Hello all! Long time no see =) I bring a new story. A little swearing, a little sexual reference, but I'm hoping it's not too bad.

- Tixi

Prolouge - Norah

I met Norah at a party when she was fifteen. Her hair was more of treacle than straw, but her eyes were blue and her breasts firm below her t-shirt. Alluring, she fluttered her eyelids and my heart, barely nearing nineteen, jumped into my throat. The first kiss tasted of warm bourbon leeching from my own saliva, and her cool, flicking passion pop tounge.

As a pregnant sixteen year old, she yelled a 'fuck you' to her parents, and stormed out the door. Dumped books on my sofa and threw herself down after, stomach swelled, waistline stretched, she opened The Tempest and sat silent as I made her lunch, thinking through a cloud of tobacco, that i would very much like to marry this girl someday.


Her anger grew as hormones filled her stomach, turning her sweet, plump lips into a scowl, freckles the color of chocolate on palid skin. I rotated my thumbs, faster and faster, the controller sweating in my hand, her voice reverberating in my ears.


Ferocious, she gave birth to James Elliot White a month premature, and a month after she had stormed to her room, a cake decorated with seventeen candles untouched on the kitchen table.

James had charcoal hair and milk skin, set with eyes like a tropical ocean. I loved him more than I thought possible, and set down my Woodstock & Cola to heat up his bottle.

Norah lay on stinking sheets, packets of crisps open around her, crumbs in her socks.


She had never been one to keep weight on, and when her skirts slid back into place with ease, she threw the door back on its hinges, peeling off down the street while i sat on the stained shagpile carpet, puppets on my hands, a chubby toddler asleep at my knees.


I worked as a cleaner, mopping floors three nights a week. I shuffled in the door as dawn broke, James' cries greeting me, Norah and a bottle of vodka arm in arm on the sofa, TV buzzing softly.

Norah never worked, except on good days, when she attemped to write essays long overdue. I'll graduate one day she'd whine, brow furrowed, it's just so goddam hard with a kid!

At nineteen, she was pregnant again.

I don't want this, you know, she sighed angrily, dealing out the cards, James asleep in his crib, I never wanted any of this


Yvette Jane White, perfect at full term, ten fingers, ten toes, a fine sprinkling of hair. I gave the crying bundle her first bath, changed her first nappy, warmed her first bottle. Norah binged, cursing when Size 10 gave her a muffin top.

Norah died when she was almost twenty-one. Heatstroke. She'd been at the beach. I made arrangements for her funeral with a weight off my shoulders, and two innocent-faced children staring up at me.