My Tenth Birthday

I will never forget what my father said to me on my tenth birthday. Dinner was over and the table cleared. My two brothers were seated ... looking like they couldn't wait to make an escape. Mom came into the dining room from the kitchen wearing her yellow and black shirtwaist with the white polka dots, carrying the candle lit cake she had made for me. Three presents were settled on the slightly gravy stained tablecloth. Dad looking, bored and disinterested, waited anxiously to have a cigarette. I was wondering what treasures lay beneath the carefully wrapped gifts that mom had picked out. After the required birthday song, I focused on ravaging the first box with the smiling paper clowns grinning up at me. "I will destroy you," I thought .... remembering the dream I had had two previous nightmares ago. I lifted out a box with a clear cellophane window. In it peering up at me was the most beautiful porcelain doll I had ever seen. "Thank you so much, Mom! I love her!" "It's really a shame that she will never love you!" Dad exclaimed with a smirk on his face as the unlit cigarette held between his two fingers pulled him out the front door. Mom had a blank look on her face. The boys slithered off and headed to their room. I slid out the back door, feeling slightly ill, to check on the polliwogs in the creek bed behind our house, ... my refuge. I went to bed that night holding onto the doll with the beautiful eyes and the soft, cloth body. "I will take care of you" I whispered, drifting off to another night under the small dark, canvass circus tent. -This is a writing prompt from Salon Magazine.... "30 Days of Writing" The first sentence was the prompt and it has to include the words 'yellow' and 'treasure' My brain was kind of frozen just writing to nobody in particular so you have become the recipient. Wanna do it with me?

It was the third morning and the smell of tar and seaweed had got into his clothes. His breathing was shallow and his skin had the pallor of the underbelly of a lifeless fish. Tiny crabs were tearing at the raw stinging wounds of his flesh. His mind was numb from exhaustion, hunger and cold. "Where was he? Was he really still alive?" he thought. There was a dull, thumping sound coming from up above him. A radio seemed to be playing in the distance. His decision to join the Merchant Marines at fifteen years old had broken his mother's heart. He hated leaving her behind with the new baby, but since his father had passed away, he needed to be the the breadwinner. The idea of being a pirate on the open sea, sailing from port to port across the globe appealed to him. The circumstances of his father's death compelled him to seek distance. He had been working as a deck hand for fifty seven day runs from New York to Singapore working lots of overtime, chipping rust and tightening the containers when the explosion came out of nowhere. He felt the shards of glass penetrate his skin as he was thrown overboard, landing on a yellow plastic container of dead fish. Three days passed. He was sure his ribs were broken. The dead fish had sustained him. Dehydration was causing him to swell and his skin to crack open. Then thankfully unconsciousness forced him into a a deep wild sleep. The sounds from the pier up above drew clearer and the ringing in his ears began to subside. Where was he? " Mister?" a very small voice from behind startled him into a renewed state of awareness. "Where am I" - the broken young man asked in a raspy whisper. - the first sentence is from A Conspiracy of Faith