Monday greens

We have all heard of the Monday blues, but what about the Monday greens? That feeling of accomplishment from the past weekend that makes it feel as if everyone else around you is green with envy. Ha ha maybe not but still its a good feeling in oneself that provides a drive to do things and to do them well.

Today I am going to work like a Trojan and afterwards I will once again have the green feeling, this is good as my exams are soon and no one wants to be blue just before exams now do they. As this is not work and I should be working I will put up a short story to entertain you while I am gone temporarily.

I heard the knocking

Copyright © 2011 Sheldon Hooper

When I hear that sound, the sound of a timid knock that is so slight as to not be noticed under normal circumstances, on my door frame or my window I think back on that one day that I heard it for the first time. I am one of those people who normally don’t listen for these sorts of things but that day I, for some reason unknown to me, was actually listening.

On that particular day I was in my study, breathing a fine mist in the midwinter chill, while I attempted to concentrate on my work despite the shattering cold of the outside world seeping into my bones. As I was struggling to think of a closing line for my thesis on “Adolescence of Psychology” I did not expect the little sound behind me that cracked the frozen silence. As I slowly turned around to greet this anomaly I thought to myself, “Who could this be?” I did not often receive visitors to my study at two in the morning, especially not on a night like this. With one eyebrow raised quizzically and my mouth curled up at the corners, I took in the visitor, expecting it to be a friend or even a colleague, but all remaining vestiges of humour soon left my face to be replaced with open mouthed horror.

Page 1

There in my doorway stood a pale and bedraggled bundle that could hardly be called a corpse. I recognised the hunched figure as one of my clients. A young woman in her early twenties who came to me under instruction from her bullish boyfriend hoping that I could make her a happier person. But how could she tell him that he was the cause of her unhappiness without him resorting to some sort of violence, as was the custom of such individuals who saw themselves as more than gods?

Under a paper thin nightgown hardly big enough to fit a small girl she stood quaking. My eyes quickly scanned her frame and lingered on a few dark marks peppering her arms, legs and even on her face, limply framed as it was by her dirty blond hair. Lastly I noticed her right hand clutching at a dark object protruding from her left side, just below her breast, surrounded by a slowly spreading stain.

With tears openly streaming down her battered face she collapsed into my study I lurched forward to catch her. As she landed in my arms I felt how fragile she was and looking down into the depths of her dark blue eyes, I saw fleetingly what could have passed as a look of gratitude.

Page 2

Her delicate blood-soaked hand came away from her side to pull weakly at my collar. And as I lowered my face, not losing her eyes, she spoke with what little strength she had left.

“Thank you” she said haltingly, following a rasping cough torn from her body. And with that I felt her grow lighter, as her last breath passed her marble lips.

The last I remember was her heart knocking hollowly and then nothing.

I remember it clearly.

I heard the knocking…