Have we been at this long enough now that I can lose the lame intro paragraph? I think so.
The Rules
* You get five minutes to write a piece of prose in any style or genre.
* You must directly reference today’s prompt: prescription
* Post your entry as a comment to this post.
That’s it. I’ll close the contest at 1:45. We all know how this works, we can all be grown-ups about it and if you are confused or just want to whine, feel free to email me.
At the close of the contest, this week’s guest judge, Shianan Fae, otherwise known as @ShiananFae will nominate five finalists. I’ll put the nominees in the poll on the side of the page, and at 9:30 PM EST I’ll close the poll and declare the winner.
For updates, you can subscribe to my RSS Feed, or follow me on twitter.
What’s the prize? Well, nothing, obviously. But we’ll all agree to tweet and/or blog about the winner of today’s contest so their fame and fortune will be assured.
A Few Notes:
* In the interest of time and formatting, it’s best to type straight into the comment box. It’s also smart to do a quick highlight and copy before you hit “post” just in case the internets decide to eat your entry.
* I reserve the right to remove hate speech or similar but I’m not too picky about the other stuff.
* This is all for fun and self-promotion. So be sure to put your twitter handle at the end of your post and a link to your blog if you have one.
Now…. GO!
@InkMuse
Jill sat on the empty park swing, the seat beneath her a hard plastic board and her fingers wrapped around the cold metal chains. She swung lightly, her beaten sneakers dragging twin track marks in the sand below. She stared across the street, past the open field, at what had once been her best friend’s home. She stared with unblinking eyes—with eyes that stung from the chill of winter, the bite of wind, and the glaze of tears.
How could the doctors think a piece of paper and a few pills could solve her problems? Crystal wouldn’t be coming back, and no prescription would change that. There’d be no more tiny tea parties in her front yard, packed inside a Rainbow Bright lunch pail. No more giggles between tents made of chairs and blankets and lit only by flashlights they’d have to smack against the palms of their tiny hands to make work.
Jill shook from the sobs trapped inside her chest. The tears she couldn’t let fall, in fear she might never stop crying. Even at her age, she knew kids shouldn’t die. Kids who got sick had mommies to give them medicine and tuck them in bed with cartoons to watch and everything would be okay again, real soon.
They didn’t get tumors in their brain, and they didn’t die.
They weren’t there one day, somebody’s best friend in third grade, and then gone the following year.
As the weeks passed after Crystal’s death, Jill always found herself in the same place, sitting on the same swing, alone. She packed away her Little Ponies, her Polly Pockets, and her Cupcake Dolls. Packed them all away—even the Gumbi figurines and the Popples.
She didn’t watch Care Bears anymore, or Fraggle Rock, or Alf. She didn’t play with her Skip-It, and she never would again. She’d just sit on this swing, until Crystal came back. She had to come back.
As it was getting dark, Jill picked up the cardboard box of old toys, and carried them over to Crystal’s house. She knocked on the door and she waited until someone answered and she prayed it would be Crystals face that filled the doorway, only a few inches over her own, to invite her in to play.
Crystal’s mom opened the door and invited Jill inside. Jill set the box of toys on the kitchen table and sat down.
“Maybe you could—I thought Sarah might want these,” Jill said, nudging the box closer to Crystal’s mom.
Crystal’s mom reached out and placed her hand over Jill’s. Quickly, she pulled her hand back and covered her mouth. Tears wet her face. She sniffed and wiped the tears away with the inside wrist of her robe.
Jill swallowed around the tight, painful knot in her throat. “I didn’t say goodbye.”
Crystal’s mom got up from the table, opened the kitchen junk drawer, and returned to set down a small pad of paper and a pen. “Here. Tell her now. It’s never too late to say goodbye.”
Jill wrote a short note.
::Crystal—I will never forget you. Love always, Jill::
Crystal’s mom tied the letter to a helium balloon, and they let it go into the night sky.
That night, Jill flushed the rest of her prescription down the toilet. She didn’t send any more balloon notes after that and she never said goodbye, either. Instead, she found an old journal she’d never gotten around to writing in and began to write stories of their friendship. Over time, the journal filled, but Jill continued to write her stories, over and over again in her heart.
Love, she found, was undying, and far more powerful than any prescription.
She says the tablets are for her agoraphobia, and she must take them at 7pm each day. I don’t know why she takes them, she hasn’t been outside for 30 years.
I think she she likes having something to call it, a label, almost as though if she didn’t take them, she wouldn’t have a real problem.
She didn’t like it when I had the same prescription and told her they were prescribed for back pain and they were basically a muscle relaxant.
It seemed to take the power of her little white tablets away.
The next day she took her tablets at 9am and went outside for the first time in 30 years.
@sheenaIgnatia on twitter
I stared at the slip of paper.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
“It’s a prescription, just something for the tremors, until we can get you back in here next week.”
“Next WEEK? I can’t fucking hobble around with half a leg for a fucking WEEK!”
“Hanna, I understand you’re upset, but it’s just a minor malfunction, you’re built to be able to accommodate for these types of scenarios. You have more than half a leg, in fact, you have the other three working perfectly fine and this one’s just short circuiting, you still have some use of it.”
“Give me a break! You try to work around a leg that’s ‘just short circuiting’ and then we’ll talk. ‘Just short circuiting’ my ass.”
“I hope that’s your mouth short circuiting and not the way you think you’re allowed to talk to your ‘chanic.”
“Yeah, exactly. You better fix my fucking mouth because apparently you’ve fucked that up too.”
“I swear I should have junked you the moment they first assigned you to me.”
“Yeah? Well, junk you!”
“Are you sure?”
The man behind the counter looked at the slip, and then back to me and nodded.
I sighed and took the bottles of pills from him. Three in all. I couldn’t believe it. Walking back home I looked over the bottles. They were normal prescription bottles, brown with white caps. They had those white stickers on them with the blue strip and an amazing amount of text given the size. They were all named things I couldn’t pronounce, and promised a series of potential side effects that had somewhere between zero and slightly more than zero chance of affecting me, including erectile dysfunction. I laughed at that one. Why do they put that on medicine made for women?
I walked up the front door and looked at my husband. He shut off the TV, which had been playing the news, and looked up at me hopefully.
“Did you get them?”
“Yup. Three bottles.”
I tossed him the bag and he looked at it and back to me.
“So, does that mean it’s all over?”
“Only so long as I take the pills,” I sigh. “But, yeah. It’s all over.”
“Thank God,” he says.
Honestly, I agree with him. It was a nightmare, living with what was happening to my mind. But, still. I look over at the couch my husband is sitting on and see the little green dragon, having a panic attack at the site of the pill bottles, and I think I’m going to miss the little delusions.
-Chris Blanchard (@blanchardauthor)
@noellepierce
He reached for the stethoscope and placed it in his ears. Thoughtfully, he held the other end in his hands, warming it, before placing it on her chest.
“Your heartbeat sounds good.” He paused, reaching for his bag of instruments. “Now I’ll look at your ears and mouth.”
He clicked the button on the scope and turned her head to see in each of her ears. “Say ‘ahh’.”
She opened her mouth wide, as he instructed.
“Nothing out of the ordinary there.”
“What brought you in to the office, today?”
“I woke up feeling sick.”
“Hmmm. Well, I think you should take this medicine. It will make you feel better.”
He looked at her, his large brown eyes certain.
“Okay.” She took the prescription from his hand and took a bite.
A beautiful smile lit his face, and she watched her four-year-old son run away, squealing in delight, as she ate her chocolate chip cookie.
The pills made a fun plunking sound as they hit the water. At first he tested it by dropping just one or two into the toilet, but the curious plink, plink, plink enticed him to tip the whole bottle in. They floated around the bowel, a colourful mixture that represented pain and uncertainty. Bradford knew he shouldn’t have done it. And he knew he was going to be in big trouble. Trouble always found him, or as his mother always corrected the teachers when they said it—trouble always found him.
It didn’t take long for the gel capsules to become soft in the water and soon they broke away, the two ends twisting apart. His shoulders felt heavy and he hunched them inwards. Sometimes life felt like a brick of disappointment in his stomach. Every time he turned a corner a long stretch of road spanned out in front of him and at the end, another corner. There were too many corners to turn. He wanted to hit one of those nice straight stretches of road that went on as far as the eye could see. Like the roads up in the prairies where the wheat danced on either side as you drove past.
He pulled out his penis and began pissing on the pills as they disappeared. It felt invigorating to do things he knew he shouldn’t be doing. It was empowering not to care. A bang at the bathroom door startled him and he pissed on the floor. Thump, thump, thump.
“Bradford, what the hell are you doing in there?”
“Nothing, mom.”
“Are you up to no good? You’re always up to no good.”
“I’m not up to no good, mom.” He looked in the toilet. The pills were nearly gone, and only his urine remained.
He sighed.
“Bradford, baby. Open the door. Mommy needs her pills, Mommy needs her prescription.”
He felt like crying, but tears wouldn’t stop the hurt. They never did. Instead, he reached out and flushed the toilet. The water swirled, mesmerizing him, as it took his waste and the capsules away. If only he could flush himself too.
@TL_Tyson
Happiness is a Pill Called…
‘It’s what living is all about,’ the pusher said.
‘Not too sure about that, my friend.’
He wasn’t convinced. A pill that could make you happy? Surely not. He’d heard about Prozac, everyone had. SSRIs: re-righting chemical imbalances and such like.
‘You want some?’ the guy was insistent.
‘Not sure that I do.’ He looked the pusher straight in the eye; ‘Doctor, I think I’ll find my happiness some place else.’
I see I spelled bowl wrong. Sigh. *hangs head*
He stared at the innocuous looking box, picking it up and turning it over and over in his hands, almost, but not quite, fondling it, before returning it to the usual spot. When his hands went back to it for the third time he gave in, breaking the seal and sliding the contents out to stare at him, mutely accusing.
‘It’s not like I’m hurting anyone,’ he decided as he finished unpacking and assembling his newest toy.
“It isn’t going to work,” his lover announced from the doorway. “You’re only fooling yourself.”
“I have a prescription.”
“A prescription for disaster,” came the muttered reply. “Look, if you’re going to do this I’m outta here.”
“Not fair.”
“What does fair have to do with it?”
“You’re the one who asked me to try.”
“And now I’ve changed my mind. I’d rather see you keep smoking. If I have to look at you sucking on that silly fake cigarette I may laugh myself to death.”
“Fine. If you’d rather I die of lung cancer.”
“No, but I can think of MUCH better things for you to put in your mouth if you need to suck on something.”
Twitter @SesshasWorld
When I’m about to die, and my life is flashing before my eyes, this will be the moment I remember.
My father walking out of the doctor’s office, his hands balled up into tight little white knuckled fists. My mother crying softly to herself in the corner, nearly doubled over, her posture saying what the volume of her sobs do not.
And the doctor, sitting across from me on a tiny stool that makes him eye level with me, even though I’m standing.
“Daddy, please? It wasn’t my fault, I promise,” I begged him to stay.
He kept walking.
“Now, I can’t give you a prescription for the nausea, but if you stay hydrated and get plenty of rest, it’ll pass with time.”
I wasn’t sure when I fainted, or when the nurses picked me up off the floor. The only thing I remember was feeling the crushing weight of hundreds of doors to the future slamming shut. Feeling the weight of hundreds of judgmental looks that would follow me wherever I went.
I told him no. I didn’t want my first high school dance to be like that. But he insisted. Forcibly. I’m only 15…if a senior from the varsity wrestling team wants something from me, he’s going to have no problem taking it.
But most of all, I felt the weight of the baby growing in my stomach. All the love and hugs and warmth that girls dream about giving to their babies – I would have to overcome the weight of what happened that night every time I looked in my baby’s eyes.
The doctor and nurses left the room, and I cried. I stayed for nearly an hour, and they never asked me to leave.
@pfallerj
By the time I excuse myself to go to use the bathroom it’s already half past eleven and I realize, snaking through the small hallway that runs past her bedroom with the black and white prints of burned-out buildings lining the wall, that I’ve been putting almost five hours worth of effort into this girl, like actual effort, and I’m wondering where the night’s going to go. It was a good sign, I guess, that she invited me back to her place after dinner, that she suggested we open a bottle of wine, which we inhaled promptly and have since moved on to a stray six pack buried at the back of her fridge, and an even better sign she’s moved closer to me on the couch after almost every sip of alcohol, and has, seemingly, found my jokes funnier and funnier as the night’s worn on.
In the bathroom, I quickly go to the sink and splash water on my face, feeling tired from the wine. Plus, I’m not use to these marathon courting sessions, I guess. Not that I mind. Just…takes a lot out of you. I dry off with a beige towel hanging on the back of the door and can’t help it but begin studying the small room, the matching beige bathmats on the floor, a small shelving unit hung over the back of the toilet and filled with various lotions and moisturizers, things she knew I’d see and left out on purpose, I bet, to show she takes care of herself. I look in the mirror and fix my hair in a few places and, turning to leave, suddenly get this overwhelming sense to check her medicine cabinet, a faux pas of the most heinous sort, but before I can even stop myself from thinking such a thing I realize my hands, acting on their own, have already opened the small door, careful not to make any sound.
I begin rummaging around: toothpaste, floss, mouth wash, some aspirin. I realize everything seems normal, that she seems normal, and I’m about to leave and forget I ever looked, but see an orange prescription vial with the label facing the back, so I can’t see. I turn the bottle slowly and see it says “Clozapine,” a name I don’t know, and just under it, in small letters, “Antipsychotic medications are indicated for nearly all acute psychotic episodes in patients with schizophrenia.” I feel my stomach rise in me, I wonder if I can believe anything she’s been telling me all night, about her previous relationships and how they all ended abruptly, and, fearing for my life, perhaps foolishly, I hear a knock at the bathroom door.
“Are you in there?” she says opening the door slowly. “I have to show you something.”
@robhollywood
“I have to take it!”
May shakes her head at me, her eyes bleeding with disbelief. She looks like my mother did when I wet the bed or threw up in the car, love and dying hope and disappointment all rolled together into one tight, eye-shaped package.
“I can stop anytime I want to, you know that,” I try to reassure. I shake the little orange plastic cylinder to emphasise my sincerity. “The doctor said I had to, to make sure everything heals allright. It’s like physical therapy, only without the physical.”
I point to where it says my name on that little label, black on white in computer generated script. The little pills inside slosh from one side to the other.
“Honey,” May says, looking everywhere but at me, anywhere but at the little orange box. “That was months ago. I don’t know why they keep letting you refill that prescription.”
Now I’m shaking my head in time to the rattling pills.
“Because I need it, that’s why!” I stomp my left leg, the one that caused all this. It twinges a little and I make a point of wincing. “See? I need this.”
May turns and starts to walk away.
“May! Please!” I almost run after her before I remember my leg is supposed to hurt. “May, I need it, I swear!”
She doesn’t turn around, doesn’t look back, and my heart grows tight. I try to take a deep breath and fail, lungs constricting and blood rushing from my face.
“May! I need it!” I shout and I shout but she’s gone, and only when I hear her car start do I realize what it is I should have said.
May, I need you.
I struggled to cope with the amazing and truly vibrant colours that flooded my vision. The prescription said to take only one every 12 hours but I was on a mission. I wanted euphoria and I wanted it now. My stomach heaved but I pressed my hands tighter against my mouth. He was outside the door, banging and screaming but today, I was in control. I’m in charge. I will see this to the end. The swirling sensation eventually dragged me down to the abyss. I fell into peace at last.
@scribblingirl
Walking through the hallways of her office, Kaley began to sweat again. “This stress will be the death of me.”
She fumbled through her purse, hoping to hear that familiar rattle. A soothing sound that worked as a child, now would be solution to her work day stress. She finally found what she was looking for, but there was no rattle this time.
Kaley pulled an empty orange bottle from her purse and realized that her trouble was just beginning. She swiftly dialed the number located on the bottle’s label, only to find that it was no longer in service. Rummaging through her purse once again, she found her therapists number.
The dial tone continuously rang on her phone for what seemed like an eternity. There was a sudden pause in sound and she gasped for air, hoping that her therapist would answer.
Silence.
Kaley dialed the number once again, but there was still silence. She was now starting to lose her edge and decided to go to the pharmacy across the street.
“Sir, I need to get this prescription filled as soon as possible!” Kaley said to the pharmacist technician. When he began to comply she released a sigh of relief. The technician came back with an urgent look upon his face though.
“Ma’am, it would appear your doctor has been arrested for illegally prescribing pills to people. I’m requested to contact the authorities immediately to ensure you are not involved.”
She had no time to react, no time to think. Kaley swiftly turned and ran through the doors, right into the arms of the police officer. She was then detained and shoved into the back of the officer’s car.
The officer than brought her to her home, and to her front door. When he opened her front door, all of Kaley’s friends immediately yelled surprise. She forgot her own birthday.
“What NOW Karl?”
“Just got a call. Your prescription is ready.”
Abe looked around the poker table. None of the other players would meet his gaze.
“Yeah, ok. Thanks Karl.”
The plague started ten years ago. It took the billion dollar pharma companies five years to create a ‘maintenance drug.’
Which worked fine if you had money, connections or weren’t the two and a half billion people who’d died already.
Abe tossed in a few chips and said, “Call!”
The rest of the goons all folded, made their excuses and left in a hurry. Abe collected the chips from the table.
“Heh. Works every time,” Abe muttered, chuckling to himself.
Abe tossed a few of the chips to Karl and said, “Nice one. Same time next week?”
Karl grabbed the chips, nodded the scurried out of the basement.
Abe pocketed his winnings, grabbed his hat and left as well.
The streets of Chicago were practically deserted. Abe put his head down and hurried along fourth street. ‘Deserted’ didn’t mean dangerous.
He’d been running various scams since the plague had wiped out any sense of an economy. It kept him fed, for the most part. And He’d been told he was immune to the plague, so it made him no never mind.
He got to his apartment door, turned the key in the lock and entered.
That’s when he coughed.
He held his hand to his mouth and saw the blood.
“No!” He gasped “I’m immune…’
Abe Collapsed in a heap.
At no time did Sandy consider pharmaceuticals a viable option. Sure, Doctor Therapist Lady handed her a new one every time she popped in to discuss the latest ramblings of Her Friends, but she liked Her Friends entirely too much to seriously consider saying goodbye to them, even if they were not, technically, real.
“But what IS real?” she asked, on more than one occasion, causing Doctor Therapist Lady to equivocate in a maddeningly nonspecific fashion, generally ending with, “What do YOU think is real?” Which was stupid. Sandy’s problem was not that she had Friends, it was that that none of the ostensibly REAL people around her could see or hear Her Friends.
“Real is a commonly agreed upon Truth,” Sandy suggested once. This had Doctor Therapist Lady very excited because it sounded like Progress, Real Progress. Then Sandy added that her personal list of people she would seek the opinion of as regards the nature of this commonly agreed-upon Truth would start with Her Friends.
And then Doctor Therapist Lady handed her another prescription.
As Sandy reached the last step for the door outside, she ruminated on this and other misgivings she had regarding her Not At All Friend, Doctor Therapist Lady. The woman had a cat, and she spoke to the cat all the time, and the cat basically ignored her and everyone else, yet Doctor Therapist Lady acted as if the cat was talking back. Here Sandy was, supposedly seeking a solution to the problem raised by the fact that Her Friends, while decidedly Real, could not be seen or heard by anyone but her, and the person who was supposed to be fixing this confused the random wanderings of a feline with sentience.
But none of that mattered, Sandy decided as she stepped out onto the roof. because today Her Friends finally explained The Truth to her. The Real Truth: she (Sandy) was not an ordinary human. That was why she could see and hear Her Friends but nobody else could.
Better than that, Sandy could fly.
@GeneDoucette
Time’s UP!
For a minute there, I thought I was going to come up blank this week. I’m still not sure exactly what that is in my comment box. 😉
Thanks again, everyone! I love seeing all the comments popping up and the great stuff y’all pull out of your hats in only five minutes. I’m excited. And I think I see new faces! Off to read (ok, but first I’m going back to the grill and picking up the onion rings they left out of my order because I’m really, seriously unhappy about that.)
Poll should be up by 3:00.
They say that it’s magic. They say it’s love at first sight. They say that the instant you hear your baby cry, you get it. But it’s not true, at least, not for everyone.
Jane stepped off the platform and onto the red line train that would take her home. It was her first day back to work after two years home with her Son, Michael.
The bottle of perscription anxiety pills rattled ominously in her purse as the train jittered along down the track. When the doors opened at the next platform, the rush of wind made Jane glance up directly into the eyes of a shy, clean looking kid making his way through the crowd.
She didn’t know how long she was staring at him, maybe a five seconds, maybe 30, but she couldn’t bring herself to take her eyes off his face. There wasn’t anything particularly extraordinary about this kid, and she didn’t know what about him had struck her. Perhaps that his eyes were the same shade of brown, or perhaps it was the slightly messy way he wore his hair that reminded her of Michael. He fidigeted uncomfortably under her gaze, turning to the side slightly and she quickly dropped her eyes.
That was her moment of magic- the instant when she got it. Though she loved him, Michael had never really felt like her child. She had never really felt like a mom. She always wondered if there was something wrong with her, or why that ‘instant bond’ hadn’t happend. But sitting there, she realized that for the first time in her life she was looking at that boy as someones son, as what her son would someday be. She was looking at her future, and in that moment she had never felt more filled with joy. She had never felt more like a mother.