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“But it is precisely at those moments when the glass seems to be ‘set fair’ that Fate invariably decides to take a hand.” (John Bude, The Lake Distinct Murder, 2016.)

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What if you had two weeks to escape your own home?

By Lauren Ohnona

(Image credit to Flickr)

When the lock clicks, I push my back against the rim of the sink and slide the butcher’s knife inside the sleeve of my blouse. Nicole rests in her bassinet half a room away, but the distance feels like an entire ocean. 

He’s home half an hour early. 

The door slams. Boots stomping against the stairwell informs me I am too late to grab Nicole and run to safety behind a locked bathroom door. The room explodes with pungent malt. 

“Sasshhaaa,” he slurs. I wince. “Sasha, please, darling.” His doting words are harshly juxtaposed against a forceful yank of my arm. 

I shake my head. In response, he forces his elbow into the side of my ribcage. When I yelp, his eyes glow obsidian. I am ruining the mood. Another blow, this time to my left temple and the knife instinctually unsheaths from beneath the satin drapery of my sleeve. For a moment, he hesitates with a sinister smirk so slight that shivers crawl up my spine. He lunges, and I jump backwards into the hanging pots and pans. Together we fall into a cacophony of metal chaos. His entire weight is pressed against my chest. 

This is it, I think. I use my final threads of strength to force my chin leftwards toward the basinet. She lies peacefully shrouded in a cotton blanket etched with embroidered red crabs. The peachy fuzz atop her head glows in alternating blue and red flashes. 

Blue and red flashes?

A bang. Three sharp knocks. 

“Police, open up!” 

I didn’t even realize I was bleeding until the paramedics propped me up on the couch and pulled a needle and thread from their first-aid kit after they’d taken him away. They shone flashlights in my eyes and lifted my shirt. I swatted their hands away and cried out for my baby. I breathed for the first time in an hour once they placed her in my arms. 

But they couldn’t charge him. Not with anything more than a civil misdemeanour, and he’d be back in just two weeks. We couldn’t stay in town. He would kill me, I was sure of it. 

I had no money except for the scrapings of nickels in the cookie tin, so with Nicole swaddled against my chest, I pled my sob story to the old man at the pawnshop and traded my wedding ring for freedom in the form of a train ticket West. I spent the next twelve days raking leaves and weeding gardens. I felt as if I were a young teen, desperate for a dime to see the newest film in the theatre. When a bottle-blonde elderly woman told me I “missed a spot,” I split in half and cussed her out. 

“Find God,” she screeched. I didn’t have the heart to tell her God, and I broke up thirteen days ago in the kitchen. 

On the train I picked a window seat and propped Nicole up in my lap so both of us could watch the cornfields whiz by. I imagined the patrol car pulling up Maple Street. I pictured his steel-toed boots clomping up the concrete, across the porch, and into the foyer. 

From ear-to-ear I grinned, as he screamed my name to an empty house.

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As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life

BY WALT WHITMAN

                                             1

As I ebb’d with the ocean of life,

As I wended the shores I know,

As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok,

Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant,

Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,

I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,

Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems,

Was seiz’d by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,

The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.

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What if you found out you were pregnant two weeks before your due date?

By Lauren Ohnona

(Photo by @thenerdynetizen on Instagram)

“Can you crack a window?” 

He’s sitting, back square to the banister and arms crossed firmly against his chest. His cologne singes my nose hairs, charring the tips with burnt honey. His head is facing mine, but his eyes are cast over my shoulder and fixed on the bookshelf. I don’t know how long we’ve been like this—twenty minutes at least, because my pretzel legs have lost all feeling twisted beneath my abdomen. 

“Sure,” I say. I camouflage a grimace, creaking towards the balcony. Sliding the glass door open, the cool air speckles my face with droplets.

Campus air smells sweetest in the evening when most of us have retreated to dungeon dwellings we can’t afford. The sky is glowing pink between the rain clouds, and I can’t help but laugh. 

This morning, when the doctor pronounced, “It’s a girl!” with comically tone-deaf enthusiasm, I cried. 

I didn’t cry because I wanted a boy—I don’t want a boy—I don’t want anything. I cried because at that moment, its’–sorry, her—existence sprang forth like daffodil buds through the April mud and into a mind overgrown with fear. I pictured gelatinous tendrils swimming in primordial goop, twisting and assembling. I saw two glassy eyes, black-pupilled and doey beneath drooping lids, staring at me. I imagined its disappointment when my eyes reflected back only a cold grey. 

They call it a cryptic pregnancy. I think this name makes it sound a lot cooler than it actually is. There is nothing cool about finding out you’re having a baby on two weeks' notice. 

In the spring, my period was stunted for eighteen days, “but it came,” I told them. They nodded. At this, I had stood up and yanked the varsity t-shirt off my back to reveal a smooth, lean torso in the shade of cow’s milk. “Where is it?” I wailed, but they said it could happen like that too.

“I’m supposed to be going to Edinburgh next month, Nicole.” My name spits off his tongue like he’s tasting something bitter, and I am snapped back onto the balcony. 

“And I’m supposed to be graduating, asshole.” I watch him wince, and I twist the knife, “I have to give birth, Jamie. Birth. To a baby. Your baby.” 

Jamie’s face crumples into something so foreign that I run to him with open arms and cradle his broad shoulders. I kiss him. I tell him I’m sorry, and he tells me he’s sorry, too. His lips grow warm against mine, and I picture us in two weeks, holding her. Her stickiness gone, shrouded in a tiny pink jumpsuit with ten perfect fingers clasped gently against my skin. Two years and she’ll be fascinated by the scurries of crabs she finds beneath overturned rocks at the beach. In two decades, she’ll be as old as Jamie and I. I force my train of thought to a screeching halt, and I take a deep breath. The smell of fresh air and Jamie dance on the breeze and land, churning and landing together in my nose and mouth. And I breathe again. 

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“Her dark thoughts spilled like a large coffee overflowing in an espresso cup. The coffee was bitter and strong, full of caffeine. It was a drug she didn't like, an addiction of darkness that was embedded inside her. It was a coffee being served without a smile, and one that she didn't want to drink.” ― Arti Manani, The Colours of Denial

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What if you were given two weeks to live?

By Lauren Ohnona

(Image credit to Getty Images/Cultura RF)

May 3rd, 2022, Entry 1, Day 1: 

I don’t know how to breathe anymore. Something so simple lost all at once. Two lungs, alive but so useless? It started when Dr. Marlen told me I had two weeks to live, and it didn’t end until they strapped a hard-shell plastic mask over my face and forced oxygen down my throat. Or however, that works. In two weeks, I will be dead. I’ll be dead at thirty-two. 

They’ll think of me fondly, I think. I think I’ve been a good person so far. (*Reminder to text Judy that you have her rice cooker.) 

May 4th, Entry 2, Day 2: 

Today, Mom and I went to the mall. I needed new running shoes, and we’d planned this mother-daughter outing two weeks back. As we walked through the harshly lit expanse of zealously odored candles and sparkly short-shorts, Mom clutched my hand like I was six years old. The man at the T-Mobile kiosk stared. He probably thought we were in some religious cult. Well, he can think whatever he wants. 

May 7th, Entry 3, Day 5: 

I haven’t moved in 48 hours. The stream of family and friends and some people who’s faces I don’t even recognize flows endlessly like the salmon streams we used to visit on the island. The people who come all have glassy eyes and tender movements. When their eyes meet mine they do not see me. They stare straight through the sockets and fix their gaze on the enormous mass of cells resting idly, yet so evilly, against my brain’s nerve tissue. I watch them wince and move to hug my Mom, and I can’t understand why they are all telling her, “It will be okay, Nicole.” because in what world will this be okay? 

May 10th, Entry 4, Day 8:

One more trip to the doctor’s office and nothing has changed. I hate how everyone is looking at me like I am already gone. 

May 12th, Entry 5, Day 10:

Has anyone told God that I’m thirty-two? 

May 15th, Entry 6, Day 13: 

The local Save-On-Foods decided to grant me a Make-A-Wish-esque moment, and I told them I wanted to ride in a hot air balloon. 

The flame ignites and casts eerie shadows against the tarp-material, warmth presses against my cheeks. We begin our ascent, slowly rising higher and higher into the damp-spring air. I watch as blades of grass flatten in an untextured expanse of green. The coast materializes into view, I trace each point and inlet with my eyes swallowing back the memories of hours spent on those sandy outcrops, splashing in the water and turning over stones to watch tiny crabs run circles around my bare feet. The city below looks so vulnerable, and for now, I am in control. 

(Video credit to Shutterstock)

(Photo credit to MJ Ballooning.)

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“All human plans [are] subject to ruthless revision by Nature, or Fate, or whatever one preferred to call the powers behind the Universe.” ― Arthur C. Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two

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Note to Readers

The following blog contains subject matter that may be triggering. Please be aware of the following subject matters. Reader discretion is advised: 

Abuse/Sexual Abuse

Unwanted pregnancy

Death/Illness

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Additional Resources:

Profile Picture: Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash. 

Blog Wallpaper: Image credit to Mike Chai on Pexels.