You Have Such Beautiful Hands (I Failed)
Image source: publicdomainpictures.net
“You have such beautiful hands,” he had said to me the day we met. I was sitting on a bench at the hospital reception area, waiting for a word from the doctor about my niece’s condition. At least that was what I told him, not that I was there for my weekly medication. It was the sweetest thing I had heard in a while. His smile was so warm when I looked up. It made me think of the sun. Maybe that was why I forgot. I totally neglected that I had to stay away, that I always got it wrong no matter how hard I tried.
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Six months later and this very same smile is what I am so lovingly looking at. A little awkward it seems to me now, somehow distorted. His expression is a peculiar mixture of an innocent's terror and a sinner's atonement.
As my eyes examine him they fall on my lap where my dirty hands are resting open. “You have such beautiful hands,” his voice is still ringing in my ears as if it's coming out through my red palms or is it truly coming out through my hands? Vibrating inside them his vocal cords are still dripping off his blood.
Once again I failed to control myself.
I should have never quit my medication.
Original story ending by @ruth-girl - 2019
Someone was tired those last two days and didn't have the energy to work on her computer. That someone has tried to make some fiction though and tonight is listening to a dark music mix by Lucas King (this one) and is editing her stories. 14 beers are waiting in a kitchen cabinet. One of these days they are going to be opened!
This flash fiction piece was inspired by @chinyerevivian's story: I Failed | 200 Word Story. I told her, right after I had read her piece, that the first paragraph had woken up a different ending of the story in my head and I asked her if she was ok with me writing my version. She said it was fine and... the rest you have read a few lines above.
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Wow! That's ending. Hit me in the stomach like a punch.
I read @chinyerevivian's story...that's where my impulse first went, except I imagined the infection would go in the other direction, that in touching the hand of another the narrator brought about her own demise. Because she had a compromised immune system. She knew better than to make contact, but contact was irresistible--human.
Fascinating how each of us--no matter how many of us that may be--brings to a scene part of our hidden selves. In your stories, it seems to me, your characters often take decisive action--resolve once and for all, some conflict.
The wonder of art. What it tells us. Where it takes us.
That is what I love in stories, the endless possibilities, the combinations of facts that bring so many different endings. And the writer gets to choose only one, but the readers can create their own.
Maybe my characters resolve their issues once and for all because I have trouble dealing woth my problems so straightforwardly (and I don't mean by killing people who give me a hard time - ahahaha). My indecisiveness is balanced by my heroes' determination.
By the way, would you like to join us on whaleshares.io? There is quite a creative engagement group of people who write there. Think about it. You'd make a great addition to the community 😀
I think writing is like dreaming--a place to work out internal conflict. Except, in writing we protect ourselves and disguise the darkest urges by creating scenes and protagonists. It's a wonderful thing, to have that invented universe under our control, and yet inspired by a reservoir of dimly understood urges.
I thank you for that invitation. You know, I'm quite old (on Steemit and everywhere else in the universe), but my creative energy has not lagged. If anything, it has blossomed with age. I can't resist temptation to create in a new environment. But I don't understand whaleshares.io. I trust you implicitly, so I' figure it out, make sure I understand the technical aspects of it. And then, if you're having fun there, so will I, probably.
BTW--have you checked out Shaka's #letsmakeacollage? He just started a new round. It's great fun. Between your photography skills and your imagination, this should be an invigorating exercise for you. I'm skilled in neither photography nor art, but each time I take the plunge. Already I'm planning an absurd fantasy.
Thank you again, for having confidence in me. I'm smiling right now :)
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