Nanowrimo Excerpt

Hi everyone! I haven’t posted much lately because I was participating in the Nanowrimo challenge. The novel I wrote for this challenge is called “Thoughts Like Clouds.” Here is an excerpt from it– enjoy!

Original Artwork

~New Things~
Today is Sally’s turn. It is the first when I let Sally be in charge for twenty-four hours. Before, Sally could only go a little while by herself before I had to help her, but now we think she is strong enough.
We stare at the clock. Earlier we decided that we will change at exactly midnight tonight and we’ll switch back at exactly midnight to tomorrow.
The clock goes on tick tick ticking its way towards Sally’s turn.
11:57, 11:58, 11:59, and finally, 12:00.
We switch, I push myself way back into the smallest part of our brain. Sally pushes herself way up into the front of our brain. There is a long pause as Sally settles down comfortably into our mind. Then another pause as she slowly finds each muscle, testing them gently so that she knows they will work when she asks them to. Then we stand up.
We are so excited! Sally is moving a hundred percent by herself! Sally does a little wiggly-happy-dance, but it doesn’t quite work and we fall down onto the floor. We giggle. We do not mind the fall, or sitting on the floor, even though it is a cold hard place to sit in the middle of the night. We are too busy being excited.
I offer to help sally get back up. She says that she does not want any muscle help, but if I can talk from the back of our mind and help remind her how to move to stand back up after falling she would be much obliged.
I takes us a little while to get back to our feet. It is hard to remember how to stand up after falling. When I have our body I don’t need to think much about how to stand. I just stand, but we figure it out.
Soon enough we are standing in the middle of the room wondering what to do next. Neither of us wants to sleep.
We decide to go and see Mama. Maybe we will ask Mama to read us a bedtime story, and Sally can practice using our voice.
We totter into Mama’s room. Mama is awake and reading from her favorite book. She looks up. She seems surprised to see the other Sally walking around. Mama hasn’t seen Sally move much. I am so proud of Sally.
When we get to mama Sally stops and prepares to speak. Half way between our brain and our mouth Sally’s question changes.
“Mama, do you love us?”
I don’t know why Sally asks this instead of asking about bedtime stories but I don’t mind the change, today is Sally’s day, she can ask whatever she wants.
Mama doesn’t answer. Instead, she fills the room with a long pause, and fills our eyes with her flickering gaze. It almost looks like our Mama has another Mama inside of her and the other Mama is searching for the right muscles to make the words come out.
The pause stretches out, bigger and bigger, until it fills us up, and we are trembling under the weight of all of this silence.
When we cannot stand mothers sad, empty eyes a moment longer Sally runs from the room. Her movements are awkward and stumbling, but we do not fall, not until we reach our bed and collapse down on top of it.
Sally, Sally it’s not your fault! I plea, Mama was probably just tired. She was just sitting there sleeping with her eyes open. She does love us. She just wasn’t awake, that’s all, she just wasn’t awake.
All night we lay in bed and think about Mama’s heavy silence. We try to convince ourselves that Mama truly was asleep. By morning, we almost believe it. Sally makes me take back our body, even though this was supposed to be her special twenty-four hour day. Sally says that she is tired, and moving is too hard right now.
We move quietly around Mama. We are afraid that if we stay with Mama too long, the horrible dark silence will surround us again, and we will drown in Mama’s staring eyes.

~Excerpts from a Mother’s Mind: The Other Sally~
Sally came into my room earlier, but she wasn’t my Sally. She was that other thing. That other self.
The other Sally moves differently, in a disjointed fashion. One moment it scurries at frantic speeds; the next it crawls along delicately, moving each limb as though it is afraid of its limbs shattering on impact with the floor.
It came up to me, this tumorous mockery of my little girl, head cocked viciously to the side, eyes staring with an penetrating, unblinking gaze. Its eyes bore through me. Finally it blinked, long and hard, as though only just remembering how; as though that drawn out blink of an eye was its sole purpose in entering my room.
Eyes still closed, the other Sally asked in a tremorous, rasp of a voice.

“Mama, do you love us?”
I shuddered. The thing’s eyes flared back open, pupils contracting into pin pricks as it searched my face for an answer.
My breath quickened, its hard stare so strikingly resembles her fathers that I flinch, expecting the swinging fist or the kick of a boot.
Yes, of course I love you Sally. That is what I wanted to say. What I tried desperately to say. That is what you say to your daughter when she comes to you in the middle of the night and asks you to comfort her, but all I could think of is the deep stare of the other Sally, and the years of being beaten by Andrew.
My thoughts were so full of how I want this thing– this other Sally, who has corrupted my relationship with my Sally– out of my daughter, out of my life, out of this home, out of this world that I could not respond. I just returned the other Sally’s cold searching gaze.