‘Piggy in the Middle’

Frazer: Hi – Lily?

Lily: Yes, it’s me.

Frazer: I can hear you but I can’t see you.

Lily: My webcam’s not working properly, so when I use Skype, I’m able to view the caller but he or she may only hear my voice.

Frazer: O.K., this’ll do. I’m phoning to check whether you’ll be joining us in February. Most people from our George Clayburn High School senior class of 1967 are dead keen to meet up and swap notes. After 47 years it’s taken some effort to track everyone down. Amy Hutton’s agreed to be host. If you decide to join us, I’ll email you the directions.

Lily:  That’s good. But I don’t know whether I can go. It’ll mean a lot of travelling and …

Frazer: Aren’t you interested? Several people have said they’d like to meet you again, especially after seeing the picture we used on the reunion Facebook page.

Lily: Yeah. I – er – well, I wish you hadn’t used it, Frazer. How the hell you found it – who gave it to you – beats me. It’s very aggravating.

Frazer: ‘Aggravating’? That’s a harsh term. The photo’s a charming memory of you with Rosie and Beth on the last day of term before we all chilled out  during the great ‘summer of love’.

Lily: Not me! I was the tubby, tatty stump, dumped for compare and contrast between two long-stemmed, flowering beauties. Rosie and Beth were both stunningly pretty; smiles on legs. I was just the fall-guy for all the  fatty jokes. Even the visiting French teacher, Mme DuPont remarked that every time she saw me I had become grosse et grasse – fatter and fatter.

Frazer: I remember you as quiet and reserved. We never saw you in the Plough and Harrow on Friday night or at the The Two Whispers nightclub which opened on Fresh Fields Road. What happened?

Lily: I’ll tell you, although it’s not the sort of thing that ‘nice’ girls once  ever discussed with boys. I became enormously fat after being prescribed a contraceptive pill to regulate bad periods. The treatment was unsuccessful, leaving me obese with a massive bosom and an even larger butt. I also developed a lump under one arm which my mother soothingly dubbed ‘your third breast’.

I was in a terrible mess, made worse by knowing that when you boys leered at me, it was not with desire but disgust. Don’t pretend you don’t remember, Frazer. Certainly, seeing that goddamn awful photo brought it all back to me.

Frazer: Y’know I’m a doctor? I also offer counselling, Lily. Would you like to talk?

Lily: I don’t want or need your help. But I must say that because of a thousand insensitive people like my elder sister, who somehow saw my appearance as an embarrassing affront to her, I became anorexic – bulimic – long before bulimia was generally known, let alone fully understood. I didn’t realise I was ill. I decided simply that  I’d somehow become  the most repellent slug ever to crawl the earth. Even my dreams were invaded with images too nasty to describe now, forty-odd years later.

So I tried the local Slim’n’Trim group, where Amy – yes, the same ‘Amy’ - had gone to shed a little weight before a holiday with Rosie and Beth. But I’d barely arrived at my first meeting when I heard her snigger with other club members about my size and saw the organiser and her assistant exchange   shuddering glances  when I was introduced. People didn’t bother to hide their scorn. As they didn’t care, why should I? So I didn’t attend  again and the pounds continued to pile on. This is how the fabulous summer of ‘67  became my private season of self-flagellating, self-harming, self-hate.

Frazer: Lily, I’m really sorry you’ve suffered but …

Lily: Hang on. There’s more. My mother took me to see a specialist about my ever-expanding size. But the doctor did not help. Instead he fondled my breasts in a pseudo exam while Mum watched placidly, making no effort to stop him short. Later, as I got re-dressed, I heard him say, “half the women in the country would die to have breasts like your daughter!” Still Mum did nothing,  said nothing, merely commenting later, “I didn’t like any of that”.

Frazer: What a horrible experience! Today that  would almost certainly  be viewed as calculated abuse. But you can’t blame us, your classmates, for what happened there.

Lily: You’re right. But I remember one other incident that occurred before most students left town to start their adult lives. I fell victim to a vicious hoax. Amy told me you wanted to take me out and that I should meet you at the Plough the following Friday night. Common sense told me I was being fooled. But curiosity pulled me along, the engorged Miss Piggy being trotted gamely on a lead towards her public destruction.

I’ll never forget the guffaw of derision that rang out as the crowd saw me waddle in, then register Amy and you smooching  at the bar. But no matter. I must thank you both very much indeed.

Frazer: What?

Lily: The incident taught me a priceless life lesson. No, two: First, I grasped the close, cruel link  between “slaughter” and “laughter”. Second, I've  never  trusted anyone again. By the way, Frazer, I understand that Amy married a butcher. So please tell her, whatever she serves at the party, it won’t be bits of me.

 

 

Technorati Tags: fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,The Killing Game,Summer of Love 1967,Obesity,Contraception,Bulimia,Abuse

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 03 December 2013)

‘Saul Dislocates His Shoulder!’

Gibeah Mental Health Centre

Psych Consult – Schizophrenia

Evaluation and Management (E/M) Patient

SHAUL MATRITE-BENJAMIN

IDENTIFYING DATA:

The patient, a 68-year-old white Jewish male, is a retired politician and soldier. He lives  with his wife of 45 years who was present on his admission but did  not attend my consultation.

CHIEF COMPLAINT:

"I’m here in prison because I was wrongly arrested on false allegations of attempted murder”.

HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS:

The patient has minimal insight into the circumstances that resulted in his admission. He reports being diagnosed with late-onset schizophrenia  but states  that he has maintained his stable baseline for many months of treatment.

The patient was escorted to this clinic from the Western Galilee. He was admitted to the emergency room   after attempting to plunge more than three hundred meters from the promontory, Katef Shaul (‘Saul’s Shoulder’) on Mount Gilboa and into the Harod Valley below.

A group of tourists reported his crawling to the edge of the look-out and  threatening to jump clear, in order to escape someone who was trying to murder him.

As he was restrained by two doctors in the crowd, he clutched at  his head moaning that  his potential assassin had sent the flocks of vicious raptors that he imagined were circling overhead, waiting to claw him to death.

Before and on arrival at this clinic after transfer from the Emek Medical Centre, Afula, the patient was disorganized with everyone in authority. He has since been detained on a 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation order for grave disability.

At interview, the patient is still disorganised and confused. He believes that  he  has  been  arrested  and  is  in  prison.   He  reports  a  recent history of mental health treatment, but denies benefiting from this and considers it unnecessary.

I have spoken to his wife and eldest son by telephone. His wife reports that the patient is paranoid and has bizarre behaviour at baseline, particularly and increasingly during  the past five years, with occasional episodes of symptomatic worsening, from which he spontaneously recovers.

His son estimates the patient spends about twenty per cent of the year in episodes of worse symptoms and that during the past two months, the patient has become worse than he has ever seen him with increased paranoia above the baseline.

The  son  reports  that  the patient has barricaded himself in the family home  three times and has threatened himself (i.e. the son) and his long-term partner with the sports javelins he keeps with him at all times.

The patient’s wife confirms that he  sleeps barely three-four hours a night. However, she has been unaware of any obvious medical changes in recent weeks coinciding with the onset of the symptomatic worsening. She also reports the patient’s longstanding poor compliance with treatment of his mental health and age-related conditions and attributes this to his dislike of taking medicine. She also reports that the patient believes that he does not suffer from the condition.

PAST PSYCHIATRIC HISTORY:

The patient’s wife reports that he was first diagnosed with schizophrenia ten years ago and he has been admitted to other psychiatric and rehabilitation facilities in Israel and abroad.  The patient  last had  outpatient mental health treatment three years ago but dropped out of care, initially without her knowledge.

He was most recently prescribed Seroquel, from which he claimed to suffer unpleasant side-effects.

MEDICAL HISTORY:

CURRENT MEDICATIONS:

None.

ALLERGIES:

No known drug allergies.

SUBSTANCE AND ALCOHOL HISTORY:

The patient had not smoked until the onset of his condition but his habit has increased steadily during the interim and he now smokes two-three packs per day. He consumes alcohol occasionally, but not excessively and has never used illicit substances.

MENTAL STATUS EXAM:

Attitude:

The patient demonstrates only variable co-operation with interview, requires frequent redirection to respond to questions. His appearance is cachectic with poor grooming.

Affect:

His affect is fairly detached.

Mood:

He describes his mood as "O.K.”.

Speech:

His speech is normal rate and volume.

Tone:

His volume was decreased initially, but this improved during the interview.

Thought Process:

His thought processes are markedly tangential.

Thought content:

The patient is fairly scattered. He will provide history with frequent redirection, but he does not appear to stay on one topic for any length of time. He denies current auditory or visual hallucinations, though his wife and son say that this is present at baseline.  Paranoid delusions are elicited as described by the incidents at Gilboa.

Homicidal/Suicidal Ideation:

The patient denies suicidal or homicidal ideation. He also denies his recent suicide attempt (see above).

Cognitively, he is alert and oriented to person and year only. His memory is intact to the names of his close family and former work colleagues.

Insight / Judgment:

His insight is absent as evidenced by his repeated questioning of the validity of his mental health diagnoses. His judgment is poor as evidenced by his longstanding pattern of minimal engagement in the treatment of his mental health and physical health conditions.

Assets:

The patient’s material assets include property and financial resources enhanced by a strong and supportive relationship with his wife and some family members.

Limitations:

His limitations include his history of poor compliance with treatment.

FORMULATION:

The patient is a 68-year-old white Jewish male with a history of schizophrenia. He was admitted for disorganized and assaultive behaviour, having withdrawn from all medication for several weeks.

DIAGNOSES:

I: Schizophrenia by history.

II:  Anaemia.

III: Relationship strain and the possibility that he may be unable to return to his home upon discharge; minimal engagement in mental health  providers.

PLAN:

I will attempt to increase the database and will specifically request records from all previous mental health providers. The Internal Medicine Service will evaluate and treat any acute medical issues that could be helpful.

With the patient’s permission, I will start Quetiapine at a dose of 100 mg at bedtime, given a report of a partial response to this agent in the past.

Dr Reuven Pearl

Director

Emergency Room Admissions

_________

The above will be a chapter in a fantasy based loosely on the end days of the the reign of King Saul, the first monarch of Ancient Israel.

_________

Technorati Tags: fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Stealing from the Dead,Saul Dislocates His Shoulder,Israel,Mount Gilboa,Schizophrenia

 

 

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 25 November 2013)

כתיבה וחתימה טובה

Here’s a family tale re-told for several millennia!

The first day of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, falls next week, Thursday 05 September 2013. May everyone who is celebrating have a great 5774.

Be well sealed!

Natalie Wood and Brian Fink

Technorati Tags: Jewish New Year 2013,Natalie Wood @ WoodPerfect,Natalie Wood,Brian Fink,Israel

msniw

‘Crying Wolf’

 

Wolf had arrived late and barely gestured in greeting.

 

“M’friends call me ‘Wolfie’. Who are you?”, he barked at the woman on the other side of the bullet-proof screen.

“Good morning, Herr Wolf. I’m Fräulein Roti Haube, your  court-appointed defence lawyer. In future, please try to arrive on time for our meetings as the authorities here at Stammheim Prison allow us only one half-hour a month”.

“O.K.”, said Wolf, tucking his tail between his legs as he sat down between his guards. “These men had forgotten they’d left me caged. So there was a last-minute fuss, fitting my chains and basket muzzle. But it’s all for show; a bit of theatre to impress you. Anyway,  I hope you’ve made more progress than my last lawyer”.

“I’ll be honest”, said Haube, riffling through the thick file balanced on her knee. “I’ve spent hours examining your case and it’s clear that until there’s an overall marked rise in your tribe’s population, you’re destined to live a long life in jail”.

“But I don’t understand. I’ve said if I can’t be free, I want to die”.

“Wolfie, I’m afraid that’s impossible under present legislation. Your family is in a peculiar position where you have us humans as both your only real enemy and your one true friend. According to the 1979 Berne Convention you can’t be executed because your clan’s not big enough to force us to curtail your activities”.

“’Activities’? Yeah! Those were the days,” mourned Wolf. “I still remember my final big raid with Silber Klaue when we were so desperate to feed our wives and kids after the long,  hard winter that we savaged twenty-seven sheep at a single farm.  Klaue managed to escape into the forest but I was captured because I’d gone lame. Funny though,  when I got here, even the  governor treated me with awe.

“‘Wolfie’, he said, patting the lid of my cage, ‘you and – er  – Klaue created the sort of blood-bath that would do the Mafia proud. You deserve a prize. I’ll start by keeping you in my office!’

“But I hate it there. I’m treated like a pet poodle. What’s more, I loathe hearing the staff use words like ‘cull’ instead of ‘execute’ or ‘shoot’. How would it look if we wolves said ‘let’s dine’? Klaue and I are strictly raw meat and water guys and on good days we each tore through ten kilos of a juicy boar or tender deer in a sitting”.

“So you feel you’ve been rendered – umm - impotent?”

“That’s not the half of it. Things here are now so bad I want to apply to the European Court of Lupine Rights to be allowed to die with dignity. I’ve become a laughing stock. Pure and simple”.

“But I don’t know why. You’ve got  the governor’s protection, so you’re well looked after and could live until you’re twenty – twice as long as in the wild”.

“That’s my worst nightmare!”, said Wolf. “The real problem? I’ll tell you: the governor’s taken on a trendy new doctor in the hospital wing who’s trying me on aversion therapy”.

“What on earth … ?”

“First, he clipped my claws and filed my fangs almost to the gum …”

“Then?”

”The worst bit’s so embarrassing,” said Wolf, his rasp dropping to the faintest whimper, “I’m going to put my muzzle to the speak-hole so I can whisper. Please lean forward”.

“Go on,”, said Haube, straining to hear him.

“I’m being made to eat vegan dinners. Every day,” said Wolf, his voice becoming fainter by the word, “I’m led kicking and howling into the canteen and force-fed grass and herbs while a comedian named ‘Sean Lamb’ looks on chuckling hard enough to shed  his fleece”.

“What’s he in here for?”

“Tale-bearing and lying,” mouthed Wolf, pausing while a guard dabbed his eyes. “He’d been pulled in for crying ‘wolf’. But the game’s up, Roti. Look who’s crying now!” 

----------

"If you look and find sorrow,
- it is because I sorrow.
If you look and find anger,
- it is because I am angry.
If you look an find confusion,
- it is because I am confused.
If you look and find wisdom,
- it is because I am wise.
If you look and find yourself,
- it is because we are not so different.
If you look and find your soul,
- then carry me home inside of you..."

(With thanks to ‘Lady Anubis’ - Deviant Art)

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Technorati Tags: fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Crying Wolf,Wolves,1979 Bern Convention,Germany,Stammheim Prison

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 17 August 2013)

 

 

‘Vine Leaves’

“Friends,” said Anna rising to toast her guests, “on nights like this, Shakespearian lovers mused on ancient Troy, sighing how the wind kissed the trees but they made no sound”.

“Meanwhile”, said her partner  Dennis, “less than seven hundred miles from where we’re dining now in deepest rural Greece, citizens of biblical Israel yearned to sit under their own vines and fig trees – symbolic of an harmonious well-being never wholly realised”.

“Perhaps so”, said Mona,  a rabbi  from New York. “Study of the Hebrew bible shows time and again how lasting peace has been achieved only by totally annihilating the opposition!

“But”, she laughed, “a Saturday evening’s secular entertainment like this, in a vine trellised arbour like yours,  would be possible only after the Sabbath concluded. By then, the devout  would have  detected three stars in the darkened sky and blessed the new week with candlelight and sweet spice in a ritual shielding the holiness of the day of rest from the mundanities of the working week.

“I first visited the area as a student during the early 1960s with a non-Jewish friend who is now a respected  Christian theologian.

“She was wholly captivated from the first by many local customs, some of which reminded her of what she often saw when in my company. I ponder still, as modern Judaism developed, if it adopted universally popular Mediterranean habits and hallowed them by dogged daily use”.

“I’ve lived here for much of my adult life,” said Joe, a travel writer. “But my knowledge of local religious practice is still superficial.

“Instead, I’m eternally spellbound by these islands’ capacity for physical enchantment and will always treasure  their aura of ecstatic sensuality. No wonder tiny villages like Kalami in Corfu continue to attract romantic artists  and their adoring fans.

“I’m now aged 72 and still get a kick from witnessing the quite brazen procreation all around us! Everything - everyone – simply  pulsates with life and the potential of life. So unless it’s proven otherwise, I’ll die convinced these islands were the true and first  Eden”.

“But what of our younger guests, Aron and Emily? You’ve both been very quiet,” said Anna, now serving traditional desserts with thick, bitter coffee and Ouzo.

“Er, apologies for not joining the conversation,” said Aron. “Our bedroom window looks over a pond filled with frogs which woo lustily all night long. They’ve -  well, we’ve not  – had much sleep!”.

“Thanks for the wonderful food, Anna,” said Emily. “I’ve tried all the dishes here and if you don’t mind, I’d love to have the recipe for stuffed vine leaves.

“I’ll be using vines as a theme in a piece for a creative writing course I’m beginning in October and have heard that a ‘vignette’ is not only a decoration in  a book or  a ‘snapshot in words’. Apparently,  the term  began as ‘something that may be written on a vine leaf’. It’s supposed to focus on one element of a story, mood, character, setting, object, or perhaps in good hands, a rare blend of them all”.

“I know exactly what Joe meant earlier, said Anna’s mother, Carmel,  who’d just come home.

“On nights like this”, she said drawing up a chair, “when the weather  was almost too hot to bear,  my late husband, David  and I used the same room where Emily and Aron are - not sleeping this week!

“It’s secluded, so we’d drag the mattress onto the balcony where we’d make a love as dense as the overhanging vines, trembling like two tender  leaves in a freak summer storm. We never spoke, it was as though the mood would shrivel – blow away – from a gust of mere speech.

“Later,” she concluded, her large grey eyes laden with  regret,  “as we cuddled in devoted silence, David would fall asleep, his head resting against my bosom. So I’d lie still as a rock for hours, loath to have him stir. The next year Anna was born”.

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Vine Leaves,Greece

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 06 August 2013)

‘In Gypsy Davy’s Locker’

Rachel Leah, named for the lovely sister and the other who was weary and weak-eyed, sped on a plane to Spain to meet her feckless father.

“Please visit us,”  his latest darling had beseeched. “Davy’s fallen, now broken;  unable to turn his wrist to make music or twist his pelvis in love”.

So Rachel Leah, American-Israeli film-maker, flew to Madrid where Alabama-rooted, Deep South-suited David had been reborn; become an Andalusian-booted flamenco gypsy artiste, wreathed in fumes of stale beer and clouds of Dutch black baccy.

“You may be my Dad,” said Rachel Leah, “but years apart have pulled us asunder; the blood ties quite worn away. Neither Jew, nor Christian, not quite father or even dear friend, your role in the family is henceforth as ‘Gypsy Davy Serva’,  a Cyclops eye on the score of a  siren’s song.

“No, Dad! Please don’t try to deceive me. With a stash of evidence against you, I should have little more to say and even less to do. What more may a warring father and daughter expect from a broken-pelvis-shattered wrist Sunday afternoon?

“However,” said Rachel Leah, now in directorial command, “for the next ten years I shall focus my forensic eye upon you  through the viewfinder of my camera. We start today. It is our new zero”.

“What do you mean?”, mourned Davy, his spirit fairly snapped in two.

“Your broken bones will knit themselves,” said Rachel Leah. “But only time – the greatest healer – will mend the family you half-created, then fractured with your fooling. My proposed cure is to reunite us all on film.

“You’ve fathered five children by five different women, fine mothers in their middle and latter years. They’ve had big lives, Dad. My film will show a bare sliver of their existence; their ‘Boy David’ lives.

“They were – and remain – boldly bewitching  characters. All would be yet greater if they had not been frustrated by you.

“I tell everyone – my half-siblings, close confidantes, colleagues, journalists too - that our relationship has been distressingly dissatisfying. You haven’t been absent enough to be just an abstract idea, and not present enough to be really satisfying in any way.

“But, hey Dad, tell you what: Despite all, I’ve come to like you and cherish your artistry, your wit, even your skewed brand of candour.

“I appreciate, for example, how you’ve taken so little from my own artistic pride, requesting simply that I remove  only three words about you from my film script. I suppose I set out to humanise you, but part of me also needed to punish you a little bit."

“O.K., honey. I’ve felt all that; the joy and the pain,” said Davy. “There’s no need to lay it on slab. I don't mind being a sacrificial lamb for you. I owe it to you. You want me to say I'm sorry? I'll say it five million times. Of course I'm sorry. But come on. Finish your film. I want to die sad. It's a sad story. No?"

“Yeah,” sobbed Rachel Leah. “So is the Bible story of Jacob and his wives. But he got the right girl in the end. What about you?”

-----------

Gypsy Davy, directed and written by Rachel Leah Jones, won the Documentary Edge Festival 2013. After being premiered on Israeli television, the film also gained much attention at prestigious events like the Sundance Film Festival and the International Women Film Festival, Israel.

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,In Gypsy Davy’s Locker,Gypsy Davy,Rachel Leah Jones,David Serva

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 22 July 2013)

‘Home Alone’

Great Aunt Julia slumped in her seat, her ramrod-straight back sagging beneath the weight of the news she must convey.

Then, as she began forming the  characters on the page before her, Julia realised her fine script shone with the gloss of unwonted tears.

“3 Deanery  Square,

North Shields,

Tyne & Wear

“04 May 1978

“Dear Sylvia and Lesley,

“My letter today brings the saddest news. I am now alone. Aunt Ellen died  two nights ago after several days in hospital.

“Until it was beyond me to cope she was with me here, but I realised that her many illnesses and suffering over the years had finally exhausted her.

“My love to you and the rest of the family.

“Aunt Julia”

And as she folded her note, pushed it into a matching envelope, sealing it carefully with a damp sponge, Great Aunt Julia sighed. Who, she wondered, would tell the girls when she died? Would it matter? Would anyone care?

Technorati Tags: #fridayflash,Flash Fiction,PerfectlyWriteFamilyTales,Home Alone

Natalie Wood

(Copyright, Natalie Irene Wood – 05 July 2013)