The memory still had the power to make Kate's eyes sting, all these long years after the incident had occurred. She gazed out the window, watching the naked branches flail about energetically in the strong wind. The wind tortured the Hudson into white-capped waves, making it appear as if the river flowed north instead of south.

How had she landed here? She now lived in this decrepit little shack on the edge of nowhere, eating cereal with water because she couldn't afford milk and it was too stale to eat by itself. She'd grown up in a mansion on one of the finest streets in Saratoga Springs, pampered and spoiled by her doting parents, envied by her peers and coddled by her teachers.

Kate's path through life had been strewn with rose petals, up until the time she'd reached college. Then, the habit she'd formed of simply going with the flow, doing just enough to get by, had enfolded her in a cocoon of anticipation. If she was good for just another year and a half, she'd be free of college and could find something that mattered to her.

Then she met Professor Allegany. His literature class had been the beginning of the end for her. In all the other classes she'd taken, it had been enough to read the assignments and write vague essays on them. Professor Allegany, however, thought that the key to teaching students about literature was making them write it -- or at least attempt to. Like everyone else, Kate had whined and complained, but when she finally gave in and sat down to write what the Professor required, a miracle happened.

Kate discovered that she loved to write. And when she submitted what she'd written to Professor Allegany, he'd gushed about how fresh her voice was and how true her characterizations rang. He gave her an "A" for the semester and had exhorted her to think about writing seriously, suggesting writing programs to attend and writers on writing to read.

That summer, Kate decided not to travel to Europe with her mother and her sisters while her father executed a commission to build an office complex for the European Union in Brussels. Instead, she retreated to the family's cabin in the Adirondacks with a portable computer and a box of reference books. She kept in touch with Professor Allegany via e-mail, sending her stories, memoirs, essays and poems to him for critiquing.

Professor Allegany forwarded some of her better work to some friends of his in the publishing business, and before she knew it, Kate's work began to appear in some of the small literary magazines that her mother kept on their coffee table but never read. She was astonished at the ease with which she'd become a "published author," because she'd always been led to believe that work worth publishing could only result from surviving suffering and strife.

Kate had never striven a day in her life. She'd been born into the lap of luxury and had never left it. But as her new obsession took her over, strife began to worm its way into her life. Her friends had spent the summer without her, and when they returned to school, she spent most of her time in her room, at her desk, leaning over her laptop tapping out stories. They quickly forgot her, and she quickly forgot them.

When she did seek companionship, it was usually Professor Allegany that she sought out. He alone seemed to understand and appreciate this new compulsion, to get everything out, into the computer and out onto the paper. Then she seemed real, her life tangible. There it was in black and white.

And the magazines proved she existed, that she mattered. They bought her stories and memoirs, published her words, perpetuated her thoughts. She was happy. Professor Allegany was happy. In retrospect, it had been inevitable, she later thought -- they fell in love.

When it was discovered, there was the scandal. Professor Allegany was forty years older than her, married, with grandchildren her age. Her parents were mortified, and even more chagrined when they discovered that their daughter had been writing professionally, selling thinly disguised little slices of their lives to magazines.

Kate had been summoned home from school, and when her mother declared that her nerves were shattered and that she needed peace, she was shipped off to Brussels to face her father. His initial plans had been approved and now he was supervising construction of the project. He sent a car to pick her up at the airport, an impersonal chauffeur handed her into the limosine and out of it into the mud of the construction site.

"Katherine," her father greeted her coldly. "You and I need to have a talk."

"Yes, Father," she mumbled and looked down, expecting him to take her into his mobile office so that he could dress her down in private. Instead, he let loose where he stood in the mud, specks of spittle showing up white against the redness of his face.

There, in front of the entire construction crew, who had begun to titter and then guffaw as he berated her, the architect's daughter looked down and saw the pea gravel between her shoes. She noticed it again as her father fell down into it, jerking in spasms as more spittle foamed from his mouth and his face turned redder still.

At the funeral, her mother ignored her, except to say that her father's demise had been entirely her fault and that the rest of the family would never forgive her for it. When her father was laid to rest at last, her family left her standing alone in the cemetery. She never saw her home again.

Kate was forced to join the working world now, and without a college degree or experience, couldn't find anything better than working behind a register in a grocery store. The days were long and hard, but she looked forward to going back to her miserable little shack each night so that she could write.

On her salary, she could barely afford food, but what few pennies she was able to spare went for paper and pencils. When winter came and she had to pay for heat, she wasn't able to afford these luxuries any more.

Kate turned to shoplifting, and was eventually caught. The grocery store manager didn't want a thief running his registers and fired her, and with no degree, an arrest for theft and a bad reference from her one employer, no one else would hire her. Still, she couldn't stop writing. She picked through public trash cans, trying to find something with a clear surface. When she came to herself one day to find she was writing on the inside of a discarded paper bag, she realized that it was time to end the misery.

In the middle of winter, in the bitter wind, she pulled the thin raincoat she'd worn at her father's funeral around her and walked down the road to the gravel quarry. She found a lovely pile of soft pea gravel, and lay down in it to wait for peace.

Props to the CH Percolator List for the prompt
February 17, 2001
1,195 words