May 18 2008
A Many Splendid Thing…
Now, for something different….My dear friend Anonymum has started a sequel to her world-wide hit Splendid. So popular was this story that the public simply demanded we revisit the series with a new and wild set of characters. The challenge is that each contributing writer adds 6 lines to ongoing story that she has started.
Here is the story so far with A-mum kicking off, and a paragraph each by Lightening, Javaqueen, Evyl, Anja, Jayne, Bettina, Hilary and my addition to this ongoing saga is the last paragraph shown in italics.
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The sun was orange as it set against the ocean.
As Natalie walked along the beach, she felt the sting of tears as they sprung to her eyes. How could he do this to her? What would she do now?
She had invested 12 years of her life into their marriage, thinking they were happy, only to have him say he was leaving. Her question of why had been left unanswered. There was no explanation or reasons. He had merely looked at her sadly and walked out the door without so much as a backward glance…
The sand felt cool against her hot face as her legs buckled and she surrendered her weary body to the comfort of the course sand. She curled up into a foetal position, her mind willing her body to simply evaporate. The darkness enveloping her was barely recognisable against the darkness that enveloped her heart. A darkness that had been slowly creeping in over the past decade. Somewhere in the distance, a baby cried…. a cry that tortured her heart with memories of a dim and distant past……
Alone in the sand Natalie couldn’t stop thinking what if. What if she had been able to have a child? If she could have given him that, would she be in this situation now? At one time they had been so happy. She had foolishly thought that they could make it work by just loving each other. Natalie had told him from the start that she might not be able to have children. Back then he just looked in her eyes and said the only thing that mattered is that they had each other. Why had she believed him? Now, after twelve years of marriage she was all alone. They had tried for so many years to have a baby, but they never could. She had been through seven miscarriages and had given up hope. Now her husband had left her. She felt empty inside. If only he had known . . .
It was all a lie. No that wasn’t quite right. There was nothing false about the love at least not for Natalie. Yet the long nights lieing against Brad after the loving exchange of heated passion, whispering softly of the hopes and dreams of the sweet pitter-patter of small feet treading through the carpeted halls of a loving home. The faked miscarriages were not something that Natalie was proud of but it had been her last resort at maintaining a thin veneer over the stained lies that haunted their relationship. For though in her heart, soul, and mind, Natalie was one hundred percent woman, Natalie was born Ned. Yet, how could she have told Brad the truth. For Ned and Brad had been best friends in grade school. Playing catch at the ball park, racing bicycles down the quiet suburban streets, camping in the backyard until that fateful day, when everything changed….
Natalie stared at her perfect breasts in the mirror. That surgeon was worth his weight in gold. She was every man’s dream - beautiful, successful, able to strip an engine faster than any man, but she was missing that one thing - a uterus. Natalie thought she had given Brad everything he wanted. She knew what men wanted in bed; she knew that men liked hot sex, cold beer and sport on the tube. Who was better to know what a man wanted than someone who had spent half of their life as a man, and her husband’s best friend. Life was wonderful until that barbecue with the new neighbours. Curse that little baby with her gummy grin and corn flower blue eyes. Natalie knew their lives would hit a road block when Brad said “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had one of our own?” Natalie could do everything for a man, be everything for a man, apart from one thing… a mother….
Natalie knew there was one last trump card to play, although it was going to be a doozy -she would go back to her surgeon and discuss Changing Wombs. She decided that, after all these years trying to be the perfect woman for Brad, she’d like to experience that female condition with the roller coaster hormones, strange food cravings, sleep deprivation, painful boobs, constant toilet stops and be able to scare the bejebus out of other mums at Playgroup with her own horror birth story. Her surgeon had offered the optional plumbing in his original surgical assessment but Natalie had dismissed it, not considering for a minute that the sport-lovin’ Brad she had her eyes on would succumb to natures tug on his goolies. Having kept several bucket loads of Brad’s love juice on ice at a private storage facility proved the post-op turkey basting would not be a problem and could be a great surprise with which to win Brad back to her side. Natalie made her appointment, booked her ticket and was soon winging her way to motherhood.
Natalie slept for all of that long plane trip, exhausted from the emotions that had ravaged her mind, body and soul. She dreamed of what was to come, the look of surprise on Brad’s face when he saw her swollen with his child, of her triumphant return to his heart and his bed. During the taxi ride from the airport she let her mind wander to their future, longing for the look of wonder and awe as Brad looked upon her with their newborn child for the first time an event that would link them for eternity. She could never had prepared herself though for what was to happen as she entered her surgeon’s office. The sight of Brad sitting in the waiting room looking so pitifully embarrassed to be there, hunched over in his chair holding a magazine high in front of his face set her emotions whirling. His clumsy attempts to disguise himself with that stupid floppy hat and large dark sunglasses, may have fooled some, but not her, not when she had known and loved every contour of his face and tall muscular frame so well for so long. Natalie’s heart lurched as she quickly darted back into the foyer a million questions racing through her mind - What on earth was he doing sitting in the waiting room of the most highly respected transgender specialist in the country and how could she find out without him knowing that she had seen him there?
She was hovering in the foyer in a lather of indecision when the receptionist’s voice broke into her ruminations, ‘Mr Fothergill, the doctor will see you now.’ Before she knew what she was doing, in three strides and a dive she had caught Brad by the ankles as he approached the consulting room door and brought him down in a tackle that would have brought a smile to the face of their Under 10s rugby coach.
‘Brad! NO!’ she cried, desperate tears spilling onto her cheeks, ‘We’re running out of penises!’
‘ . . . eenises . . . eenises . . .’ echoed the enthralled silence in the room. She surveyed her slack-jawed waiting-room audience, surreptitiously adjusting her skirt with her free hand.
‘What?’ she blustered in confusion. ‘What would you do if your husband’s balls were at stake?’ But a fidgetting in the stalls suggested she was already losing them. A magazine page shuffled. At the reception desk a computer mouse clicked.
‘Balls at stake? Meh,’ seemed to be the view in the waiting room of the most highly respected transgender specialist in the country…
A small girl, dressed in a pink pinafore stepped forward,- a naughty smile tugging at the sides of her mouth. “Tick-tock, you lost your cock, but all’s not lost, cuz I’ve been tossed, from the sperm of Brad, so don’t be sad.” She smiled broadly and did a little curtsey. “Hello Mummy and Daddy. It’s me, your long-lost, Maddie.” Before Brad or Natalie could utter a word, the Doctor stepped from his office and said, “So, how do you like her, I’d say she’s the spitting…”
The remaining authors to contribute are:
I’m tagging Cris to add her twist.
