| Biographical Non-Fiction posted July 19, 2023 |
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An unforgettable room I wish I could forget
Pierre
by Loretta Bigg
Sense of Place Short Story Contest Winner
Time to inspect my brother's room. My father said we had to. "Take what you want," he added.
I took nothing but this memory. And I remember it very well.
My brother's bed is made, hotel-perfect, and in the closet sit the new shoes, hardly worn, comfortable. He'd bought them just a week ago. "Why waste them?" says my father. "John can wear them." I feel my face grow pale at the thought of someone else wearing my brother's things, but my father picks them up and inspects them, then puts them in a bag.
On a rod wait all his empty clothes, along with a few hangers. My father eyes the jacket there, starts to speak, catches my glance, and says nothing. But he slips it into the bag when he thinks I'm not looking.
Despite the dust, the room is well taken care of, everything in its place, crowded with things once used, and yet the space feels empty.
Near the window on a rickety card table sits his "treatment machine." It still feels warm as if he'd used it yesterday. Puff in, puff out, three times a day. It clanked out an awkward metallic noise, like an iron lung, I guess, a sucking sound hard to forget but impossible to describe.
I also remember him sitting in the blue chair, the one from Mexico, one for him and one for me. He breathed into the machine every waking day, for years.
One day after a visit, I saw him through the window, reading Isaac Asimov as he puffed in and so out, and so on, suck-release, suck release. I tried to get his attention. I waved and waved but he never looked up. He seldom did, from his magical books that spoke of a wonderful future, Heinlein, Asimov.
I turn away from that memory. On a second card table sits all my brother's medicine, the digestion pills, the drops that stain his teeth. The whole room smells of sickly vanilla mixed with the reek of mucus. He coughed it up all day.
I forgot to mention his oxygen tanks sitting in the corner, discarded.
The shag carpet is stained from where he used to sit on the blue chair because the machine leaked steam. On the carpet is a huge box of Kleenex and a wastepaper full of stained tissues.
On one wall hang photographs he took, and newspaper articles about him, with words like proud and brave and below that a shelf of books, all Science Fiction, but not dystopian, hopeful that things would someday get right with the world.
On the same shelf leans a radio. He listened to it all day long, news shows, politics. He wanted to be a politician. He even dragged me out to canvas for McGovern for President.
No letters.
The room is dusty, as I said, and full of things, but empty. A vacant memory. The most essential thing of all is missing and will never return. No goodbye. Like bad magic, gone.
But I remember still.
Time to inspect my brother's room. My father said we had to. "Take what you want," he added.
I took nothing but this memory. And I remember it very well.
My brother's bed is made, hotel-perfect, and in the closet sit the new shoes, hardly worn, comfortable. He'd bought them just a week ago. "Why waste them?" says my father. "John can wear them." I feel my face grow pale at the thought of someone else wearing my brother's things, but my father picks them up and inspects them, then puts them in a bag.
I took nothing but this memory. And I remember it very well.
My brother's bed is made, hotel-perfect, and in the closet sit the new shoes, hardly worn, comfortable. He'd bought them just a week ago. "Why waste them?" says my father. "John can wear them." I feel my face grow pale at the thought of someone else wearing my brother's things, but my father picks them up and inspects them, then puts them in a bag.
On a rod wait all his empty clothes, along with a few hangers. My father eyes the jacket there, starts to speak, catches my glance, and says nothing. But he slips it into the bag when he thinks I'm not looking.
Despite the dust, the room is well taken care of, everything in its place, crowded with things once used, and yet the space feels empty.
Near the window on a rickety card table sits his "treatment machine." It still feels warm as if he'd used it yesterday. Puff in, puff out, three times a day. It clanked out an awkward metallic noise, like an iron lung, I guess, a sucking sound hard to forget but impossible to describe.
I also remember him sitting in the blue chair, the one from Mexico, one for him and one for me. He breathed into the machine every waking day, for years.
One day after a visit, I saw him through the window, reading Isaac Asimov as he puffed in and so out, and so on, suck-release, suck release. I tried to get his attention. I waved and waved but he never looked up. He seldom did, from his magical books that spoke of a wonderful future, Heinlein, Asimov.
I turn away from that memory. On a second card table sits all my brother's medicine, the digestion pills, the drops that stain his teeth. The whole room smells of sickly vanilla mixed with the reek of mucus. He coughed it up all day.
I forgot to mention his oxygen tanks sitting in the corner, discarded.
The shag carpet is stained from where he used to sit on the blue chair because the machine leaked steam. On the carpet is a huge box of Kleenex and a wastepaper full of stained tissues.
Despite the dust, the room is well taken care of, everything in its place, crowded with things once used, and yet the space feels empty.
Near the window on a rickety card table sits his "treatment machine." It still feels warm as if he'd used it yesterday. Puff in, puff out, three times a day. It clanked out an awkward metallic noise, like an iron lung, I guess, a sucking sound hard to forget but impossible to describe.
I also remember him sitting in the blue chair, the one from Mexico, one for him and one for me. He breathed into the machine every waking day, for years.
One day after a visit, I saw him through the window, reading Isaac Asimov as he puffed in and so out, and so on, suck-release, suck release. I tried to get his attention. I waved and waved but he never looked up. He seldom did, from his magical books that spoke of a wonderful future, Heinlein, Asimov.
I turn away from that memory. On a second card table sits all my brother's medicine, the digestion pills, the drops that stain his teeth. The whole room smells of sickly vanilla mixed with the reek of mucus. He coughed it up all day.
I forgot to mention his oxygen tanks sitting in the corner, discarded.
The shag carpet is stained from where he used to sit on the blue chair because the machine leaked steam. On the carpet is a huge box of Kleenex and a wastepaper full of stained tissues.
On one wall hang photographs he took, and newspaper articles about him, with words like proud and brave and below that a shelf of books, all Science Fiction, but not dystopian, hopeful that things would someday get right with the world.
On the same shelf leans a radio. He listened to it all day long, news shows, politics. He wanted to be a politician. He even dragged me out to canvas for McGovern for President.
No letters.
The room is dusty, as I said, and full of things, but empty. A vacant memory. The most essential thing of all is missing and will never return. No goodbye. Like bad magic, gone.
But I remember still.
No letters.
The room is dusty, as I said, and full of things, but empty. A vacant memory. The most essential thing of all is missing and will never return. No goodbye. Like bad magic, gone.
But I remember still.
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Writing Prompt Write a 400 to 700 word essay describing a place. This should be a descriptive short story, make sure you describe the place very well. This place you are describing can not be a place in your imagination, dreams, ext. It has to be a real place, preferably a place you know very well. You do not have to have been to this place, and this can be a made up story. Be creative and descriptive! |
Sense of Place Short Story Contest Winner |
 Recognized |
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