XV. A beautiful Winter….crimson stains and tears…an angry god and white flower…

One man's battle with painted doors, cat piss dreams, three pills and a life time of nightmares

The room smelled of raw cat piss and dirty dreams. 
            Some nightmares breathe and come to life. Some are measured in tons. Some make you corner yourself in a room with two flickering, dying light bulbs while the love of your life is in the bathroom pissing blood and crying that her life is changed forever. 
            At this point, memories you have never had put your brain in a vice. 
            At this point, the crying from behind a badly repainted wooden door gets louder. 
            That wooden door.

            Badly painted on purpose. Simpler times when half unpacked boxes lay strewn into rooms labeled to make the future. The door was supposed to be light blue, adorned with grey clouds with bright silver linings on them. We put our handprints in the middle, mine in dark blue, hers in light green, and underneath, in script, was written “we will be our own silver lining.” 
            We had let the paint chip and wear. The silver lining, now only a darkened edge for the storm clouds that now dropped glass raindrops all over the hallway floor. The door, our dream, had unfurled months ago like the end of a silk ribbon and lifted high into the storm, disappearing into the void of an unforeseen future. 
            Fast forward to a present that tastes like sour milk and caustic catastrophe. 
            “Ethan! Please! I don’t want to do this anymore! Please!” 
            The tears choked the words lifeless. It’s too late for all that ugly talk now. The steps have already been taken and we both knew it. 
            A week from now the crimson stains on the inside of the toilet would be the remnants of could be happiness and would be dreams. 
            I was younger then, prettier. 
            She kicked the wall over and over bellowing a cessation of the blood. 
            “Please! We are killing her! Killing her! Oh God! Jesus please don’t hate me!” 
             We laid in bed and I ran little circles around her belly button. She held the most important piece of plastic of both of our lives in her hands, blazed pink with a huge plus sign. She turned it slowly over, and over again, almost as if the sign would change. 

            “I’m ready, Ethan. I am. This is what our future is. Right here. This little pink plus. Our new addition. Get it?” 
            “Hardy har har. ADDITION! WHEW! Comic genius!” 
            “Shut up assface!” 
            I leapt on to her sending the little plastic test spiraling in slow motion. 
            “I f*****g love you, know that?” 
            It fell further, gaining speed… 
            She smiled, the corners of her mouth crooking up and closing her eyes. 
            “This moment,” she started, “this is what they write about when they talk about love.” 
            I leaned in and put my lips to hers. 
            Ice cold. 
            The test hit the ground and shattered, spraying a mist of blood onto the hardwood floor and off white bed sheets.

            “Ethan! It won’t stop! Please baby! Please!” 
            Corrosive, burning sweat fell from my face and into my eyes. I staggered to my feet and felt my way to the bathroom. Flames danced in the small apartment, the smoke choked me, head felt off and light, the walls pulsed with anger and pumped the room with hot air and fear. 

            “Winter.” 
            “Winter?” 
            “Yeah Winter.” 
            “It’s pretty, but why that?” 
            The day was bright. Low 80’s. We ate sushi in the outside patio of a Japanese American joint in lower Manhattan. She clicked the front of her shoe against the bottom of my foot playfully. Our Chihuahua lapped at a bowl of water that I kept dropping saki into and getting crooked looks from the locals. She didn’t mind though. She was good for a joke. 
            “Because,” I started, “ Winter is pure and open and focused. Breathing in the air of clarity and focus. Winter is romance and togetherness but can also be biting and bitter. She’s gonna get her beauty and bitterness from you and her clarity and biting wit from me.” 
            “Winter?” 
            “Winter.” 
            Her ice blue eyes tore into mine in only the way they could. One glance dissected my soul and stormed my heart. She pulled the straw to her lips and sipped. 
            “I love it,” she said, reaching under the table for my hand. 
            The dog licked our interlocked fingers and perfection had a painting of pure ease and godliness. 

            I finally got to the bathroom door, pressed my hand against it gently, matching mine with the chipped, green, painted version of hers. 
            “Be the silver lining.” 
            My head throbbed and tears began to pour out. 
            “Help me!” 
            I heard screaming. The walls rattled with demonic fury. Someone had woken the Kraken and he was caked in blood and terror. He was the created abomination of eons of aborted images of new beginnings. He was the black rider. This b*****d was the 5th horseman of the apocalypse.
            My soul shuttered and locked, pulsating to the sound of a wall being kicked from behind a door where death stood, catching the hemorrhaging remains of our clarity, our biting beauty, our Winter. 
            “Help me!”

           “Winter?” 
           “Winter.”

            I pushed the door open and knelt down before her. Mascara made streaks of black and blue veins upon her face. Her hair, a matted mess from pulling it and her cheeks raw from scratching. She was pale, broken and her stained hands clutched the sides of the porcelain bowl. I laid my head against her lap and the sour tears burned holes in my face, dripping passed her legs and joined with what was left of our silver lining, which was now fuel for the sewage system where her future would be forgotten and dumped into the river miles away. The river of blood. The fallout would be biblical and a pestilence would rise, stinging us for our transgressions. 
            I rubbed her leg, she my head. 
            “….Baby,” she said, wiping the side of my face, relieving me of the twenty ton tears that sat upon my cheeks. “It’s over now, ok? Help me…back to..bed ok?” 
            I looked up at her. The vanity light behind her created a halo around her form. I looked up and saw her, and God behind her. My Galatea, My love. 

            I reached down and wiped away the murder from her legs. 
            I said I reached down and wiped away the last bit of murder from her legs. 
            Gently, I pulled her up and took her into the bedroom and laid her down on the cool pillows. The hate had lifted from the room and the sun shone down upon her, I grabbed a damp washcloth and wiped away the tears and bad decisions and regret from her face. Her breathing steadied and finally, mostly due to exhaustion and frustration and heart ache, finally slipped away into uninvaded sleep. 
            I combed her hair back with my fingers and kissed her twice on her forehead. 

 

            “This is our future.” 
            “Doctor, will there be any pain?” 
            The room was white, as usual, and smelled of cotton balls and antiseptic. He passed over three pills in an envelope and explained what the effects would be. 
            “This would cut off the blood flow….” 
            “This stops the growth….” 
            “This expels the waste…” 
            This expels the waste. What could one day rule the world is reduced to rubbish and refuse that would get wiped up with a paper towel and buried in a landfill. 
            There are no headstones for the forgotten, only memories in blood. 
            That night, some God spoke to me. 
            I walked to the gate amidst the clouds and was met by angels who cast sideways glances at me and stopped their songs of splendor. There, in the distance, a divine light holding within it a frosted white flower. I grabbed the bars of the gate and looked as the flower opened and within in, a sleeping child, 5 maybe 6 years old. She restlessly pushed her dirty blonde hair off her face. She had pink cheeks and high cheekbones like her mother. A rounded button nose like her father. She lightly blinked her eyes and opened them wide. 
            Ice Blue. 
            Like Winter. 
            The purist and calmest Winter, making way only for untouched snow and still heavy air.
            She sat on a pedal and kicked her feet back and forth. 
            My eyes burned and horrible icy tears formed in the lids. I smiled an ugly half crying smile and pushed my hand through the bars in the gate and waved. 
            She scrunched her nose and lifted her tiny head and tilted it from side to side, and crooked the sides of her mouth up, like her mother. 
            The tears cut my face like razors and cold kissed the wounds. 
            She hopped down and walked toward me, giant silver lined wings sprouted from her back. She held out her hand and raced forward, but never got any closer. I felt heavy, pushing down through a nonexistent floor. I cried and bled, telling her to run faster. She stopped and frowned. 
            “No God..please..don’t,” I begged with the light. I scratched at my face and pulled hard on the gate, but moving it not. 
            The little girl’s bottom lip pushed out, quivered and pouted. In her eyes formed tears. In her perfect, blue eyes formed tiny red tears. 
            “God…no…no no no. Please.” 
            “Daddy?” 
            “No God. No.” 
            “Why can’t you hold my hand?” 
            I knife in my chest and screwed. God is making this personal. I'm the pin cushion. I acted like a jackal and he's treating me like one. I wept afresh. Searing pain scorched my face and my hand became of fire. I pulled on the perfect golden gates, harder and harder again. I bellowed and shook the sky. The devil had been awakened from his thousand year sleep. Torture had begun for the uninformed and the ones who made malicious mistakes. 
            “F**K! F**K F**K! YOU F**K!!” 
            The light sat silently behind the flower. Emotionless, unmoving and stoic. I would return here, every night until I died. And when I did finally take the big s**t I would fall from that gate, skin burning from bone, into the black nothing. I will fall knowing I deserve whatever I got, and welcomed it. 
            Icy tears will fall upward, and disappear into clarity. 
            And into Focus. 
            And into the heavy air. 
            And into Winter.

 

Author's Note

Prewriting is for pussies...so is proper grammar

Reviews

[Chloe..Across the Unive..]

“Help me!”
I heard screaming. The walls rattled with demonic fury. Someone had woken the Kraken and he was caked in blood and terror. He was the created abomination of eons of aborted images of new beginnings. He was the black rider. This b*****d was the 5th horseman of the apocalypse.
My soul shuttered and locked, pulsating to the sound of a wall being kicked from behind a door where death stood, catching the hemorrhaging remains of our clarity, our biting beauty, our Winter.
“Help me!”

This kicks you in the face.. this hurts to read.. Winter is such a beautiful name
( I had it chosen had i had a girl) The name fits with this writing. Winter is beautiful but can be deadly, treacherous...and as we know Winter is used as a symbol of our latter days.. The part of the child behind the gate asking daddy why he can't hold her hand brings such pain. A child is such a gift... be this true i am so sorry for the two, three with Winter.
This is enthralling... written like a pro.

Chloe

[roarke]

Winter, it's a lovely name.
First the technicals:
" At this point, the crying from behind a badly repainted wooden door gets louder.
That wooden door.

Badly painted on purpose. Simpler times when half unpacked boxes lay strewn into rooms labeled to make the future. The door was supposed to be light blue, adorned with grey clouds with bright silver linings on them. We put our handprints in the middle, mine in dark blue, hers in light green, and underneath, in script, was written “we will be our own silver lining.”
We had let the paint chip and wear. The silver lining, now only a darkened edge for the storm clouds that now dropped glass raindrops all over the hallway floor. The door, our dream, had unfurled months ago like the end of a silk ribbon and lifted high into the storm, disappearing into the void of an unforeseen future. "

everyone's gonna comment on this hunk, it's a damn story in itself and did I mention genius as well? Now weave it into the whole story and it transcends into that etherial realm.

The broken delivery, just what happens when we have to digest something our emotions and minds can't deal with, so it gets fragmented. But no one catches this, except you.

Winter, not only a unique name, not only archetypical in season, but the way you've presented it here, representing the difficulty of really grasping and then holding the concept, the procreation... the relationship.... layer upon layer. Master craftsman.

All throughout, even though well foreshadowed, all the readers hope against hope. They lend their expectations and prayers to a bunch of words, not very many words mind you, that immediately transport them to that hallway, that life. If you actually tried to do that, then you need to license that pen of yours.

Now for my bit. I mess around with words. I play with concepts/scenes... I scribble with crayon.
YOU, you can write anything, in your voice, and speak truth in but a handful of words, just words.... ink bendings on paper.... yet here this piece exists. I don't know of too many braver, more open writers on here that are able to do justice to a reveal like this. An honest, lifting of the veil....

I should just shut-up, unable to render a comment or review worthy of addressing what you've given to us here. I can't dig deep like that, present it with style and honesty... my words like gibberish in comparison.

so, .... I"ll just shut-up now.

[kill the innocents]

ummm... i dont know how to comment on this story.. but i like it.. i like how you describe this "The door was supposed to be light blue, adorned with grey clouds with bright silver linings on them. We put our handprints in the middle, mine in dark blue, hers in light green, and underneath, in script, was written “we will be our own silver lining." its good.. i can feel the tense inside this.. the feeling that i cant describe.. winter.. how i love the winter.. is how i love you..

[E. A. Fielder]

This chapter was one I could not relate to but I could feel. I never really understood the pain of an abortion or a miscarriage because it's never happened to me. I never really got why people get so torn up. This was enough to make me understand...

[Brad]

your work is so raw and real...it should shock some but only puts a s**t eatin grin on mah face. would definitely love to see this all in pictures someday

[Kerry O'Connor]

I have read your story, EH, and I have felt it. It is a story which you needed to write, but one that requires no literary comment from me.

[Doreen]

Holy s**t this was intense. Your writing style matched with your ability to crawl into the trenches of memory and emotion is superb. You have an incredible ability to use words as something more. Your stuff comes to life. As usual, your imagery is spot on - I felt it all. Some memories just don't heal and haunt us for eternity. I know; I have my own.

[Justin Littlefield]

Holy s**t man that was enthralling. Your description is very visual, but even more than visual because of the great figurative language. The way that the subject was haunted by his doings was pure emotion and you did good at making the reader experience every bit of it. Very creative dude, you've got a great style and I look forward to reading more!

[OT]

:( this is so unbelievably sad - and without a doubt the most intense and personal piece to date - the emotions, they can't be feigned - the flashbulb like memories of pain and intensity as crystal clear as ever. Such a sad topic and course of events, and you've even held back a bit on your typical brutality in favour of some truly beautiful lines, which adds completely to the topic:

"The door was supposed to be light blue, adorned with grey clouds with bright silver linings on them. We put our handprints in the middle, mine in dark blue, hers in light green, and underneath, in script, was written “we will be our own silver lining.”

"The hate had lifted from the room and the sun shone down upon her, I grabbed a damp washcloth and wiped away the tears and bad decisions and regret from her face."

I could quote forever!! so bittersweet - the power of the writing matched with the sadness of the topic!!

[Chloe..Across the Unive..]

I will leave a deeper review later, right now i have to look away through tears.. too cold this Winter.

Chloe