In the Dark of Night – Part 2
2020 has been bleak.
Everything that could possibly go wrong seems to be going wrong all at once. I am left wondering if the Earth sailed right by the warranty date. It would explain a lot, right?
However!
However…
There is still some beauty in this miserable soup we’ve all landed in. On Saturday of a fortnight ago, I was given a gift.
A beautiful, wonderful angel of a human being read my work. They were so moved, this mystery person (*cough* Samantha *cough*), that they had to get the ideas that my work had spawned within them down onto paper.
Think about that. A fully grown human adult female took time out of her day, with all its stresses and cares, in freaking 2020, and went “You know what? The only way to get all this out is to set it down in paper.”
Thus was born my very first piece of fan art.
It. Is. Gorgeous!
Her work is the image that graces my story, and will until the story has told itself in full.
I cried when I saw what she had made. I was happy, transported even, but I didn’t cry joyfully. I cried ugly. Big, sloppy, messy crying. I shed the tears of a man finally free from a crippling burden of self-doubt. I had become so used to the act of hunching over my sores to hide them from the world that when Samantha’s drawing of my protagonist in all her glory arrived, I was unprepared for just how much it would hurt to stand.
I did stand, though.
For the first time in nearly four years of writing, I stood. Not on the work of another, not on the hopeful promise of work yet unwritten. Not upon the glimpses or hints at writing talent as yet unexpressed.
I stood upon my own two feet. Samantha hadn’t made fan-art of someone else’s work. She had made fan art of my work. She had given me something I hadn’t even known I was looking for:
Validation.
There’s a long way to go before I can quit my day-job, but now I shall walk that path with my head held high.
All because of an angel named Samantha.
In the Dark of Night – Part 2
“Claire!”
I woke with a start, wiping my mouth clear of the crust of hair and slobber of a deep, post-magical hibernation. I looked to Mr. Whiskers for counsel on the time, but he had deserted his post. For such a dependable clock to abandon me in my time of need, something truly sinister must’ve occurred the night prior. If only I could…
I groaned as the entire encounter was dumped into my brain like a load of bricks. I had been one swing of the bat away from annihilation. If I had missed, well… I suppose poor Mr. Whiskers would’ve had some company in the Department of Mutilation. I’d have to ask Jacob to fix it, assuming he would stay quiet long enough to try.
“Claire, save me! The peasants are revolting!!”
Kurosawa’s ghost, mom was trying to handle the horde alone. At. Breakfast! I ran to the dresser, stripped lightning quick, threw on whatever covered the right bits, and flew down the narrow stairs towards barely restrained bedlam. I was grinning from ear to ear as I reached the tiny landing, excited to see what mischief the kitchen door hid.
Ryan was chief architect of the chaos past the portal, as per usual. He was thumping about in a circle in his birthday suit. He must’ve heard me gushing to Jaqueline about Stars in my Crown last night, for he was wearing his diaper prominently upon his head and wielding a wooden spoon as he paraded about the kitchen.
Mother, bless her soul, had attempted to stave off disaster, but she’d committed one of the classic blunders. She’d taken her eyes off the twins, and they were using Ryan’s exuberance as cover to commit the real crime. The twins, the Tweedles as I had taken to calling the pair, sensed that their time had come. Taking turns, they had freed one another from their woven plastic shackles and were waddling about in joyous freedom. Unlike Ryan’s, however, their diapers had been full.
Abigail, as always, played Switzerland at the table crammed into the corner of the kitchen. She was huddled in one of dad’s old sweaters, knees pulled up to her thin chest, spectacles and pencil whizzing back and forth as she tried to record the whole affair in her diary. I’d realized long ago that help would never arrive from that quarter.
Ryan, who should have been overwhelmed by a mother used to working for twelve hours a day without breaking a sweat, squirted free almost immediately after she had managed to corral him. Toddlers could smell weakness, and mom was always too gentle for her own good. Even now, with brown horror smeared across the floor and the school bus only an hour away, she was smiling and shouting half-baked nonsense about cutting off Ryan’s toes and barbecuing them for dinner while she gave chase. Ryan just laughed, waving his spoon like a matador tempting a bull.
While he might be a scion of the destructive arts, he was still just a toddler. I had far too much practice in making myself invisible. He didn’t even notice me as he ran past, legging it towards the living room. When he was just past me, I struck.
“Whooooooosh!!!!!”
Now he was giggling madly as I flew my newfound plane in a circle around the stained coffee-table. I paused to refuel mid-flight, flipping the giggle-plane over to land a solid raspberry on his tummy. Thus distracted, mother was able to tug the diaper off his head and replace it upon his bottom. Having successfully reigned in the ringleader, I turned my attention to the two soiled anarchists that remained.
Ryan’s feigned protest at being strapped into his high-chair for morning intake filled the background as I focused upon the Tweedles. Without the manic toddler to keep the fuzz distracted, they seemingly gave up the ghost and stopped waddling about. I wasn’t buying their bit in the least, but I allowed them to think their ruse of fussing over one another had fooled me. This gave me time to lather up a washrag and wring it nearly dry so that I wouldn’t add to the mess when I gave my customary signal that a cleaning was about to commence.
“Hiiiiiiyah!”
I ran the washrag through all the nun-chuck moves I knew, more or less successfully, and finished with the wide Bruce Lee shout and pose I adored from Enter the Dragon. I immediately regretted my decision when some of the unmentionable spread across the floor claimed my giant yellow and gold tube sock, but this was war, and casualties were inevitable.
I tugged off the sock, throwing it into the corner for its crimes. Down to one argyle tube sock and my stars and moon patterned jean skirt, I did my best ninja impression as I made my way back and forth across the kitchen floor. The Tweedles, still play-shoving one another, turned to watch the show. Swish, swish, rinse, lather, wring. They were mesmerized. Win number two for the Clairemeister. With another flourish and cry, I deposited the rag in the sink and summoned a box of wipes from thin air. The Tweedles, now tragically ensnared in the web of my majestic conjuring skills, began clapping and giggling. It wasn’t actually magic, this time, but the Tweedles lived for spectacle.
Toddlers did not have the monopoly on smelling weakness. I was half-way done with the cleansing before Mistress Dum knew it had begun. Mister Dee, awake at last to the reality that the wipes were coming for him next, made a break for it. I swept out the blessedly bare leg kept in reserve for this moment. A gentle hook and tug, and Mister Dee was once more in my clutches. Mistress Dum was giggling at Mister Dee’s plight while the wipes did their work. Mister Dum showed grace in his defeat, allowing me to wipe him down with a minimum of fuss.
As I polished off my leg, a gentle hand appeared above me holding out a pair of diapers. I took them with the autonomy of long practice. The hand ran through my hair as it retreated, full of love and gratitude for my efforts that required no words to be heard. I leaned into, reveling in the warmth of that hand. There was no hesitation in that moment, no judgement. Just love.
Mister Dum chose that exact moment to begin filming Jailbreak 2: Electric Boogaloo. I yelped and threw myself forward without thinking. Mom, unable to get her hand away in time, got caught up in my ponytail band. To her credit, she tried to move with my lunge, but the bloom had long since fallen from the rose on her nurse-shoes. With a squeal and an oath, she tumbled to the recently cleaned kitchen floor. I wedged myself between the mom meteor and the Tweedles while also trying to keep my hair attached to my head while also-also trying to keep mom out of the emergency room.
The odds were stacked against me, but as the good Meatloaf hath said; two outta three ain’t bad.
Mom was able to spring back to her feet almost immediately. After a brief round of hurried ‘are you okay’ and verifying the Tweedles remained blithely unaware of how close they had come to mom-based destruction, we both stared down at the one that had gotten away.
More specifically, the thick tresses that had been the price of protecting more important things. The fierce red strands, my pride and joy, stared at me in mute accusation from mom’s hand. Mom’s gaze was locked on her hand in terrified disgust, as though she held my severed head instead of a hunk of my hair.
I spent hours on my hair, sunk all my meager allowance into shampoos and conditioners, and flaunted my ponytail for all I was worth. My blocky flip-phone had exactly three numbers in it; Mom, Jaqueline, and Stylist Betty.
Lip trembling, mom held out the strands to me. I wanted to cry, to shout and stamp my feet, but mom hadn’t done it on purpose. So, I took the hunk of hair, gently scooted the Tweedles so I could stand, and marched over to the bin at the end of the counter. I tapped the release, held up the strands, and bowed over the can as I dropped them inside. They had died a good death; a warrior’s death.
Then I marched to the living room, grabbed my ratty old ball-cap from it’s wall-hook home, and pulled my hair through the convenient ponytail hole in the back as I rejoined the family. I marched straight up to mom, and placed both hands upon my hips.
“I demand a hug as recompense for wearing my weekend cap to school!”
A hug is exactly what I got. Then Ryan belched, loudly, and breakfast resumed a more natural course.
Mom and I did as we had always done, even when dad was still here. We rolled up our sleeves and resumed the battle, back to back in the foxhole as the belches burst all around us.
To be continued…
Breakfastfully,
The Unsheathed Quill
