Check out my new story on Wattpad (new chapter released every Friday)
Red by Melissa McLean (Wattpad username: MissyMcLean)
And if you could give my profile a follow while you’re there, that’d be fantastic, too!
I wrote this a few weeks ago and asked my husband to read it... He didn’t so, I’m just going to post it without any other opinions than my own.
I like to think it’s pretty good as I am the one who wrote it but my opinion may be a little biased (I’m trying something new and being positive that my abilities as a writer are as good as others say)
There will be a trigger warning below in the notes/comments as I don’t want to give anything away and spoil the endling unless I have to.
Without further ado, please enjoy!
He tried not to press her every time he came home. The dishes were never done, the bed never made, the floor never vacuumed, but he figured he would just do it himself. She had been going through a lot lately especially with having to look after the baby alone.
He had received a call from his mother today at lunch. He didn’t typically accept calls from anyone but his wife while at work but his mother had been texting him more frequently than usual as of late but he didn’t want to talk to her. He knew what she would say: she was concerned about Sarah and the baby.
“Mom, I promise you everything is fine.”
“I don’t trust her, Derek. I just don’t. I went through something like this before...”
“You’ve never trusted her. You’ve never liked her and now you are translating that onto her abilities as a parent. Just give it up.”
“Derek! I thought I taught you better than this! You are speaking to your mother.”
“…And you are talking about my wife. Just because you are my mother doesn’t mean you can disrespect me or my wife for that matter and expect us to give you our undying respect in return” He fought the urge to hang up on her then. She knew how to grate on his nerves. He knew she never approved of their relationship, to begin with.
She let out a long defeated sigh on the other end. He knew he had made a point and it had made it through her thick head. Derek: 1; mom: 0, he thought a smile tugging up at one side of his lips.
“Just make sure you keep an eye on her, Derek. Sometimes she says she wishes she could run away! I wouldn't put it past her to just up and run away with your baby!”
“I trust my wife.” He said with finality. The one thing from her he was happy to accept in his gene pool: the ability to add a sound to a period just by changing his tone of voice. He did hang up this time without so much as a goodbye. He’d hear about that later whether from her or his father but couldn’t care less.
He rounded the corner of their small, single-storey home and almost crashed into Sarah carrying Marie in her arms. Sarah looked drained especially compared to the smiling, gurgling 6-month-old cradled happily in her arms.
"This child she screams from the time you leave to the time you return home." She complained, it almost sounded like a snarl. "Sometimes I just wish her lungs would give out. I'd finally have some peace."
"You don't mean that." He said this but at the same time, looking at the harried expression on her face, he was scared she meant it.
“Your mother called you today,” Sarah said, her voice piercing through his thoughts like a knife. Her voice had a sharpness to it, he was entering a conversation he didn’t know how would go. His only option was to approach it calmly and hope it didn’t escalate, especially with Sarah holding his daughter. As much as he trusted her, she could turn a little flippant at times and he did worry from time to time that she might take it out on poor, innocent Marie. Not deliberately by any means but Sarah wasn’t the most patient person in the world.
“Yes, she did. At lunch.”
“What did she say?” Sarah asked.
“Just asking about you. Asking about Marie. You know how she is, she just wants to keep caught up on everything going on.”
“She told you I’m a bad mother, again.” Her tone was short, clipped. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. She knew what his mother thought of her.
“She didn’t say that.” It wasn’t a lie. Just a bit of truth embellishing. Sarah cocked an eyebrow in response as he reached out and took Marie carefully from her arms. Sarah willingly handed her over and swept past him leaving the air frigid in her wake. He took his daughter over to the living area to play with her toys on the floor. He laid down on his side with his head cradled in his hand as he shook a rattle over her hearing pots and pans being torn from the cupboards in a flurry of anger and slammed down on the counters with an exceptional force. She was angry, but she was always angry. There was no escaping her wrath, anymore.
“Do you need any help, honey?” He asked half-heartedly as Marie giggled on the floor beside him. Sarah shot him a look from the kitchen and continued making dinner, her anger continuing into the evening, leaving him to walk on eggshells around her, waiting until the morning light to be able to slip back off to work.
The next time his mother called he was tempted to let it go to voicemail until he realized it would be a new level of low to screen phone calls from one’s own mother.
“Hello?”
“I was tempted to stop by and see how your wife is treating my grand-baby but I decided against it.” A “woe-is-me” tone didn’t so much as creep into her voice as much as it had been fully possessed by it like a wayward spirit on a rampage. “I assumed I’d be unwelcome.
“Mom…” He warned. He didn’t want to hear it today. Hell, he didn’t want to hear it tomorrow or the next day, either, for that matter.
“I know… I know… Just ignore me. It shouldn’t be that hard of a task.” He felt his eyes roll and his thumb hovered over the end call button. One more time, mom, he thought, give me a damn reason to press this button.
“Did you call Sarah the other day after our phone call?” The question had departed his mouth as suddenly as the thought had popped into his head.
“I did. I didn’t think it’d be a big deal to call my daughter-in-law and ask how my grand-baby is doing. I sure as Hell don’t hear anything else about her. No one would ever think to update--” The beep sounded, short and abrupt as his thumb stabbed at the button, cutting his mother’s screeching voice off as quick as it started. Is this what Sarah had to deal with when she called her up to bitch about something? If so, he sure as Hell owed his wife an apology when he got home. Maybe a bouquet of flowers. He took a mental note to stop off at the florist’s downtown to pick her up something on his way home.
“Roses, maybe?” He muttered to himself. Did she even like roses? He couldn’t help but notice how far they had grown apart since having Marie. He resolved to take notice a little bit more of their relationship, maybe that was the cure to what seemed to be wrong with Sarah, lately. “Daisies!” He almost shouted before clamping his teeth down on his tongue. That was it. He would be sure to bring her home some daisies.
He opened the door to their home, the bouquet clutched firmly in his left hand.
“Honey! I’m home!” He called out. Sarah shot him a dirty look from over her shoulder as she stormed through the kitchen working on preparing dinner. He realized what he had said had been mostly drowned out by the sound of Marie shrieking and wailing, strapped down in her high chair.
He gently lay the daisies down on the table as he calmly shushed Marie.
“I see she’s been giving you the ol’ run-around, today.” He said chuckling. She shot him another look over her shoulder. If looks could kill… He thought as he unbuckled his daughter from her chair. As he picked her up, his eyes drifted to Marie’s diaper swollen and dangling between her chubby thighs. His brow furrowed as he quickly glanced in Sarah’s direction, waiting for an explanation but none came. He opened his mouth to ask; to say something, but thought better of it.
Upon opening Marie’s diaper he was stunned. Feces were dried onto her little pink bottom so badly he had to scrub with the wipes until her behind was closer to a shade of red than pink. Blisters had broken out where excrement had been caked on worst and the diaper nearly exploded in his hand as he lifted it to toss in the nearby trash bin; his fingers sinking deep into the warm engorged gel confined on the inside of it.
Marie wailed and shrieked as he did his best to be gentle at the same time as being thorough. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes at the knowledge that his baby girl was being put through as much pain as she was at that time. How could Sarah have left her like this? He reached for the cream on the underside of the changing table when he noted it wasn’t there.
“Sarah? Honey? Where’s the diaper rash cream?”
“Which one? The one in the tube or the one in the tin?” She called back.
“Doesn’t matter. Whichever will work. Her bum is broken out something fierce.”
Sarah suddenly appeared behind him and held the little blue and white tube over his shoulder.
“Where was it?” He asked, more than a little shocked it wasn’t where it usually was kept. They tended to keep things rather tidy so they didn’t have moments where they had to search high and low for things needed for Marie.
“Oh, I needed it in the bathroom today.” She said. He let out a small sigh of relief. It had just been a fluke that Marie’s diaper had been as full as it was. He knew Sarah would never neglect her like this. What had he been thinking? He did his best to hold back the laughter, knowing Sarah would ask what was so funny. She loved Marie, she wouldn’t let something like this happen.
“Oh?” He asked, leaving his tone to be open, welcoming of an explanation as he slathered the white paste all to cover the rashes and sores, leaving no part of her backside uncovered.
“Yeah, I decided we should have a bath and I noticed her bum was a little red so I figured she might need some.” She stood behind him, picking invisible lint off the hem of her shirt. He glanced over his shoulder, letting the relief wash over him that his wife was properly caring for their daughter. She must’ve just gotten busy and hadn’t gotten the time to change her, that was all there was to it. He couldn’t expect her to be everywhere doing everything at once. He quickly slipped a fresh diaper under his daughter’s bottom, flipped the tabs up over the front waistband and swung her up into his arms, barraging her with kisses and tickles. Basking in the warmth of her little body and the sound of her giggles. This was true happiness the love he felt for his daughter and his wife.
As they entered the kitchen from Marie’s room, Sarah stopped at the table, scooping up the flowers and inhaling their scent as deeply as she could. Taking them in as he had taken in the familiar smell of his freshly changed baby.
“Oh, Derek! These are beautiful!” She gushed, burying her face deep into the bouquet. “What’s the occasion?”
“No occasion. I just wanted you to know how much I love you.” He smiled at the joy on her face. The wife he knew was happy, once again.
“Thank you.” He could hear the sincerity in every ounce of those words and it filled him with warmth. She returned to the kitchen pulling out a vase and placing them just so in into it. The glisten of the water in the clear, crystal vase caught his eye, dancing around the stems of the daisies as Sarah placed the whole thing on the table in front of him and Marie and then returning to the stove to finish making up dinner. He stared long into the vase until he could feel the water in it, soaking into his shirt. He quickly looked down to see the Marie had burped up. As he reached for a napkin, a thought kept niggling at the back of his mind that it wasn’t milk that she had burped up on his shirt, but what looked like water. His eyes drifted up to his wife as she floated around the kitchen, the happiest woman in the world.
Derek decided to stop in and have lunch at home today. He didn’t tell Sarah; he figured it would be a nice surprise as he hadn’t come home for lunch in what was probably a little over a year. He slipped inside quietly, in hopes he could take his wife off-guard. Potentially catch her in some endearing mother-daughter moment of bonding between her and Marie. He loved catching little glimpses of their times, that warm feeling deep inside that they caused him. He peered over in the living room as he entered. They weren’t in there but there was a stray cushion that had been removed from the couch, resting beside the changing mat they kept in the room for quick changes when they didn’t want to go all the way to Marie’s room to give her a fresh bum.
He quietly tip-toed into the open room and picked up the cushion, setting it gently down on the couch swiping any loose dirt off of the surface of it. His brow furrowed at the small amount of wetness there, almost cool to the touch. Why would it be wet? Everything inside of him wanted to call out to Sarah. A simple shout of ‘Honey?’ but he refrained. Something ominous was in the air. Something he needed to know as much as his mind told him he didn’t; it begged him not to go any further. He continued into the kitchen to find Marie sitting alone at the table in her high chair. The poor little baby girl had fallen asleep sitting up. Her jaw was slack leaving her tiny lips parted just slightly, allowing a mouthful of whatever mushy orange food she had been being fed to ooze out, sliding down off her bottom lip. She looked like she had been so tired that Sarah hadn’t even gotten a bite swallowed before she had fallen asleep.
A sigh mixed with a chuckle tumble from the back of his throat. She was probably only gone for a few seconds to get a cloth or even to go to the bathroom and Marie must’ve crashed. He couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when she returned not only to find their little girl asleep where she sat but also to find he had come home for lunch, too.
The feelings of dread began to settle and he slipped his phone out of his pocket to take a picture of the infant while he waited for Sarah. He was posting the picture to social media when the feelings started to return. He had been home for several minutes now and Sarah was still nowhere in sight.
As soon as he pressed ‘Post’, he slipped down the hall. The bathroom door was open and the light was off. The same was to be said about Marie’s room, where they kept all of their baby supplies, cloths included. So, where was Sarah?
He opened the door to their bedroom to find her tucked into their bed, sleeping away.
“What the Hell?” He shouted, hoping Sarah would hear. Hoping she would bounce up and give him a perfectly good explanation. But she didn’t. She lay sleeping soundly in front of him not moving. Not even stirring. Of all the things he had come home to this was by far the worse of it all. He stepped forward to shake her awake when he decided against it. He decided he should deal with their daughter first. The poor thing would wake up with a solid kink in the neck if left to sit there any longer.
Stopping into her room to grab a cloth and wet it in the bathroom on the way, he approached Marie as quietly as he could to not startle her. He quickly wiped the sweet potato smears off of her cheeks and lips and then tossed the cloth haphazardly on the table.
Picking her up from her high chair caused him a bit more grief than washing her up proved to be. She seemed oddly stiff and heavier than normal.
“Good God, you’re getting big!” He whispered as he finally managed to jimmy her out of her chair and place her on his shoulder.
As he approached her room, something hit him. She didn’t sit the same in his arms as she always had. She almost seemed colder. He swung her down off of his shoulder and looked at her face. His heart was beating in his ears and his stomach was somersaulting as he brought her little body to his face, resting her chest up against his ear, a motion that was almost ingrained into him from all the times he spent kissing and snuggling and tickling her. Nuzzling her belly button with his nose, breathing in the beautiful smell of her soap. The memories raced through his mind, flooding his head with them like a dam bursting forth.
All at once, he stopped breathing as he realized hers had stopped altogether. In the silence that was the absence of breath, he heard his phone ding. He slipped it out, almost as if he was on auto-pilot and looked at the notification. His mother had liked his post.
I logged on to type up my 250 words tonight only to find out that - with no rhyme or reason - 3000 words (about 10-ish pages; ~2 weeks worth of work for me) vanished.
Needless to say, I am absolutely distraught right now. This might not seem like much to most people but to me as a SAH mum to two littles with little time in a day THIS IS HUGE.
I'm hoping tomorrow I wake up and feel like rewriting all that I've lost but I think right after I get my kids down I'm just going to go to bed.... 😓
30,000 words reached (alternating between a chapter of Telltale Games' Batman: The Enemy Within and 250 word increments to make up having written 1000 words in an afternoon and playing 4 chapters of Batman - not bad if I do say so myself)
I haven't posted anything on here in while so I guess I should let everyone that cares know (although, that's very few of you) that I still exist.
A year from Thursday marks my son's first birthday. So since I was rather active here I've moved on to having a second child so my life got impossibly more difficult. I've been keeping up on reading and unfortunately haven't been doing much writing (terrible thing for an aspiring writer.)
I've never given much merit to New Year's resolutions but this year I decided I would write 250 words a day toward a story (a 10 minute job in my day which I can usually manage to squeeze in while my husband bathes the kids in the evening time). I have calculated it out and even if I gave myself a "weekend" of sorts that is 65,000 words in a year (a novel at minimum is usually around 70,000). Currently I'm on day 3 and have written 750+ words - more than I have managed to write in the past year or two.
I am hoping to be able to release a novel in about a year or so, so please stay tuned! 🌻
This year everyone seems to be doing most of their gift shopping on @amazon and online. SAVE THE PACKING PAPER. Have your kids paint it, colour on it, and decorate it in any way that is special to them and wrap your Christmas gifts for grandparents, family friends, relatives and whoever with it.
The kids get to do something fun that is helpful, the Christmas wrapping is super funky and awesome looking and your family gets special art made by your kids!
