Hello sexy!

Sorry, you just missed him.

That's enough, move along!

Bootylicious!

No, this is my good side!

He said What?!

PS: Family members might recognise this story.

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She got up quickly as the doctor came towards her.

“Mrs du Preez, your son’s eye was damaged quite badly by the buckshot. The fovea was destroyed and the lense had to be removed. To stop the retina from detaching we replaced the gel in his eye with medical grade silicon oil. Should the silicon oil do it’s job the eye will retain its shape and he will keep his eye.” Strangely the doctor’s factual description eased the aching worry that Angela went through while sitting in the waiting room.

“Can I see him?” she asked.

“His in recovery now. They will bring him out in about ten minutes.” He replied

“Thank you, doctor.”

The alarm sounded next to her bed. With determination she got up to wake her teenage daughter.

“Sam, it’s time to change your brother’s dressing again.” she softly called her daughter. It hurt when her son, Stephan, told her she wasn’t allowed to touch his eye, but to be completely honest, she was terrified that she might hurt him. Samantha had the objectivity to clean and medicate his eye without the trembling hands.

Angela prepared everything that was needed. She handed Sam the anti-bacterial soap to wash her hands. Made sure that all the things used during the cleaning was ready. They walked into Stephan’s room and touched his arm to wake him up.

In the dim corridor light, Sam pulled the tape from the eye patch. She removed the cover and dressing from the eye. With careful strokes she cleaned the glue from his skin. Using clean cotton wool soaked in saline she cleaned the eyelids. Ten eye drops were counted as they dropped. Then the antibiotic eye ointment squirted in a long worm along the bottom eyelid, before the eye was closed again and re-bandaged.

“Done” Sam muttered before heading back to her bed. Angela packed everything away before heading back to bed herself.

The first time Stephan complained about the pain in his eye, Angela almost panicked. Back at the hospital the doctor explained that due to the silicon oil the drainage canal had been blocked. The eye produced new gel and pressure built up in the eye. Her teenage son had glaucoma. They needed to operate again to relieve the pressure. The second time it happened she new what to do. Stephan was taken to hospital for another operation. After weeks of controlled panic, her son got better. Stephan kept his eye, though he couldn’t see very well with it. The absence of a lense and the destroyed fovea gave him no detail. He described it as seeing light and dark without any definition. The silicon oil was absorbed into his body and the natural balance was established again in his eye. The only sign of all the trauma an elliptical hole in the iris.

I promise you it felt like 5 hours  in a dentist chair!

But it’s up and with one more chapter to be written by Mrellan, I can sit back and wait for the finale.

Today I’m doing the last bit of polishing on the next serial starter.  You’ve guessed it a Romance!  And I’m taking the other writers out of their comfort zone right into Africa *cue evil laughter*

This morning I was working on an idea for a romance starter at The Story Mint.

The setup for the story was a young widow with two kids, boy and girl. Who is having a well deserved holiday.  The love interest comes in when she is seen on a daily basis by a famous movie star who is working incognito on a screenplay.  Sounds like a typical Mills & Boon story right?  You got it

Now originally I had the story set in Seattle and he was working out of a two story house/apartment next to a park where she takes her kids on a daily basis.  He becomes obsessed with her and finally approaches her.  She doesn’t want to be involved with a movie star – too much publicity, etc.  He changes careers (because he was fed up with the public lifestyle in any case) and they live happily ever after.

I decided to rather add a bit of local flavour to the starter, since the other serials have all been in foreign (and sometimes frightening) locations. Well, for little old South African me at least.  So I tried to set this story up in a South African City/Town/Whatever… and I came up with Margate!  If you’ve tried working on a laptop in any South African city you’ll know that the selection of places that supply you with a power outlet is limited.  BUT since I was sitting in Wimpy this morning working on my laptop, I thought of the big Wimpy right on Margate’s main beach.  Perfect spot for our hero to watch our Heroin.

Since I’m a very fair minded person, I decided to see what info is available on the internet on Margate and Wimpy and if the other serial writers would be able to google any info they needed to contribute to the serial.  I found Margate, SA on Wikipedia (PS: what is with the unoriginality of the South Africans?  Every single SA place I google, has been named after some other place….  St Lucia, Margate. I mean really!)  and I was amazed to see that Margate’s claim to fame was about a HUGE furry water animal that had a fight with some killer whales and then washed up on the shore.  The thing was called Trunko.  So obviously I google Trunko and it turns out that Trunko was in fact a globster.  In other words a piece of decomposed whale that was unidentifiable because of it’s state.  The fur was only exposed connective tissue fibres.  Uhhmmm, Yuck!

Of course now I’m stuck with this image of “vrot” whale carcass in my head… I’ll have to skip the romance until later.

Official photograph of Trunko (Copyright AC Jones)