Lisa is today’s host at dVerse’s Prosery, and says: "Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to incorporate the quote ["I dress in their stories patterned and purple as nigh" –from “When We Sing of Might,” by Kimberly Blaeser] into a piece of prose. This can be either flash fiction, nonfiction, or creative nonfiction, but it must be prose! Not prose poetry, and not a poem. And it must be no longer than 144 words, not including the title. (It does not have to be exactly 144 words, but it can’t exceed 144 words.)
Deathbeds
Their graves are trash bins, medical refuse after each organ is harvested, the doctor careful to preserve the parts but not the whole. There is money to be had. She knew all this. She had worked as one. But the children she had aborted were not real to her.
Until the day she lay dying.
Suddenly they appeared before her eyes, smiling their forgiveness, and she relaxed. They understood! There was a God in heaven after all. Why, she didn’t even have to forgive herself!
She stretched out her hands to them but they stood out of reach midst the children she herself had decided to keep.
Her children saw her eyes widen.
“I dress in their stories patterned and purple as night,” she whispered.
What stories, Mom?
“The ones I took from them. The ones I robbed them of. Oh God! They burn!”
Update: So far this year almost 40 million children have been killed by choice. The leading cause of death is by abortion, far surpassing all other causes. According to data compiled by the Worldometer, a reference website that monitors statistics on health, the global population, the use of resources and deaths in real-time, over 40 million abortions are performed worldwide annually.
This Jolly Beggar 
Haunting words, Dora!
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Thank you, Ingrid.
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OMG. What a haunting tale. Short but you hit all the right spots.
Happy you dropped by to read mine
Much💜love
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Thank you, and yes I did. 🙂
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Dora, my heart goes out to the tormented person in your story and to those tiny souls who are burning. Powerful writing and haunting imagery.
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p.s. Dora, this past weekend, I watched a new movie called, “Nine Days.” It talks about the born, the unborn, and who gets to live and who doesn’t. I bet you would *love* this movie.
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Sounds intriguing to say the least!
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Lisa, those tiny souls are not burning at all (just the opposite) but their lost stories now worn by the protagonist.
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Ah! Thank you for the clarification. That reminds me of a Tao Te Ching verse where it says that man should not play executioner because when he does he hurts his own hand.
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Wise words indeed.
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a truly haunting story of such an age old issue …
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We treat life cheaply at its most vulnerable stage.
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I doubt any treat it cheaply, many have limited choices … and all I know are haunted to this day 😦
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It’s a cruel irony that there are infertile couples that are waiting to receive these children that women cannot raise themselves. 😕
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rape situations, DV issues, many factors come into play, sadly nothing is black or white …
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Nothing diminishes from the fact that a life is taken, a child’s life. So many women who have done so suffer lifelong for it and my heart goes out to them.
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they never forget, it’s not a light decision …
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It’s tragedy on all sides, isn’t it? May they find peace.
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may we all find peace 🙂
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Indeed. RIP. Disposal of the baby’s body parts as medical waste needs to be stopped. Those children need the dignity of a proper burial.
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I couldn’t agree more!
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I’m sorry the woman is so tormented, though I do not share your viewpoint.
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Yes, she is tormented.
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Thanks for the clarification as to the lost children. Mostly I walk the fence between pro-life and pro-choice. The Zen in me knows that there is more going on here, karma and cosmic choice.
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Pronoun references are dang confusing sometimes. The hand that rocks the cradle as being the one that wields death is an irony a writer can’t resist.
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All those millions of humans, whose cells doubled in number each day growing to maturity were snuffed out since the early 70s. It is hard to account for all that inhumanity.
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60 million lives since then, and counting in the U.S. It is an unspeakable crime against humanity.
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Such a tragic story Dora
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Thank you, Sadje.
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Well done Dora! A really hot issue in our society. There is much talk about the woman’s rights to her own body, but what about the rights of the living unborn??
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Exactly, Dwight. These helpless ones cannot speak for themselves, their own rights. We have to.
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Yes, I agree!
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👍🙂
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Just read this, Dwight, from the pen of Mother Teresa:
“America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts — a child — as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign.”
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Very well stated!
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She wasn’t one to flinch at speaking truth, whatever her audience.
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That is true… an example to all of us.
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ooohooo. now i need to keep the light on before i sleep! haunting and creepy!
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I have to blame the line Lisa provided which seemed “tailor-made” for such a tale. Thank you, Rosemarie.
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true!! anytime, Dora. 🙂
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Those first few lines….they really hit….what a start to the sad tale of hopeful redemption……as I see it. Hard-hitting…
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Thank you, Ain.
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A very powerful narrative, Dora. Such a huge responsibility a doctor has to bear, really. Great inclusion of the prompt line.
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Thank you, Sunra. Such doctors do bear a responsibility. As do the mothers.
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I’m afraid I’m pro-choice, Dora. And wholly on the side of the mother. But I respect that the doctor has to deal with the conflict of this on their conscience.
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The choice to kill is always there, isn’t it, and not just in the matter of a mother and baby. There’s no getting around it. Abortion is the leading cause of death globally, beyond all other causes. What a tragedy!
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I’m with Kate and Merril on this one. I think you are profoundly wrong.
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The killing of a child is profoundly wrong, Jane. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
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A child, yes, I agree.
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Dora, I’m grateful you dare to write truth on this issue and in such a powerful way! It’s a barbaric practice but we’ve become dull to the horror and the numbers of victims. Women are victimized too. We can choose what to do with our own bodies…before conception; after that, another human’s body must be considered.
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You said it well, Lynn, especially that “women are victimized too.” I appreciate your pointing this out. They suffer the consequences of what they are told is a simple medical procedure to a clump of cells, but which leaves them ravaged physically and emotionally. It is barbaric and it’s infanticide. A life is brutalized and killed in the womb. We have to keep praying it will stop and keep working towards its abolition.
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This is such a difficult subject for all sides of the discussion… Well done, Dorah.
❤
David
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Thank you, David.
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My gynaecologist sis-in-law was often haunted by this fear when her children fell sick – that it was the curse of the ones she terminated with her scalpel.
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How sad! If, like your sister-in-law, one has a conscience, it is a great weight to bear.
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