The Photograph

Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge - FORGETTING

I'm tired. Physically, I'm tired. But more, I'm tired of what I've become. I look around the tiny apartment, its lack of soul underscored by the smells and sounds drifting up from the busy Bangkok street below. Nothing in the apartment is mine. Nothing in the apartment is me. Shattered, I slump on the bed. Again, I reach into my pocket and pull out the crumpled photograph: the two of us with our girls on the beach, only six months before I left them.

Accepting what my life has become is not easy. Forgetting what it once was is impossible.

Family

Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge - FAMILY

The nurse asked if there was any family she should contact. She said a familiar face would help. I thought for a second. There were five people I could have suggested. My first wife, but she had left me for the gardener. Or my second, but she had left me for my younger brother. Perhaps my third, but she had left me without saying why. Probably not my fourth – she had left me for my third. And my fifth had left me at the altar. I shook my head and told the nurse there was no-one she needed to call.

The Note

Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge - BATHED

His death hit me harder than I'd expected. Never close, we hadn't spoken in years. His inability to love could be summed up by any number of episodes from my childhood. But it wasn't isolated incidents that drove us apart. His detachment had become a constant theme of growing up. Successful at everything he did, he bathed in his own self-importance rather than immerse himself in the duties of fatherhood.

That he had been found hanged, shocked me. That the note they found in his pocket spoke of his failure at the only thing he'd ever cared about, broke me.

Letters

Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge - DISTANCE

Even on the front line they bring us letters. They keep us sane. As we cower in the trenches, voices of mothers and fathers, wives and girlfriends play in our heads. Shattered faces betray conflicting emotions as each man responds to his own. Smiles for one. Tears for another. Empty, staring eyes for most. Sometimes they bring us a little closer to home. But as minds drift, the twisted, cloying smell of rotting flesh, overflowing latrines and chloride of lime cruelly reminds us that the distance from loved ones hasn't changed at all. And that for many, it never will.

The Voice

Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge - IMP


She told me it's often referred to as the 'Imp of the Perverse'. I'd sat in her chair, as I'd done every Tuesday for years, and told her of The Voice. I'd smiled at her description. Perverse, I understood. But I'd always imagined imps as cheeky and playful. Yet The Voice dancing and singing in my head is far from playful. I sit on the floor, my head in my knees, and rock, waiting for it to go. But it's getting louder. I begin to claw at my neck with my fingernails. It tells me that drawing blood is fine.