Short Story 2.
The man who learned to write no more went to his grandmother's for the nurse was gone that day.
Upon her bed she lay helpless. Beside her, a handwritten note: "The red pill at the morning, the yellow pill at noon, the blue pill at night."
The man grew so bored with watching stillness and thought it better to give three pills all at once instead of one.
Three minutes of breath, one for each pill, and the body went silent.
He checked the wrong wrist for his watch and found four slash marks instead of five.
Under his grandmother's prayer book, several pages of his letters he wrote to keep her well. As he read, passages of the days, ideas he had and pointless saluations became blurred as if touched by spit.
He grabbed a pen, put it to paper and the paper became blank.
He looked into the mirror and saw his faerie godmother with robes of dark and hair of white. She wrote the number "4" through the dust on the other side of the mirror.
His grandmother sat in a chair, sleeping bound and gagged, beyond the mirror.
The man talked and talked, pleaded and begged but the fairie godmother made no sense of it. And then he tried to ask "How?" by writing upon the dust on the mirror.
His finger was dirty but he left no trail. The number 4 remains.
Upon her bed she lay helpless. Beside her, a handwritten note: "The red pill at the morning, the yellow pill at noon, the blue pill at night."
The man grew so bored with watching stillness and thought it better to give three pills all at once instead of one.
Three minutes of breath, one for each pill, and the body went silent.
He checked the wrong wrist for his watch and found four slash marks instead of five.
Under his grandmother's prayer book, several pages of his letters he wrote to keep her well. As he read, passages of the days, ideas he had and pointless saluations became blurred as if touched by spit.
He grabbed a pen, put it to paper and the paper became blank.
He looked into the mirror and saw his faerie godmother with robes of dark and hair of white. She wrote the number "4" through the dust on the other side of the mirror.
His grandmother sat in a chair, sleeping bound and gagged, beyond the mirror.
The man talked and talked, pleaded and begged but the fairie godmother made no sense of it. And then he tried to ask "How?" by writing upon the dust on the mirror.
His finger was dirty but he left no trail. The number 4 remains.