Sick of Herself

Yes, it has taken 417 posts and nearly one year to get there, but the Matron is thoroughly tired of her own stories and small life!!

She was cruising along just fine until she came to Jesus, the Black Hockey sort, here.

Considering, she has decided to mix it up a bit, move beyond her own small sphere. Why, the Matron can create non-linear narrative with the best of them! Black Hockey, she has vast Imagination!

Digression. Imagination has failed her for 20 years regarding a certain book title: Quick Comebacks and Witty Replies, the Pocket Guide for the Slow Thinker. You see, the Matron thought of that title when she was a Young Miss and has yet to conjure content. Sigh. She thinks she has already said that here, too. See? Time for renewal, fresh energy, all that.

Self-help books aside, the Matron is either the most under-utilized creative writer that she knows or a hopeless egomaniac. So she wants to take blog risks and get more creative, all that, but today, she is living a very linear, narrative-driven life (with a job!).

In a nod to creativity and concession to the demands of the day, here is a scene from one of the Matron's two unpublished novels. Check out that imagination and nonlinear verve!

Background: The ambulance is taking Leilani--a 45 year old woman whose 3 year old daughter Holly and husband were killed in a car accident several months ago -- to the hospital following a suicide attempt. Leilani was serious. She took a boatload of pills.

The ambulance bumps and howls down streets and around corner. Inside, men paid to save lives earn their money on Leilani. They help her heart pump and make sure she's still breathing.
"Hang in there," whispers one.
Leilani can't hear them. She is alive. She isn't in the ambulance. She isn't fighting. She's most assuredly not pulling her weight--as far as the medical team would be concerned---in the battle to keep the body breathing.
No, Leilani is at the midway marker of her journey. There are no pearls or angels. No great wise guides wait to usher her to the other side. She doesn't feel the heat of Hell, nor does she merge into an eternal oneness.
She stands by a river, shivering, as centuries of dead children rise to meet her. The water foams with wispy cuts of baby hair, tiny toenails and teeth. Babies swarm and descend: locusts, greedy and unfed.
"Holly!" She plucks off the creatures that crawl up her belly, her thighs. She searches every face, only to discover that the mothers through time have lost the same child: each face looks precisely like the others, round and slightly brown with limpid black eyes.
"Holly!"
She trips and stumbles up, only to stagger again. Who could walk an inch? There are millions and millions of them. The toddling bodies on the bank thicken and pile. More emerge from the white river, endless.
Leilani gives into the babies. She sits down so they can crawl all over, burrow her in. There's some comfort in this, she discovers. Babies! Meaty little packs of warm fat and skin, they claw their way higher and higher up her body until she nearly disappears. Fists, chunky thighs, a thunderous belly--the body parts obstruct her vision and limit her hearing to the swish and goo of newborns. Holly! No sound comes from her mouth, swollen with flesh and hair and fingers. The river is warm and smells like almonds, yarrow and milled corn. The current calls and opens, folding her in as it's own.