Finally, this thing is finished...
Title: Jung, Ban, Hab
Prompt: Carrot Cake 24: Pour; Chocolate Gelato 20: Bona Fide; Buttermilk 15: Born Yesterday
Topping: Whipped Cream, Cherry (scene separation-I usually hate doing this.)
Extra: Milkshake
Rating: PG (death-not a spoiler)
Word Count: 1,462
Summary: Clara makes a discovery.
Note: “Jung, Ban, Hab” is Korean for “Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis.” I wasn’t trying to make Korean all symbolic. I just like it because each word is one syllable. Really choppy… you know what I mean? Plus it makes sense after you read the story.
Christmas shopping. That was the first thing she thought of as soon as she woke up. They had to finish their shopping in time, otherwise there would be no Christmas. And she wasn’t allowed to go out by herself, only with her mother or her father. And her mother had taken ill not too long ago. Pneumonia, the doctors had called it. But at least they’d prescribed some medicine for her, medicine that was sure to cure her.
She sat up slowly, have a bit of a stretch before slipping out of her bed. She knew how to run a quick bath and dress herself; she didn’t need her mother’s help with that. And so she picked out a simple pinafore and turtleneck for herself, something to guard her against the frosty air when it was finally time to go out.
The medicine should have kicked in by now, she thought to herself. Her mother would definitely be better by now, right? There was nothing to worry about, right?
Right.
She smiled to herself as she settled into the bathwater. Right. Everything would be just… fine… Perfectly fine. It would be a good day.
--
Except now it wasn’t. It was a good day gone wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.
She stood in front of the bed, brow furrowed, eyes dull. Her mother wasn’t getting up, wasn’t even twitching. She’d called to the unconscious woman several times, even tugged at the material of her nightgown. To no avail. The woman was still lying there, eyes still closed, skin still as pale as when she’d first taken ill. But a case of pneumonia wouldn’t keep her mother from waking up in the morning. Her mother had been waking up every day. Why was this day different from all the others?
“Mummy,” she said softly, frantically. “Mummy, wake up! Wake up!” She willed herself not to cry, willed herself to be strong as she made a desperate grab for her mother’s hand. It was cold as ice, freezing. Her mother’s hands were never cold, always warm, so very warm, so that she could warm up her daughter’s hands whenever they were afflicted by the cold winds. If her mother’s hands were cold, what would she do then? How would she be able to keep her hands warm and earn her mother’s affection in one fell swoop?
She had to wake her mother up. She had to get her mother out of bed. There was no one else here. Her father had left about a half hour age for that business trip-she knew because he’d come in to hug her and kiss her goodbye before leaving. Her, but not her mother… perhaps he hadn’t wanted to wake up her mother, her mother who needed all the rest she could get in order to be cured of this awful sickness.
There was only one option left.
She raced to the bathroom, as fast as her little legs would carry her, reached down for the small bucket that was wedged in between the toilet and the sink. It was a small bucket, very similar to the pail she used at the beach whenever she went, but it would suffice, she knew it would suffice. All she had to do was fill it with water, just like what she’d seen on television. That was sure to work.
Within minutes, she was walking back to her parents’ bedroom as quickly as she could without letting any of the water spill onto the floor. She didn’t want her mother (or her father, for that matter) getting angry and scolding her for something like that. And she noticed, once she had returned to the large bedroom, that the woman was still in bed, lying there, motionless-hadn’t once shifted, not at all. Which only scared her even more. Naturally people turned onto their backs and their sides when they slept, didn’t they? Didn’t they?
She trembled. The bucket trembled. The water trembled, creating the smallest of ripples. She would definitely get in trouble for this, but there was no other alternative, no other way out. She had to do this, and she had to do this fast.
Three.
Two.
One.
She flung the bucket toward the bed, watching as the icy contents poured themselves onto the woman in the bed. That was sure to work, she thought to herself as a bit of hope swelled in her chest. The water, not to mention how cold it actually was, would wake her mother up. That was how it always worked on television-if someone had fainted, someone else would pour water on the unconscious person, who would wake up almost immediately and start coughing. So of course this would work. It would definitely work. Definitely.
Except it didn’t. Her mother hadn’t moved an inch.
Her heart sank into the pit of her stomach. She wasn’t born yesterday. As a matter of fact, she had been born exactly eight years and eight days ago. She knew what had happened. Her mother… she shuddered, a visible, audible shudder. Her mother was dead. Simple as that. And she was all alone in this huge house with no one and nothing to comfort her except the corpse in front of her.
So she did the first thing she thought out. She made a grab for the phone on the nightstand and used what little exertion she had left to push down on the 3-hard. It was the button that dialed her father’s mobile phone. She needed to call him, she needed to talk to him; he was her only hope in terms of comfort now. Being in the same room with the dead form of her mother was starting to unnerve her. She could already feel the lump forming in her throat, the tears forming in her eyes. Her mother was…
Dead. Gone. Lost.
And there was nothing she could do about it except cry and look to her father for help.
A click. “Amy? I haven’t even gotten to the train station yet. Is something the matter?”
“Daddy,” she managed to choke out. “Daddy, it’s me. It’s Clara.”
A pause. “Clara? Clara Marie Hilman, just what do you think you are trying to achieve by ringing me up with the telephone in your mother’s and my bedroom? You know you’re not allowed to use that unless there’s an absolute emergency while I’m gone. Otherwise, you’re not to touch your mother’s phone.” He sounded firm, stern, ready to scold her. “Where is your mother?”
She coughed-“What mother?”-and the tears finally spilled over. “Mummy’s dead! I tried everything! I called her name so many times, I nudged her, I tugged on her night gown… I even threw water at her with that little bucket in the washroom. But nothing’s worked, nothing! Nothing at all! She’s dead, Daddy, dead as Hamlet’s dad!” She was shaking, she could tell from the way the earpiece of the receiver rhythmically but gently kept hitting her ear. “She’s cold, she’s not moving at all… Please come home, Daddy, I’m scared, I’m so scared right now, and I wish you would come back. I don’t want to be here anymore… I don’t want to be alone!” She didn’t want to start wailing into the phone, but the way this conversation was going, she was just about ready to do exactly that.
There was another long pause on her father’s side of the line, as if he were trying to process what she had just said. But he finally spoke after a moment or two. “Don’t you worry, Clara, I’m coming back. You won’t be alone anymore. All you have to do is wait for me on the stairs outside. Don’t stay in the room, or in that house, whatever you do. Get out as fast as you can, and just wait for me on the porch.”
She nodded slowly-“O-okay…”-and hung up. And she did exactly what her father had told her to do. She ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her, and pulled on a pair of warm tights and Mary Janes. And she ran down the stairs and pulled on her coat, and she sat herself down on the porch and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And cried.
Merry Christmas indeed.
--
It wasn’t the right medicine, she heard them say as she clung to her father’s hand. Not the authentic medicine that her mother was supposed to take. It was completely different. What was supposed to cure her actually killed her. It wasn’t the right medicine at all. It was morphine. Her mother had died of a morphine overdose.
She shivered. Morphine.
She would hate that word, that substance, for the rest of her life.