for the "escape" drabble

The nurse smiled as she left the exam room. “I just have to get some paperwork. I’ll be right back”.

The woman in the room winced as she sat up, a hand to her ribs. She shouldn’t have come here. The nurse would return with a police officer. They would start asking her their questions, wanting a name, a narrative, a betrayal. She limped across the room and picked up her purse.

They would lecture her about how she didn’t deserve this, how he had no right to do this to her, how she could stand up for herself. They would presume to know her life. They knew nothing.

She reached for the door handle. If she left now, she could escape. Escape the charges being laid, the subpoenas being issued, the meetings with prosecutors, the trial dates and witness warrants.

They would not understand. The door clicked shut behind her.

Two superb drabbles, there.

Do I ask people in my essays if they prefer anonymity? Is that the classy thing to do? Is it customary?

Allyson, I would, even if only on the purely legal basis. Even in published articles, I always felt it was sound practice to ask first; that avoids legal complications, and establishes a sense of trust early on. But that's just my take.

I like present tense. Here is my escape drabble.

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The icy glass sparkles on the bar, drips of condensation carving out elaborate patterns on the frosty surface, decorative windows revealing the amber liquid within. The man behind the glass stares into the patterns, his eyes blank but his mind not yet there. With one fluid motiont, one quick swallow, the whiskey is gone, leaving an empty tumbler and a burning throat as its only proof of ever having existed.

"Get me another double, John" says the man, praying that the next drink will do what this one did not, that the next burning swallow will take him away.

I sent what I think should be the first essay off to ita, who is the subject of it. That felt pretty damn fine.

Go Allyson, with the attempting to publish!

That felt pretty damn fine.

Doesn't it, though? There's a sort of "HOOOO, yeah!" touch to getting something really on its way.

Nova, I like.

I've written about this before, I think.

Freefall

Fractured metal in the grass, the nauseating reek of eucalyptus from a thousand scattered buttons. The universe has collapsed in upon itself, becoming a small hideous ball of screaming and heat and pain and fear.

Above my throat, a line of jagged glass. Before the Caddy was forced from the hill, this was the rear window. At some point, during the shocking tumbling insanity of freefall, the child called Eve was torn from my lap, torn from her jammed useless seatbelt, torn into eternity.

On shattered legs, I escape my presumptive tomb. There will be no escape from the nightmares.

*wince*

That's good. Hurts, but it's good.

Thanks, NC.

One more.

New Years Eve, 1975-76

The dream is perfect.

I'm young again, vibrant, and he's alive - I'm less in a dream than in a memory, sitting in the Keystone in Berkeley. It's New Years Eve. He's locked up with the piano; Garcia's on guitar, Matt Kelly blowing the roof out on the harmonica. Is it raining? I don't think so. I watch him, concentrated, not smiling mostly, and he runs an arpeggio during "Catfish John", so perfect, and he looks up for just one moment and we lock eyes and the sun, the fucking sun, comes up.

I lay on the threshold of morning, desperate to escape back into the night just gone, the night long gone.

Amazing drabbles, every one. I've been a little behind.

This seems to be my theme, I guess (Nova, if you say something about how happy it is to see caustic people dying, I may have to hunt you down and shoot you.):

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Mother chatted quietly to Dad. His work-roughened hands gripped his knees and he nodded gravely in response. I sat beside them but watched my brother where he knelt, leaning against his chair with his face hidden in his hands, all the tension gone out of him. His wife hid in the bedroom.

When they arrived, men in dark suits carrying a stretcher, they scanned the living room with anxious expressions then turned toward the bedroom. My mother called them back, waving gently at my brother. “He’s here,” she said.

He wasn’t, though. He’d escaped. I could hear the bastard laughing.