Damocles' Feast of Poison

Brief intro, dives you into Aden Wood's (the narrator's) world.

Chapter One: Damocles' Feast of Poison

 

My mother was an English professor.

 

She worked at the local college, devoted herself in all her entirety to the well-being of her (slow, doltish) students, and was woefully underpaid by the ambiguous, insipid board of education under whom she toiled. We begged her to contact them and please oh please just complain, but lo, she refused and insisted the fault was in her and not them, after which harder and harder she worked, resting little and working myriad hours, but to no avail. The wages dribbled on undeviatingly, her work ethic cumulated to alarming degrees, her actions took a metronomic, weary quality. And all this while, Father and I stood by shouting alarm to deaf ears.

 

It was no surprise when headaches began to assail her already weakened mind. She wanted to keep working, father and I near forced her to rest. Take some Advil, watch Top Chef, content yourself with being the gentle housewife spreading love and optimism and support to the men of the household.

 

It wasn't really her fault.

 

Mother had a working instinct. It was quite literally forced upon her in her tragedy-wrecked childhood; dead mother, drunkard father, baby brother, she was lucky to have obtained a job in a miniscule souvenir store, eking out a meager living with a friend who was not so kind as she was desperate for employees.

 

Hard work, she would say, a mile to trek through the wind and rain, and no relief to sink into at home. And so, she would say, you should not complain at the dawn of your petty troubles.

 

I blame contemporaneity and its stupid imposing effects of laziness. But I never voiced that thought, because I knew Mother could easily counter it.

 

For Mother was smart. Intelligent, brainy, clever, shrewd, whatever, she was smart. When I was only ten years old she explained to me Zeno's ten paradoxes (which took one week, four hours of arguing, six days of confusion, and perilously high levels of impatience for me to get) as well as their various insufficiencies. Shakespeare's multitudinous sonnets and plays were necessary for me to analyze, copious myths were handed to me to study their allegoric qualities, numerous idioms required for me to memorize.

 

Mother was a big believer in intelligence and its spread. That's why she worked so hard. That was why she coached a confused, tantrum-throwing ten year old, why she taught classes and classes of even more confused dorks, why she worked all these hours without even a single rest, why she allowed the board to get away with paying her such meager wages. The promotion of intelligence was her life.

 

Yet one day, when I was twelve, when Mother and I were having our weekly discussion about literature and philosophy, I managed to convince her to relax a bit and take a break, especially with her headaches. How do you convince a college English teacher (who also happens to be your mother)? Easy. Use big words and complicated metaphors and reference Damocles and possibly Zeno. I should've gotten an award for the amount of work I put into that speech.

 

I won't bore you with the details. My concluding sentence basically summed it all up: "You were eating not a feast but poison, Damocles. Sword or no sword, escape your banquet of delusions." Not exactly well phrased, but it worked.

 

Mother got the point and lay low for a while, which was a relief. She contented herself with her books and reading, for her headaches, she said, were small and bearable.

 

Until she stopped reading.

 

My mother, stopped reading? Impossible. We caught her massaging her temples sometimes, looking troubled. Did she want to read? What was wrong? Nothing, could she just have some warm water.

 

Then she'd take some Advil, are you sure you're alright? Yes I'm fine, I'll just take a nap. The books lay untouched. The nap lasted hours.

 

Later the pain became obvious in her weary face, yet she would insist that she was perfectly fine, and Father and I could only take her word doubtfully. She was okay, there was nothing wrong, could we all just leave her alone and stop worrying. It wasn't like she was going to die or something.

---

If only.

Author's Note

I actually wrote this one (really, Alice? Yes, I know). Er, tell me what you think!

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

The story of the woman is very good. I like her ability to overcome and survive. The chapter allowed the reader to understand a life and a situation. The chapter was well written and kept my attention till the last words. Thank you for the excellent chapter.
Coyote

[Alice Locke]

Thanks!

[Peeps MacArthur]

An early grave is a sort of reward for her. I was thinking the big C from the start. the use of optical hallucinations here would be interesting, if not maybe just to me. They would be optical, not like flying pigs or anything, but they could add a little more.
I'm new at writing but my medical background would be too tempting if I were writing it and turn it into a physiology lesson.
Anyway, I connected with the work ethic and long-suffering of Mother. I could feel the weight of it and the blurry-eyed determination to have dignity in the face of tiring circumstances. I will be reading more.

[Alice Locke]

Thanks for the review! Would you happen to know anything more about glioblastama multiforme that I could possibly add to enhance the story? Thanks!

[Peeps MacArthur]

My first academic love is anatomy & physiology. It's been almost 10 years since I took it so alot of diseases mingle together. I'm retaking it this semester for a certification so I'm more than happy to help you decipher a technical article or discuss pathophysiology.
I was thinking about auras associated with brain tumors but it must have been some obscure bit of trivia I remembered since I've done a brief search and didn't come up with that. Could have been end-stage lung cancer I was thinking about which is probably associated with hypoxia (low oxygen content of blood).

[InsanityWriter]

It was good. :) The ending was very well written. (: