Thawed

               Here is the full story that earned First Place in the contemporary short story category at the Philadelphia Writers Conference this year. Please excuse the poor formatting, Word Doc's do not convert well to this blogs system and I'm just not patient enough to try to go through and fix the spacing today. Maybe another day. Enjoy:)

Thawed

by Melissa Hart

               His heavy eyes fought against him as he struggled to open them for longer than the shortest of seconds. Bright, glaring lights invaded his closed eyelids and added to his battle to open his eyes. He wanted- no, he needed -to see where he was and what was happening. If only his damned eyes would cooperate.

                Blips and beeps echoed through his head like high-pitched screams. What the hell is happening?

                Phillip was consumed by the noise and the light and the desperate need to open his eyes. He could hear far away voices speaking to him at the same time, one of them felt vaguely familiar but he couldn’t place it.

            “Phillip, listen to me. This is crazy.”

Where had he heard that voice, that line, before?

“Phillip, can you hear me?” said the second voice- an unfamiliar one- breaking through the squeals and beeps of machines. “Phillip. Phillip, can you wake up?”

“Phillip, can you listen to me? You don’t know the risks involved, no one does.”

                What the hell is happening? His eyes wouldn’t stay open, there was no hope his mouth would move in answer to the distant voice.

                “Phillip, if you can hear me try to focus on the sound of my voice” said the unfamiliar voice again, sounding closer.

                “Phillip, I am begging you not to do this.”

                Open up! Phillip silently screamed at his eyes to stay open. Finally, they relented and allowed him to open them, only to be blinded by glaring white lights. Squinting against the invading brightness, Phillip tried to find the source of the voices.

                A face came into focus. The face was only a pair of deep brown eyes peeking out from a green surgical mask and cap. There was no second face, no one else around that Phillip could see.

                “Wha… wha… wh…” Phillip tried to speak, but the words got stuck in his dry throat, cracking as if his words were brittle old pieces of paper that crumble when touched.

                “What is happening?” said the masked face, asking the question Phillip was unable to articulate. Phillip simply blinked in answer.

                “What are you thinking?” the unseen voice said, growing angry.

                Am I dreaming? Phillip wondered.

                The brown eyes smiled with excitement as the voice exclaimed simply “We did it Phillip, we brought you back.”

                Phillips thoughts were fuzzy. He felt as if he should know what the voice meant, but he could not remember.

                “No one can say for sure that this will work. What if it doesn’t? What happens to your money then?” The ghost voice was yelling now.

                “Rest now, Phillip.” said the voice with the eyes reassuringly. Phillip felt a pinch as a needle pricked his arm. “We will talk when you’re more awake, it’s been a big day.” The eyes smiled at Phillip one last time.

                “I can’t even talk to you right now, You’re making a big mistake,” said the ghost voice.

                Phillip closed his eyes and fell into a sedated sleep filled with dreams and voices that did not make any sense.

                                            

                Hours later, Phillip awoke more easily. His eyes opened at will and he found he could move, although stiffly. His thoughts were clearer but he still could not recall why he had awoken in a hospital.

                “Are these even actual medical Doctors Phillip? Or just mad scientists?”

                So I am dreaming. Maybe I’ve gone crazy.

                “Good, you’re awake.” The other voice spoke again and Phillip turned his head towards the sound. The face had a mouth this time, the mask and cap were gone. Pulling a chair to the side of Phillip’s bed, the doctor asked, “Can you speak?”

                “Ye…yes.” Phillip squeaked out the words and winced at the sound that came from his own throat. There was no trace of the formidable voice that belonged to the powerful Phillip James, this was the voice of an old man. The voice of a corpse.

                What the hell is happening to me?

                “Wonderful.” The doctor smiled at Phillip. He was obviously young, a fact that was apparent to Phillip by the unconcealed excitement written all over his face. “Do you know why you’re here?” asked the doctor.

                Phillip shook his head.

                “You don’t know what you’re doing Phillip. We don’t even know if these mad-scientist-Frankenstein-worshipping nut cases know what they are doing either.”

                “You came to this company a long time ago Phillip, you wanted our help to preserve your body when you passed away,” said the Doctor.

                “There’s a reason people die Phillip, we weren’t made to live forever.”

                “Cryogenics,” Phillip stated simply. He was starting to have an idea of why he was here.

                “Yes! That’s right Phillip! It worked and you were frozen cryogenically and brought back to consciousness. You were the first to make it through the process successfully,” the Doctor explained.

                “And what if it doesn’t work? Listen to me Phillip, I’m your brother for crying out loud. These things were not meant to be played with, you don’t know the ultimate price.”

                William. Yes, that’s right, William was against this. I remember…

“How long?” Phillip asked the Doctor.

                “One-hundred and fifty years, Phillip,” said the doctor. His smile took up his entire face and he looked as if he wanted to hop up and down in his seat as he spoke. “Phillip, we brought you back after a hundred and fifty years in the tank. This is wonderful news for science and medicine.” The doctor beamed at Phillip like a proud new father looking at his newborn son.

                “A hundred…” said Phillip, trailing of his words not out of inability too form them, but inability to process what he had just heard.

                “And fifty!” said the doctor.

                They actually did it. Phillip lay silent as he let it seep through his brain that he had been dead-no, frozen- for a hundred and fifty years and was lying thawed out in a hospital bed.

                “How much are you willing to pay? What price is too high?”

                Shut up William. You’ve lost this argument, I’m back.

 His heart was beating. His mind was thinking clear thoughts. His eyes could see. His hands could move. His lungs were taking in air. And they thought I was crazy, he thought. A small smile crept into the corners of Phillips lips. Phillip James is back. Watch out world, here I come.

“…certain sacrifices we had to make,” said the doctor. Phillip had been so lost in his own thoughts that he had not realized the doctor was still speaking. “I don’t want you to let these detract from the over-all miracle of you being brought back, but you have to know that you will not be a hundred percent of what you once were.”

“What price is too high?”

                The doctor was serious now. His face was still friendly, and his brown eyes continued to smile reassuringly but the naked excitement was gone from his voice and his face. As he continued to explain to Phillip that his revival had gone smoothly but not without concerns, Phillip began to get edgy.

“I don’t understand,” said Phillip. His voice came to him easy now, but it was still the croak of an aged man. “What sacrifices?”

“You have children Phillip, leave your money to them. Don’t risk it on a science that we don’t know much about.”

“Phillip, please understand that when you died cryogenics was still a new field of science,” Said the young doctor. “Scientists thought that the state you went into the tank was the state you would emerge in and that anything wrong with you at that time could be fixed in the future,” the doctor calmly explained. “We know now that just isn’t the case.”

“What sacrifices?” asked Phillip. He was growing impatient, he was Phillip James and he was used to calling the shots. In his old life no snot nose kid would stand there and go on and on without cutting right to the chase.

“Fine! Freeze your damn self if you have to, but at least…”

“A human body in a cryogenic state is kind of like a steak in the freezer,” said the doctor. “For a certain amount of time, the state it was in prior to freezing is preserved, but after awhile it does begin to degenerate. “ The doctor was beginning to get visibly nervous, the smile was still on his face but his eyes could no longer meet with Phillips and darted around the room instead. “A steak gets freezer burnt after too long, and given enough time in the freezer will eventually begin to rot.”

“… leave the company and the money to the kids.”

“What sacrifices?” repeated Phillip.

Rot? What the hell does a rotting steak have to do with me?

“We had to remove both of your legs, Phillip,” said the doctor simply. Meeting Phillip’s eyes with his own again, he added “and there are spots at various places on the rest of your body where we were unable to do anything about the decomposition.”

“Decomposition?” asked Phillip in disbelief.

“Phillip,” said the doctor, taking a deep breath before continuing, “you are essentially rotting from the outside in.” The doctor broke his eye contact with his patient again and looked down at his own feet.

“Rotting…” said Phillip in a hoarse whisper. How can I be rotting? Phillip thought. I was cryogenically frozen for Christ’s sake! “So I’m dying again,” said Phillip out loud. It was a simple statement, not a question. Phillip knew there was no way a rotting body would be able to survive.

“Not exactly,” said the doctor. “You will need to have daily injections of a preservative-basically a low dose of embalming fluid- but I believe we can hold off the deterioration for somewhere close to ten years. “ The doctor looked at Phillip again, “but I should warn you, your appearance is not what you were probably hoping for.”

“This is the most selfish God complex I have ever hear of!”

Shut up William! I’ve done it, I’ll live two lifetimes while your coward’s corpse is rotting (Rotting! How can I be rotting?) six feet under.

“”Mirror,” said Phillip.

“I don’t think…”

“Mirror.  Now.” Phillip would continue to demand things in this life as was his right as Phillip James, one of the world’s most wealthy men. No one, doctor or otherwise, would keep him from getting what he wanted. He got what he wanted in his old life and, damn it, he would get it in this life as well. Rotting skin or no rotting skin, no one would deny him what he asked for.

Looking into the mirror the doctor handed him Phillip cringed. His face looked like the corpse his voice sounded like. The whites of his eyes were graying and the pupils filming over, he had hollow spaces under his sinking eyes. The once pink flesh of his cheeks was now scattered with small gaping wounds that were turning green around the edges. His nose was bony and the nostrils seemed to be disintegrating. He was too scared of his own image to look for long and threw the mirror on the ground where it smashed into pieces.

“What price are you willing to pay to live forever Phillip? To bequeath your money to yourself after your death… it’s the most presumptuous and absurd thing I have ever heard of!”

At least my corpse can still move and breath, William. So I guess I get the last laugh anyway.

Calming himself, Phillip realized it didn’t matter. He had come this far, he would go farther. He was still one of the richest men alive.

He would buy himself a cure.

               

Sneek Peek

It is official; I have begun work on writing a book. A memoir, to be exact. I have completed chapter one so far and expect to finish at least half of a rough manuscript by the end of the summer, under the guidance of a very supportive instructor. I am excited and more than a little nervous for this venture.

I don't know what, if anything, will come of this project but at this point I can only remain optimistic. Each one of you can help me greatly by kindly reading the small excerpts I will be posting here regularly and sharing these posts with your friends. The broader my readership, the greater my platform and, therefore, the better my chances of eventually publishing this memoir. Thank you all in advance, I appreciate the support.

Here is the first excerpt from chapter one, enjoy!
Thanks for reading,

Missie

In the Shadow of Blame

by Melissa (Lutz) Hart

Excerpt from chapter one: Everyone Was Hammer Dancing

                I watched as John, Mom, and Eric ate spaghetti, praying that they would take me to the hospital. I didn’t want to bleed forever and I wanted the pain to go away.

                As Mom cleaned up the dinner dishes, John took my hand away from my face and looked at my wound. My “boo-boo” he called it. The word sounded even more childish than usual coming from a muscle bound brick layer.

                “Pfft. You don’t need stitches,” he said. “God will heal you. We just need to pray about it.”

                He kneeled before me and placed one hand on my forehead and the other on my shoulder. I could see his eyeballs bulging beneath his lids as he sputtered  in tongues one minute and begged God to heal me in English the next.

                Later, as Mom came into my room to say goodnight, she sat on my bed and whispered to me.

                “I wish he would have just agreed to go to the hospital. Praying for a wound like that isn’t going to help anything,” she said.

                Who cared if he had agreed or not? Wasn’t she in control of what happened to her children? That was her famous claim, wasn’t it? That only she was in control of the decisions about her kids. So why the difference this time?

                Never one to keep my mouth shut when my opinion differed from my Mom’s, I asked as much.

                “Someday you will understand, Missy,” she said.

                No. No, I wouldn’t understand.

excerpt of "Faith Destroyed"

Recently, I was lucky enough to have one of my fictional short stories selected for publication in Reading Area Community College's literary publication, Legacy. I have decided to share part of it here for those of you who may be interested in reading it but do not have access to the journal.

Due to the fact that more than a few people have been disturbed by the content of this story, I will only be posting about half of it. If you would like to read the rest, please leave me a comment with your e-mail address and I will gladly send you the second half.

I need to stress that this content is dark in nature, stop reading now if you are easily upset. Also, please keep in mind that this is a FICTIONAL piece, therefore nothing in this story is based on true events. Some of you who are very close to me or have read my non-fiction writing may recognize certain imagery or dialogue. The writer writes with the tools she has collected, so yes I do tend to draw from my memory bank when writing fiction, but the events themselves are NOT based on any actual experiences.

Thank you for letting me share, enjoy!
Missie

Faith Destroyed

By Melissa (Lutz) Hart



Faith awoke to the sharp sounds of shattering glass right before the cat ran terrified into her room. Her heart sank and her tummy tightened.

Mommy is throwing things again.

                “It’s OK Gracie, I’ll protect you,” Faith whispered unconvincingly as she gently pulled her pet onto the dingy mattress lying on the floor. Cuddling Grace to her chest, she tried not to worry. The sun was only beginning to come up, and she wondered if she would be going to school today. She hated the days that her mother kept her home from school. Her second grade teacher was as kind to her as she wished her mother would be. She often secretly pretended that Miss Smith was her Mommy and tried hard to always do her work well so her teacher would smile and tell her how smart she was.   “Shhh kitty, it’s going to be alright,” Faith quietly said to the cat who had started to meow loudly. “Don’t let her hear you.”

                Crash. Another object met with something solid. “You goddamn bastard! You fucking drunk!”

                “See Gracie, it’s not us she’s mad at this time.” The small girl’s lip was trembling, but she knew well enough that tears wouldn’t make anything better when her mother was on one of her rampages. Tears only served to make Faith’s life worse because falling tears meant (I’ll give you something to cry about) a spanking with the belt.

“Faith! Get down here. Now!” Her mother screamed up the stairs. Still clutching the cat to her body, Faith got up from her meager bed and slowly made her way down to see what she was wanted for.

Faith’s stomach fluttered nervously as she walked the short distance from her barren room to the cluttered stairway.  Her feet felt heavy and weak, she had to force left in front of right, but her arms felt strong and her hold on Grace never faltered.

“I didn’t do anything wrong this time, Gracie, I promise.” Faith whispered into an orange tipped ear, “I’ve been a really good girl.”At least, Faith hoped she had been. Sometimes it seemed to Faith that the harder she tried to please her mother and step-father, the angrier they became with her. With every effort-laden step, Faith sent up a silent prayer that she wouldn’t evoke her mother’s wrath.

Dear God, please don’t let me get the belt this time.

Left foot forward.

God, Grandma says to ask you and you’ll listen.

Right foot forward.

Please God, the belt hurts.

Left foot.

 I promised Gracie we would be OK this time, God.

Right foot.

Please hear me, just this once, I don’t like the belt, it scares Gracie.

“What the hell is taking so long?” Faith’s mother yelled impatiently, breaking into Faith’s internal plea to a God who never seemed to answer the child’s requests. Faith quickened her pace and hurried down the stairs, expertly maneuvering around the scattered pieces of dirty laundry that littered the dark staircase.

Wordlessly, Faith walked towards the kitchen and stopped in the doorway with Grace still in her arms. Her step-father sat at the card table where Faith ate macaroni and cheese or a bologna sandwich alone every night while her step-father was at his latest job and her mother rested on the couch.

The top of the table was strewn with a night’s worth of empty bottles and an overflowing ashtray.  His head down and an empty beer bottle clutched between both hands, he did not speak. There was anger in his tensed back and stiff shoulders, she could tell. She could not see his eyes, but she knew they would be bulging out of their sockets the way they tended to do when he was madder than mad, which was any time he did not get his way. According to her step-father, life was out to get him and things never went his way, so he was mad a lot.

Her mother was on the other side of the table. Leaning against the countertop behind her, her left arm was bent back and propped casually on the peeling brown laminate. Her right arm was held up in front of her, moving only when she brought the cigarette she held in her hand to her mouth. This was her mother’s usual stance in the kitchen. Faith would have mistaken her mother for almost calm if it wasn’t for her eyes glaring at Faith’s step-father. Her mother’s eyes seared through the unmoving figure at the table as if trying to burn him with pure will.

“Put that damned thing down and get the broom,” her mother said, not looking at Faith who was standing small and silent at the kitchen entrance. “You’re going to clean this up.” She pointed to a mess of broken green glass, still staring down the man at the kitchen table. “And put some shoes on, I can’t afford to take you to the doctor if you get cut.”

                Faith looked hesitantly at her mother. “But Gracie will get hurt if I put her down.” As soon as she said the quiet words, she knew it was a mistake. Her mother’s venom filled eyes finally broke focus on her step-father and snapped towards Faith.

                “You. Fucking .Defiant. Child.” Her voice was clipped and dangerous as she snubbed out her cigarette. “I said clean up the glass, and you’re going to clean it up.” She then lunged towards Faith, grabbing the cat from her daughter’s tight grip.  “The fucking cat can go outside. Maybe she will get hit by a car and then you will learn to do what I tell you to do.” Her mother walked with angrily rigid steps over to the door at the side of the kitchen and effortlessly tossed the cat outside. The cat screeched in shock as its body hit the ground.

                Tears began to betray Faith as she watched Grace scramble to her feet. The door slammed shut as Faith’s voice also betrayed her, “NOOO!”  Her voice husky with tears, she ran to the door begging her mother to let Grace back inside. She knew she shouldn’t, she knew she would get the belt for arguing with her mother, but sometimes Faith felt something come over her and she could not fight against it. Her chest tightened, her body felt stiff and electric and would not listen to her head. Fear of the belt and her parents wrath was not enough to keep her from fighting back, fighting for what she wanted, what she needed. She felt like another girl at times like this, as if she wasn’t herself but just a voice inside someone else, begging her to listen to her mother and not fight back.

                That other girl wasn’t listening to Faith again.

                “Mommy, Mommy, please. Please let Gracie come inside, I don’t want her to get hit,” Faith said, pleading with tears flowing unashamed down her pale face.  She yelled, “Please, Mommy, I’m sorry.” Her voice was high with desperation as her mother blocked the door with her body. Faith pulled unsuccessfully at the door knob, trying with all of her childish might to overpower her mother’s strength.

                Her mother’s hand shot out and caught a handful of Faith’s uncombed hair and yanked her away from the door.  She began to scream back at Faith, “Sorry? You’re sorry? I’ll show you sorry.”

                “No. I will,” said her step-father. Speaking for the first time since Faith had walked into the turbulent kitchen, his voice was too calm, eerie almost. Faith stopped fighting against her mother’s hold and looked towards him.

 Still sitting, he had turned in his chair to watch the scene at the kitchen door. His eyes blazed and his jaw clenched, unclenched, clenched again. His fists around the beer bottle now held in his lap had the same rhythm: clenching and unclenching, clenching again.

“I got this Bill, finish your damn beer and let me take care of it,” Faith’s mother said, her voice spitting with distaste.

Faith watched as her step-father began to shake in anger at her mother’s dismissal of him. She knew it made him mad when her mother didn’t listen to him. He was much scarier than her mother, and he hit harder. The other girl who sometimes over-took Faith’s better sense slowly drained away as Faith quickly moved her head to avoid the beer bottle that had flown from her step-fathers hands.

The bottle had been nearly empty, only a few drops splashed onto Faith’s cheek before it shattered against the wall behind her. Her scalp stung from the hair that had been pulled when she yanked away from the hands still entangled in it.

“I SAID I will,” her step-father bellowed, rising from his chair and knocking it over. He moved towards Faith, she tried to sink away from his grasp but he caught her by the wrist. Where was that other girl now? Why did she only ever appear long enough to get Faith into trouble but was never there to help her get out of it?

 Hatred seeped from her step-father’s pores along with last night’s alcohol. “I’ll show you both sorry,” he said as he tightly squeezed Faith’s arm and jerked her away from Faith’s mother, leaving strands of hair streaming from her empty hand.

                “Ow! Daddy, you’re hurting me,” said Faith. Her voice was still pleading, but weaker, now. Her face was drenched in tears that would not cease. She knew what would come next, what always came next:  (I’ll give you something to cry about) the belt.

                “I’m not your Daddy,” he said. His eyes were bulging out of their sockets farther than Faith had ever seen them bulge before. She had a momentary fear that they would fall out of his head and land right on top of her. Cringing with this thought, she tried to pull away but his hold on her was too tight and she could not escape. “Your daddy didn’t want you or your mother and now I’m stuck with both of you,” he said as he pulled harder on Faith’s arm, moving her farther away from her mother. “Well, now I’m going to show you both how sorry you really are. Sorry little bitches, that’s what you two are.” He began to unbuckle his belt with his free hand.

(Ending available by request.)