Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
Formula
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
I test the bottle against my wrist, and the white dribble is neither scalding nor tepid. It is just right, perfect for a tender little mouth. I caught hell from the missus the first time I overheated the formula.
I take one long tired blink, and fight the yawns. Jules has nearly kicked his way out of Sharon’s expert wrappings, and his squeals are constant, his struggles furious. He latches on to the rubber teat with relish, and chugs down the white muck like a frat boy. He never liked breast-milk so much, and I think Sharon is quietly relieved that her days of swollen breasts and saturated t-shirts are over.
Jules is thriving on this new diet, and he’s growing by the day. I know there’s been some safety concerns in the past, but we’re told that the formula is perfectly safe these days. “Bottles Bring Better Babies!” says the label on the tin.
I don’t care that people on the picket-lines call us bad parents. I never try to hide the formula under my other groceries, and I don’t bother joining the online forums. Why would I want to be friends with other formula-feeders, the ones who try to keep it secret, who are ashamed of what they’re doing?
I even caught some prick trying to paint a slogan on my house, and frog-marched him out into the street at gun-point. We’ve got a dog now, and cameras. If the vandalism gets any worse, I’ll put in an application for a kill-fence.
It amazes me how judgemental people can get. There’s been a resurgence in natural methods, breast feeding and home births, all that hippie stuff that we thought dead and buried. Whenever we mention that we feed Jules on formula and formula alone, we get everything from silence to accusations. Jules’ food intake is a bone of contention between Sharon and her mum, by which I mean they scream at each other frequently.
I try to imagine the nanobots, invisible little servants suspended in that sweet warm liquid. Even now they’re flooding throughout his little body, and as Jules looks up at me with those trusting little eyes I wonder how much has changed. Are the bots already in there, working away, making his eyesight perfect? Better? His bone-density, just that little bit stronger? His brain, his heart, his muscles…
We’re just like any other parents. Who wouldn’t want to give their child the best start in life?
Red New Day
Monday, March 30th, 2009
The chariot awaits, but I cannot leave.
As long as my husband lives he will follow me.
The axe is sharp, bright and washed clean of my sister’s old blood. This is the weapon she used against her husband, and the one her son used against her in turn. I bade Orestes abandon it when he fled the Furies.
‘You will never be free while you carry it.’
I hid it for many years, until I had need. It is heavy in my hands, but I swing it, find my rhythm, feel my muscles hum with effort and recognition; I am, after all, a daughter of Sparta.
Though I look not a day over eighteen, I am old. The blood from my father is a god’s, but in my bones I feel old. The years weigh on me.
I heft the axe again, hear the whoosh of it slicing the air, watch the sunlight of the red new day flash against the great double blades. For a moment I am blinded. I think of other battles, other stained weapons.
Memory takes me.
Paris, petulant adolescent, did not like the word ‘no’. When Menelaus left his palace and wife unattended, the Trojan boy struck.
I did not consent, no matter what they say. I did not say ‘yes’. But I took life and limb from seven of them before I was overwhelmed. They dragged me to their ship covered in the blood of others.
And ten years in a gilded cage, rich with Trojan contempt. Watching as the black ships dotted the shore, watching from the high towers as both sides died, all in my name. Until sly Odysseus came, disguised, past rotting corpses the Trojans no longer had the heart to bury. I sent him away with an idea. When at last Menelaus stood there, unable to kill me even though he blamed me, because that would set me free.
In the bottom of the chariot, the scrolls, my history and Troy’s; how it burned, its children dashed against stones, its women parcelled out. How its men allowed destruction within its walls.
I take my bright axe and walk to where my husband lies in half-slumber. I think of my sister. I think of escape, of dark caves where I might hide, or shadowy cities where I might wander. I think of my future and it holds shadows.