Tag: miscarriage

All Stories, General Fiction

Scans by Edward Lee

literallystories2014

Contains references some readers may find distressing, please refer to the tabs at the bottom of the page.

In the library I see a woman photocopying ultrasound scans. At first, I am sure not sure what she is doing, though I can clearly see her take the scan out of a purple folder and place it on the screen of the photocopier, before closing it and moving across to the screen to input her instructions.  It is obvious that she is photocopying the scan – after my eyes recognise the black and white image, they then pass over the slight swell of her stomach, the glance more instinct than choice – and yet, it takes a few seconds for the obviousness of it to make sense in my thoughts; there is also a suggestion that I am not thinking of them correctly, that ‘ultrasound scans’ is not the correct terminology, but as to what it might be I do not know right at that moment, and this misnaming is, I believe, contributing to the delay of the realisation.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Category 5 by Emily Tiedtke

literallystories2014

typewriter

He hadn’t meant to do it. As his muscles strained against their tendons, sweat pouring from his brow, reality blurred like the trees standing behind rain-covered windows. Adrenaline coursed though his veins, filled his mouth with a metallic taste- He wondered if she’d tasted it too, in those few brief moments of chaos.

He hadn’t meant to do it. Really. But, in the moment, it was the only choice he had.

~

Jason Mattis was old. Not in the physical sense — though a few gray hairs had begun to work their way into his shadow of a beard — but in what he’d experienced over his 26 years of life. Growing up, Jason had watched his mother deteriorate in a mess of tubes and needles and medication, the whirring machines sucking the life from her as fuel for their colorful blinking lights. Sunken eyes, sagging skin, and the shadowy shapes of bones resting just beneath the surface. Smaller and smaller upon that white bed, until one day, she simply wasn’t there anymore.

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