“Amputate it!”
That she said this all those years ago haunts her even still.
The room was flooded with fluorescent light. All humans present, except for herself and Edgar, were wearing gowns and masks, their gloved hands held aloft, arms bent at the elbows.
“Good decision Mrs Viscardo. Thank you. Otherwise, we might have lost all of him” the doctor said solemnly. The surgeon was a devotee of Edgar’s, having learned much about her chosen vocation directly from him.
Edgar, Elsie knew, would have chosen differently. The loss of his legs? No, he would have chosen to try to find a way to live with his legs. He would not have chosen the certainty of living without his legs.
Could one half-remembered dream bring down a marriage?
Ever since the dream, she’d found him disgusting. What better way to make him disgusting - to make her disgust his fault - than to allow the doctors to chop off his legs?
This is my entry to @mariannewest's daily freewrite challenge. Today's prompt is amputate it!.
I've been aching to write another episode in the lives of Edgar and Elsie. This freewrite is a springboard - an outline really - of that fifth episode. And boy is it a downer! That surprises me. The previous four are love stories.
Below, find the first four episodes. The first two of these were not freewrites, but we-writes, which always take me a good week to write. Three and four were, like this one, five minute freewrites, and are really good if I do say so myself! They are all very short, and well worth reading.
I've listed them in narrative chronological order, not the order I wrote them.
This collective story has promise. Finishing it is on my bucket list.
The Easiest Thing In The World To Do
A Little Old Lady and her Morning Constitutional
Poster image: Roseland Ballroom - eBaycard, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30478888
Crikey, that's a bit of a downer!:)
Reading the back stories, I couldn't believe I actually remembered 'The easiest thing in the world to do'.
I wrote that back in the day when I would work tirelessly for a full week for a story. It's pretty good if you ask me! Memorable! And set in a place I loved, now closed.
This is the back of the building your picture is about. I don't have the time to read all of the past posts so I will save this one to my blog and when I have more time I can read them all.
The club, which was a HUGE open space, no seats, hundreds and hundreds of people dancing kind of place. It was great, closed a few years ago.
Yikes ! Having to make that decision for another would be awful ! Spur of the moment decisions though and no time to think it over more.
What a story ! I'll have to check out the others soon.
Oh she knew what she was up to. Destroying both of their lives really. Self sabotage. Lordy I wonder if my mind goes to these places when I am not freewriting! Thanks for stopping by!
LOL.... well.... if I read the others first, maybe I would know better her mindset.
Edgar! Elsie!!!
I've been thinking of them as I chop buckthorn and honeysuckle from the woodland understory.
Seriously. I have. And today, YAY, yay!, YAY, here is a return.
It seems to me I kinda/sorta remember a story where they both died.
I hope I dreamed that one.
LOVE the way Elsie's dream is so vivid, so real, she gets mad at Edgar (or disgusted) - and wish I didn't know that syndrome all too well. To this day, I cannot get past the dream (shortly after our marriage) in which I caught Tim cheating on me... the whole dream is so vivid (full color! I can still smell the cigar!) ...
Good to see you back @owasco - and you remind me, I'm way past due to return to the land of the living.
Oh my. MEMORY LOSS. In a we-write (you posted the link, Sunflowers are for Sissies), I wrote the demise of ... after you wrote the demise of...
---- Now all I can think about is those gorgeous rugs - your photos - do people really step on such works of art! (Because I am trying NOT to think of the end of Edgar and Elsie.)
But, but, you revived Edgar and Elsie after that we-write, and let them live on in other stories, right?
(How can my memory be so full of gaping holes!)
Fictional characters feel so real sometimes - especially these two. BRAVO! More more more!
I forgot that I killed off Edgar! I killed off Elsie on the steps of a courthouse. She'd held a sign lefties didn't like and they murdered her. My goodness I have a macabre mind when I freewrite!
WE LOVE IT!
Macabre mind, Fiction -
I love the Whedon Brothers and the Cohen brothers for their black humor in TV shows.
The beauty of fiction - you can claim "parallel universe" or whatever and revive the characters you bumped off. :)
Your imagination is a wonderful place for others to visit - thanks for opening the portal and letting us in!
I'm enrolled in a homeopathy academy (think of you all the time! your name appears in my note margins whenever she tells us of ailments like yours) and just before I wrote this she told us of an ailment that strikes a lot of women during menopause, where they suddenly cannot stand their husbands! IT'S CURABLE! Homeopaths consider the emotional/psychological aspect of humans to be very important in all disease, if not a major source of disease.
Please do return to us. I miss you!
I don't know if I still have it in me to write fiction. My focus is so poor now. 😔 This is an interesting story with potential for much. 💚