Summertime, Part I

For some summer fun, I'm posting my short story "Summertime", from my Guppy Soup literary short story collection.

Guppy Soup by JT Therrien

Summertime 

Part I

Bright sunlight filtered into Eugenia's bedroom as she lay in bed dying. Her aged and decaying body shook with each labored breath. At ninety-six, this was surely her final battle with cancer. She couldn't sleep, hadn't slept in weeks: the sharp pain in her lungs too insistent to ignore. And what would happen when she couldn't feel the pain anymore?

She groaned, softly pressed her ear against the wallpaper, a field of repeating pink roses framed with a spray of white Baby's Breath. If she listened hard enough she heard Fred and Ethel Murtz, arguing about plumbing or a leaky pipe. Eugenia was unable to make out any of the details.

"Fred and Ethel," she whispered, pushing stale air through parched lips.

"What's that, Mother Adams?"

Fanny's high-pitched voice felt like an ice pick piercing Eugenia's eardrum. Eugenia groaned again. She pressed her fingers against her temples in the hopes of averting further agony. Fred and Ethel's voices faded away, dispersed by the sickening throbs in her head. Through a veil of rising nausea, Eugenia reluctantly let them go.

Even though Fanny had been married to Martin for twenty-one of her son's fifty-four years on Earth and, as the mother-in-law, Eugenia had made the required effort to welcome the loud and selfish woman into the family, admittedly mostly in the beginning, Eugenia had never gotten used to Fanny's grating voice. Whenever her daughter-in-law spoke Eugenia's skin would crawl, making her feel like a nervous cat coiled, ready to pounce. Upon further consideration, she had never taken much of a liking to her daughter-in-law's given name, either. Who in their right mind would name their daughter "Fanny"?

Eugenia sighed deeply, straining to lift the layer of oppressive hot air weighing her down and suffocating the life out of her. There was a time, a long, long time ago, when the hot summer weather had been much more enjoyable. Eating sweet, juicy watermelons, and swimming in the cool running waters of a shallow creek. That's what summers were all about.

"Round up my son for me, will you?" Eugenia asked Fanny without raising her head off the pillow.

Long, thin motes of dust, like wispy marble columns, swayed in the sunlight as Fanny harrumphed and left to fulfill her errand. Not one to be told what to do, that one, thought Eugenia as she chuckled to herself. Too bad. She'll have the run of the house soon enough.

She closed her heavy eyelids and waited for Martin. Slowly, tentatively at first, as if loitering at the frayed edges of consciousness for their cue, Fred and Ethel returned. The subject under discussion, a full-blown argument really, was a wedding. And a fur coat. Yelling, threats and loud tin-can laughter periodically drowned out the angry couple's voices.

Eugenia laughed.

TO BE CONTINUED

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I hope you've enjoyed this post. I'll be continuing the story over the next few weeks.

If you absolutely need to finish reading "Summertime" before I post the other parts, you can find Guppy Soup for Kindle on Amazon. The literary short story collection is also available on Smashwords for all other e-formats, including Kobo, ibooks, B&N, etc.