New Idea…

10May08

Ok Im tired of not writing… and Im tired of just telling everyone about my Police academy experiences (riveting though they may be) Im ready to do somthing different… so here is my idea.

Im gonna put a piece of somthing Ive been writing on here and I want some ideas…

I have some good characters, but Im having a hard time coming up with a good plot…

what happens next kinna thing.

SO thats your job… if you have any great ideas for characters, plot, events, conflicts, or twist… tell me about them and Ill try to write the next section of this story including the best ideas you have… if I dont get any action Ill just put somthing else up and see what happens… so here is the first piece of a story Im working on..

Here are some things to think about

What was Maurice’s occupation

What is Maggie’s occupation

Where does Maggie go after this?

Who does she meet?

Why is Misha metioned? Will she be a main character?

These are things I want to know to move on in this story… get to it!!!

Chapter 1

The room stank. living with the ever lingering stench of old age and incontinence in his nostrils for the past 2 years had not robbed Maurice Kennard of awareness, and disgust for the odor. His throat contracted, he swallowed hard trying to keep from openly gagging as he watched the robust little nurse changing the soiled sheets on his bed. He wanted to tell her he was sorry, but he knew she would just nod and pat his shoulder not understanding his slurred mumblings.
He looked down at his pale hands. They moved and jerked in his lap involuntarily in a rhythm he had memorized. It had become a pastime of his to try and touch his two index fingers together and hold them there. Sometimes he would try all day and never succeed. He glared at his quavering hands and tried to will them to stop moving. “Useless old claws” He fumed to himself, as they continued to randomly move about. He looked at his freshly trimmed fingernails, clean and shiny, curved around to the edges and clipped square. “Never had no clean fingernails before now…never had no soft hands…” his mind wandered and lost its way as he continued to stare at his manicured unspoiled hands.
The stainless steel lid of the laundry cart clattered, jarring him from his idle state. As the nurse came within reach and stuffed the sheets into the bin Maurice reached out and grabbed her sleeve. He shook his head desperately back and forth, the only thing he could do that would communicate his distaste for the position he had put her in. It appalled him that he was incapable of controlling himself and that she had to bear the weight for it and he wanted her to know it. She glanced over her shoulder at him and smiled.
“Don’t you worry none Mr. Kennard, this here’s my job.” He just continued to shake his head and tug on her sleeve. Finally she was finished and left him alone in the little room. Maurice inched along in his wheelchair until he sat in front of the window. It looked out into a small courtyard. In the summer there was a water fountain that rattled its mockingly cheery, repetitive chant, and flowers in raised beds along the concrete wheelchair paths. Now it was dead and colorless. Little patches of ice in the shade from a week gone snow, black spots of mud where the melting snow from the roof had dripped, skeletal trees, all of which seemed to be clawing at his window trying to reach him, trying to drag him into its misery. Tears formed at the edges of his eyes and melted into the wrinkles. “Crazy old man, what happened to your head? Why’d you let me down this way?” Maurice turned his head to look at the framed picture on his nightstand. He squeezed his eyes shut and strained to remember. “I know her…I do…what’s her name…WHAT IS HER NAME MAURICE!” He stretched his shuddering hand out and took the picture. He laid it on his lap and stared at it. Finally after a few minutes of gazing and shaking his head he turned it over. His eyes could see the sequence of letters on the back of the picture, but try as he might, they meant nothing to him, except for the “M”. “M…Mmmmm” he hummed out loud. His mind began to swirl. “mmmmmmMMMMMM” He hummed louder and louder until his voice echoed in the room. His mind began to wander and stray from what he knew. He fought valiantly “No!! don’t go… please stay…” His thoughts hissed and crackled in his head like an old AM receiver losing its signal. “I love you… I know I do, I love you…you are beautiful, I just don’t remember your name!” His knuckles grew white as his grip on the picture frame tightened. His eyes didn’t stray from the word on the back of the photo. His voice grew louder as he tried to hold on to the one thing he knew. “MMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmm.” The glass shattered in his grip. He stopped humming abruptly. His cheek twitched and his neck jerked and gradually his eyes cleared. He frowned slightly as he saw blood running up the edge of the frame and dripping onto his vinyl slippers. He turned the picture over and looked at it. A smile rippled across his face like the wind on an uncut hay field. He slowly lifted the picture to his lips and kissed it, closing his eyes as if it were a real person. He pulled his sleeve up to try and wipe the blood off that he’d smudged on it from his hand which continued to bleed profusely. “I do love you…my little sunshine…daddy’s baby…I love you…” He said aloud, his voice clear and unwavering. He ran a steady finger down the line of her nose and crinkled his own nose at her. “It’ll be a bit till I see you again, so be good.” Maurice reached for a pen from the nightstand and scratched a few words on the back of the picture, then He sat for awhile smiling at it and reliving moments spent with his little girl. He was ready now…he had remembered her and it was all he wanted.
He watched as his left hand slowly began to quiver again, he knew what was coming. Tears overflowed onto his wrinkled cheeks, his thumb stroked her face a few last times as he drifted away. When the nurse came in an hour later to make her rounds she found him slouched awkwardly to the right and unmoving, but the broken picture was still held tightly in his hands. Maurice Kennard had long since paid his dues, he had long since been ready, but he had waited for that moment of remembrance.

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

“There you go ma’am.” The pretty dark haired young woman set the steaming cup and saucer down on the table in front of Maggie. A quick flicker of her eyes to the nametag and Maggie smiled pleasantly,
“Thank you Misha, its beautiful” The girl smiled with satisfaction and dipped her head, as if she had been waiting for the words. She started to turn and walk away, but Maggie touched her arm, “I’m Maggie, and you… are new?” She said with a bit of question in her voice. The girl nodded and smiled again.
“Yes ma’am, I’ve only been here for 3 days.”
“Well it doesn’t show in your drinks, at least this one is quite artful”
“Thanks, I like makin them pretty, but you better taste it before you give me too much credit, I might have just covered dirty water with whipped cream…” Maggie laughed and defiantly grabbed up the mug of steaming something under a tower of swirled cream. She took a long sip and closed her eyes.
“That’s the best dirty water I’ve ever tasted… bar none!” Misha laughed delightedly and dipped her head again.
“Thanks… I guess I better get back to work… it was nice meeting you.”
“Oh you’ll see me again, I’m a regular here…” Maggie’s mobile phone began to buzz and move across the table. She gave it an angry look and picked it up without looking at the display. With a flourish and a defiant glance at Misha, she dropped it from above her head into her purse. Misha looked at her quizzically and laughed before returning to her post at the register. Maggie was of the persuasion that life existed quite well before cell phones, and that it would continue on if she didn’t answer hers ever. So she rarely did and her colleagues never stopped ribbing her about it.
She was halfway home before she thought about the missed call again. With one hand on the wheel she rummaged through her purse and finally found the phone. On the front display she read “9 missed calls” And shook her head in disbelief. “How about leaving a voicemail?” She said grumpily to the phone. She flipped it open and punched the auto dial for her voicemail. Moments later the electronic female voice told her that her mailbox was full and that she should delete some of the messages before anyone could leave another. Slowly she lowered her phone from her ear and slapped it shut. Whoever had called wanted to talk to her desperately and couldn’t leave a message… She flipped the phone open again and looked down to see who the missed calls were from but as she did the phone buzzed to life startling her and making her swerve in the road. She almost cursed when she bounced over a curb while turning to get on the freeway. Then she glanced at the display to see if she recognized the number. She let the phone buzz as she just stared at the number on the display. Her face was becoming pale, her breathing short. The phone stopped buzzing… 10 missed calls. She didn’t need to answer, she knew who it was… why they were calling… she had been dreading the day for a long time and here it was. Her face was void of expression as she sat with both hands on the wheel in a gas station parking lot. Sweat had beaded on her head, her eyes had taken on a wild terror, as her mind processed what she tried for months to prepare for. She was…alone. Daddy was gone…and there was no one else…just Maggie. Her eyes fogged over, her back and neck slumped and her face flushed as a line of moisture formed on her cheeks and steadily dripped from her chin. An anguished sob escaped her as she struggled to hold the emotions at bay. After a moment she was quiet again. She picked up the phone from where it had fallen on the floorboard, and hit the connect button for the number that had been calling her.
“Yes this is Maggie Kennard; I’ve missed several calls from this number…”
After she got off the phone she took a deep breath and turned her vehicle around and headed to the place she dreaded so. The rest home. The place she had hated herself for having left her father in, and the place he had taken his final breath. As she found a parking spot her mind was blank. She was sad, but she couldn’t cry or do anything, she felt mechanical and stiff as she stepped through the electronic sliding doors of the home. A young woman in purple scrubs stepped from behind the square nurse filled corrall and extended her hand. “Mrs. Kennard, I’m so sorry.” Maggie looked at the woman for a moment and finally extended her own hand as the woman grasped it with both of hers.
“Thank you, I believe you are…” Maggie pulled away and started walking toward her fathers room. “Is he still in there?”
“Yes ma’am, we just laid him on his bed, that’s all.”
“Thank you, for not taking him…” The woman blinked in place of a nod and her lips pressed together in her effort to not show too much emotion.
Maggie paused at the door, and slowly pushed it open. She stood out in the hall for a moment, and then glanced at the nurse, silently telling her to stay out, then she stepped into the room. Her father lay on his back with a blanket pulled up to his armpits and his arms on top of the blankets his hands folded together. He looked peaceful. She sighed with some relief, realizing how much the fear she had, of seeing him in some grotesque death pose had gripped her. She pulled a chair to the edge of the bed and sat down. For a long silent moment she sat just staring at his face. She reached out and touched his forehead, clenching her teeth and trying to overcome the terror of loneliness again as her hand touched cold skin. His skin had never been cold, it had never been lifeless before, always warm and loving and full of fun and life…but now he wasn’t even here… just an old dried out shell of what he had been, like one of those cicada shells left clinging to a tree in the spring time. She smiled as she realized just how well that analogy fit. He had broken free of this bound up sick, and struggling life, and flew off into the heavens. She stroked his face and pushed a whisp of white hair back from his forehead. She didn’t have anything to say now that she hadn’t sat here day after day and already told him… there were no regrets, she wasnt afraid she hadn’t told him she loved him… there had been plenty of time for that while he was here. She took his hand and kissed the back of it. She noticed a small cut on his thumb and wondered how he got it. Then she saw the sparkle of a tiny shard of glass still in the cut. Her brow furrowed as she looked around the room trying to see what might’ve cut him, and she saw the picture. She reached across him and picked it up. She looked at her own face in the picture for a moment and then laid if face down on his chest. “I Love you daddy…” She whispered… then she saw the scratchy writing on the back of the picture. She squinted to try an make sense of it…”I remembered you my sunshine”

She sucked her breathe in deeply, trying to suppress a sob that was welling up as the name her father had always called her triggered memories from her childhood. She could feel his strong arms as he tossed her up with little effort and always caught her again, she remembered his face, scratchy against hers, the smell of the spearmint gum he always chewed and the faint spicy aroma of a cigar she had never seen him smoke.
So much time had passed since then, so much had happened, so much pain had been experienced, and now it was done… he was finished with this old troublesome life. Maggie kept finding herself smiling through the tears streaming down her face. He was home, finally. Then the great groaning sob exploded from her chest as the realization flooded over her again…She was alone. More alone than ever before. She lay her head on his chest and finally stopped holding back the raging river of emotion as she her body heaved in pain and loneliness.

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