Compulsion: A Story Written for @tristancarax

For those of you who have read my stories in the past, prepare yourselves: This story is like no other I have written. You will discover thirty-word sentences, with multiple dependent clauses. This is not my style.

The rule generally governing my writing is, less is more. However, @tristancarax, an extremely creative Steemian, has thrown down a challenge. He has created a strict format in which writers must tell a story. There will be exactly 31 sentences in the story. Each sentence will have a defined length, and the order of the sentences is determined in advance. Every sentence must be a true sentence, except the sentence with 1 word.

There's more. We have a prompt! Check out @tristancarax's blog for a full description of this, but it relates to styles of thinking: a growth mindset vs a determined mindset.

This is the sentence order @tristancarax mandated:

4, 8, 6, 7, 15, 24, 3, 16, 25, 26, 10, 21, 29, 13, 28, 12, 2, 9, 23, 31, 22, 5, 18, 1, 11, 14, 17, 27, 21, 20, 30

I had more trouble counting the words, than writing the story 😄
In the spirit of adventure, and in support of my friend's creative enterprise, I am offering:

COMPULSION

Out, damned spot, out!

I kept thinking of that line from Macbeth. My aunt was on her knees. She was vigorously scrubbing spotless floor panels. Her feet were bare, because she would never wear shoes on her precious oak floor.

Where was this spot, this ugly gash that tortured my aunt, haunted her dreams, tormented her sleep, and pulled her prematurely from slumber? Where was it?

A beam of sunlight streamed upon the high gloss floor, but I could see no blemish. My aunt gripped sandpaper in her gloved hand, and buffed until the beam of sunlight moved across the room and found a corner to illuminate. As my aunt scrubbed, glistening rivulets of perspiration formed in the crevices of her furrowed brow, which deepened to match the intensity of her crimsoned cheeks.

I moved closer, to try and see what she saw. Nothing was there, certainly nothing to warrant such focused dedication, such frantic expenditure of time and energy from this distraught woman. I wanted to intervene in her frenzied exercise, wanted to abort the fruitless activity, but I knew she would not welcome interference, would not, could not, tolerate a challenge. My aunt, you see, was eccentric, perhaps a bit mad--a family secret.

The inclination toward madness may be said to run in some families, certainly in our family, and we do not like to acknowledge this congenital flaw to outsiders.

My father was eccentric, I admit, as was his father before him. It's worrisome. I might be troubled, if I dwelt upon this. I recognize the tendency that ran strong in my father, and in his father, is the same that now afflicts my agitated aunt. As for me, it is true I check the stove, and check again before going out, and I wash my hands whenever I touch a light switch, or any suspect surface. But I have the ability to be discrete, to conceal my inclinations, and would never allow anyone else to witness these peccadilloes.

Awareness indicates rationality, they say. I am not like my poor aunt, who, despite the calloused knees cannot see unreasonableness in her behavior.

Stop! I want to shout it, but this would have no effect. Only through sheer physical exhaustion, or after complete darkness, will her labor mercifully end.

As I stand here talking to you, please know that I am conflicted, because I cooked this morning. A question nags in the back of my mind, a refrain, one that makes me uneasy, urges me to go check--did I turn the stove off? But I resist, because there kneels my aunt, compelled by obsession, and I will not let compulsion take hold of me.

She is beginning to wheeze, as exertion takes its toll, but apparently this does not diminish her will to clean. I suppress thoughts of the stove and continue to monitor my aunt--this done with love for her, and a dark foreboding that today's events might foreshadow my own future.