Pass the parcel
More creative writing. This week were playing a variant of exquisite corpse. We're to write the start of something for someone else to continue and another to finish. We've also been looking at 'last-lap' stories which start as the bullet hits the brain, or the wave starts to break, or realisation to dawn, then backfiling, or maybe not, to finish off what's left to tell.
The numbness left her legs and spread upwards through her body to her brain. She opened her eyes. The nurse looked down at her. 'Don't try moving yet', she said. 'Give yourself a minute or two.' She couldn't have moved anyway. Her arms were still by her sides, as if she'd slept on them. They weren't hers yet. Her legs were but they throbbed as if she'd just been for a long run. Further up, she could feel where the baby, where it, used to be. Where it had lived. Where there was now nothing. She felt she should cry but her brain was as dead as the aborted foetus. Instead she tried to think, to think about Kieran. What would he have said if he'd been here. Something comforting, 'Don't worry, old girl. It's for the best.' And then something crass and unthinking, 'We didn't want a boy anyway.' Her face and her neck were wet. She realised she must be crying. The nurse came over. 'There, there dearie.' She put her hand on Amanda's who felt it as though through a thick blanket, through armour. Armour that she must now put on, cover herself with, to protect herself from the world and to hide from it what she had done to herself.
The numbness left her legs and spread upwards through her body to her brain. She opened her eyes. The nurse looked down at her. 'Don't try moving yet', she said. 'Give yourself a minute or two.' She couldn't have moved anyway. Her arms were still by her sides, as if she'd slept on them. They weren't hers yet. Her legs were but they throbbed as if she'd just been for a long run. Further up, she could feel where the baby, where it, used to be. Where it had lived. Where there was now nothing. She felt she should cry but her brain was as dead as the aborted foetus. Instead she tried to think, to think about Kieran. What would he have said if he'd been here. Something comforting, 'Don't worry, old girl. It's for the best.' And then something crass and unthinking, 'We didn't want a boy anyway.' Her face and her neck were wet. She realised she must be crying. The nurse came over. 'There, there dearie.' She put her hand on Amanda's who felt it as though through a thick blanket, through armour. Armour that she must now put on, cover herself with, to protect herself from the world and to hide from it what she had done to herself.