Living Well

[Teresa]

The human mathematical equation that would explain the chronic feeling of displacement from which gifted individuals frequently suffer, can be traced back to the improbability of their being born into the families that raised them , the local Milton Junior College text read, Sometimes, in order to provide hope for a genetic trainwreck, a "variable" is born.

Bogart Freely was certain he was the "variable" of his textbook, Genius Rising by John Paul Slumberger, since for many years he'd been plagued with the persistent feeling that he didn't belong in his life; in a journal entry dated 1/1/69, he made the resolution to do something about it.

Bogart grew up with no father; his mother, Ethel, was a loud opinionated woman who didn't trust Bogart to wash well so she bathed him herself until he was thirteen. He wasn't allowed to have friends over unless Ethel knew the parents; the other criterion was that the families had to attend the same church as the Freelys - a small congregation called Living Well which met in a building that was once a 7-Eleven on Burchill Road in Fort Worth, Texas.

The few times Bogart dared to bring a friend over, Ethel embarrassed him with her chastity sermons delivered from their sun yellow kitchen while she made the ritual Sabbath meal of gooey chicken and dumplings; once she even showed Bogart's only good friend, Gerald, the large rasberry hemangioma at the top of her fat milky thigh which she believed looked exactly like the face of Jesus as it appeared on the Shroud of Turin.

Bogart had devised the perfect crime on that day in 1969, Ethel's rasberry stigmata and the surrounding tissue would be sufficiently digested to the consistency of her chicken and dumplings once he gave her body a good bath; there would be little more than her brittle bones remaining in the deep quiet earth behind Living Well.

[Jeanette Cheezum]

Teresa, this was very wicked, I loved it.

[Teresa]

This piece is longer at 10 Pen Scribe. I think it actually works better here because I was forced to be more concise - not always easy for the kid in school who was labeled, "Too talkative".

[Sandra Davies]

Yukk - sorry but although the first couple of paras. were very thought-provoking, and the second two horribly reminiscent I found the last one far too creepy and nightmareish - too close a conjunction of 'dumplings' (which I had for tea last night) and 'body.'

And a name like 'Bogart Freely' conjures up some VERY nasty images - so you can congratulate yourself on a very effective piece!!

[jkdavies]

nice, got me thinking about how we tell if we are "gifted" or just different.