Graves, Writing, Life Lived, and Six Sentence Stories

The following two stories are fiction, and are told in six sentences, for my friend Ivy’s prompt. I usually don’t participate, as I’m often doing my own Finish the Sentence Friday prompt on Fridays. Ivy leaves her Six Sentence Stories prompt open until Tuesday, so that we can do both if we so choose. How awesome is that?

***

“I love you more than there are grains of sand on all of the beaches, and in all of the sand dunes, and in all of the deserts, in all of the world,” he whispered into her neck, and she believed him, and loved him more for his words.

She knew she was finally needed, and that she’d do anything for him, and did in fact do most everything for him, for his business, and for his ego – especially when he was in a bad mood, feeling again that life is “so damn unfair.”

He often felt that life was “so damn unfair,” because that was his way, and in many ways, that was his charm.

He did, of course, love her more than everything, but she wondered what love was when he followed those confessions with “I want to put you on a shelf where nobody can touch you, or see you, and I’ll take you down from it when I am able to, or want to.”

15 years later, the woman finds herself telling her son, born from a different man (this one, her husband) that she “loves him more than there are grains of sand on all of the beaches, and in all of the sand dunes, and in all of the deserts in all of the world,” and she means it – ferociously and fully.

She imagines the one from years ago and how his pesky hands have been poking out from his shallow grave in her mind, and she decides that she’s ready to put him 26 feet under.

***

Denise stood in the kitchen, willing her face to un-blotch, and her hands to un-twitch after her boss’ wife had said “Boo Hoo to you with no mommy growing up!”

Denise hadn’t meant to draw attention to herself in that way, but she also knew that she was hoping for attention, because, after all, who grows up without a family the way she had? She thought about her childhood next to the train tracks and and the tracks on her father’s arm that she’d traced as a tiny girl while he sung to her in his deep voice, lulling her to a slumber that she hadn’t experienced since he’d left. 

Certainly these people in their wanna-be fancy house and their ostentatious bathrooms wouldn’t understand, and she’d obviously over-shared.

Earlier, Denise had felt grateful when she noticed the off-brand serving dishes and the fake Prada on the counter, and, minutes ago, had exhaled and thought “Phew! They’re faking it, like I am.”

She went outside for a cigarette, and, while admiring the gorgeous garden, stumbled upon the grave within it.

*** Denise’s story is continued here

This week’s prompt was “grave.”