Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Taking Care of It - Anne Wright

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. Nobody else was around so he was talking to himself. He liked the confident sound of his voice. It had a loveable rough growl when he ended his sentences and he felt a little sad that no one was there to hear it. If only, he thought, then stopped himself. It was one of those dreams that would never happen, no matter what he wished. He had already been more fortunate in his life than any of his friends. He had had a wonderful wife and family, and a fulfilling career. The children were grown up now, but his wife had died in a terrible accident and he missed her every day. If only he could go back and change one day, one little thing, maybe she would be alive. Maybe he would have met another woman who wasn’t so wonderful. It could have been that his son had turned out to be bad, and his daughter stupid. He might have not graduated from college and had to join the army and kill snipers that were hiding around the corner, and he might have gotten gassed with Agent Orange and end up in a veteran’s hospital for a few years. And the nurse, who he thought was so beautiful, and fell in love with and married, cheated on him with the man next door. The nurse was a blonde but she let her black roots show, until they were an inch long, before she bleached them. Plus she had long toenails that scratched him in the middle of the night, and when he woke from his nightmares of the enemy getting ready to stab him with a bayonet, he thought her nails were dipped in poisonous juice from a tree only found in the jungles.

1 comment:

  1. Two things I love about this one...the way you write your male characters, they're totally believable and interesting. And the what if game our narrator plays here. It's so specific, so full of images. Really terrific!

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