And Then She Sang

We were all quite a bit worried about aunt Stacie. She’d been growing ever rounder and rounder with every passing year. Quieter and quieter as well.

Several years now it seemed she only ever used her mouth for eating. Never spoke a word to anyone, no matter how we tried to get her to talk. Talk to someone. Talk to anyone at all.

She really ought to tell someone what was wrong. But then, she never really looked like anything was wrong. She just didn’t speak. That’s all.

Just didn’t speak, but definitely did eat.

She looked quite happy enough, stuffing her face with cheese, and sausages, and puff pastry. Chips and cakes and cookies and food. Endless amounts of food after food. Plate after plate of pasta. Serving after serving of meat.

But nobody eats like that if they are truly happy. Do they?

Nobody knowingly bloats their body six times its original grown-up size, unless there’s something seriously wrong with them.

But Aunt Stacie would not talk with anyone. She did not tell us what was wrong. She wouldn’t speak to any of the doctors we took her to see. And none of them could do anything about her eating.

She’d spent some time in psychiatric evaluation. They sent her home after a while. Said there’s nothing to be done.

She seemed perfectly normal otherwise. Wasn’t hurting anyone else, and even herself only by eating too much.

They couldn’t keep her locked up for that.

And so we worried.

Everyone who loved Aunt Stacie worried about her health. Worried about her mental state, about what it was that drove her into silence and food.

Fat load of good any of our worrying ever did.

No matter who tried to talk to her about her health, she’d just look at you with the kindest eyes and the sweetest smile, nodding every once in a while, and then resume her eating. If she’d ever paused at it at all.

She could be happily munching a bucketful of lard fried chicken while you talked at her about exercise and cardiac health.

She just didn’t care!

Just did her thing.

Now here we were, about to sit down to yet another New Year’s Eve dinner. All our great, big, extended family gathered together as always on New Year’s.

Lucky, really, that Uncle Isac owned such a large party venue. Otherwise we’d be paying a fortune for all these different gatherings that were our tradition in this family. No party greater than our New Year’s Eve.

There’d be dancing later.

Aunt Stacy wouldn’t dance.

These days she needed a custom built mobility scooter to get anywhere. She didn’t use it much. Just stayed at home and ate whatever was delivered.

Just where she found the money for so much food, no one knew. Her late husband must’ve been far richer than any of us thought.

They were only married two years before he died.

That’s not what triggered her eating, though. It only started almost ten years later.

Nobody knows of anything that could’ve happened to her then.

Anyways, here we were, and here’s Aunt Stacy too. Carried by her mobility scooter to a table laden with free food.

This must be Aunt Stacy’s idea of heaven.

There’s ten types of salad. Sixteen chicken dishes. Twenty three types of pork and beef. Loads of different kinds of mutton, deer, elk and bear. There’s rabbit and hare and ducks and goose. There’s frankly everything!

Don’t get me started on the list of desserts. That would take forever.

That’s all of us going to be stuffed long before the meal is over. We’ll stumble onto the dance floor, and then we’ll eat some more.

That’s the plan, anyway.

That’s how things usually go. But not this time, though.

We’ve hit the seventh type of dessert, when Aunt Stacy suddenly puts down both her spoons. She raises her face and looks at everyone present.

We all feel her eyes upon us.

We everyone stop eating. Even the littlest of the children stop and look at her.

Aunt Stacy opens her mouth.

Out pours the most beautiful song we’ve ever heard.

I didn’t know Aunt Stacy could sing!

God… the sound is just so beautiful…

I’m crying.

So is everyone else.

On and on Aunt Stacy sings. On and on we cry.

And then…

 

“A massive explosion has shaken this small town to its very foundations. The loss of the town’s most popular party venue is nothing compared to the loss of the town’s indisputably largest extended family in its entirety. The cause of the explosion is as yet unknown, but the police tell us there’s no reason to suspect a terrorist attack…”

The news went on and on. Not that any of us were here to hear it anymore.

Dripping Dreams

A donut is dripping its glazing all over the kitchen table. Damn this heat. There’s flies all over. Attracted to the sugar. Laying their eggs in the quickly rotting carcass on the floor.

He was a man.

He was a real man he was. Strong. Capable.

Quick to temper he was. He beat his wife and daughter time and time again. Oh, he was a man. Oh such a Man with a capital M.

The hell he was.

He was just a worm. A maggot like the ones now crawling in his body on the kitchen floor.

I sit in the living room drinking an ice cold soda.

The donut drips its glazing in my dreams at night long after it is gone all this is gone it will be dripping in my dreams. I know it will.

I stand in the kitchen doorway looking at his body at the flies and at the donut on the table growing mold.

I rush in to snatch another soda I rush out.

I haven’t liked to spend any time in the kitchen since the day he died.

I rush in. I grab another soda. I get out.

I buried her in the garden. Put flowers on her grave I made a wreath.

I buried her in the garden with flowers on her grave I made a wreath I will. I’ll make another wreath for her I will. I promise that I will.

She stopped him hurting me again. She got in his way and she stopped him. Slowed him down.

He killed her for it. He beat her to death and I… I killed him because of that. I killed him for killing her.

When he was drunk enough I killed him. When he passed out on the kitchen floor I took a knife. I killed him cut him open.

I buried her in the garden left him there on the kitchen floor.

He brought the donuts for my birthday. He never could remember when it was my birthday. He never did remember when it was.

He meant to bring those donuts for me. For me upon my birthday it was not my birthday then. I should not have said that. I should not have told him it was not my birthday. Shouldn’t have told him anything should have smiled.

He killed her when she helped me. For standing in his way. I killed him and left him to rot.

It is my birthday now. He never did remember when it was. My birthday is today is now. Today it is my birthday.

Today I am fourteen I miss my mom.

Wounded

Warm. Wet. Running down my side.

“How bad is it?”

Shit.

Wrong question.

I shouldn’t have asked that one. For now the pain hits me. It hits me hard.

“You’ll live.”

“Whatever you say, sir,” I manage. “Whatever you say.”

I don’t know if it’s the pain, or if it is the bloodloss, but everything grows dim. I’m passing out again.

I remember coming to a couple of times during transport. Slipping in and out of awareness into dreams, and into darkness.

One time I thought I saw you there. In the transport. But that must’ve been just another dream.

I’m awake at hospital now. The nearest proper one. Three days’ journey from where I was wounded. I haven’t been this far from the frontline in eighteen months.

They say I developed a fever. For a while there they weren’t sure if I really would pull through or not.

I’m on the mend now. The fever’s gone. The wound no longer infected it’s healing nicely. Another scar for me to carry all my life. I do not mind. I’m just so glad to be breathing. That is all that matters now. I’m just so glad to be breathing.

Two weeks, they say. Two weeks I’ll rest here, and then back to the battle it is.

I think I’ll rather enjoy this two weeks of mine. After eighteen months in the front line, I feel kind of justified in getting a break. Just wish it didn’t have to hurt so much to get here.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d never shy away from doing my duty. But still, eighteen months of war will get to you. A moment of rest, of peace and quiet in the beautiful surroundings of an old hospital like this one, it begins to feel like heaven.

I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated a place and a moment quite as much as I do this one here and now. Each breath I take, it’s like being born again.

There’s flowers in a vase near the door to my room. The room I share with only two others. The colors of the flowers are amazing. That such beauty can still exist in this world of war and pain and suffering. I spend hours looking at those flowers in the vase. Absorbing all their beauty.

Seems awful now, but when the war started, I was happy.

This was my chance to get away. This was my escape.

From the moment I enlisted, he couldn’t touch me. He couldn’t hold me any longer. My life belonged to the military now.

I expected to die very fast. I was okay with that. I’d much rather be dead in the service of the kingdom, than be kept alive for your entertainment even one more day.

Little did I know I’d turn out to be so good at war.

All the hatred I felt towards you, all the anger I could never express, I channeled it all towards the enemy. It made me an efficient killer.

All the need to survive, to stay one step ahead of you and all your games, it had honed my strategic skills to perfection. How ironic I had you to thank for my success at war.

Two weeks of rest and recuperation, before I would return. Two weeks of peace and quiet. I loved it all.

The night before I was to return to active duty I held the hand of a dying man. It wasn’t the first time I had done so. Unlikely that it would be the last.

In the morning I returned to my room. What few belongings I had would have to be packed.

I stopped by the vase of flowers. I breathed in their scent. Inhaled their beauty.

Standing there I overheard a conversation. They were talking about the new captain of my company. A city-dweller. A rich man who had bought himself a commission. Paid for his rank with money instead of brave action.

I didn’t pay much attention. This sort of thing happened all the time. Bigshots wanted to play at war, until they saw its reality, and swiftly bought their way out again. Just too bad this one had to come to my company to get his taste of action. Wish he’d gone someplace else.

But then they said his name.

Your name.

And everything stopped.

The flowers filled my field of vision. An echo in my ears, your name.

A thought.

This is war… where people get killed all the time.