Nothing but words.
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posted : Monday, July 19, 2010
title : Fidgety Fingers & a Restless Brain
With almost too fidgety fingers and a restless brain, I produced two plots, both hardly similar in genre. Knowing that this could be it - a story so carefully constructed and can possibly be published, leaving readers grasping for more. So many ideas, but only two hands. Which to embark? Option I or II? Option I Synopsis Emily and Allie were typical childhood friends who grew up together and stuck up for each other. Like a pair of Siamese twins, they were inseparable. That was until they reached senior year in high school when they broke the first commandment, one of many they had penned down since they were five – to never ever fall in love with the same man. With a twist of fate, Emily, now a speech therapist, coincidentally bumps into Allie after losing contact for years since the incident happened. Can an unplanned meeting turn into an opportunity to unravel their misunderstandings and heal their friendship? Will Emily look past her feelings for Nate, the man of her past and now husband of Allie, in the path of forgiveness? Prologue I feel a dull ache creeping up my back, a spasmodic contraction that triggers a piercing pain through my lower abdomen and a thick wetness between my legs. As I am being wheeled into the ER operating room, I look down and notice the red stain, once a spot around the area of my groin, spreading itself across the lower half of my nightgown down to its hem. Around me I hear the paramedics briefing the nurses about the happenings of the fifteen minute drive to the hospital. I feel my body leave the stretcher and land on the operating table. My head spins in giddiness and I am momentarily blinded by the intensity of the operating table lamp. In the split second before I lost consciousness, I hear the ghost of a baby’s cry as its heart beats its last goodbye. On better nights I do not dream. When I do, I have the same recurring nightmares since my miscarriage. **** I am lying on a picnic mat, on a field that is earthly green and flowers blossoming in the wake of spring. The sky is a healthy shade of blue; a sun beaming through the white fluffy clouds. I cover my eyes and count to three. “Boo!” I shout, much to the delight of my one-year-old toddler. Ryan is in a laughing fit, his handsome smile revealing his first tooth. His ocean-blue eyes are tearing with the exhaustion of laughing for too long. He has my facial features – a sharp pointed nose, kind blue eyes, a pout for a mouth and elfish-like ears. The rest are a resemblance of his father, the golden locks of his hair and slightly tanned complexion of his skin. I look across the field to where my husband Nate is now enjoying a game of Frisbee with my best friend Allie and counted to three again. “Boo!” I shouted again, opening my eyes wide and waiting for my child’s laugh, a melody to my ears. But I immediately notice the absence of Ryan by my side. Panicking, I look around frantically, swallowing the bile that has risen to my throat. That is when I notice, receding into the far horizon, my best friend with my son in her arms eloping with the man I love. Option II Synopsis A late night call notifying the police of a dead body down the road leads them to believe that it is yet another hit-and-run incident – one that was incidental or had the motive to kill. Upon clinical examination, autopsy reports made a shocking disclosure: evidence that Jacob, a successful business manager whose wife recently died, had attempted suicide with an excessive intake of sleeping pills pre-mortem. Following years of insufficient evidence, and subsequent case closure, Casey, the guilt-ridden culprit of the car accident decides to turn himself in. As big-city attorney Renee takes on the tangled case to defend her husband’s action, will she be able to acquit Casey who got in the way of Jacob’s eventual death while implicated in a case of manslaughter? Will her marriage hold as she struggles to continue trusting Casey while new facts about him unravel? Prologue It’s been one long wary year since Allie has passed away. I still see her shadow, a subtle imprint on what she had left behind – her side of the bed with a slight dent in the bedding, after years of sleeping in; the coffee cup bearing the faintest stain of her lipstick, the photograph capturing a candid moment we had during high school, sitting on the mantelpiece in the living room. In the silence of the night, her words in my memory like music to me ring loud and clear. I feel her in my dreams embracing me, lingering on to the past we shared. In the late nights and wee hours of the morning I wake up clutching on to whatever fragment of her I can hold dear. Don’t get me wrong, I still carry on my life as it is. However, since the day she left, I knew a part of me had died, like my soul had been emptied out and I can never be whole again. Life is a funny thing, the way it robs you during your happiest moments and leaves the world crumbling down around you. Other than that, I have been truly blessed to be with Allie, for whom I would not have had the most wonderful and joyous moments in my life. **** Prom is the first official date I’ve had with Allie. I remember the days leading up to when I finally managed to pull myself together to ask her that one question that will change both our lives forever. “Allie, will you hmmm.. you know.. come to the prom with me? Be my dance partner?” I fiddled with my pen, twirling it between my fingers. My heart palpitated, each heartbeat pounding hard against my ribcage. You see, I’m the class nerd and she’s the school cheerleader. I would do anything really, to avoid this situation - getting embarrassed and rejected by the one girl I’ve laid eyes for. But I knew I wouldn’t. Not when I had spent many nights prior to this crafting out what I wanted to say and rehearsing it a million times over. I had planned to ask her during Mr Paulson’s arithmetic lesson, when she sat beside me during class. “Yes,” Allie said, blushing a little. I must have heard wrongly. Did I actually just feel cupids tugging at my heartstrings, a confirmation of her acceptance and reciprocal of my love? “Hey Jake, will you like to share with the class what’s so entertaining about the trigonometric function? Or is there something hilarious I don’t know about,” Mr Paulson said sarcastically, noting the ear to ear grin that had been plastered on my face. I woke up with a start, beads of perspiration trickling down my forehead. “Allie,” I whimpered. I hear a ghost of her whisper; smell the scent of her in the atmosphere around me. Then with the reality of my loss crashing down on me, in the silence of the night, I cried myself back to sleep for the umpteenth time. |
Sherlyn.
