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Wallace swigged at the bottle and then spat and cursed its emptiness. You could see three counties from this ridge on a good day but this wasn’t ever going to be a good day and a haze of droplets hung rain-bowed in the air, cocking a snook at the sunrise. His leather had come away from the upper and the sole flapped peep-toe over the drop as he sat on a boulder contemplating the edge.
“What are you doing here?”
It was the rage in his father’s voice he remembered down the years and he heard his own breathless reply, then saw the panic in his sister’s tear-stained face as she lay in the hay loft. Her eyes begged him. Begged him to do what? Tell? Not tell? Tell?
Later the leather belt raised welts on his skin and his mother’s words burned into his mind.
“Liar. LIAR!”
He’d never felt the need to tell the truth again and to make sure he didn’t have to, he’d never spoken of this to his sister or tested out the truth of how he’d got into that loft. To this day he kept it to himself; never told another living soul — not even his wife.
This damned fog had to burn off sometime and then he’d face the truth. His life wasn’t worth shit. He’d never done anything of any note; communicated nothing, truth or lie. He’d just kept right on following the rules.
His mother was long gone, his sister a stranger, his wife was dead. What good are rules when this is what happens to an honest man? So he left his job, his house, hit the booze and everybody called him a bum, a common vagrant. So what? Maybe nobody would miss him and maybe they would. He still had a secret.
A sudden shaft of sunlight broke through from the eastern side of the peaks and Wallace saw striations of mist, purple, blue-grey, wispy, laid out in the valley, just like safety nets. Maybe he’d dreamt it. Maybe he was dreaming still. The old roundelay played in his head.
Row, row, row, your boat…
Just a few hours ago he’d heard the old refrain that haunted him, “What are you doing here?” His father’s voice. “Did you drive all the way?”
Wallace had looked at the frail man in the bed. This nursing home was far too good for the likes of that. Without a word he took the pillow from under the old man’s head and…
“What are you doing?” His father’s voice, weak and crackly now — confused.
Wallace looked straight into the pleading eyes and pressed the pillow down. The old man was stronger than he looked.
“No, I flew,” said Wallace.
He dropped the pillow on the floor, pocketed some change, strode out of the room and didn’t look back. He took a car, bought the bottle at a store along the way and was sat here now on the edge of nothing, waiting for something — for the moment, for the courage, for the cowardice to act.
The sun rose higher and the green fields were picked out below like jewels. A river snaked and sparkled its way through miniature woods. A bird called from behind him — a hawk, swooping down from the craggy sides, threw itself onto the air. He saw it hover below; a shimmering virtuoso of the currents.
Wallace stood atop his boulder. In an instant of childlike clarity he launched himself from the edge. His momentum grew, then slowed as the layers of mist upheld him. He circled in eddies like a ballet about a leaf.
“Do you hear me, Dad?” he shouted. “Do you hear me you sick old bastard? I FLEW!”
Oonah V Joslin is Managing Editor at Every Day Poets. Credits include 3 Micro Horror prizes, an honorable mention in The binnacles Shorts Poetry comp 2009, Inclusion in several anthologies, A Man of Few Words, The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008 and 2009 and Toe Tags. Read her at Static Movement, The Shine Journal, A View From Here, The Ranfurly Review 10FLASH Quarterly and many other places. Other work including her Novella, A Genie in a Jam, can be found at Bewildering Stories. The list is updated in The Vaults at Parallel Oonahverse and on her Facebook. Oonah’s ambition is to have a book published.
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30 Responses to “LIVING THE LIE • by Oonah V Joslin”
Comments
« BILLY • by A. F. White | Home | RAIN • by Katherine Lopez »
February 26th, 2011 at 2:46 am
liked this very much.
February 26th, 2011 at 3:52 am
Gripping story, Oonah.
All the ingredients there.
I laughed at that last line despite the sadness of the poor man’s despair and demise.
A great ending,
February 26th, 2011 at 8:32 am
Very good, Oonah. It takes a poet’s eye to write like this. And, you are so proflific!
February 26th, 2011 at 8:56 am
Poetic prose to delight the eye. A lovely read,whatever the story’s end.
February 26th, 2011 at 8:58 am
Oh, Oonah. I’m covered with chill bumps and I’m practically speechless. What an amazing, tragic/beautiful story. Like Walt pointed out, this is prose written by a poet. Stunning.
February 26th, 2011 at 8:58 am
The poet’s attention to language was on display throughout:
“You could see three counties from this ridge on a good day but this wasn’t ever going to be a good day…”
Says so much about Wallace’s character without using all that many words.
February 26th, 2011 at 9:00 am
A heady mixture of breath-taking clarity and muzzy whiskers.
February 26th, 2011 at 9:33 am
A mellifluous read.
February 26th, 2011 at 9:59 am
That was one heck of an opening paragraph, Oonah! Impossible to turn back after that… I really liked it all.
Tiny Typo? “…sunlight broke through from the eastern side OF the peaks…”
February 26th, 2011 at 10:20 am
Thank you all for reading and for your kind comments. There are two typos – I sent a message and hopefully they will be corrected.
February 26th, 2011 at 10:22 am
Corrected, Errol, thanks.
We really appreciate it when our readers point out typos for us, but we’d actually prefer to have them brought to our attention through our contact form, as some readers find that others’ typo-spotting interrupts their enjoyment of the discussion about the story.
February 26th, 2011 at 10:56 am
A powerful story about the destructive effect of abuse on a brother as well as sister. There is no good ending possible for him, whether he does or does not exact revenge against the father, the bottle will continue to
take its toll against him. The leather coming apart from
the sole on his shoe, as he sits there contemplating suicide was a telling image and spoke volumes. One in such
despair that he does not bother to mend it says everything. A perfect balance between poetic description
yet spare and lean story line tension.
February 26th, 2011 at 11:57 am
Nice writing Oonah. Well done.
February 26th, 2011 at 3:11 pm
Oh man.
Fantastic writing, truly. And the idea… wow. The idea was great, and the plot was not at all hard to follow. I want to call it ‘simple’, but that almost sounds negative, so I won’t.
It was all so… cohesive. His character tied-in well with everything. Great job. The characterization of them all was good for such a short thing (I wish it had been given a lot more room for development, though).
You can see that I’m having trouble finding words. I’ll say this: I wish that it was longer.
Again, wonderful job. I look forward to reading more of your writing.
February 26th, 2011 at 4:52 pm
Thank you Alison
You see that is the entire point of what I do… I keep it short but I try to make people go WOW so I reckon I succeeded with you and I am most gratified X
February 26th, 2011 at 4:54 pm
John, thank you
February 26th, 2011 at 9:20 pm
Good one Oonah, love it
February 27th, 2011 at 12:11 am
You succeeded in getting the WOW from this reader. What a well-developed, fantastic idea. This could be any hobo in any small town, but I imagined the Southern US. I’m left wondering whether the act of flight cured his bitterness, or was a final fantasy before he died.
Anyway, I loved it.
February 27th, 2011 at 2:24 am
I loved the idea of ‘on the edge of nothing, waiting for something’. A story to warm my heart, and liver, and maybe kidneys too.
February 27th, 2011 at 4:00 am
This story had the breathlessness of your protagonist’s voice all the way Oonah. The rage, the anger and hurt literally flew, as the crow flies! Five stars for sure.
February 27th, 2011 at 4:57 am
So many lovely comments! Thank you all so very much. I think that poor Wallace flew in the end – but to another place perhaps, a kinder reality…
February 27th, 2011 at 6:48 am
Wow!
Great flash.
Bill
February 27th, 2011 at 7:30 am
Another lovely piece of writing by Oonah.
February 27th, 2011 at 11:28 am
Very powerful writing.
February 27th, 2011 at 6:37 pm
A very provocative story, with an ending that is very ambigious to me. The MC finally broke the rules and stood up against his dad. Yet he was still tied to his father by an invisible umbilical chord of unresolved rage. I could not help but feel that there should be a deeper layer of truth which he had not yet discovered. I am very curious about the author’s perspective behind the writing of this story.
February 28th, 2011 at 4:05 am
I think you got it in one Iepifera – that deeper layer of truth – what do we know of truth unti we try? Until we live the lie and launch ourselves onto the wind and have faith in the dream, the concept, our own sense of what truth is? That is why the end is not resolved. We must each take that fianl step ourselves…
February 28th, 2011 at 10:41 pm
Oonah, thanks for the clarification. Now I am more certain that the patricide in the story is meant to be symbolic, rather than just an act of simple vagence.
March 1st, 2011 at 3:59 am
[...] “Living the Lie” by Oonah V. Joslin (Every Day [...]
March 4th, 2011 at 7:55 am
Thanks for the review and glad you like my name
March 5th, 2011 at 3:18 am
[...] was really happy to be in EDF again in February Thanks to all the lovely people who commented on that story! I’m not there in March but I am around in other sites and so I hope you’ll go and have [...]