"Cough (part one)" a #365daysofwriting tale (days 357-362)

I’ve fallen behind a little with @mydivathings’ #365daysofwriting challenge (I’ve been writing everyday, but not using her pictures as prompts). So time to catch up. I am writing a story using her prompts to drive the story forward one five minute freewrite at a time. I used themostdangerouswritingapp.com to write each portion in five minutes. Then used google docs to edit them.

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https://steemit.com/fiction/@mydivathings/day-357-365-days-of-writing-challenge

Photo by Damian Denis on Unsplash

When I came to I found myself driving on a long straight road. Controlling my anxiety as best I could, I turned the wheel gently and took my foot of the pedal, allowing the car to drift to a halt at the side of the road. I sat there for a moment, taking deep breaths.

It was not the first time I had had these blackouts.

But it was the first time I had come to in a situation where I could have potentially done harm to myself, or others. Feeling slightly calmer, I looked around the car. I did not recognise it as my own. Inside the glove compartment was a gun, and papers that identified the owner as a Mrs Davinia Plage.

I didn’t recognise the name.

I turned the engine off. And opened the door. Without the air conditioning the heat hit me like a sock full of lead and I quickly closed the door again. Where the hell was I? I was David R Glevins, a writer - or so I liked to believe - home, was London.

This was not London.

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https://steemit.com/fiction/@mydivathings/day-358-365-days-of-writing-challenge

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

My last memory was sitting in front of my desk at home. The heating was broken, so I was dressed in three woollen pullovers, and wearing my coat, hat and gloves. January in London can be cold. It is not so much the temperatures are low - there are certainly colder places to live - but the damp air seems to invade your bones, making them feel fragile.

I remember staring at the screen of my computer, my latest story failing to make itself known to me, hiding within my mind like that pesky mole that dug up my garden the whole bloody summer. I remember standing to fetch myself another cup of coffee - at least the kettle was working - and then... and then nothing.

A blankness until I came too sitting behind the wheel of a strangers car in the middle of a fucking desert. I turned around to look at the back seat.

There was a blanket, checkered like the one my grandma used to have.

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https://steemit.com/fiction/@mydivathings/day-359-365-days-of-writing-challenge

[Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/E9KjjSUi1Zs]

I used to hate that fucking blanket. It was itchy, used to scratch my skin with its thick woolen threads.

And it smelled too, of old dog and cabbages.

My grandma would insist I had it on my bed whenever I stayed over. She seemed to think I liked it. The one on the back seat wasn't exactly the same as my grandma's but it was similar. There was something underneath the blanket, I realised. It was the shape and size of a child.

"Oh fuck!" I whispered, opening the door again, letting the fiery desert heat punch me once more. I stood away from the car for a moment, looking one way, then another, but no other cars came. There was no one around. I opened the back door and took hold of the blanket between the finger and thumb of my right hand and tugged it. It fell to the floor and so did I, with a thump.

When I awoke it was night. Dark and starless.

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https://steemit.com/fiction/@mydivathings/day-360-365-days-of-writing-challenge

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

I was still in the desert. On the same road, perhaps. But it was fucking cold. I was dressed in a cotton shirt, and a pair of linen trousers I didn't even know I owned. The car was gone. And with it the body on the back seat.

I must be dreaming, I must be dreaming.

There was a wind that blew dust - sand I suppose - over me, and I coughed hard. I tasted something metallic in my mouth. Blood, of course. The taste of the cancer that had been growing in my lungs.

The taste of the death that awaits me.

I began to walk up the road, I didn't know where I was heading but I decided a long time ago, never look back, always move forward. Although I was not sure where I came from, so there was a strong possibility I was heading backwards. I tripped over something in the road, and the next thing I knew I was in a theatre full of yellow seats. The stage was too far away to see who was on it. But there was something. I picked my way through the seats. Always move forward.

Never look back.

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https://steemit.com/fiction/@mydivathings/day-361-365-days-of-writing-challenge

Photo by Michal Janek on Unsplash

It might have been a nativity play. It was a winter scene, anyway.

Probably, not a nativity, I thought. Does it ever snow in Bethlehem?

There was a strange shaped house on the stage, covered in snow, surrounded by pine trees. It reminded me of that fairy tale with the witch in the wood and the lost children.

I walked up to the stage and called out, "Is there anyone there?"

Like the rows and rows of chairs the stage was empty of life. I climbed up, onto it. To my amazement the snow seemed real. It was cold and melted in my hand. The house was not made of gingerbread, but something told me there would be at least one child held within its walls. A helpless child, crying for his mother, ignored by the boy who stood beside him.

I coughed. More blood in my mouth. The taste was bitter, but thick and warm like soup.

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https://steemit.com/fiction/@mydivathings/day-362-365-days-of-writing-challenge

Photo by Christiann Koepke on Unsplash

Thinking of soup reminded me more of Christmas.

We were the only family I knew where we would start the Christmas meal with a bowl of soup.

Not homemade, either.

Grandma would wanted her favourite canned tomato soup. Ben loved it, and would bounce up and down in his chair like a demented jackinthebox, seemingly more excited to be getting soup to start the meal, than he had been when opening the presents a few hours ago in front of the tree.

After the soup we would eat the turkey, which everyone would agree was dry and tasteless, and say that next year they would try something different, but it was always turkey. For Boxing Day we would eat leftover turkey.

Turkey sandwiches for lunch.

One year - that year - Ben and I took them as a packed lunch and headed off with our new bikes. We headed into the woods, leaving the bikes chained up by the gate. There was a house that the local kids all said was haunted. A witch had placed a curse on everyone who went in there. I remember Ben saying he didn't want to go inside.

I remember calling him a baby, until he gave in.

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To be continued…

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