Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

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Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

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Champagne Challenge #133: The Holidays
by allegrita » Fri Nov 25, 2011 7:04 pm
Season's Greetings, Moonlightaholics! Have you noticed? It seems every newspaper ad and every commercial is urging us to prove our love for those dear to us by buying them a diamond, or perhaps a luxury car. But here at MLA, there's no need to shell out the bucks--we'd much prefer the gift of your creativity.

The theme of this Challenge is "The Holidays." Challenge stories must feature the theme idea, as well as the words rain, wrap, and shimmer. Your story may have any title and may feature any Moonlight characters. All ratings and pairings are welcome. The Challenge will run through the end of December.

Please note that all entries should be new stories, and should be inspired by the Challenge prompt. Thanks!



= = = = = = = = =

The Gift of a Child (Pg13)

It was Christmas Eve and I stood on the parapet of my building, facing 5th to watch the lights over Pershing Square shimmer in the misty rain. If only the mist could wrap around thickly enough to protect me from this past week’s wretched reality. The night Barbara Turner knocked on my door I couldn’t have been emptier if they had cut me open and gutted me.

Coraline had kidnapped a child.

Of course, I didn’t know it was Coraline when the shaken Mother appeared at the door, banging with the power to crack the door’s glass. I was fresh in the PI business, handling corporate espionage mostly for Josef and background checks for a locally owned bank just small stuff to get a P.I. rep.

What could I do the week before Christmas but cave to Mrs. Turner? The poor woman didn’t even have the mister with her. I’d be a friggin millionaire if I could unlock the solution to why men take off on a wife and daughter. I get being fed up with the missus, I’ve done that myself.

It’s leaving a child, your flesh and blood vulnerable – how can a man do that? So with that thought in mind….that it could be this jackrabbit coming back to give his little girl the perfect Christmas without perhaps a meddling Mother that I took the job.

Driving out to the Turner home I hugged just a couple of car lengths behind her battered Hyundai, Mrs. Turner took a chance driving in town to see me, she had a burnt out tail light. I shook my head at that thought; of course she didn’t give the tail light a thought. Someone took her daughter.

I thought about the notes I made into the mini cassette, Mr. Turner was absent, hadn’t seen them since his Beth’s first birthday when he went out for “ice-cream” and never came back. The kid was 4 now, at least I hoped she was still 4, it’s a hell of an age to die.

I slowed the Benz to turn onto an unevenly lit street in a less than desirable neighborhood and her white car pulled onto the small oil stained concrete slab. There, alone between dark homes sat a peach colored cinderblock house, if it was 1000 square feet I was figuring it on the large side. All of Mrs. Turner’s grief was magnified to me by the fact that strings of multicolored lights twinkled along the roof gutters and especially poetic, candle lamps in the two bedroom windows glowed golden with her hope.

The house was lit like a beacon, just in case whoever took Beth had decided to find their way back in the dark. Before she could enter the empty home she broke down over the hood of her car. I listened to the tick-tick-tick of the Hyundai’s cooling engine against the rapid heartbeat of this woman in crisis. There she stood, thin arms crossed where she hid, head buried.

Now in the night air I caught the scent of frustration and working class poverty. It domed the neighborhood, confining their spirits only lifting to release their bodies for day worker jobs or night shifts at the diners lining the main road some blocks over.

I was beginning to doubt myself in this situation…. I had been so far away from mortals for so long the mendacity of immortality had jaded me.

I party more hours than I work and I haven’t had a real conversation since my father and I convened on the subject of pleasing a woman the night before my wedding in 1952. Corporations in need of a private dick don’t collapse in tears, was I even wired for this? I grit my teeth and stepped up to the plate, she was smaller than I saw her as I gathered her under one arm and walked her up to the windowless front door.

“She was in her bedroom, she had written Santa for a Barbie comforter set and she was upset because she said Pound Puppies were for babies” she eked out words between sobs as she opened the lock in the knob. The woman needed a dead bolt, why didn’t she have a dead bolt? I shook my head at that and she must have interpreted it differently.

“Yeah, I told her big girls liked Pound Puppies too” she wiped at mascara ringed eyes ruddied by hours of crying, “But I was covering, because I didn’t have the money, it was either the doll or the bedset” her confession stung me; the bedset wasn’t three drinks at the nightclub I frequented.

When the door swung open “her” vile decayed scent hit me. I didn’t have to walk back to the little 8 x 10 room to give her my professional opinion. It was Coraline, for some half-baked reason. Now my brain cranked into overdrive manufacturing PI questions as if I had to imitate a character on a procedural TV show. “Would you have a seat in the living room?” I asked Mrs. Turner as I pressed her down onto the worn plaid sofa.

The pink and beige bedroom waited for her precious tenant. Sparse furnishings held even more Spartan belongings. The twin bed’s Pound Puppy sheets were twisted, the tiny imprint of her head still indented in the tired pillow. I could see those rubine nails peeling back the faded sheets from the tiny sleeping child. I froze, scenting for blood and only caught fear, urine and Beth’s shame at wetting herself as Coraline drew her close in icy arms. Beth’s 35 pounds gave their best fight when she got both arms and legs squirming against Coraline’s selfish grasp.

This was going to be ugly, uglier than my wedding night.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Beth’s clutch on my neck was nothing compared to her clutch on my heart. She saw something in me in that burning room that I didn’t see in myself. “Are you my guardian angel?” she whispered in my ear as I trotted to the car, for once I thought about my words, how they could only compound the sins of this experience.

“Who do you think I am?” I plopped her into the shotgun seat and buckled her into the Benz but I didn’t give her time to answer, I flew around the back of the car to slide into the driver’s seat. She didn’t need me to do that vampy jump after Coraline and I bounced around the room locked at the jaws with each other. If only miles on the odometer could take Beth Turner further down the road from this occasion of sin.

“You aren’t an elf cause you’re too big and you aren’t wearing green” she was matter of fact and I was going with that while I pulled the car as far away from the bonfire behind us. I flipped on the radio to kill the silence as Tears for Fears finished belting out “Everybody wants to Rule the World”.


What were the chances that “St Elmo’s Fire” would scream out of the speakers next? We tooled down the road while I mindlessly sang along, “Growin' up you don't see the writin' on the wall, passin' by movin' straight ahead you knew it all, but maybe sometime if you feel the pain, You'll find you're all alone everything has changed” At the traffic light I caught her staring at me, I stopped singing while the song on the radio continued.


(1) “I can see a new horizon underneath the blazin' sky
I'll be where the eagle's flyin' higher and higher
Gonna be your man in motion all I need is a pair of wheels
Take me where my future's lyin' St. Elmo's Fire”


Our eyes met at her words, “Are you St Elmo?” she wiggled her pink toes as she wrung her hands in her nightgown, “I had an Elmo when I was a baby”


“No, honey, I’m far from a saint” I shook my head to elude her stare, those blue, blue eyes bore right thru me and I floored the accelerator as if that would divorce me from tonight’s deeds.


“There was fire” she was emphatic. Was I going to explain the scientific basis for conditions that generated St. Elmo’s fire? That it appeared during thunderstorms or when high voltage was present between clouds and the ground underneath? Yeah, Coraline and I were frequently electrically charged, but there hadn’t been a “glow” between us in a decade or so.

As I drove I pointed out Christmas lights and peaceful Crèche tableaus in front of Churches, anything to scrub tonight’s stain away. Crimes: Kidnapping, Arson, Murder, all because of Vampires, because of me and because even an unbalanced immortal caved to the idea that a child might save an empty relationship.


“My name isn’t important. The truth is, you are the only important person here” I spoke without making eye contact since the reality of this night in her eyes was a millions times more piercing than any stake I had ever endured.


Beth was asleep in the front seat by the time I pulled up; the engine’s rattle was singular enough to roust Mrs. Turner from the sofa and onto the porch before I could toe the passenger door closed while I carried her sleeping beauty to her.


She ran to grab Beth and I deferred, “let me get her inside” I could tell by her heartbeat, her breathing she was about twenty feet from fainting, so there inside, I held the two of them until they settled into a calm, humming sleep.

Before dawn streaked the sky Mrs. Turner shifted and realized where she was, “Oh, Mr. St John, let me let you go” yet for just a moment I held them that much tighter. Those couple of hours I felt Mrs. Turner’s love for her child were the purest emotions I was granted the grace to experience.

I felt like a thief. Mrs. Turner had hired me and I had earned moral purpose, not a paycheck.

“Would you accept a check?” She sheepishly asked as I carried Beth down to the hall to her bed. The bed had been made, the room nervously cleaned while I was battling Coraline. By the time I drove a stake thru my ex-wife’s heart Mrs. Turner was realizing she didn’t have the cash to pull from the ATM.

I pulled the faded Pound Puppy comforter over Beth’s slight body and cherished the last sight I’d have of her sleeping pout. I made steps backwards out of the room as I monitored her steady breathing and peaceful heartbeat.

“Would you wait till Friday to deposit this?” the check shook until I steadied it in my grasp.

“Mrs. Turner, it’s Christmas, you have better things to do with this money” I folded the check in half and handed it back to her.

“Actually, that isn’t even money yet” she folded back on the sofa, her elbows on her knees, her hands in prayer, “I can’t believe I was going to kite a check to the man who brought my daughter home to me”, the dam Barbara Turner took all day to build crumbled like sand, releasing a flood of tears.

I caught her descending body like the feather she was and got her back to the sofa – wrapping her in the afghan to diffuse my preternaturally cold embrace I comforted her as I had watched my Father so many times. Dad admonished me to just listen to women, said it was worth its weight in diamonds and gold. She had to be strong, she had been alone and tonight that changed. “Mrs. Turner, you know it didn’t even take me the 24 hours to find Beth”

Barbara caught about every other of my words between her heaving sobs as she repeated over and over, “I owe you, I owe you everything”.

Whatever had died inside me 33 years ago kindled back to a low burn. This was reality, family and the fear of death. I couldn’t let her go to bed this disturbed. ”Mrs. Turner” I caught her face in my hands. “Where do you keep tea or hot chocolate? Let me fix you something” Some loose thread inside me wouldn’t tuck itself away until I saw her settled.

“Call me Barbara….the cabinet over the stove” she pointed to the small kitchen about twelve feet away. I probably would have scented it had I turned that way. Clean, dilapidated painted cabinets lined six feet of wall that made her eat-in kitchen. Ragged pot holders hung on a hook near a battered aluminum tea pot. The pipes rattled and whined while I filled the pot and set it to heat. The dishes were nice, service for four sitting starkly in the cabinet. There wasn’t even the pretense of my making two cups, I just pulled the tea bag from a canister and silently leaned against the counter watching her in the multicolored glow of the small white Christmas tree between us. I leaned on those old familiar ways as I formed the words I’d need to use when I served her what I had hoped would be a healing cup.

Why should I bother, I debated? Could I change their abject poverty? I hadn’t even asked what Barbara did for a living; she was just flat busted broke. All the damage I had done in this incarnation the thought began to bleed into my undead soul…. I didn’t have to stay crazy in this state. I could change. My thwarted marriage had caused unjustifiable misery in the Turner’s innocent lives. I poured the boiling water into the cup and squeezed the honey bear over the floating tea bag. As the honey melted in the water and diffused into the darkening water I wondered how long it would take to diffuse the abduction in their world.

“You don’t have to tend to me, you’re wife’s probably wondering where you are” her earnest eyes apologized.

“Nope, no one like that in the picture” I sat opposite on the lumpy chair and figured I wouldn’t quit here until I knew she was nodding off.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

That week I did a little research.

Barbara barely owned the home, she was one month past due and there was $119. in her bank account which didn’t include the $50 in the Christmas club that she had to withdraw by the 23rd. I ordered a deadbolt and to supplant my paranoia I ordered burglar bars on the Turner home. I dug in and found the Barbie bedset for a twin bed and had that sent to Beth signed, “Santa”.

My vampire conscience, Josef, would have incinerated me for stepping back into the mortal world to comfort and succor what could be construed as “food”, at lease in Barbara Turner’s case. So, I sent the Locksmith as a community watch “drawing” winner, Barbara was tired enough to believe the guy.

I began visiting the restaurant on Pico, to whisk in and slide a few extra singles into her locker, she never saw me, her mind on getting trays of comfort food to the right table.

Do you know how hard it is to get things done before Christmas Eve?

So that fabled night when families settled to celebrate that Christ was born became the night I was reborn. I watched the taxis ferry people intent on making Midnight Mass and knew two of the 600 or so of the vampire population had gone from preying on to praying for the Turner women.

I felt dizzy “gargoyling” the Square beneath me, my concentration tumbling the ways I would look out for Beth. It wasn’t my physical sense that reeled at the heights; it was my heart divesting the misdeeds of 33 years of my wanton conduct.

Perhaps Barbara Turner would find another man and move away and I could relay their safety to a mortal man. If she was lucky they’d draw their daily sustenance from each other making random acts of normalcy, twisting in rough sheets at night, yeah, if she was lucky.

Finding Beth, killing my sire and ex-wife provoked the ashes out of my sack cloth of a soul. Scores of floors above the city, wrapped in purpose this Christmas Eve shimmered for me as I took the “should have done’s” and turned them into “To-Do’s”

Yeah, this year I had received the gift of humanity from a child.




1) St Elmo’s Fire Lyrics
Artist: John Parr
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francis
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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by francis »

This story squeezed my heart, hard, and left me feeling as if I should turn my life around, too. So good! Love the St. Elmo's fire included. Love the description of the Turners' poverty and how it affects Mick after his debonair life in luxury. He didn't spend a thought on what human life was like, since his marriage. Now he's reformed and trying to change. All because of a little child.
In this story it seems to me that it was more the mother and the circumstances than Beth herself who changed Mick. Watching over her, still, is what keeps him on his way, from now on.
Love it! :heart:
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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by Lucy »

francis wrote:This story squeezed my heart, hard, and left me feeling as if I should turn my life around, too. So good! Love the St. Elmo's fire included. Love the description of the Turners' poverty and how it affects Mick after his debonair life in luxury. He didn't spend a thought on what human life was like, since his marriage. Now he's reformed and trying to change. All because of a little child.
In this story it seems to me that it was more the mother and the circumstances than Beth herself who changed Mick. Watching over her, still, is what keeps him on his way, from now on.
Love it! :heart:
Thank-you.....
That modicum of "humanity" inside Mick was touched by their aloneness and woke empathy for this broken family....and Mick knew the family unit had been damaged by separation and poverty. The trip begins for Mick as he watches Beth grow....and there the love grows too.
:coffee: But that's just my theory on his metamorphosis. :Mickangel: :notworthy:
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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by cassysj »

Lucy this is fantastic. I can really see this metamorphis in Mick. He really was born-again this holiday season. Beth's mother made quite an impact on him. It changed him forever.
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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by Lucy »

cassysj wrote:Lucy this is fantastic. I can really see this metamorphis in Mick. He really was born-again this holiday season. Beth's mother made quite an impact on him. It changed him forever.


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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by jen »

Lucy

This was lovely!

The rescue of Baby Beth was a pivotal moment for Mick, as she silently witnessed him severing the cords that bound him to a lifestyle he couldn't embrace forever--it wasn't who he wanted to be.

We all have moments in life that are both endings and beginnings.

This was Mick's.

Thank you.
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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by allegrita »

Lucy, this is a wonderful take, not just on the Challenge, but on the story of Mick, Coraline, Baby Beth, and her mother. I love the way you described the grinding poverty Mrs. Turner endured, and the bit about kiting the check was just a brilliant touch. I can really see Mick comparing his luxurious, partying ways against her honest poverty... and turning that into a connection to the humanity that he'd thought was lost forever. Thank you for this story.
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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by Lucy »

jen wrote:Lucy

This was lovely!

The rescue of Baby Beth was a pivotal moment for Mick, as she silently witnessed him severing the cords that bound him to a lifestyle he couldn't embrace forever--it wasn't who he wanted to be.

We all have moments in life that are both endings and beginnings.

This was Mick's.

Thank you.
Jen-
You are always receptive ears.... I thank you for returning to the scene of my literary crimes! :notworthy:
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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by Lucy »

allegrita wrote:Lucy, this is a wonderful take, not just on the Challenge, but on the story of Mick, Coraline, Baby Beth, and her mother. I love the way you described the grinding poverty Mrs. Turner endured, and the bit about kiting the check was just a brilliant touch. I can really see Mick comparing his luxurious, partying ways against her honest poverty... and turning that into a connection to the humanity that he'd thought was lost forever. Thank you for this story.

I have to THANK-YOU that your board constantly knocks on little doors in my brain when you have these challenges. I hadn't thought of any of this until I read the challenge announcement and I sat down to outline a few points I felt strongly about. It was creative luck. :notworthy:
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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by r1015bill »

Very nice story, Lucy!

I've always regretted (among a lot of other things) that we really don't know much about Beth's family. I love people's interpretations about her beginnings.
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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by darkstarrising »

Wow, Lucy, this is fabulous :heart:

I could hear Mick in this story - you've got his speech and cadence down pat, not to mention the introspection. What you've written is a closer look at the moment his life turned around. It wasn't just returning a little girl to her mother - it was seeing the human condition - in this case, a woman barely making ends meet doing what she can for her child, the most precious thing in her life. If she loses that child, she's lost everything.

Loved how you had Mick compare how an amount of money that was hard for Mrs. Turner to come by was little more than what Mick might blow on drinks in one sitting. It started to put things into perspective for him. Also loved how Mick hearkens back to decades old advice from his father as he tries to soothe Beth's harried mother.

By the time the little one is returned, Mick has gotten his own Christmas present.
Before dawn streaked the sky Mrs. Turner shifted and realized where she was, “Oh, Mr. St John, let me let you go” yet for just a moment I held them that much tighter. Those couple of hours I felt Mrs. Turner’s love for her child were the purest emotions I was granted the grace to experience.
Wonderful take on the challenge, Lucy :hearts:
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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by Lucy »

darkstarrising wrote:Wow, Lucy, this is fabulous :heart:

I could hear Mick in this story - you've got his speech and cadence down pat, not to mention the introspection. What you've written is a closer look at the moment his life turned around. It wasn't just returning a little girl to her mother - it was seeing the human condition - in this case, a woman barely making ends meet doing what she can for her child, the most precious thing in her life. If she loses that child, she's lost everything.

Loved how you had Mick compare how an amount of money that was hard for Mrs. Turner to come by was little more than what Mick might blow on drinks in one sitting. It started to put things into perspective for him. Also loved how Mick hearkens back to decades old advice from his father as he tries to soothe Beth's harried mother.

By the time the little one is returned, Mick has gotten his own Christmas present.
Before dawn streaked the sky Mrs. Turner shifted and realized where she was, “Oh, Mr. St John, let me let you go” yet for just a moment I held them that much tighter. Those couple of hours I felt Mrs. Turner’s love for her child were the purest emotions I was granted the grace to experience.
Wonderful take on the challenge, Lucy :hearts:
I admire your work so .... your words here humble me. Thank-you! :notworthy:
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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by Lucy »

r1015bill wrote:Very nice story, Lucy!

I've always regretted (among a lot of other things) that we really don't know much about Beth's family. I love people's interpretations about her beginnings.
Thank-you! Don't these great challenges bring out the "secrets"? :notworthy:
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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by MickLifeCrisis »

This was wonderful! It made Mick take a hard look at his own life and he didn't like what he saw. I liked how he remembered lessons his Dad had taught him about women. This was about Mick's rebirth and it was beautifully done.

Thank you! :twothumbs:
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Re: Gift of a Child (PG13) Champ Chal 133/Holidays

Post by Lucy »

MickLifeCrisis wrote:This was wonderful! It made Mick take a hard look at his own life and he didn't like what he saw. I liked how he remembered lessons his Dad had taught him about women. This was about Mick's rebirth and it was beautifully done.

Thank you! :twothumbs:
Thank-YOU! (the little bit I write....when I post it I am so nervous....hoping it hits my target) :notworthy:
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