Friday 20 September 2013

MOVING ON

September's prompt is MOVING ON.  FLASH FICTION, POETRY, NON-FICTION, PLAYSCRIPTS, ARTWORKS, PHOTOGRAPHY...all welcome! Treat the prompt as you wish!
  1. SUBMIT your name to the Inlinkz list below NOW if you wish to participate
  2. CREATE your entry according to the monthly theme - September - MOVING ON. 
  3. EDIT your entry until it sparkles
  4. POST your entry on your blog on the date shown - Check out the clock on WEP which is set to Brisbane, Australian time. Post on September 20 your time. Remember to state feedback preferences (full critique to general comments) and whether your work is copyrighted - © 
  5. READ other entries, giving feedback as requested
Open to all genres - Fiction works can be - Adult, YA, MG. All entries maximum 1,000 words.


HERE IS MY FLASH FICTION:

MOVING ON
Roslyn shook out a tablet in to her hand.   She regarded the single white pill and added another.  A pair of innocuous looking tablets nestled inside her palm, inbetween her heart line, head line and life line.  She tipped the bottle once more, another four tablets spilled out of the bottle.  She clenched her fist shut, her manicured nails dug in to her palms.  She took a deep breath and reached for the glass of red wine sitting on her dining room table.
With her free hand she gulped down the red liquid, felt it burn as it travelled down her throat and reached her stomach.  She emptied the bottle on to the table, the whiteness of the pills strikingly brilliant against the dark wood grain.  She stared and stared at the mountain of round tablets, she reached for one, she reached for two, her hand shook as she raised it to her mouth.
Angrily she swiped the tablets off the table on to the floor and poured the last remnants of the bottle of wine into her glass.  She glanced again at her silent mobile phone as she sipped her drink pondering on how near she came tonight to ending it all.  
Roslyn’s tears began to flow down her cheeks; she started snuffling, she moved towards her bedroom and flung herself down on to her bed as sobs racked her body.   She gulped air trying to draw breath, hugging her painful ribs to her sides trying to regain control of her emotions.
Minutes or hours must have passed, it all seemed the same to her.  She must have dozed off at some point because she awoke with a pounding head as the sunlight filtered through her bedroom curtains.
Her eyes were sore and swollen, her ribs ached, piles of crumpled paper tissues were strewn all over her bed spilling over into a mess on the carpet.  She grabbed her phone from the bedside table, still no messages, no missed calls, no voice mail.  She flung it against the headboard in frustration. 
What was it with her and men?  Why couldn't she keep a relationship going?  Her friends trotted out the well worn clichés, you can do better, his loss etc. etc.  That was all very well but they were securely ensconced in their relationships and marriages.  They didn't understand how she felt.
Her phone pinged and she ran back to her bedroom.  Disappointment flooded through her body, it was a text from her best friend to go with the others she’d been ignoring for days.  She was possibly the only one that would stand by her, even after the stupid thing she had nearly done last night.




Roslyn smiled, Sarah always said the right thing at the right time.   Roslyn squared her shoulders, took a breath in and texted back.


Sarah opened her door and Roslyn fell in to the biggest hug ever.  Her friend was cuddly these days but happy, no longer a svelte size, she’d survived a failed marriage and was now enjoying love a second time around.  If only Roslyn could find that first husband she’d be more than happy.
Sarah’s husband poured out the mugs of tea and then discreetly disappeared in to the kitchen where they could hear him pottering about with pots and pans.  Very soon the tantalising smell of roasting chicken started to permeate through to the lounge.
Roslyn saw Sarah’s face turn pale as she described the events of the previous evening. 
‘Why on earth didn’t you ring me?’ demanded Sarah.  ‘You know I would have come and got you.’
Roslyn explained the depths of despair she was feeling.
 ‘Oh Roz!’
The tears threatened to spill over again as Sarah put her arms around her friend again. 
‘You do know what you are doing to yourself, don’t you,’ chided Sarah as gently as she could.  ‘You are an attractive, intelligent woman, a professional who holds down a fantastic job that you excel at.  You work hard all week and then let yourself down emotionally.’
Roslyn nodded in shame, dabbed her eyes with a tissue and blew her nose. 
‘Crying isn’t very ladylike is it?  I must look a right mess.’
Dan, Sarah’s husband peeped into the lounge and quickly scuttled back to the kitchen.  He’d let his wife deal with tears.  He didn't do tears very well, especially somebody else’s tears.  He’d peel more potatoes and vegetables because he could see this wasn't go to be a quick visit.
Sarah was firm. ‘So, your next step, Roz, is to get some help.  I don’t know what to do to help you.’
Roslyn nodded in agreement and vowed she would get professional help when she got to work on Monday.
The trio sat down to a wonderful meal, the first proper food Roslyn had eaten in over a week, a few more glasses of wine were consumed, then Dan and Sarah waved goodnight to Roz much later in the evening.
Three weeks and many text messages later a very different Roslyn turned up for coffee at Sarah’s house.   The first tentative steps to recovery were being taken and, as Roz explained to Sarah, there were deeper issues to resolve than just this broken relationship.
Her main priority would be working on not being somebody else’s victim.   She had to work on her self esteem, her own self worth and not fall in to the trap of using her past to cloud her judgement of herself.  She couldn’t change the past but she would no longer allow those events to define her life.
Sarah’s words came back to her time and time again, ‘your head knows what you have to do; you just have to wait for your heart to catch it up.’
So, come on heart please, for goodness sake, catch up with my head and let me move on.
 Word count: 983

20 comments:

  1. The heart is always a laggard with the head. Sometimes it never catches up. Great, evocative post. :-)

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  2. nice! I have to tall you, as a therapist I deeply appreciate her taking responsibility for her own recovery.

    This also reminds me of my best friend- many dinners with her and her husband when I was having a rough time of it. Where would we be without our girlfriends?

    great piece.

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  3. Nice, Sallly. Good to see Roz moving from despair to a place where she's holding her head up and determined to move on with her life. Of course, the support of friends is always key in these situation.

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  4. It's great to see her finally take a stand and be happy. Thanks for sharing!

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  5. Great story, from despair to hope to help! Awesome!

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  6. A story of accepting who you are. Lovely and can touch all of us, I'm sure, in some way because we've all been either there or close to it! Appreciating who we are is SO hard sometimes. Thanks for dropping by my blog...

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  7. Great piece and good to see Ros taking some action to move on. Well written.

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  8. That was wonderful! I could just 'see it' playing out in my imagination. Glad for the happy ending! thanks for visiting my blog!

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  9. Sally,wonderful is all I can say! Your imagery was evocative - She emptied the bottle on to the table, the whiteness of the pills strikingly brilliant against the dark wood grain.' Great word pictures. You kept my attention, wondering if she was going to 'do it', then relief when the pills were swept off the table. Love the way Sarah helped her through. Girlfriends are what every girl needs, no matter what the age. Girlfriends get you. You definitely fulfilled the criteria for the prompt MOVING ON. Loved the intertextuality too, with the text messages.

    Thank you for posting for WEP. Your support is much appreciated. (I got your message that you'd posted at 1am, but had to get a little shuteye.)

    Denise

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  10. Nice piece. Good life lesson in this one, too: good friends will save your life if you'll just let them.

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  11. Great story and a powerful clsoing line. So difficult to get them both in sync! Hope she finds her man.

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  12. Hi Sally
    What a scary challenge your heroine has. I love how the pills landed in the rug and she stared at them there. So glad she has such a wonderful friend.

    I've posted my story.
    Nancy

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  13. A great story with a wonderful message of friendship, that we can all learn from.
    I thought of this quote after I read your piece:
    "You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes." Winnie-the-Pooh.

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  14. That was a powerful story with a message of hope for women in DV situations.

    Well done Sally.

    .....dhole

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  15. Hi, Sally,

    I totally agree with Donna. Very intense and you handled the delicacy of the grave situation very well.

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  16. An impressive capture of despair, Sally. Girlfriends are the best!

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  17. Women certainly can't do without their girlfriends. Great piece of courage and hope.

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  18. Dear Sally,
    What wonderful story about making a difference. Roslyn was so lucky to connect with Sarah before it was too late! Love the details of Sarah's husband making dinner and staying out of the way while Sarah spoke heart to heart with Roslyn. When you are depressed it is important to take care of the basics - to have a good home cooked meal is the best beginning of her healing process.

    I think you must have a lot of experience with helping others to know what the right thing to do is in such circumstances. You have made Sarah do the right thing, say thew right words!

    I'm impressed.

    As the other commenters before me, I would like to say that, yes, girlfriends can help if you are down in the dumps, but not just any girlfriend, you need someone with good sense and a good heart, like your character, Sarah. Unfortunately, women can also be mean and cruel to other women.

    Thanks for your kind comments about my story. I will revise and edit it when I get the time. I want my story to have a happy ending. It will not end like a Kafka-story!

    Best wishes,
    Anna

    Anna's W-E-P-Challenge for September: Moving on...

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  19. I happen to have a best friend called Sarah who is always the best at cheering me up - mostly by bitching out the stupid men I've dealt with in my lief. :P It really does help.

    Of course, I've never even been tempted to take too many pills, so I can't really relate to this MC. Still, I can relate to the extreme need for besties!

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  20. This is a great story, Sally. It is the beginning of a good novel. I would like to follow Roslyn in her journey. I could probably give you some of my own stories for your research, lol (well, not the potential suicide part).

    Have a great weekend!

    Kathy M.

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