All Story Du Jour tales are available online and free! A small presentation in these trying times.
"Michel" - by Cody Pease
677 words
Care and sorrow blend in a tale of the inevitable.
Here's a sample of the writing:
"Days pass without warning, a monotonous routine. I lose myself in all of it. He sleeps past noon. Then I follow him as he ambles throughout the house, spraying the doorknobs and countertops, the stairway railing and armrests, wherever he lays his hands, wherever he breathes. I empty two bottles of cleaning spray within the first nine days since the hospital visit. I cook his meals: gluten-free, sugar-free, free of meat and eggs. I wash his clothes with scent-free detergent. I wash his body with only warm water, once in the morning and again at night. I buy a new bed, a firm bed to support his spine. Instead of wrapping myself around him and breathing in the nape of his neck, I keep two feet between us and hold his hand."
"Days pass without warning, a monotonous routine. I lose myself in all of it. He sleeps past noon. Then I follow him as he ambles throughout the house, spraying the doorknobs and countertops, the stairway railing and armrests, wherever he lays his hands, wherever he breathes. I empty two bottles of cleaning spray within the first nine days since the hospital visit. I cook his meals: gluten-free, sugar-free, free of meat and eggs. I wash his clothes with scent-free detergent. I wash his body with only warm water, once in the morning and again at night. I buy a new bed, a firm bed to support his spine. Instead of wrapping myself around him and breathing in the nape of his neck, I keep two feet between us and hold his hand."
Soon more fiction.
2 comments:
Tragic irony. The man's so afraid to die he's spraying everything with disinfectant, like someone hanging crosses and garlic, to ward off vampires. And yet, he is subsisting on meals with no protein value.
If the stress and worry about dying doesn't kill the poor man, slow starvation might.
Good and yet depressing bit of flash fiction. Thanks.
Not a happy tale.
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