Eave - part 2

Fiction Friday: Pick one item from each column. Roughly sketch out a short scene that includes the character you selected and the situation you selected. The scene should begin or end with one of the characters performing the action you selected. Don't be too literal--there is creative leeway as long as the building blocks are still recognizable.

This scene should be generally compatible with your character from last week's challenge. For instance, in my case I wrote about someone who presides over a Wizard's Union, so if I chose the situation involving a broken down car, I'd need to make the car into a horse-drawn coach.

See the choices here.

The scene should begin or end with one of the characters performing the action you selected.

This scene should be generally compatible with your character from last week's challenge.

Read part 1 here.

Here are the three items that I've pick for this Fiction Friday:
Character -- mother who is bi-polar
Situation -- finds out his/her mother is cheating on his/her father
Action -- rips up a plane ticket


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Just before she died, Eave's mother, Jackie, had told her that her father, Jack, has been cheating on her. Eave had no reason not to believed her mother. She wanted desperately for her mother to be happy. It was almost two years later after her death did Eave find out it was her mother who was cheating. Her mother was secretly sleeping with her psychiatrist during her weekly sessions with him. No one knew or suspected her mother of ill-behavior. She was always so pleasant. It was those pills she takes for her bipolar disorder. She had this order since she was a child. Only Eave and her father knew about this. Jackie was able to controlled it over the years. But on the night of her death, it was apparent to Eave and Jack that she was not taking them. Those last moments with her mother, Eave felt helpless and yet still believed her mother had loved her.

It was almost midnight. Silence swept over the neighborhood. It was like a dream, wrapped around itself. Shadows felled where the moonlight doesn't shined. Through the open window, gust of wind kept blowing into the kitchen.

There she was in the unlited kitchen with a knife in her hand. Jackie was wearing her nightgown, the old-fashion kind that was long with long sleeves. She was sweating all over, her red hair clinging to her face, her eyes wide with dark tears running down her cheek. Her face was all at once smiling and crying. Tears were streaking down her face. She had wipe them with her nightgown sleeves, leaving a dark smear at the edge. She stood there with a knife in her right hand, every so often wiping her face with her left hand. Eave had came downstairs for a midnight snack. It was quiet until she heard her mother screaming profanities at her father. Eave stood in the kitchen doorway. Her father, Jack, was in his pajamas, standing still not far from her mother. There were talks, mostly from her father telling her mother to clam down. Eave slowly pushed opened the door.

Jackie's eyes glance at Eave. Fear overtook Eave as she stood there staring at the knife in her mother's hand. Jackie slowly walked toward Eave. Eave could not moved. Her legs stayed frozen. As her mother steps closer and closer, Eave was quite fearful and panic was storming inside her. Jackie dropped to her knees and grabbed Eave and held her tightly in her arms., the knife closed to Eave's head. Eave could not move from her mother's grip. Jackie keep saying, "My baby, my baby..." At fifteen years old, Eave was short for her age but still she was almost as tall as her mother. Her mother's head rest against her chest, her messy hair brushes against Eave' s face.

Jack was quiet, certain his daughter will get hurt if he didn't do something. Eave tried to pry herself away from her mother but could not do so. Jackie was crying louder now. Her grip on Eave grew tighter. The knife still in her hand. Jack walked slowly towards them, hoping to take the knife away from her. Jackie turned around suddenly with anger on her face. "You want to take my baby away! You...you.." She pointed the knife at him. Jack took a couple of steps back as Jackie walked toward him. Jack's back was against the cabinet. Eave was still standing there frozen in place. Jackie stick the knife against Jack's chest. Her face now emotionless with streaks of tears down her cheeks. Then she turned around suddenly and glance at Eave with such sweetness in her face. Eave almost felt like jumping into her mother's arms. Then Jackie walked toward Eave again, the knife held high up. "My baby," that was all she kept saying. Jack tried then to take the knife away from her. They struggled, each grasping the knife, pulling in every direction. Finally, Jackie pull the knife away, her back hit against the refrigerator wall where all the magnets and pictures felled to the floor. The magnets slowly tickle their way down making no sound as they hit the ceramic tiles.

They both looked at the ground where the objects gathered like a photo album. A photo of Eave as a baby, her face all puffed up with shades of pink covering both cheeks. Jackie picked up the photo, tears started down again. She stared at the photograph, knife still in her hand. All of a sudden, Jackie stuck the knife into her stomach, screaming so loud, there were echoes everywhere. She felled onto her knees, all quiet now. Her head hang against her chest. Nobody dared to move, not Jack, not Eave. What could they have done? The sirens came crashing through the night. Stopping at their house. The neighbors all gathered around, as if waiting for something more to happen.

A few months after Eave moved out into her own house, Jack had came to visited. He had read her latest novel and wanted to congratulated her. He had then told her everything - about her mother's affair and about her twin sister, Eva, who had died at just a year old after catching pneumonia. It was a shock to her and yet what was even more shocking was what her father told her next. Jack was not her biological father. It was something that he kept to himself even when Jackie told him it wasn't necessary. Jack felt very protective of Jackie and did not her to be unhappy. He had accepted Eva and Eave as his own. He knew about the affair. Jackie was not secretive about it. And yet, Jack knew that Jackie loved him and still wanted their marriage to work. The affair was over at the same time that Eva past away. It was a loss that cause Jackie to end the affair and to seriously treated her disorder. In those times, Jackie was on and off her medication, but had since obediently taken them. She felt Eave needed a mother.

Jack spoke with such tenderness about her mother which make Eave cried. Eave and Jack had avoided talking about Jackie. But now it seem to be the right time to talk about her. He had smiled and wished her well as he said goodbye and he handed her a plane ticket.

Eave loves her father dearly but now after what he had told her, Eave couldn't help herself but distance herself from him. Eave always felt Jack was the bad guy. That he had caused her mother's death, that he stood by and did nothing. Evae didn't understood it then. At the time, she was so angry at him and had stop speaking to him. After a time, they had patched things up but things were not the same. Their once closeness was gone.

Eave had never met the her mother's psychiatrist until at her mother's funeral. With tears in his eyes, Dr. Heath, gave her his condolences. She knew then he was in love with her. Eave had just nodded her head, not sure what to said.

Now siting here at the airport waiting for her flight, Eave could not make up her mind what to do. Her father had given her a one way ticket to Boston. That's where Dr. Heath had moved to. She had talked to Dr Heath on the phone the night before, but still felt like a distance cousin. What could she hope for now? After all these years, the man who had raised her is her father. Dr. Heath is just another relative, right? After considerable time, her flight was cancel due to severe weather. Eave knew what she needed to do. She torn up the ticket and hail a taxi to Jack's house. She wants to see Jack again and not as a friend but as her father.


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