It was a cold autumn morning, the empty blue sky contrasted with the clear crisp air, and the scene was practically silent except for a faraway dog, barking at passing cars whose motors produced a low, monotonous murmur. The grass was covered in a cold, wet carpet of dew and an old, ivy covered house led to an ivy covered front porch in which Sarah sat. The sun reflected itself off a passing car and illuminated Sarah’s tired face for just a second. As she let herself melt into the deck chair, she felt a painful void in her stomach in which butterflies used to flutter. A nasal voice ricocheted inside her ear and called to her as she snapped back to reality.
“Would you like some tea?”
She shook her head lethargically and closed her wan eyelids. She slumped back into her chair and winced at the sound of her mother clumsily banging the tea cups together and laughed grimly at the irony of the sugar pot in front of her; if only she had put sugar in Gordon’s coffee that distant morning, he would be here with her, sitting on the adjacent chair, commenting on the weather. The doctors had been astounded at how a man with no previous health problems regarding blood sugar could suddenly die from hypoglycemia. But there was nothing she could do now.
Her mind drifted back to the funeral, back to the grim faces and the somber condolences, knowing that no one had grieved as much or as long as herself. She felt the void again. If only they had let her keep the body, she would have been happy; she would have found some consolation, however small, in cuddling next to the expressionless and silent features of her beloved. Her lurid thoughts were once again cut short by the infuriating voice of her mother.
“Honey, are you okay? Your expression looks a bit worrying…”
“I’m fine, mother”
And as she struggled to say this with a quivering voice, she observed her diabetic mother injecting herself with insulin. At the sight of the needle piercing the skin, her thoughts began to darken; she imagined Gordon’s dark skin on that side of the needle, the skin undulating gently under the pressure of the needle, and the sudden release of pressure when the needle breaks the skin. She saw her mother’s disheveled hand on the insulin pen and the two realities fused in a strange and twisted idea in which her mother was injecting insulin into Gordon’s lurid body… Her eyes turned red and she rose from her chair; her whole body, from her hands to her eyelids, trembling in a sudden rage,
“Was it you?” A hint of anger could be detected in her tense whisper,
“Stop mumbling dear, I can’t understand you…”
Once Sarah’s mother said this, Sarah’s eyes shone with anger, her past self lost under the glossy rage that coated her eyes; suddenly her hand whipped out onto the button of the insulin pen and an unholy amount of insulin was injected into her mother’s blood stream.
Her mother stared at her in astounded confusion and collapsed in a dizzy haze, caused by the rapid acting insulin. Sarah put some sugar in her tea, put some sugar in her mother’s tea, and subsequently sat down to finish her cup. The bells of a nearby church rang out through the street and marked 10 o’ clock. Meanwhile, her mother was convulsing on the floor, and was already becoming delirious, sweating profusely*; the high pitched sound of Sarah’s voice resounded through the clear, crisp morning air,
“Mother, would you like some tea?”
END
*(the basic symptoms of hypoglycemia)
Creative writing 