look at it differently then. Sera