Read about http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105660765 NPR running such a story contest. Found it very intriguing.
On further investigation, it turns out you have to write a story, starting with the sentence “The nurse left work at 5 o’clock”, that can be read in 3 minutes. That was still not good enough a brief for me. So I copied a “runner up” story onto Word, did a quick word count, came to 497 words.
I told myself a story around this had to be less than 500 words, and then got cracking. 2 hours today evening, and this is the output.
Do let me know what you think of it? Very interested to debate on it… must admit, this was tough to write.
( :- ( Hell no, the contest is over, so I can’t participate now, but I still enjoyed writing it.)
The nurse left work at 5 o’clock. Anne would usually be back home by then to take care of her ailing comatose mother, called “Ma” by one and all. By convention, the nurse, did not necessarily have to wait until Anne came back, though she usually always did.
At 3pm, today, a call from her employing agency, had cursorily informed, that today would be her last day at Anne’s house. Starting tomorrow, she needed to report to a new place to work with a “new client”.
For 5 long years, she had steadily nursed and nurtured Ma, in the process knowing and adopting her frailty. For her, to willingly have receded into the depths of another’s vulnerability and let that susceptibility perennially dance lamely around your thumb, was both, a very humbling and an immensely fulfilling experience.
Ma was forever confined to be on the fringes of “the end”, but never really there yet, living in a distant nether land between speech and silence, between touch and inert, between warm and cold….always near, yet always appearing afar.
Today, as she walked out of the door for one last time, it distinctly occurred to her that this was it, she would never again get to see Ma. This was a full-stop just as similar as Ma’s yet-to-happen end…..and yet, between that cessation and she having to move to a new job….in both cases the net result was exactly the same. A further thought crossed her mind, that it did not really matter who amongst them ended up “winding-up” today, the conclusion would still remain absolutely the very same.
At 5pm, today, she did not want to wait for Anne to return, she did not want to have one long last look at Ma, she did not want to kiss her goodbye…..as she moved out of the door, past the stairway, passing the lobby, merging into the street…she continued walking, not stopping, not pausing, never once turning back.
On the street, she walked with her eyes downcast, the steady stream of humanity comforting her, their gross anonymity and complete inability to peek into her personal grief, providing for an ideal air cushion. After a few minutes, she did reach a busy intersection, which had a circle and statue at the center of it. She walked across the street onto the intersection, which was bereft of any people, and then she stopped.
Turning around, raising her eyes, she did a panoramic scan. Far and wide, all she saw were people, apparently oblivious, and yet, steadily and continuously moving towards a imminent frosty death, just like Ma and her.
(My story is approx 425 words)
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