Monday March 12th, 2018

The exercise:

Write about: picking your poison.

3 comments:

morganna said...

Bleed out or confess
I'm a silly old woman
A difficult choice.

Greg said...

Sorry for the lateness and slowness of posts: work is rather busy right now and with it being a work trip I’m required to be out socialising with my colleagues a lot of evenings. I shall catch up, but it may be at the weekend.

@Morganna: I love this continuing haiku that you're doing, and the tale you're telling! Thank-you :)

Picking your poison
“Five more dogs,” he said, turning his head towards her. She watched his blond hair fall over his eyes and found herself admiring how he lifted a hand to sweep it away from them.
“Five?” she repeated, perhaps half a moment too late. She could see immediately that he was interpreting her hesitation as approval.
“Not just the children, but us too,” he said. “No-one should be left out when it comes to dogs. They’re a wonderful force of nature, loving and kind and good. Of course, there might be some problems adding another five dogs into an existing pack... but I guess we really just need a litter of puppies, and that’ll solve that problem. And dogs only take nine weeks for a pregnancy, not nine months, so we can have a practice run at high-speed for our own children!”
She stared at him, feeling the chill from the lake starting to seep through her shoes and into her feet. What had happened to the dominant, sometimes-overbearing, always enthusiastic man she’d ran away from? She was sure that when they’d first started their relationship he wouldn’t even have known how long a pregnancy lasted. She shuffled her feet, wishing that it wasn’t unladylike to stamp them, and he looked down.
“Would you like a foot rub?” he asked.
“Here?” It was easier than saying no. Adrian had all the delicacy of a milking machine and the tact of a steamroller with broken brakes at the top of a steep incline. If she didn’t have bunions before he started, she was certain she would have by the end of it.
“Why no-“ he looked around at the beautiful but frozen lake and the setting sun, and the snow mounded into drifts at the edges and she saw something she’d never expected to see: recognition. “Oh, where would you sit?” he finished. Her stomach fluttered: it was a long way off the kind of understanding that she desired, that she ardently needed in a man, but it was a first step. Maybe, just maybe, he was worth coming back to.
She considered her new life again then though: her new job as a cleaner in a homeless shelter (she could still wear her old clown outfits and no-one bothered her), her studio apartment three floors above a bingo hall, her hot-plate that was more of a not-entirely-cold-plate but still let her almost-melt cheese for toasted sandwiches... was she willing to surrender all that, her independence for this man? And up to twenty dogs? She supposed that this was picking her poison and hoping that Prince Charming would kiss her awake from it.
“I took massage classes,” said Adrian. He’d walked away and was sweeping the snow off a fallen tree to create a seat. “The teacher said she cried when I massaged her feet.”’

Marc said...

Apologies for the return to being terrible behind on comments. Been busy. Hopefully coming out of that now.

Morganna - as with Greg, always happy to see this continue :)

Greg - yeah, shame on you for being behind... :P

And, also, terribly happy to be coming back to comments to find this ridiculous tale continuing... :D