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Introductory Text

Mother has put a nail in my brain
The Son's Narrative Part 03 96th Post Posted 6 July 2016 at 01:16:14 UTC Link to original

Mother has put a nail in my brain. The nail stays still. Everything else moves.

Last year me and my family took a trip to California. My dad got to drive on the Pacific Coast Highway. He really loves cars and it was his dream to drive on that highway since he was little boy like me. But he didn't get to drive on it much because I got really car sick. We kept having to stop and then we just went home. My dad didn't say anything on the way home.

Why did mom and dad leave me behind? What is because of stuff like that? Because I'm too much of a baby?

I feel like I'm car sick now. The medicine makes everything look like it has colored shadows. Everything is going different ways in different colors. I can see things that don't happen. And things that do. Things that try to happen but don't get to. It's too confusing.

Outside it's sunny. But I stay in bed so I don't feel so sick. If I lie in bed I only see a few things: me lying this way or that way. But if I get out of bed I see a thousand different mes. I'm doing different things and crowding everything up like Where's Waldo. It makes me dizzy.

Mother comes in and puts three big stones on the floor by my bed. I don't know why. I watch them. They just sit there. Doing nothing. I think about pushing one of them away, and then it's covered with color shadows. The shadows show things that could happen but don't. So I make this a game. Watching what could happen.

After a few days I start feeling a little better. I still see colors but they don't make me sick all the time. When Mother comes to give me more medicine, I tell her I'm hungry.

"Make some food then, dear," she says with her bird voice.

"How?"

She points to the stones. "Command that these stones be made bread," she says in a new voice, a man's voice.

I look at the stones. Now they are colored with more shadows moving every different way. It looks like colored fire. But I don't know what to do. I say, "Stones! Turn into bread!" and shake my finger at them like Harry Potter pointing his wand.

I see a color of fire I haven't seen before.

It works. The stones are bread.

Mother laughs.

Mother leaves and I eat the bread. It's wonderful just like my favorite bread from Tony's. Warm and squishy. But how did it happen? Is this magic? Real magic?

I drop the bread and run to the window. The street is empty, almost sunset. I close my eyes and make a special magic spell.

When I open my eyes... Yes! There it is coming down the street: mom and dad's car.