trees in motion

The thick forest outside of her window isn't filled with animals and birds today. It's mostly mosquitoes, due to the fact that it's been raining non-stop for the past week. The trees climbed to the sky, and it took thick boots and a wool cap to trudge outside today. No one wanted to venture outside on such a day; they wanted to stay inside with a mug of cocoa and discuss how silly worrying was, about anything.

Even with the weather, she zipped up her thick plush coat to her neck, strapped on a pair of galoshes, and made the hike from her front door to her beat up car. Because of the location of her tiny cabin in the forest, it took about thirty minutes to drive to the old clinic on the edges of the nearest town. It wasn't the gossipy small town, it was the lonely kind, where nobody knew anyone else because they stayed locked in their homes. The most populated place on Friday nights was the pub, and Annabelle was still a few months shy of twenty-one. Most of her days were spent out back, armed with her set of oil paints and her father's wood canvas to practice on. She wasn't good yet, most of her works were of the boring scenery kind, but she always thought she would get better.

She sits in the clinic, now. Even being the only patient in the lobby, she still has to wait, fanning through old children's magazines from the 80s. A small, plump doctor comes in and says her name, leading her into a series of tests. She tells him about the seizures, the sensation of having your brain melting at her fingertips like someone had been holding it over an open flame. He nods occasionally, and says he is going to consult some doctors at other hospitals, and call her later with a definite result. He also says not to worry, and she doesn't.

She spends the next week painting, and talking to her brother. Her brother is sixteen, and goes to the high school about fourty minutes away, with a class of 50. She's been taking care of him after their father died in a hunting accident a few year ago, a week after her 18th birthday. It's not a big deal, her brother is one of those 'beautiful minds', a scrawny thing with a knack for playing piano. Even now, the light twinkle of his playing can be heard when the letter arrives in the mail.

Opening it nonchalantly, the paper falls out and onto the floor.

She reads it ten times, sitting on the kitchen counter and letting the ash from her cigarette drop to the floor. The lump in her throat never goes away. Tears come first. They're ugly tears, where she keeps gasping, choking, falling. Adam, her brother, gets up from his piano to ask if she's had a bad day waiting tables at the diner, but then he picks up the letter. Silently, he holds as her sobs get even louder. She feels terrible afterward, because she said things along the lines of 'this family is cursed' and 'what's going to happen to you?', which probably didn't relieve Adam at all. But he told her not to worry, because he's more mature than her, he always has been. She's just some 20 year old nobody in a small town with a dead end job and a little house in the woods.

The letter says something about brain cancer and approximately three months to live. After that, her paintings are expansively better, to a point where a buyer comes by to see the painting by 'the dying girl'. A rich art snob, who harrumphs at the painting only to buy it for 10,000 dollars. For a brief moment, she considers using it to be the useless treatments she's being offered. But she secretly transfers it to Adam's bank account. The seizures get worse.

She dies in two months instead.

Author's Note

I realized yesterday of how sick I was writing in heavy city environments. MAN THIS ISN'T EVEN A STORY THIS SUCKS WOW.

Reviews

[Rebecca]

"The thick forest outside of her window isn't filled with animals and birds today. It's mostly mosquitoes, due to the fact that it's been raining non-stop for the past week. The trees climbed to the sky, and it took thick boots and a wool cap to trudge outside today" This part is very poetic and could become a stream of consciousness story

You also personified a town as "the lonely kind": really hooked me. you're a great poet

This is really good, your readers will want more this feels like a prologue or a first chapter. Just a suggestion. Work on charterizing Adam and go deeper into the narrator's painting. Write how she feels when she's painting, what the painting does to her and what she does to the painting. keep writing, check out my writing if you want :)

[Feary]

How she chooses to die sooner instead greatly reflects on her character.