A Day in the Brick House

Posted by LediaR on February 5, 2012
Posted in: Creative Writing, Humor, Ledia Runnels, Relationships, Short Story. Tagged: , , , , , , . 24 Comments

English: A picture depicting the pig who had r...

This story has just won an award at the Oklahoma Write’s Federation in the “Prose Humor” category!

(I spend much of my days, Monday through Friday, with an adorable preschooler who loves singing nursery rhymes. When asked to do a creative writing assignment concerning one character that wants to leave and one that wants to stay this story came readily to my creative writer’s mind.)

Hey diddle, diddle, the day started out like so many others. The sun shone over London Bridge and all seemed right with the world. Then I walked into the kitchen and saw that the cupboards were bare. I couldn’t even find the poor dog a bone.

So, I went to locate Agatha, sitting in the parlor eating bread and honey, and said to her, “How about the two of us go to the market to buy some slop or something? I mean, Caradoc over there is eating roast beef, but Digory, poor piglet, has none.”

So what did my beloved wife do? She got this pained expression on her face. You know the kind I’m talking about, where her ears turned down at the ends while she shoved her snout up toward the sky.

I really hate when she does that.

“I’m tired,” Agatha grunted. “and my hooves are killing me!”

So now it was my turn to give her the look. “You know, Aggie that was not the deal we made when we built this house of bricks. We promised to share all the chores.”

So she sat up straight and turned those beady, black eyes on me. The ones that used to make me quiver, but now they make me shiver. And she said to me, “I have had a really terrible day. You remember those four and twenty black birds? Well, I tried to bake them in a pie. But when the pie was open the birds began to sing, the wretched things.”

Agatha trembled as she pointed toward the fence that leads to outside. “One of the black devils,” she sniffled. “attacked Freda while she stood in the garden hanging out the clothes, for goodness sake.”

Then a loud snort blew from her snout in this pitiful, annoying sort of way. “Oh, Balthazar,” she wailed, “I ended up calling in the village doctor. And you know how queasy it makes me feel when he drags out those nasty leaches. Call me piggyunish, but I don’t see how letting the little suckers chew on poor Freda’s back helps get her nose back on her face.”

All the while Aggie was oink, oink, oinking at me I thought, what’s she gonna say next? That the cow jumped over the moon?

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw our little dog laugh. And then I cringed because Aggie got this gleam in her eyes. I mean she looked absolutely blissful.

“Balthie, dear,” she began ever-so-sweetly. “you could take Emrys. He loves going anywhere with you.”

And you don’t? I wanted to squeal. I may be a boar, but that last comment got me right in the pork ribs. I could feel this deep frown wrinkling my brow as I shoved my fists on each side of my shank.

“I love our youngest son, I do. But the way he always has to shout… I, well, I’ll be perfectly honest, Agatha, after a while, it starts to get on my last nerve. I don’t understand why he can’t just sit in the cart and sing a song of six pence instead…”

So, to make a long story short, I went to the counting house to count out some money and ended up taking the youngest piglet with me. We were so hungry by the time we got to the bazaar that we ended up buying out half the vegetable, fruit and flower stands. I bypassed the poultry stalls though. I wasn’t about to buy any more of those confounded black birds.

Personally, I enjoy a good prickly thistle. Just love the way it tickles my throat all the way down.

When we got home, Agatha was asleep in our little corner of the sty. She looked so darn cute and tasty with her curly tail tucked under that I didn’t even mind that the memory of Emrys’ tinny voice still squealed in my ears. “Wee, wee, wee…” all the friggin’ way home.

Copyright by Ledia Runnels 2012

Enjoy!

English: Illustrations from the novel A Book o...

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Going Nowhere Fast

Posted by LediaR on February 5, 2012
Posted in: Creative Writing, Divorce, Drama, Forgiveness, Ledia Runnels, Regret, Relationships, Short Story. Tagged: , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Texas Paintbrush

(A short story about the meandering paths of a relationship.)

The yellow haze hanging in the air always bothered me.

My teenage son drove the red Mustang speeding south past the imposing statue of Sam Houston that loomed in the near distance off highway 45. As we approached the Woodlands Mall, I looked out from the backseat and noticed the dirty sky.

The songs the children and I sang earlier that day, keeping time with the music from the CD player, dried up when we left Dallas, replaced by an empty sensation that squirmed like a worm inside my chest and grew to the size of a viper at the exit to the apartment I rented in advance from an online site.

It resembled the dust storms from childhood in West Texas that filled the air and left piles of grit lying on the window sills. But I never knew if the sky that day really turned yellow or my mind played tricks on me.

There aren’t any dust storms in East Central Texas.

Now I sit alone and stare at nothing from the couch that Mike bought just because I wanted it.

So different from telling me what he thought I wanted to hear.

Two images flash in juxtaposition across my mind. Four days after Mike and I married, I would leave on a jet plane and end up the next day on the tiny Aleutian Island of Adak, Alaska for a one year tour of duty. But the night before, we sat in the front seat of the blue Regal miserable to the dulcet strains of “We’ll never have to say goodbye again.”

After checking my luggage at Intercontinental, we snuggled in a restaurant lounge talking about our brief honeymoon in a hotel on Corpus Christi beach overlooking the silver-gray waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Oh what a night.

Corpus Christi Bay - Corpus Christi Bay (right...

Corpus Christi Bay

And the spectacular house we wanted to build someday in Colorado. I clutched the ticket that would take me away while Mike gently held me, my tear-streaked-face dampening his big shoulder.

Later, walking toward the boarding gate I stopped to wave one last goodbye before taking the triple-leg flight from Houston to Seattle to Anchorage to Adak. I turned to see Mike standing a short distance back.

Tears glistened in his eyes.

I wanted to run and comfort him, but the boarding call had gone out and I couldn’t miss this flight. So I smiled sweetly and blew him a kiss instead.

The navy frowns heavily on deserters.

The second image, synchronized with the first, had Mike standing alone in the front yard beside the moving van that held all mine and the children’s belongings. Except for what we carried in our suitcases stuffed inside the red car’s trunk.

I never wanted to move from Texas to Pennsylvania in the first place.

And to clinch the deal breaker, we had spent the last six months with just me and the kids shoveling snow layered waist deep to my 5’ 2” frame and sliding between ice walls that jutted toward foggy skies on either side of the gravel driveway.

Because I told him to leave since he stopped listening to me when I made him feel that he couldn’t do anything right after he did that thing that crushed my heart so long ago–even though he told me he was sorry.

A terrible realization slams into my conscience. The day I drove away from the chocolate three-story chalet as fast as I safely could on the PA two-lane residential I hadn’t looked back to wave goodbye.

Or see if Mike had tears glistening in his eyes.

In the Mustang, my daughter’s cheerful voice chirped from the passenger front seat, sounding garish and out-of-place in its sweetness. “Mom, we’re home!” she sang out.

A knot clenched in my throat. Hot tears, quickly blinked back, burned as I replied, “Are we really?” All the while, I remember, the tainted sky hurt my eyes.

He used to call me his queen. I wonder if he could ever feel this way again.

Copyright 2012 by Ledia Runnels

English: The Woodlands Texas

Bike Path The Woodlands, Texas

Enjoy!

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