How i have been occupying my time.

So i thought i would let you see a little bit of what i have been doing over the last 15 days.
You know this little thing called NaNoWriMo?

So here is an excerpt...remember when you read it that it is supposed to be crap. it is about putting words on the page. When i am done the story, then i can go back and fix it.....

Talking to Dead People

There was nothing out there.
Guess I was just imagining things. I was getting pretty tired.
I curled back up on the couch and picked up the transcript.
I was reading about Meighien Malloy, when I heard something again.
“Make sure you put the kettle on, you will be wanting tea.”
Ok, so I know that this time I heard something. And that something had a distinctly Irish brogue to their voice. What the hell was going on?
“tea?” I said out loud.
Nothing.
Just the sound of my breathing, and my heart racing loudly.
“Mom?” I tried again.
Still nothing.
I shook my head and kept reading about Mrs. Malloy. She had died young, at forty. She had left behind three small children, and of course her husband, who according to this research re-married a young girl to care for his young family. That was not uncommon. Lots of widowers remarried, especially when faced with the daunting task of raising small children alone.
I looked through my paper work to see if I could cross reference the Malloy’s with any of the other information that I had lying around.
I was not disappointed. Mr Malloy was a prominent business owner by the times standards. He was a pub owner and a brew master. And an avid tea drinker.
Tea drinker?
SO much so that during his wake, which was the largest of any the village had ever seen, the departed was toasted with tea, and not whiskey as would have been the custom.
“will you  be wanting some tea?”
Ok, I definitely heard that. A woman wanting to know if I was going to want some tea. An Irish woman, who sounds like she is the mothering type. The kind who would ask her husband if he wanted tea after a hard day at work..
“Um….why, did YOU want some tea Molly?” I waited to see if I would get a response. Hell, I was actually waiting to prove to myself that I was not losing my mind.
“No thank ye, I thought perhaps you would as you seem to be working very hard and the air has a bite to it this eve.”
I sat on the couch, staring out the window, knowing in my heart what had just happened. I just needed my brain to catch up.
“Molly, can you actually hear me?”
“Yes, you are talking to me are you not?”
“Well, yes I suppose I am, but I was kind of thinking that you were just a figment of my imagination”
“And why would that be Ms O’Donnell? You have been talking to us for years..ever since you were a wee lass, hiding from the sun in that little grave yard on the hill.”
OH MY GOD! I must be losing my mind. There is no way that I am sitting in my Mother’s living room, having a conversation with a women who has been dead for two hundred years. Not only that but this dead women apparently had been watching me for the last forty years.
“You are not losing it..as you young people like to say. I am talking to you, you are talking to me…there is nothing unusual about that.
“Well, no, not if you were sitting in the room with me, or on the telephone.” Or alive, I added to myself in my head.
“I heard that” she chuckled.
“you have always been the voice for us. You have helped us find our way. You have found some of us that were lost, without us even knowing it. You have always talked to us. It is just that now I wanted to talk back.”
I think I needed that drink now…and it was not going to be tea. It was going to be another shot of whiskey…and a big one at that.
I ran into the kitchen and grabbed the bottle out of the cupboard. I did not even bother with a glass, just said a brief prayer and tipped back the bottle.
It burned going down, just for a moment, and then…bliss.
I stood there in the moonlight and tried to process what had just happened.
Ok, brain, sort this out.
This afternoon, your grandpa wiped the soot of his brow, and then Uncle Curley waved at you.
Now you are standing in the kitchen with a bottle of whiskey because a woman who has been dead for two hundred years has decided to make light chit chat with you.
“Molly are you listening?”
I waited for a response.
I did not get one.
Was I really expecting one?
Probably not.
I really needed to get some sleep. And take a vacation. And get a life.
What I really needed to do was to put down the whiskey bottle. The shape was beginning to feel really familiar in my hand and from past experiences I knew that that was not a good thing. (Thank-ye Martha Stewart) I had been down that road once before, and while I allowed myself that odd sip now and then, I had stopped drinking like a drunken Irish sailor many years ago.
I put away the bottle, which was now considerably lighter than it was before I came to visit (mental note, make sure you hit a liquor store to replace the whiskey).

Comments

[Joanne]

Hurry up! I want to read it all.

[creechman]

Happy Turkey Day to you too. Even Canadians can play along. :)