I am writing with the lovely i_id. Her entry can be found here.

No more eggs. With the sound of the crack of the shell on the floor, she had begun to cry, but forced herself to hold back, her hands clutching the sink to keep her body steady. She watched the cold liquid of the albumen spread slowly at her feet until its edge touched her bare toe. Dennis was outside for now, and she knew Martha was safe in the basement. Safe, she thought to herself, when did it come to this?

Dennis was sitting on the tire swing, twirling around, playing that game where you twist and twist the rope and then let go. With every turn he looked in at her, and with every look her heart tightened, the fear mixed with the residue of but that’s my little boy.

“Mommy, there’s egg on the floor. Was that my egg?”

For a second she couldn’t hear her, but the sweetness of her daughter’s voice soon broke through and brought her back.

“No, sweetie, that was my egg,” she said, and bent over to pick the sticky shells up from where they sat. “There’s some cereal on the table for you. Coco Pops. I’ll get you some milk.”

Standing, she noticed the tire swing was empty.

…so far, Mark, he has only been identified as John Doe. A woman was seen leaving the hospital earlier today, and some reports are saying this is his wife, but what I really want to talk about is the psychology behind this sort of thing…

“What’s that word, psycho…psycholedg…?” Martha was taking some Coco Pops from her bowl to give to Bunny.

“Psychology. It’s a big word for how people think,” she said, closing the fridge door. “For talking about what makes people sad or happy.” 20 June, it was still good. She unscrewed the cap and told Martha to say when.

…can we really ever know what makes a terrorist? People like to say parenting – “When” – people like to say sociopathy, but what makes a sociopath?

“Does Bunny need milk?” Martha nodded and she obliged. Within a moment, the front door slammed and feet pounded their way upstairs. She wondered if she should call for him.

“Dennis needs milk.”

…the disease agent was called something like Clarastridium tetani, we've heard…

She laughed, Clara, just like my name. It sounds too nice to be a killer.

“I’ll make sure Dennis gets milk.”

She stood at the bottom of the stairs, hand on the rail, her mouth poised. It was the crack of the bowl on the floor that stopped her. She could see the milk in her mind, spreading across the floor like the egg yolk, and wondered if it wasn’t some kind of auditory hallucination, and nothing followed.

“Martha?” she was running now.

…I think it’s parenting, Shirley. These kids just aren’t getting the care they need, these monster parents just don’t know how to give love…

Neither mother nor child was breathing, as she lifted her daughter up, wondering if she could remember CPR or where the phone was. She wiped the milk from Martha’s face, and it tingled on her skin. The line rang for 911, and she held her hand to her face, finally taking a deep breath, and then another one just to be sure, and another one.

“Hello, hello? Hello. My daughter’s been poisoned, it was the milk, it was in the milk bottle, I don’t know what it was,” she coughs, “he put it in the milk bottle.”

An introduction, for i_id.

This is the true, fictional story of Beth.  All of the local folk know about Beth; despite the name not sounding any different from yours or mine, it is rare that you could meet someone who would not nod their head and smile at the mention of her, thinking at once of the young girl who came from the sea.

Beth was found one morning in June.  She was a typical basket case, that is to say that she was found in a basket (though would later claim it was a hat), wedged in between two rocks on the south shore of the island.  The man had been alerted to her arrival by the gulls, which were busy plucking at the hull of the basket in search of food, an act which looked almost as if they were cleaning the craft for their mistress.  The man had shooed them away and taken baby and basket back to the vicarage, where his wife was singing to herself and working away on the roses.

“We should call her Bess,” said his wife, “after the old queen.”  The man shook his head; she wasn’t a cow, she deserved a better name than that.  Eventually they compromised, and a Beth was born.

Life in a vicarage, while it had its charms and its safety, was never going to contain her, and so it was not long before her tiny legs were carrying her off back by the ocean.  At first this scared the man, but if the ocean had sent her to them once, surely it would just spit her right back out if she tried to go too far, and that’s just what it did.  Beth was such a natural swimmer that it led some of the local population to spread rumours she was a selkie, or worse.

Yet the ocean was not the only place she loved to dwell.  Over the years, her adoptive mother had accumulated shelves and shelves of books (it can get lonely being the wife of the vicar), from historical tomes to the latest adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and every night the girl would read a new one.  She fancied herself being like one of the pirate captains she read about, and she often dreamed that her true father was the Master of the Sea himself, and had sent her to the land to learn about the ways of mortal men.  The man did nothing to discourage her, and actually enjoyed listening to her tall tales over the dinner table.

One morning, at the age of twenty, Beth left the house with a book and her rucksack and went to the shore.  Here, she set to making a boat.  Every day, without fail, she came to the shore with her book and her rucksack and spent the day working on her boat.  Crowds soon gathered, of men and women wanting to help, and children wanting to play, but Beth would accept no help, nor would she allow any of the children to come along for a ride.

On the day that the boat was finished, she called her Gandalf, after one of the characters from one of the vicarage books: a strong name, a magical name, and one that would watch over her.  She waved to her parents, and to the townspeople, and pushed herself and the boat off into the sea.

She has not been back to that town since, and no one is quite certain where she’s gone to, but they all know she’s safe.  Perhaps she has gone off to try and find her pirate family, or to seek out her fame and fortune on foreign shores.  Or, who knows, maybe she has gone off to join her father, the Master of the Sea.

Now that my essays are done, and I am on summer holidays, I intend to try LJ Idol with all that I have!