Meg Sefton's Blog, page 44

Inktober: Rat

[image error] Image from page 63 of “Natural history” (1897) flickr

Unemployed and worried, I couldn’t sleep. I opened the cabinet to retrieve a box of tea from my dwindling supplies. There was a rat eating from a tin I kept for hiding money. What are you doing? I demanded. He grinned, shreds of bills hanging from his teeth.

Inktober: Lady

[image error] Dark forest by Michalis Mantelos, unsplash

There is a dark lady who points to an easy road, a permanent solution. Her arts are effective when there is a weakening of will, inflexibility in expectations, lack of creativity to meet the moment. She loves the deeply troubled genius, is frustrated by the happy fool.

Inktober: Lock

[image error] Domino made for swap by Tracey, flickr

I kept my heart in a small box requiring a thousand keys to unlock it. I was the only one making the rules, the only one keeping a tight watch over every feeling, every move. The risk of unlocking was hurt. But the risk of keeping it locked was death.

Inktober: Weekend

[image error] Heads by Timothy Neesam, flickr

She hadn’t told him where she lived. She had moved a few months before Covid-19. When he asked her out, she said she wasn’t dating anymore. But he found her, got through the gate, and muscled his way into her apartment. Within a week, she was dead.

Inktober: Weekend

[image error] Aftermath by Jeff, flickr

The well-heeled students at the college held “Coronaparties:” Significant chunks of father’s allowance went into the fund for anyone who came down with the virus, but there was unabashed drinking, dancing, carousing. It was a kind of joke. That is, until someone died.

Inktober: Weekend

[image error] Teenager by Alex, flickr

The virus meant school was closed for a week. Friday’s game against Palm Bay was a no go. Tyrell sat in his room fake passing his football. His Moms would teach him at home. The palm tree glistened in the sun outside. It would be a very long weekend.

Inktober: Noir

[image error] Purposeful by Jeremy Brooks, flickr

After the questioning, there were duties: mourning wife, funeral director, hostess. To shore up my nerve, all I had to do was remember the years of indignities and the pain, and I was a woman of steel. Before I left town I paid the death expert, my white knight.

Inktober: Pain, part 2

[image error] Chemist Shop of Mr Jones on the Quay in Waterford City, National Library of Ireland, flickr

At last I found relief for the pain: a bottle of cheap pills I purchased online. They were an underground OTC medication purportedly recommended by pharmacists and other ministering angels. The only thing was they deadened me. I was addicted, free of pain, but not quite alive.

Inktober: Theater

[image error] Movie Theater by Roey Ahram, flickr

It was like Granny to take her grandchildren to see the movie Ghandi. What was puzzling was why we stayed seated behind a couple making out the whole movie. Granny was very proper so we remained mum. There were things about her I learned only closer to her death.

Inktober: Theater

[image error] AMC 25 Movie Theater by corchploy, flickr

I miss a dark, cold theater on a hot warm day, escaping responsibilities, piling in with strangers, eating buttery popcorn, feeling like a child lost in make believe. I used to think our theaters depressing, relatively empty now because of home theaters. Now I yearn for all that space.