It is such a comfortable place

Task: Write something to do with vegetables.

October 6, 2010

It is such a comfortable place. #1
GregW ©

Day notes from a hospital bed.

Oh fantastic, Sally has finally come, she’s late. I can hear her voice softly outside the room.
Today has been a long day, I think every doctor and nurse in the hospital must have come to prod, poke and read instruments around my bed. I feel exactly the same as I have always felt and in the end they all agree that nothing has changed. The situation report remains static as one of them put it. Great, it’s 1969 , there’s a man on the moon and the greatest medical minds of this modern age can only tell me I’m static.

Anyway now Sally is beside me again.
“Hi My darling” and I get a warm, soft kiss.
I wish I knew how she did that, generate such a wonderful feeling in me with just a simple kiss. I am sure she would love it if I could return that feeling in a kiss. It’s the sort of thing couples never discuss but I always feel I just don’t exude the warmth she does. She knows how I feel though. I’m sure she does.

It is always great at the end of a day to hear all that has been happening at home and in the business while I have been stuck in here.
She drags her seat up close and holds my hand. We have always held hands, its not something all long-married couples do I suppose but its how we are. I catch a smell of her and for some strange reason her scent makes the whole tiresome day disappear and stops me telling her about my petty complaints.
I am much keener to hear how the new partners are working out in our firm because although I have not been able to keep my eye right on the changes in the office I have almost enough confidence she is in control. Last week when the new orders all came in she couldn’t stop talking about how well things were running, and how the staff had all stepped up to the challenge of the new product lines.
But tonight there is something bugging her. There is a quavering in her usual chatty manner as she tells me of our young Matthew’s first day at big school. I feel that despite the happy story there is a sadness she isn’t telling me about. I know not to interrupt as I have learned from many years that she will tell me what’s bothering her in her own good time. Almost without a pause she babbles on and links seamlessly into the set up of the new offices for Keith and Ray, how they liked the fit out and the new board room. I am about to enquire whose desks had to be moved downstairs to accommodate the new floor plan when Dr. Richards interrupts our conversation.
I never liked Dr Richards, he rarely acknowledges me unless Sally directs him to include me. I hate doctors like him who see patients as inanimate objects of clinical fascination.
This time again he ignores me and asks Sally in a tone rather softer than his usual brusque manner,
‘Has there been any response tonight?’
Sally squeezes my hand tighter and I feel her warm kiss again on my forehead
‘No Doctor’ she says.
‘When you are ready then Mrs. West. Take as long as you want. The nurse will find me when you are.‘
Then he just leaves the room and I’m totally mystified.
I feel a tear fall on my cheek, and another one, suddenly Sally is crying great sobs and hugging me tight.
I can’t understand why she is upset.
She gasps and judders and asks me why I won’t fight.
She tells me she can’t go on and on and on every night talking to a vegetable wired up on a bed.
I have no idea what she is talking about, I want to get her to calm down and explain what she means.
But she doesn’t.

She lies quietly for ages next to me, sobbing occasionally.
Before I realise what is happening she sits up, takes a deep breath, kisses me on the lips and walks out without saying anything more.
I am stunned.

Almost immediately a nurse is beside my bed playing with some cords, I feel light headed and floating, it is such a comfortable place, and warm, I know there is something I should be upset about but, I can’t recall what it was, I just want to fall, deep, deep, asleep…………. . . . . . . . .



It is such a comfortable place. #2
Greg W ©.

Occasional notes from a pepper's bed

July 30, 2010.

This is such a comfortable place I find myself in now. The days and nights roll by, me and my brothers and sisters are all nicely cosseted in this wonderful translucent green orb. Sometimes it rains and every time, not too long after we have heard it pokking on the skin of the pod, we all get a wonderful sweet nectar which makes us all plump up a bit more. We really are all looking very well on it and happiness is everywhere.

August 12

I have noticed in recent days the pod starting to change to being a bit striped with yellow but today there are signs of deep red light filtering into us as we all huddle together at the top of the pod, getting closer to the nectar supply. We are all very thirsty and I think we are sucking too hard sometimes.

August 18

Nothing much has happened in the past week since the pod started to change colour but now we are bathed in an even red glow in the daytime and to be honest, things are getting a little bit uncomfortable. There seems to be less nectar coming and it’s sometimes very hot in here. I feel myself sort of drying out a little. The mist in the pod is thinning. One or two of my siblings have let go and lie un-fed below. We feel a bit sad about that but cling to our nectar supply.

August 22
A momentous day today. Quite catastrophic I think. There was a loud rumbling sound and lots of shaking, quite a few of my brothers were knocked off their nectar supply and they fell about, bumping into everyone else as the pod rolled around.
Almost immediately the shaking started, my supply of nectar, which had been getting less every day anyway, well it stopped. Just stopped. I panicked of course but I think I can survive if I stop trying to grow bigger than everyone else and sort of shut down, I’ll stop looking after my outer skin too, concentrate on saving my inside. I don’t get to think about how to do this much though because our pod is rolled and shaken with varying ferocity all the rest of the day.

August 27
I must have passed out. I am shocked to find my outer skin has dried off alarmingly, the pod is looking wrinkled and there is no mist or dew lining it’s inner walls any more.
WHAT IS THAT!?
A huge hard silver thing has pierced the pod. Horrible acrid dry air is rushing all around us. The hard silver thing is knocking us and scraping us all off our pod stem. I am ashamed to admit I pass out again.

August 28
Its so hot. I am suddenly aware I am lying out in the raw air, with a lot of us who I don’t recognise, I think I recognise one of my sisters nearby but I’m mistaken, she is horribly dried out and as gone a dark colour. A huge hot ball is throwing heat at us and I realise I’ll have to sacrifice my outer skin totally if I want to stay alive. I watch through the day as it goes slowly black and I retreat further within myself.

August 29
I have given up all hope now, late yesterday a huge warm soft thing pushed me around a bit and then a while later a different hard silver thing scooped me and a lot of others into a big hard cold silver box where we were left for ages. At least we are not under that huge hot ball anymore and I am feeling like if I could just get a little bit moist I might be able to recover.

August 30, 2010
That’s it for me then, this is my last entry. I‘m giving up, I’m closing down until I am sure the world still exists. The last straw has fallen on me I think. Today a not so big but still hard silver thing scooped me and about fifty others up and now we are all in some sort of airless clear pod, no mist, no nectar. I quit.

April 16, 2011.
It’s unbelievable. It is such a comfortable place I wake to find myself in. Without any conscious effort on my own behalf I find I have gained a new lease of life. I feel plump again and the old dry skin I remember has softened. I am in what I had always hoped to be in, a cool moist place. It’s very calm and dark and quiet. I try to get my bearings. At least now I am lying the right way up. But it is dark. I try to gather my thoughts, what do I want to do now? What do I want most? Easy. I want a drink, I want some nice light and rain, light is what I most want. After drink.

June , 2011
I am so sorry for not keeping in touch.
The past couple of months have been so busy I haven’t had a chance to make notes so I’ll try and catch you up now because I have made such a huge breakthrough!
So much has happened since I was dropped into that clear shiny pod then woke months later.
When I woke up I was parched. So parched. The first thing I had to figure out was how to get a drink. I was so surprised to find part of me, which I didn’t even know I had, it started to grow and as I watched it pushed out through my skin. I don’t think I could ever explain how amazed I was when it started to drink from the darkness around me and gave me some nectar.
Honestly, I just lay back and sucked up as much as I could for days. I am rather embarrassed to admit I have gone on to become a bit of a binge drinker over the period. Because of this I don’t recall a heck of a lot but I felt very different with a huge range of hard and soft things branching out everywhere from me and through which I happily sucked more and more in great gobs of wonderful nectar.
I actually got to a stage when I had just had far too much nectar. I was over satisfied but quite content. Then I remembered how I had once longed for some light and warmth. It was like I became immediatly obsessed. Light and Warmth, light and warmth, that was all I could think about. I had no idea how I could get light and warmth but one thing was sure, down wasn’t the way to go to find it. I had grown a big mess of hard and soft things that formed a mat beneath me so up was the only route. I had no idea how far up, nor how I could drag this mass of mating with me but as I said I was obsessed with light and warmth and I was now convinced up was the only way to go.
If I was pretty surprised to have grown nectar getting things before, you will never understand the feeling I got when a hard spike shot out of my head and proceeded over the course of a couple of days to push itself up through the dark.
Anyway, I stand here now, in full light, my top quite warm and my base busily sucking nectar. I have fun playing with the abundant source of nectar and I fill myself and slosh it around some new big green flat things that I have produced. I’ve been doing this for a few weeks now and I have finally discovered my purpose in life.
I’m pregnant.
Yes. Lots of pregnant. Popping out all over me. SO exciting!
I had thought the big pretty soft yellow things were gorgeous and I had loved the attention they bought me from all the flying jeweled things but pregnant, well pregnant is better than anything.
I have been quite lazy really just growing and plumping up my babies in the sun. I am rather bored now to be honest. It is such a comfortable place here that I have been lately a little slack in feeding the babies and I notice they are going a bit red on me.

Ooh! What is that I hear, a sort of rumbling is shaking the ground.. Hang on a minute, I’ll get back to you when I see what this huge motory wheel thing is going to do.   It sounds exciting.