The Empty Dreams of a Lost Delta Dawn
The date was November 4, 2014. Pepper Baiij was no longer an
insecure, impetuous twenty-year-old cheating on the husband who doted on her
but whom she didn’t really love. Pepper’s life had not turned out the way she’d
hoped back in 1987 when she was fooling around with Virgil DeMille behind Larry’s
back. She was now forty-seven years old, many years divorced and living in a
dilapidated mobile home with no working furnace.
There were things that Pepper was grateful for. She had a
job that she found acceptable, and she had twenty-five-year-old twins to whom
she was deeply devoted, as well as five cats that she adored. Her daughter
Ixchel was savvy and self-reliant, but she worried about her son, Quetzalcoatl,
who struggled with anxiety and depression.
“I always believed I’d do wonderful things,” Pepper remarked
as Gerry and Paul Clifford’s guitars wailed the lonely riffs of Mainline’s 1981
song, “Manual Overdrive.” “But my big dreams of bright lights and big city
nights died one by one, leaving me in this dim place. I wish I knew you when I
was young, Gerry, or maybe it’s better that I didn’t. I probably would have gone
and fucked things up like I always do. These days I prefer rustic simplicity to
nihilistic glamour. I didn’t find fame and fortune, but I didn’t wind up dead
either. I worked something out, and maybe that’s the best that can be expected.
But oh, Gerry, I wish that somehow I could help you.”
250 Words
Acknowledgments
Prompt List
https://fivedotoh.com/2020/12/17/fowc-with-fandango-impetuous/
https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2020/12/11/delta-dawn-challenge-171/
October Spooky Writing Challenge Prompts: Empty
Putting my Feet in the Dirt December 2020 prompts: Manual
Overdrive
http://puttingmyfeetinthedirt.com
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2020/12/17/ragtag-daily-prompt-thursday-rustic-simplicity/
https://siobhanmuir.com/thursthreads-tying-tales-together-week-443/
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Working things out is better than I have learned to expect. A DEFINITE achievement even if she is not yet ready to claim it fully.
ReplyDeleteI so loved reading this :) thanks for joining in on my prompt
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