Get In, Sit Down, and Shut Up

Here is day 4 and I am still doing it.  Surprising to say the least.  But I do feel myself pulling away.  Although, why I don’t know.  Is it because of the pressure I am putting on myself to perform?  Or that there is a quasi audience reading what I write, judging me.  Or is it because I’m just a lazy fuck?  The world may never know.

In all honesty I should have done this earlier in the day.  I’ve been bored watching television and stuffing my face with the holiday cookies my husband made last night.  He’s been really busy the past few days, which left me alone to my own devices. 

I had attempted to continue reading about druidism but it was throwing so much information at me that I thought I was going to die.  Eesh.  But once the husband goes back to work and thus leaving me all alone, I’ll pick it back up.  Plus I need to read a book a month, per my year long goals.

Year of Writing Prompts by Brian A. Klems & Zachary Petit
January 4
365 Days
Something life-altering happened.  As a result, you’ve decided to give something up for an entire year.  Write a scene detailing the cataclysmic event, or the struggle to keep the vow you made.

 

I stood staring at the car, parked in the driveway.  It was covered in a thick layer of dust, that some punk from the neighborhood had decided to scrawl obscene words in, along with the images of dicks and even a pair of boobs.  Any other time I would have been furious.  I had loved my car.  It was the lover and friend I had always wanted.  Loyal.  No one drove her but me.  Now, I couldn’t care less what happened to her.

Ever since the accident I can’t bring myself to sit behind the wheel once again.  My girlfriend says that I’ll get over it, in time, but I’m not so sure.  It’s been a year since the incident and I still don’t even feel comfortable in a car, let alone drive one myself.

Angela walks up behind me and drapes and arm around my neck.

“What’re you doing, honey,” she says.

I lower my head.  For some reason I can’t bring myself to tell her that I had gotten the urge to try and drive down the street.  Maybe it’s because it would give her hope that I didn’t feel ready to give. 

I look into her sapphire eyes.

“Just wanted to get some air.”

She hugs me tighter.  With a peck on the cheek, she feels satisfied and turns to go back into the house.

I slowly walk around the front to gaze at her other side. 

The body shop did an amazing job.  No one would ever know that a Ford Bronco had t-boned me in the intersection.

A faint memory flashes through my mind of he headlights getting brighter and the deafening crunch of our cars colliding.

I stumble back out of breath.  I double over and try to catch the air that has left me.

I still don’t know how I survived.  By all accounts I should have been crushed.  When I replay it I just hear sounds.  No other details come to mind.  It was like my brain had put me into suspencion to protect myself from the crash. 

The next thing after the lights, that I remember, is waking up in the hospital days later.  The doctors were afraid I’d never wake up.

The doctors released me into my own care, but what they failed to realize is that I would be consumed with fear whenever in a vehicle.  I close my eyes and tense my body every time I go through an intersection.  Every car that waits until the last minute to stop will surely collide into me.  I just know it.

My heart begins to race.  I was stupid to even try.  I turn and head back into the house.

Halfway up the walk I hear Angela’s scream.  I rush up the rest of the way, throw oopen the door and find my girlfriend sitting on the kitchen floor, blood all over the white linoleum.

“What happened?” I say.

“I’m such an idiot.  I dropped the knife and it went right through my foot.”

She’s clutching her bare foot, the bloody knife only a few feet away. I rush to the drawer with the tea towels and grab everyone of the neatly folded cloths. I drop to my knees and begin wrapping them around her foot.

“You need to take me to the emergency room.” She says.

I look up at her.  My eyes are wide and my mouth is open. Very slowly, I shake my head no.

“I’ll call an ambulance.”

I stand up, but she grabs me around my arm and stops me.

“Are you insane? We don’t have that kind of money.  This isn’t that bad.” She says. “You can do it.”

I look at her.  I want to tell her know.  But her eyes plead with me and I can only agree.

I scoop her up into my arms and take her outside.  I don’t even bother to lock the door behind me. 

I gently lay her in the passenger seat and rush around the nose of the car to the driver’s side. I stop only inches from the repaired handle.

“Hurry, Jon,” she says, “I’m getting blood everywhere.”

I scream from the deepest part of my chest and pull open the door and toss myself inside.  She starts up instantly, like she was waiting for me.  Carefully, so carefully, I back out the driveway and head for the emergency room.

“You’re amazing.” She says.

My hearts pounding in my ears.  I can barely focus on the road and all I can think about is she did this on purpose.

Theft and other things...

My mind still cannot wrap itself around the fact that my laptop was stolen out of my dining room, while I was home with a large group of friends. Nothing else was taken, not a single other trinket, but the pc. My friend's purse was sitting in a chair maybe a foot away from it but that was left behind. My 3DS XL sat on the leather sectional, maybe three feet from the door, (certainly on the way in or out of the dining room and house) and it remains. And the thing that really blows my mind is that it was the most inexpensive device in our entire house. The phone in my pocket was more than that laptop, but it was that which the thief took.

The only solace I get from this situation is despite losing my laptop, containing my many manuscripts, short stories, and the like, I still have them in safe keeping. And to top it all off I don't think they could get to them anyway since my computer had a password protecting it. Although, my best companion and techy told me that was trivial.

When I was younger my parents, for whatever reason, thought it'd be cheaper if the husband of a woman my mother worked with built me a PC for Christmas. It may have been, for all I know, but it ended up where twice the hard drive crashed and refused to load. The first time he successfully fixed his folly, but the second... I was mortified because I had lost all of my work. All of my novels were wrapped up into that single device. I didn't know what to do. As a last resort I took it to best buy and the computer guys there (long before the geek squad) were able to retrieve them and put them on a disc.

Since then I have been relentless when it comes to saving and resaving. I have multiple thumb drives, my files are saved on multiple home computers, and now I have them in a dropbox. Dropbox is the most amazing thing to ever happen to me. I cannot stress that enough. I preach of it's wonders to any and all I come across because it truly is a miracle product. That is where my stories are even now. All the ideas I haven't locked in permanent memory are there. My many incarnations of my current novel. All of it. And if they're not in there they're on the thumb drive I have ringed with my house and car keys.

Like I said... I'm a relentless saver.

As to the computer... My boyfriend gave me the computer he just recently bought for his company to me. It's nice... But I liked my other one, despite being so low-tech. It did what I wanted. It was my friend, my companion, my secret lover. And like any lost love I will truly miss it. But in the end it was just an object. Easily replaceable, as I have found, since I already have another one. It all boils down to the point: who the hell did this?

No matter how many times I run it through my mind it just doesn't make any sense. None. Why take that but nothing else? I've looked. I keep hoping that this is some elaborate joke against me plotted out by one of my "friends." But I knew at the moment I saw it gone, that many in my life refuse to believe, that it is just gone. Gone gone gone gone gone gone. Gone. And I have to live with that.

But, silver lining time folks, I have all of my work. All of my stories, novels, ideas. All of it is safe within my reach and that is truly a miracle and brings me momentary peace. In fact, I worked on a project this evening just to get acquainted with my new friend. I've decided to call him obsidian, but that is irrelevant.