The Longest Morning

Dorothy opened her eyes and saw the first morning rays of sun glimmering against the freshly fallen snow just outside her window. Excitedly she reached for the clock on her bedside table, 7:48 shone back at her and her heart sank just a little.  She had promised to let Mommy and Daddy sleep in until 8.

She crawled to the edge of her bed and hung her head over the edge where if she lay just right she could see the glow from the Christmas tree and trained her eyes on that slightly brighter spot. The glow looked the same as it had last night before bed but it felt different, it felt like an extra special glow now.

She pulled herself back up onto the bed and crawled over to the foot board where her robe lay folded over top and reached all the way to the floor to snag her slippers.  She slipped her arms into the warmth of her robe and her feet into the fuzzy bunnies their round little eyes staring up at her.  “Just a few more minutes” she whispered to them and lay back against her pillow to look at the clock. 7:49.

She sat back up and slid to the floor creeping as softly as she could over to the window sill. She stared out at the dawning morning looking for rabbit tracks and was not disappointed to see a rabbit sitting amongst the row of spruce trees nearby.  Dorothy took off her slippers and held them up to the window.  “See some bunnies live outside, you live on my feet”

She dropped her slippers back to the floor and stepped back into them before turning back to her bedside table again. 7:50.

Dorothy sighed and looking down she noticed her clothes from the night before and her stuffed animals all over the place.  She picked up her clothes balled them up and threw them from where she stood into the open hamper beside her closet. “shoots and scores” she whispered. 

She pulled her sheet up and then her blanket folding the top edge down and then the sheet over top just like Mommy had shown her how to do and set about collecting all the stuffies around her feet.  She arranged them just right along the headboard before looking at the clock again 7:52.

 “Arghh” Dorothy growled, why wouldn’t her silly clock hurry up. She softly tiptoed over to her door pulling it open just a little bit further and peeked out into the hall before edging her way out and down to the next door. Dorothy walked over to the crib where she was greeted with a happy gurgle. “Hi Tommy” she said.

Dorothy looked over at Tommy’s bedside clock 7:54. “Do you want to get up Tommy? It’s Christmas morning?” His only response was to blow a bubble. “Really Tommy you could at least answer your big sister” She teased poking her fingers through the bars. Tommy babbled solemnly in response and grasped her fingers.

“Yeah, I know just what you mean. C’mon Tommy lets go see if Mommy and Daddy are really sleeping?”Dorothy pulled the step stool nearby against the side of the crib and climbed up so that she could reach down and hoist Tommy first up to standing and then up over the rail.

“Dorry?” Tommy asked inquisitively.

“What did you say?” She asked him almost stumbling as she stepped off the stool “Dorty” Tommy answered.

“Tommy” she said smiling down at her brother. “Dorty” Tommy  cried again clapping his hands. Dorothy sat down sitting Tommy opposite her so she could see his face.  She pointed her finger at him and said “Tommy” then pointed back at herself “Dorothy”.

“Dorty” Tommy cried excitedly reaching out to grab her shoulders and pulling himself up to stand so that he leaned against her. “Dorty, Dorty, Dorty”

“Dorothy that’s right Tommy, you can say my name!” Dorothy exclaimed having forgotten all about Christmas morning.   

Ten minutes later the door swung open “There you are, I was wondering where you’d gotten off too” Said Dorothy’s Dad “Do you want to come see if Santa came?  Mommy is getting up now.”

“No look Dad, Tommy who am I?”She asked him

“DORTY!” He crowed loudly.

“He knows my name, I’m his first real word! Isn’t that amazing.” She said beaming up at her father as he smiled down at her.

“Yes it is, now do you want to go see if Santa came?”

“Mommy said not until 8”

“It’s quarter after 8 Dorothy.”

“Oh…..c’mon Tommy lets go see if Santa brought you a present!”

Part 3/3 - Lost

Part One

Part Two

She stared for long moments the fear and panic creating a painful burning sensation in the back of her throat. She could see the desert stretching out around her, feel the warm sun on her face, the cold packed earth beneath her feet, smell the dry dust everywhere around her and she dropped to the ground in relief.

A dream she thought nothing more than a dream. She had dreamt the world around her had suddenly blinked out of existence. It had just been a dream, a dream so realistic that it had quite nearly driven her insane.  She clapped her hands over her mouth to stop the laughter that threatened to bubble up at the thought.  She was quite sure if she began to laugh right now that she would never stop.

“A dream” she repeated aloud as if hearing it would make it seem more truthful and yet it did not.  Everything still felt wrong but she was so grateful at being able to feel anything at all that it didn’t matter. 

She stared at the horizon and at that great big beautiful ridge which would lead her into town.  Slowly she walked towards it and as she did she felt the dream slipping away. She could only remember the joy she had felt when she had opened her eyes, not remembering having shut them in the first place, and the terror which had gripped her but the details were fading away.

Now the sun was rising and the world looked even better with the sun just above the ridge which would lead her, while not home, to safety.  She would be fine she would just keep walking, she was bound to reach town before another night fell. She would spend tonight safely locked in her hotel room with the TV and every light on, wrapped up in all the blankets she could find.

She paused for a moment sitting down to rest her feet the thought of the warm and comfortable hotel soothing her mind like a balm.  She took out one of the water bottles from her backpack and drank half of it down before climbing back to her feet and beginning to walk again.  

The ridge looked different somehow, Joelle shook her head, no it was just the after effects of that terrible dream playing tricks on her mind she thought and continued to walk forward the ridge becoming clearer with each step.

The closer she got to the ridge the more convinced she became that something wasn’t quite right and as she walked to the top of a small hill leading ever closer to the edge of the ridge she looked up from her feet to the sky and stopped dead.

Hanging above her head was not one sun but two.  Both blazed their heat down upon her and as she stood staring into the sky she heard a wet squelchy sort of noise from behind her. 

The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and she remembered that warm and wet, somehow alien feeling, she had experienced in her dream. She refused to look behind her and indulge herself in this new paranoia, and yet the two suns hanging in front of her was just as insane to contemplate as considering what in the middle of the desert could have made that wet noise. 

She gave her head a little shake instead and stared at the ridge over which the second sun had just risen. It must be a mirage, or a hallucination she thought. Maybe something had gotten into the water bottles she had been drinking. With determination she set her mind against her imagination and set off towards where she knew the town lay in wait. 

Once she got there she would instead of heading straight for her hotel room head for the nearest Doctors office instead.  They would be able to figure out what had suddenly gone so wrong with all of her senses. They would fix it. 

The ridge she now realized wasn’t that far off anymore and she probably could have made it the night before if she had just kept going. She would have seen the lights from town before long and could have followed them to safety.

Of course she was still going to get there safely. There weren’t two suns she told herself sternly and she certainly hadn’t heard the sound she thought she had, there was nothing here. She had just gotten stuck a little ways outside of town and had to walk back that’s it nothing more.  

Sometime later just as the ridge began to rise up to meet her she heard that same wet sound behind her. This one was followed by another and another wet sound and she began to run towards the ridge, towards the light of the two suns.  Faster and faster she went as the sounds behind her seemed to get louder and closer and somehow more excited.

She was scrambling up the hill leading to the top of the ridge in front of her when she felt the first brush of warm wetness against her ankle and she screamed just as the view beyond the ridge came into sight.

She found her footing and stood on the edge of a great chasm. Where was the town, where were the people, the buildings, anything.  There was nothing just those two suns high up in the sky and the noises behind her.

Panting she shaded her eyes and searched the horizon for some sign of life but there was none. An alien landscape spread out in all directions before her, the noise from behind came again followed by a sensation of that sickening warm wet thing against her leg.  The sound became a happy gurgle and Joelle shuddered.

She took a deep breath and finally turned to look down and back the way she had come.  She finally had an image to put together with that noise and that warm wet feeling. It was worse, much worse than she could ever have imagined.

She had apparently driven much further away from town than she had thought, or perhaps she had walked further. All she knew was that the wrong turn she had taken had been more wrong than she could ever have imagined. 

With a final scream of terror she threw herself from the top of the ridge into what she hoped would truly be nothing.         

A Story Begun

Mary grumbled to herself as she walked over the frozen snow sinking every few feet despite the sturdy snowshoes strapped to her feet.  Whatever had possessed her to believe she could get through an entire writing session on a single cord of wood was beyond her.

She had known of course that if her estimates were off at all that she would run out of wood but at the time it hadn’t really seemed to matter.  The only thing that had mattered then was the book, but now the book was done and so was her wood supply.  

She had finished late at night and gone to bed expecting to leave the cabin the next morning.  She had been so busy congratulating herself on her perfect estimates when she’d brought that last armful of logs into the house that she hadn’t even noticed the swirling skies.

Perhaps if she had she would have had the sense to at least get into town before the storm hit. While she knew now that the storm which had been coming would have prevented her from getting all the way home she could at least have found space in the McKintey’s motel.   

It wasn’t a particularly appealing option but even that disgusting motel would be preferable to freezing to death in her own cabin.

She had set aside a small store of wood in the garden shed which she’d managed to stretch out through the first days of the storm but the last log was now on the fire.  She was pretty confident a stand of dead wood wasn’t that far from the cabin and so she had resigned herself to dragging the sledge out to bring it in.