Turmoil

Turmoil

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Hosted by: Ariana Browning


Prompt #5

Racing against time, she pressed down upon the gas pedal more firmly.  Coaxing the old pick-up truck around the curves and bends in the road at what her father would call, break neck speed.  Gusts of wind had knocked down branches and trees across the road.  So far the downed trees had been small enough to simply drive over, jerking her back and forth, straining against the seat belt. 

Peering into the rear view mirror, she could see the lights gaining on her.  She could feel them trying to overcome her independence.  They were trying to probe her mind and control her without even being in proximity.  “Fools!” she spat out the word as she rounded a curve on two wheels.

Knowing full well the turmoil she would cause, she escaped her captors.  Unwillingly, she had left others behind.  Others she fully planned to go back for, once she had figured out how. 

Mind control.  There was no need for them to chain anyone.  There was no need for them to discipline anyone, they simply controlled your thoughts.  Oh, they said it wasn’t control.  They said they could only foster a thought process.  Instill a certain pattern and our brains willingly followed.  They said, from the time we are very young, we, the lazy humans would much rather be told what to think and how to behave rather than make those tough decisions on our own.  

It had taken years to figure it out.  But, that knowledge was the key to her escape.  Learning to block their suggestions!  Learning to think for herself!  Learning to made decisions on her own! Initially, these had been very nearly intoxicating.  Initially, she was nearly found out on many occasion.  Initially, she had been giddy with the new-found self awareness.

Escape had been relatively easy once she mastered the “turn about”.  Instilling a suggestion into her guard’s mind had been as simple as the old woman was.  She was just an old woman doing a job to get by in life.  No point in hurting anyone, that would only make her as bad a person as her captors.  No reason to start out her new life with a “bad omen”. 

The lights were getting closer, but so was the town she was heading for.  Expletives burst from her.  She shouted at the heavens.  Then calmed, quieted, and began the tiresome act of transmitting to her pursuers.  Slowing, merging into traffic, she disappeared.

leigh

To My Younger Self

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To My Younger Self

Blogging Lounge #4

Sitting near my Grandmother, she reaches out a gnarled claw like hand to stroke my hair.  Grizzled as she appears on the outside, she is all soft and love on the inside, at least I thought so.  She loved me like no other.  I had not seen her extend even a thought of kindness to anyone else, ever. 

My Grandmother lay on her deathbed.  She wheezed and groaned as she fought the inevitable.  Hard as nails, she was determined to see my wedding day.  She was determined to have the right to request her “wish” be granted.  Only my Grandmother knew what that wish was, but I had a good guess.  Often I could catch snatches of words, as I sat next to her.

After days of lifting her nearly hairless head off her pillows to spoon feed her broth, I finally got the gist of what her request was going to be.  I was struck nearly dumbfounded when I realized what she planned.  I dropped the warm cloth I had been bathing her face with.  Staggering backward, I knocked over the stool I had perched upon for the past week.  My back aching from hunkering over her was thrown into an upright position.  My very nerves jangled at the thought of touching this person I had so long thought of tenderly. 

The years of her telling me that if she had it all to do again, she wouldn’t change a thing.  The hours of plotting and planning she had divulged what she would do if she were young in today’s world.  How often she had said “if I were to tell my younger self anything, it would be to implement this plan sooner”.  I had adored watching the movements of such a swift mind.  Her ability to envision a plan and implement it down to every detail was astonishing and wondrous to watch. Her plans were always to her advantage, the other individual always left hurting.  She had no qualms about using the other grandchildren.  

Always whispering to me how much she loved me, how she was teaching them lessons I didn’t need to learn, and how I was her favored one.

My wedding day was also my 21^st birthday.  Two magical days rolled into one!  I was so excited, and had been for months.  Giddiness was normally squelched by my Grandmother.  She did not delight in other’s joy.  It was difficult to hide my excitement.  She said she could “see” it on me.  She said it hung about me like a shroud, colorful and bright.  However, she did not punish me overly much.  I assumed she knew it would be futile to try to sober me up.

How wrong I had been!  How naïve!  This wicked old woman had been planning something so cruel I never would have conceived it!  “To my younger self”, indeed!  She was planning to utilize my magic day!  Every lesson she taught me, she would always add that even if I forgot the actual lesson, my body would remember when the time came.  

Every extra helping of food, every ministering when I was ill, every look she bestowed upon me was the path she had lain out to execute her plan. 

Transmogrification!

 That wicked old witch!  That devious horrible woman! The vileness radiated from her body.  I stepped back, with my hand to my mouth and my mind reeling.  Slowly, vowing she would NEVER again hurt anyone.  Vowing she would NOT be trading bodies with me on my wedding night, I moved her nearly hairless head from her pillow and forced it onto her face.

leigh

Something Worth Writing

Something Worth Writing

Rise of the Pheonix : Week #12

Quote and a Word

I had begun the class thinking I would stir the imaginations of those who dared think.  I wanted to stir the imagination.  Explore the “unexplorable” with those whose minds were formulating beliefs.  Bend their thought process to view their lives as a grand experience, rather than the drudgery obligatory grind I saw on the faces I knew. 

To behold the world and see what had transpired, not as though a great burden had been thrust upon them, but that they hold the knowledge and can weld it as a sword to make their life experience in a better world. I never anticipated my words, said with earnest enthusiasm, would lead me to this jail cell.  Anticipating a severe outcome does little to bolster forgiveness for those who put me here.

Awakening from the vivid dream, the colors still carry into my conscious mind.  Knowing that dreams are our minds way of rehashing the day, sorting the information, and filing it into pockets of brain matter, I am astonished by the transient images which waft across my vision. The orange bird taking yellow seed from my hand while it’s red mother looks on approvingly. I find it inspiring. 

Here we are in this brightly hued world, wondering at our “beginnings”, fighting over who’s ideas are the most accurate, and who is withholding information. Mostly, I think there are many withholding information. 

There are tales written in stone, depicted on the walls of caves, and inscribed upon the hides of animals no longer roaming the Earth.  We, the human species, were “made”.  Does that make us Golems?  Mindless drones to do the bidding of our overlords? If so, just who are the overlords?  Are the overlords benevolent or filled with

Inscriptions dating back to the Mesopotamian era tell of God creating mankind.  God gave mankind the ability to speak. Now we need think we need to figure out who's God and then which God? 

Acts 2:1-4 ''Now while the day of the [festival of] Pentecost was in progress they were all together at the same place,  and suddenly there occurred from heaven a noise just like that of a rushing stiff breeze, and it filled the whole house in which they were sitting.  And tongues as if of fire became visible to them and were distributed about, and one sat upon each one of them,  and they all became filled with holy spirit and started to speak with different tongues, just as the spirit was granting them to make utterance.''   

Does this indicate that prior to “interference” we, mankind, had as much ability to speak as most animals?  Therefore we were, as many claim, animals prior to intervention? Are we merely "tweeked" animals some claim we are?  Without the ability to actually "see".

Benjamin Franklin told us “ Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing” Silly me, I thought I was following those words to the fullest extent.  I held those words in my heart and followed as best I could see how.

Perhaps someday.  Perhaps someday someone will see my story and find it worthwhile to explore the unexplorable.  To see the world as an exhilaratingly wonder-filled place.  For, there are miracles, and whomever brings them really doesn’t matter to the one experiencing them!  We DO exist! I will escape this prison they have created. 

leigh