#ThrusThreads Week 432 : What Is All This?

“You’re the one that wanted to see what’s going on inside my mind, this wasn’t my idea.” I’d warned her, but she wouldn’t listen. No one ever listened. So, she’d insisted on the link, a small chip in her, another in me, and they talked to each other, and shared our dreams, our wishes, all the rest.

After a week, she was going all Fruit Loops on me, because of what she’d learned about me, and about the chaos I live with, and in, all the time. Every heartbeat, every breath, endlessly. “I did tell you I didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“I know. You did.” She looked at me like I was a complete stranger, someone she’d never met. “But I never expected anything like this.”

“You mean, you never expected anyone like me.” I don’t know why she didn’t slap me then, because I knew from that damn chip she wanted to.

She gritted her teeth, and I heard that chip screaming, “We have to talk! I have to fix you! Everything is all wrong!”

“What is all this?” She waved at her head, and then at mine, where I chips were. “What is all this stuff?”

“It’s the me I don’t show.” Yeah, that summed it up nicely. “The me I don’t let anyone see, because I know they can’t live with it.”

She started to talk, but I cut her off, “You know damn well there are reasons I take Prozac every day.”

249 Words
@mysoulstears

---

It’s Week 432 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Something I may have to write. Something much bigger than 250 words. Please go read all the entries in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.

Advertisement

Miranda Kate’s Mid-Week Challenge : 2020/09/21 (Week 163)

“There’s this thing about history that no one teaches you,” sometimes roaming city streets was a better teacher than any book.

It was Cinthia who asked the first question of the trip, “What do you mean, professor?”

“I won’t tell you, because you won’t really understand.” I kept walking across the parking lot, to the road, where the city was putting in new fiber optic cable. “You’ll remember the lesson that way.”

“Why are we outside, in the cold, and the dark, at stupid o’clock?”

“Ah, Beverly. We are here to learn this.” I stopped, and pointed at a space on the pavement of the road, next to the trench the construction crew had dug for the cable. “What do you see?”

Cinthia didn’t disappoint me, “History.”

“Precisely!”

The asphalt surface of the road had come up next to the cable trench, most likely because of ground stresses, as the adjacent pavement  had been ripped up, along with everything beneath it. The missing asphalt revealed cobblestone pavement.

“Brick?”

“Yes, Beverly. Brick. And you won’t find a record of it anywhere in the city’s archives, blueprints, road plans, or anywhere else.” I took a picture of the brickwork, “It’s what the road was made of before the layers of asphalt.”

“You mean, there was a  time the road through here was brick?”

“Yes. It clearly was.”

The entire reason I was at that location was to record everything I could about what had been found. The trench for the cable cut straight across several layers of earlier construction. When the construction team spotted the brick, and the other layers, they’d stopped work, and reported their discovery, as they were required to do.

In response, the city requested an archeological team to examine the discovery, and determine if the layers needed to be preserved.

“And what,” I looked squarely at Cinthia, “do the layers here, and in the trench we are about to explore, tell us.”

“There’s more to history than what is written down.” Cinthia didn’t disappoint. But then, she never had. Sometimes, I thought she already knew how history worked, how archeology worked, and how the past wasn’t recorded, but was forgotten, and rewritten into something that worked better for the current day and age.

We examined the nearby trench, and found several layers of history, two layers of earlier brick, a layer of gravel, and through it all, several layers of electrical cables, and pipes, all of which were no longer used.

“No one knew this was here. Because. Whoever writes the history of a place, of a people, of a nation, only writes what they want those who come after them to see. Only writes what fits their beliefs, their understanding, of the place, and the people who live there.”

Cinthia once more didn’t disappoint me, “Like now. How things in our history people don’t want to remember are being erased from the books.”

“Yes. Just like now.”

490 words
@mysoulstears

---

Written in response to the prompt for week 166 of Miranda Kate‘s Mid-Week Challenge. You can learn about Miranda’s challenge here. The stories people share for the weekly challenge are always little works of art, crafted with words, meant to be shared, and enjoyed. Please go read them all.

#ThursThreads Week 431 : This isn’t what I dreamed of.

I looked at the remains of my house, a set of pilings that stuck out of the ground, and some debris scattered here and there. Most of it was gone. Completely gone. Everything in it was gone too. Washer, dryer, bed, computer, desk, gone. Even the 85 inch TV. Gone.

“This isn’t what I dreamed of,” was all I could say. All I could think, as I wandered among the scattered remains of my home.

It was supposed to be a beach house, although a small one, that sat 10 feet above the ground, so floods would pass beneath it. A house where I could sit on the front porch, and watch the sunset over the Gulf of Mexico every night. Where I could come home from work, change out of work clothes into beach clothes, and walk, barefoot on the sand, for miles.

It was supposed to be my dream home. The place I would spend forever.

A Category 2 hurricane wasn’t supposed to push half the gulf on shore, and then dump 30 inches of rain on top of it. It wasn’t supposed to put my house underwater, and the water wasn’t supposed to take my house with it when it left, leaving my kitchen, bedroom, and the rest somewhere in the gulf, where the fish could live in it, and slowly turn it into a new coral reef.

But the storm had happened.

And everything I had, everything I’d been. Was gone.

245 Words
@mysoulstears

---

It’s Week 431 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. Given the events of 2020, I didn’t have to work hard to come up with these words. Please go read all the entries in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.

#ThursThreads Week 430 : Aren’t You Worried About Tomorrow?

Tomorrow was Friday, the day of the final exam in our Operating Systems class. Everyone I knew from the class was cramming, spending all night going over every detail, every note, every page of every text we’d ever crossed during the semester.

Except me. I was standing in line to watch a movie, all alone, without a date, or friends.

“You know, if you don’t pass this test, you’ll fail the class, and you won’t graduate. You’ll have to take another semester, maybe another year, to graduate.” I had to smile as I remembered my talk with Heather earlier in the day. “You’d better study.”

“I’m good.” I know. It sounded arrogant, flippant, maybe like I didn’t even care.

“Aren’t you worried about tomorrow?”

“No. I’m not. Not really.” I knew, from the look on her face, I was going to have to explain why. “Because. If I don’t know the material by now, it’s too late. You can’t cram 18 weeks of classes, and the ocean of things we’re supposed to learn in those classes, into one night of study.”

“But…”

I had interrupted her. “But, nothing. If I don’t know the material by now, I’m not going to know it by tomorrow. If I’ve done what I’m supposed to do, I’ve learned it in the 18 weeks.” I don’t know if she thought my grin was arrogant, or proud, or the grin of an idiot, “At this point, I’m ready as I’m ever going to get.”

248 Words
@mysoulstears

---

It’s Week 430 of #ThursThreads, hosted by Siobhan Muir. I finally decided, “If I wait until I’m ready to write something, it’ll be 2030,” and decided to write even if I’m not ready. Please go read all the entries in this week’s #ThursThreads. They are always fun to read. And there are some great writers who show up every week.