This was a story that I had started long ago, barely out of my teens and quite a few years before the digital age was upon us. I thought I had lost the journal where I had begun the story, but a Writing Miracle has happened... and viola! Found chapters!
It is unfinished and I can barely remember the plot since so much time has passed. A thin thread of memory regarding these characters, and yet; I want to know them better already. Who knows where the story was intended, or will go; just another unfinished work in progress and Hey - yep that's me.
Scene:
One hand grips the cool metal of the bed rail, while the other clutches a well-worn notebook. A pen has fallen to the floor as the first tightening pain hit; rolling out of sight to linger in dust like so many other things that once were necessary. Her face is obscured by a mask of hair, that is drenched in sweat and fallen forward to conceal a grimaced visage. But the scrawled script upon the notebook is easily visible – though drops of sweat have blurred the ink…
Daddy Did You Know
Volume 12
It contains more than just neatly printed lines. Right now: it is her lifeline.
Miles away, fluorescent lights flicker upon a similar grimaced visage, as a young man stares mouth agape at the stack of journals before him. Some are new, their spines barely broken. Others display the beaten look of many thumbed readings. Signs of their age in the blurred ink and a taped together countenance. The one thing each has in common is the title. Sometimes a childish scrawl, or the pencil gripped efforts of the early school aged. More recent bear the fancy flowered lines of a young girl. Yet, the same title no matter the style:
Daddy Did You Know
As the young man whispers the words aloud, his stomach clenches telling him these journals are not going to be an easy read. He is not likely to find joy within their perfectly lined pages. Yet something else within him, a quiet whisper of the heart just as strong, is telling him the reading will change him forever.
This is the crossroads of a young man with an entire bright future before him. Simple and soul searching words bled and cried upon the page by a young woman he used to love. Words he knows are going to strike at the very heart of his soul and cause him to ponder all those questions about life, and love and what it is to be a man. All from the heart of a young girl he once proudly led upon his arm, and who right now, is probably enduring pain as old of time to give him what should be the greatest gift of all.
He is about to become a father.
But she is there alone, and he is here alone. A stack of journals the only thing to bridge the gap between them. And in that place where fear and faith have collided, he settles upon the dusty floor and with heavy sigh, picks up the oldest and most tattered journal; and begins to read.
So many story ideas....
