Morning all. I hope your week is going swimmingly. I disturbingly have the Instacart song in my head. It’s from the banana themed commercial. I am going to have to put on some music, any music, just to get rid of it. For now, there is the writing prompt. So timers set and off we go.
Oh I like this one. It does set up a few possibilities for story ideas. Although this might not be the beginning of the story. I will have to circle back. But it is on the list to break out.
Tuesday, June 16th: I told you not to come here.
“I told you not to come here,’ he said. The look in his eyes was pure rage, barely controlled. Elliot watched his hands ball into fists at his side, clenching and unclenching, the knuckles going white and then fading to reddish with the movements. He tried not to frown.
He knew he wasn’t allowed here. He knew Hugo found his existence to be an embarrassment. That fact was drilled into home over a lifetime. Elliot was never supposed to come here. He was never to admit he knew Hugo let alone knew he was his father. Their father. He doubted Hugo realized he wanted to be here less than Hugo wanted him. Still, he thought it was the right thing to do, given the circumstances.
“She’s dying,” Elliot said.
Hugo barely blinked. “She’s always been dying,” he said.
The coldness of the statement hit harder than Elliot thought it would. He took a deep breath and swallowed back his emotions. “The doctors give less than twenty-four hours. Mother wanted you to know.”
Message delivered Elliot turned and walked away. Hugo could do what he wanted with the information. He promised he would give him the message and he had. He let his steps take him to the edge of the property. He soon disappeared into the trees that ringed the property, protecting the oversized neo-colonial mansion as though the building were some ancient baronial keep.
Hugo liked to think of himself that way, the untouchable lord in the manor. Elliot used to think of him that way. He used to wonder about him. When he met the man he was initially hurt at the rejection. The rejection was constant, never changing. Gradually his emotions grew a callus from where Hugo hit them.
He studied the man, wanting to know more. He found very little to admire in Hugo. He took what those who came before him earned and then squatted on it like a lazy dragon. What Hugo didn’t realize was that his fangs and claws were no longer fearsome to Elliot, not was the fire of his rage hot enough to burn. He stopped thinking of Hugo, for the most part a long time ago.
He would be happy to forget that Hugo existed.
But Ellie was dying. Despite the fact that his sister too would be happy to forget about Hugo, their mother thought it appropriate he be notified that Ellie took a turn and while always sickly, she would soon be lost. Elliot didn’t need the doctor’s confirmation. He could see it worsening every time he came home. Each time a little more was whittled from her. She was almost a ghost already.
So his mother asked him to go to Hugo. A request he could not refuse.
He knew that if his child, even an illegitimate one he never wanted his very proper wife and legitimate children to know about was dying he would want to know.
‘But Hugo doesn’t think of us as his children,’ Eliot thought. He never had and that was something his mother could never understand.
Ten til Midnight 