Folding within Myself

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Threads of Thought

By BB Curtis

Just a bit of a character study:  Old man in a wheelchair, head bent at a 90-degree angle, can’t straighten out and all he can see is his own crotch.

I wonder if that little thread will cause a problem if I pull on it.  It looks like it might.  I shouldn’t touch it.  I don’t have a lot of pants like I used to have.  Once was I had half a walk-in closet of dress slacks and the other half suit coats.  Needed a second closet for shirts and another for casual pants.  That was in the days when I wasn’t stuck here in this damnable chair; when I was tall and straight; when I was young and strong; when I was vital and handsome and interesting.

Now, my days are spent staring.  Everywhere I go, just staring.  I can see pretty damned well.  I’m not entirely sure about my distance vision since I can’t straighten out my neck enough to look at anything very far away, but I can see details of cracks and rocks and flooring everywhere we go.  I never really lost my near sight like most people, though, more’s the pity.  I’m starting to wish I had lost at least part of that.  Being able to count the threads of my pants and the teeth on my fly is not something I wanted to do repetitively throughout the end of my days.

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The Package

by BB Curtis    

Chapter 1

The Set-Up

    Sick and twisted doesn’t really cover it.  The package in the freezer, all wrapped up in 5 zip-style bags, has a lot to do with determining sanity, ethics, and morality.  That package, hidden in the back behind a 10-pound bag of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, has a lot to do with whether or not there will be a full trial.  That package, disguised as a nice knackwurst, once discovered, would be both the beginning and the end of normalcy for the people involved.

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My Child Naked

by BB Curtis

A two-year nightmare was over.  The future would hold what it held; but, for this evening, she sat holding her baby girl, rocking her as she had every night for four years until it had begun.

Her “baby” was seven now and more beautiful than she’d remembered.  Her thoughts drifted over the hundreds of nights and days filled with loneliness, despair, fear, and all those tears.  For the moment, at least, she was content just to touch her and to look at her thin face.  Her older daughter was on the floor by the chair, leaning against her mother’s leg and holding her sleeping sister’s hand.  She, too, was thinking about those days, wondering if she’d ever be able to forget . . . forget the looks on her mother’s face, the strain, the sense of loss, the pain, when it hit her fourteen-year-old mind, “Mom,” her voice cracked as she spoke, “what’s going to happen now?  Is Donna going to be alright?”

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