NaNoWriMo + @freewritehouse = #freewritemadness.

17 18 freewriters are gathering at the @freewritehouse to write 50000 words in one month! I am using @mariannewest’s #freewrite prompt (https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-389-5-minute-freewrite-tuesday-prompt-excuses) and @mydivathings’ #365daysofwriting picture prompt (https://steemit.com/fiction/@mydivathings/day-330-365-days-of-writing-challenge) to help write my story.
Today’s prompts are: excuses and a Photo by Rye Jessen on Unsplash

As usual I started with the freewrite prompt and used themostdangerouswritingapp.com to write the first five minutes:

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_{Catch up with the previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13}
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The many torments of Tiny Earl - Chapter 14

Eleanor dreamed of the cross-eyed man, again. This time, she was late. For a meeting? To get home? To find someone? She wasn’t sure. But she did know she had to get on that subway train, the one that was just pulling into the platform.

Eleanor began running through the passageways, her footsteps echoing loudly in her ears, trying to get to the platform. She could hear the train had just pulled up, but she couldn't find it. She ran down one stark white passageway, with its cables snaking above her head, and into another, but she couldn't find the platform. It was like a maze, every turning she seemed to take took her to a dead end.

Where the fuck was everyone?

She was alone. Was it really late at night? Early morning? Was it the end of the world?

There were no other passengers in the subway, no one else trying to get on that train. And then, as she rounded a corner she saw him.

The cross-eyed man.

She stopped, almost skidding into him. He smiled, and as he did so his eyes moved inwards and Eleanor couldn’t help but stare as the colours of each eye changed, rapidly blue, green, red, yellow, blue, green, red, yellow and then he smiled and said, "Hello Eleanor. I've been waiting for you."

He leaned towards her as if he were going to whisper something in her ear.

"No more excuses," he said and kissed her and she felt something wriggle from his mouth into her own, and she woke up screaming.

And coughing.

She felt the thing being expelled from her lung, but this time it didn’t make it out of her mouth. She could feel it squirm in her mouth, its tiny tail flicking in anger at being trapped behind the prison of her teeth. Disgusting fucking thing! Keeping her lips tight, she let her jaws open, just enough so the creature could crawl over her teeth, trying to find its way out of her mouth, searching for freedom. Eleanor bit down on the creature and she felt its little body break between her teeth, and fluid squirt from its crushed carcass, flooding her tongue. It tasted bitter and warm, like the bile that erupted into her mouth.

She leaped from the bed, pulling the sheets from her body, tearing them away with one hand, the other clasped to her mouth to prevent her from opening it, to prevent the vomit/creature mixture leaking out, onto her body, or onto the crisp white bed sheets. She knew she didn’t have time to make it to the bathroom, but managed to get most of it into the wastepaper basket, that sat next to the desk under the window.

For a moment, afterwards, Eleanor sat heaving, clutching the wastepaper basket and trying to be strong enough to look at what was inside. When she did all she saw was a wastepaper basket with a small amount of vomit in it. There didn’t seem to be anything in the liquid. Not sure if she was going to be sick again, Eleanor pushed a finger into the vomit, knowing that if anyone was watching this they would think she had lost her fucking mind. She used her finger to stir the liquid, searching for the remains of the creature. But there was nothing in there.

Eventually, Eleanor stood up and took the basket to the toilet, emptying it into the toilet and using water from the bath taps to rinse it out. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror and ran water from the taps into the sink. She put her head down and took a mouthful of the cool water, swilling it around her mouth before spitting it out into the sink. There it was! The crushed green body, and tail was in the sink, swirling around about to be sucked down the plug hole. Not sure why, Eleanor tried to catch it before it washed down but the first attempt it slipped from her grasping fingers. The second time she had it and she raised it up to look at it and.. Ouch! The fucker bit her! She shook her hand and the creature, smashed and useless looking held on to her finger, its teeth imbedded in the tip. Eleanor shook her hand again and this time the creature flew off and it and a drop of her blood disappeared down the plug hole.

Eleanor washed her finger under the running water, cursing. When she looked into the mirror she noticed her eyes looked odd, and as she watched they began to cross, changing colour, alternating quickly: blue, green, red, yellow, blue, green, red, yellow. And she realised it was not her face in the mirror but that of the cross-eyed man.

“No more excuses, Eleanor!”

She screamed and as she did so the cross-eyed man in the mirror screamed too, and when he did his mouth opened and Eleanor could see his mouth was full of writhing, squirming little green creatures.

“Eleanor!”

A banging at the bedroom door.

“Mrs Montgomery-Smyth! Eleanor! Are you alright in there?”

Eleanor sat up, in bed, the tangled and sweat soaked sheets clinging to her body.

“Eleanor! Can you let me in? If you don’t answer I’m coming in anyway.”

“I’m fine!” Eleanor croaked, barely loud enough for her to hear, let alone Clare, on the other side of the bedroom door.

“Eleanor! Open the fucking door!”

Eleanor wrestled with the sheets and managed to get out of bed and to the door. There was no key in the door. Confused she turned the handle and the door swung open. Clare stood on the other side looking worried, holding a gun. Down the corridor, she could see that the room to Tiny’s room was ajar. The door closed quietly as she watched.

“It wasn’t locked,” Eleanor said, pulling the sheet, tangled around her body up higher before turning away, heading for the bathroom. The dream was still vivid in her mind, her mouth tasted like shit. She checked the mirror to make sure the reflection was right, before running water and rinsing out her mouth, over and over again.

“Are you alright?” Clare was standing in the doorway of the bathroom, the gun had disappeared. “I heard you shouting. And then the door was locked, I couldn’t get in to check on you. You shouldn’t lock the door, Eleanor.”

“Just a dream,” Eleanor said, staring at her face - her face - in the mirror. Fuck, she looked like death. “And the door wasn’t locked. There’s no key.” As she leaned over to rinse her mouth out once more she felt - rather than heard - Clare move away, presumably to check what she said.

“I’ll get it looked at,” Clare said, returning. “It must have been jammed somehow. It seems okay, now though.” She paused, and Eleanor looked at her standing behind her, in the mirror. She looked worried. “Are you alright?”

“Just a bad dream, really. I’m fine.”

“Okay,” Clare said. “Only, you don’t look fine. If you don’t mind me saying, you look sick. I’m going to call the doctor,” she pulled a device from her pocket. “In the morning. Just to be sure.”

Eleanor nodded. She wasn’t going to argue. She felt like shit. Perhaps she was coming down with something.

“I’m going to try to get more sleep,” she said. “I’ll leave the door ajar, I promise. You don’t need to worry, Clare. It was just a bad dream.”

Clare nodded, not looking at all convinced. But she left Eleanor alone.

The bed was a mess. Eleanor fetched clean sheets from the cupboard next to the wardrobe. She stripped the bed and then made it again with the clean sheets. She checked the time: four am. A nice warm shower, and then she would snuggle back into the freshly made bed and hope she could get some more rest.

“Are you alright?” Eleanor jumped and turned. Tiny stood in the doorway, his dressing gown barely covering what it needed to.

“For fucks sake, Augustine!” Eleanor said. “Just fuck off, would you?”

“I’m just checking on my wife,” Tiny said, a hurt expression on his face. He stayed in the doorway. “You were shouting, you know,” he said. “I could hear you from my room.”

“It was just a fucking dream,” Eleanor said. “I don’t know why people can’t understand that! I can’t be the only person in the whole fucking world who has bad dreams.”

“No more excuses,” Tiny said.

“Pardon?”

“That’s what you were shouting. No more excuses! A bunch of other stuff too, probably, but that’s the thing I could hear the clearest. You said it over and over. Singing it, almost. Like a chant.”

“Fuck off, Augustine.”

“I just want you to know, I’m here for you, Eleanor. If you need me. I’m right here.”

“Well, I wish you weren’t, Augustine. I really fucking wish you weren’t.”

Tiny shrugged, and turned away from the door.

“It’s not the first time I’ve heard that phrase,” he said, over his shoulder. “No more excuses, I mean.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me, Augustine?” Despite her promise to Clare, she pushed the door to, hearing the click as it closed.

Eleanor stood under the shower, the water as hot as she could bear it, washing the dream, along with the sweat from her body. She tried not to wonder what it meant, that the cross-eyed man had come to her in another place in her world of dreams. Before he had always been in the same place, the lake surrounded by mountains. As horrible as that dream was, she always knew he would be there. But now he had shifted, travelled to other places in her dreams. And then he had followed her here, to this house. Eleanor shivered and turned the water up even hotter, her skin turning dark pink. He was here in this bathroom. Was it a dream? Or was she dreaming now.

And what the fuck was Tiny playing at? Pretending he was concerned for her wellbeing. After she had left, that day he had driven off, leaving her standing on the front drive watching the dust from wheels of his car dance in the air, he hadn’t called her. He hadn’t tried to reach out to apologise. To try to put things right. Perhaps, because he didn’t want to, perhaps he knew he couldn’t.

Whatever, he’d left her alone, with all those images in her head from when she had touched him. All those memories. So many memories, so many confusing memories. So many horrible memories. Too many memories for one man’s lifetime.

For months the only communication she had had from Tiny had been via his secretary, his lawyer or from Glenn. That had been fine with her, actually. For months, Eleanor didn’t think she could bear to be in the same room as Tiny, not after what she had seen. But eventually, they had agreed to meet. Somewhere neutral, he said. A village he knew. He wanted to show her something.

She met him at the church in a village called Little Hockton, a picuresque chocolate box village, full of thatched roof cottages. He was standing, awkwardly by the entrance to the graveyard. Eleanor had almost felt sorry for him, he looked almost vulnerable.

“Augustine,” she said, ignoring his hand outstretched for her to shake, as if they were business partners not man and wife. He sighed.

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that, Eleanor. You know I don’t like it.”

“It’s your name, isn’t it?”

“I prefer Tiny, as you well know.”

“What is this all about, Augustine?”

He sighed again, and stepped into the graveyard.

“I’ll show you,” he said.

Eleanor followed Tiny as he took her past rows of unkempt graves. At the rear of the churchyard was a grave that seemed set apart from the others. It also seemed to be better cared for than the others. The cross was unusual, adorned with four carved stone ravens.

“This is Janet,” Tiny said, pointing at the ground beneath the cross. “She was my wife, a long, long time ago. I loved her with all my heart and I let her down,” Eleanor wasn’t sure but she thought she could see a tear glinting in the sunlight, in the corner of Tiny’s eye. “I wasn’t there for her and she got sick and I tried to help her, I tried to save her but I couldn’t. And she died.”

Eleanor didn’t know what to say. Despite the hatred that she had cultivated for Tiny, she felt a tinge of jealousy as he spoke about the woman he so obviously still loved.

“I can’t expect you to understand, Eleanor. It’s complicated. Unnatural, I guess. But I also know that you understand a bit more than perhaps you should.”

“Why have you brought me here, Augustine?” Eleanor asked.

“I thought I sensed something of her in you, Eleanor,” Tiny said, and this time Eleanor could see a tear roll down his cheek. “I thought I could have her back. But you aren’t her, Eleanor. Are you?”

“I don’t know who you are, Augustine. I don’t know what you are. But you scare the shit out of me. The things I saw, that day… that last time we met. I don’t understand them, I don’t want to understand them. I don’t understand how that,” she pointed at the grave. “Could possibly be your wife, and yet I know it to be true. I’ve seen it to be true.”

“There is a connection,” Tiny said. “You are connected, you know. You aren’t her, and yet there is something that connects you.”

“That would be you, Augustine. Obviously, it’s you.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know that is not what I mean. Look, Eleanor. Clearly, we can’t be together, live together. It isn’t meant to be. But I want you to know I will not let anything happen to you.”

“My hero,” Eleanor had said and had turned to leave.

“I’m sorry,” Tiny said. Eleanor had stopped, waiting to see if he would say anything else, but he didn’t. It was funny, but somehow him showing her his vulnerability, had made her hate him all the more.

That was how many years ago now? And this was the first time they had spent more than three minutes in each others company.

After the shower, Eleanor climbed back into bed and drew the sheets around her into a cocoon.

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