my little ellie

By Emery Brooks

my little ellie, tells the emotional story of a little girl with a powerful imagination and how she copes with living in a lonely reality after the death of her mother.

 

Despite living in poverty conditions with her alcoholic father - often struggling to find her next meal, Ellie chooses to maintain a positive attitude as her mother would have wished, that is, until she begins to lose everything most important to her. Pursuing Ellie wherever she goes, something from the shadows screams out for her, continually reminding her about the time she couldn't be a hero.

 

What is real? What is in her head? The lines between will blur and distort her perception of the world she lives in and those closest to her.

 

Will she be brave enough to face the challenges ahead of her like the hero she always wished to be?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emery Brooks
• Release date: Jun 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215466230

Book preview

Introduction

Who are we but the limitations put on us?

From birth, we’re told who we are, how we’re expected to be. Physical and sociological boundaries conform and restrict us when we’re our most malleable. Sometimes, it’s meant with good intentions like, to be a kind person by helping others. In other ways they may limit our potential.

Eventually, the lessons in limitations become self-imposed; we tell ourselves what we can and can’t be and we believe those thoughts to be our own.

I have to be like this...

I can’t do this...

I’m not smart enough to…

I’m not good enough because…

We don’t even notice they’re not our own thoughts anymore. For most people every day, something inside of us tells who we are. This is perhaps most evident among children and teenagers; developing minds struggling with having come from unlimited potential at birth to the burden of finding an identity based on the limitations they’ve been taught to believe. Caught in a maelstrom of emotional chaos, the young developing mind struggles to find order and stability, even personality. So, we give in, we learn to accept the limitations and say, This is just the way it is, and I am powerless to change it. Seldom ever thinking that maybe things could be different. That we can actually create our own realities.

Our minds are immeasurable in their abilities and are easily manipulated - either by external or internal factors. They’re capable of manifesting thoughts into reality not only in ourselves, but each other as well. Whether for good, bad - or whatever labels we wish to apply to it, with enough focus and belief in an idea we will find it to be true.

When our thoughts become focused finely enough, we begin to see the world around us through the filter of that idea. In this sense, we can choose to enjoy a rainy day because the clouds are ever-changing in interesting ways and the world around us shimmers beautifully. Or, we can choose to focus on how cold it is, how wet we are, and lose the ability to feel the comfort of a warm cozy sweater.

Try and recall of a time someone had hurt you, either physically, or emotionally. From that point forward, our thoughts and feelings about that person are usually viewed through the filter of that traumatic experience. We have the ability to step around it and ask ourselves, What filter are they seeing through that led to them being like this? Everybody has hidden stories that have defined them in some way and causes them to view their reality through a distorted vision.

What thoughts we choose to manifest are within our full control. With mindfulness and practice, every single person can change their reality or continue to run away from it. Life is a beautiful test.

True strength comes from within, understanding the limitations, and overcoming them.

Be the person/parent/friend/hero you always wanted to be.

eb.

Disclaimers:

Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Any photos used in this publication were either created by Emery Brooks, or used under free for commercial use licensing by generous photographers.

Copyright © 2023 by Emery Brooks

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

If you found this book through questionable methods, I get it, but please consider buying it if you enjoyed reading it. It means a lot to me to have a roof over my head where I can keep writing books for you.

my little ellie

The story of a little girl with a powerful imagination

running from her reality.

by Emery Brooks

Edited by Sylvia Shepert

dedicated to all of the little heroes needing more love.

Dedicated to all of the protectors providing it.

i wish i was a hero.

i’d get to go on adventures,

i’d get to see new places.

people would need me,

people would like me.

i would fight epic battles,

i would save the world.

but i’m too small & weak to be a hero.

e. derpy bird small

a beautiful spring walk

It took some gentle convincing to get the black coil bound notebook with green abstract accents on the cover to close properly, this always seemed to happen to these kinds of cheap notebooks after some use. Child-like writing in the middle said, ellie with a little heart beside it indicating that this belonged to her. Mr. Smith had given it to her one day after class out of his own personal cache of school supplies when it appeared to him she didn’t have anything to write on. Ellie put the cap back on her cheap blue pen and put it into her school bag. Thankfully there was no shortage of free pens lying around the ground around school. Getting up off the bed, she safely tucked her journal back underneath the mattress - the most secure hiding place for any teenage girl.

Little bare feet shuffled along the well-worn hardwood floor of her bedroom. It was still difficultly cold in the mornings. Chills ran up her small frame all the way up to her skinny arms then back down. She tried to massage the goosebumps flat again by rubbing her hands up and down them, but they kept popping back up like the rodents popping up and down in a whack-a-mole game she once played at an amusement park. Her personal best score was zero because even at the age of seven, she knew hitting animals over the head - even fake ones with soft padded mallets, was still wrong.

A moment for pause so she could work up the courage to remove her comfortably warm pajamas. Another chill. First thing’s first, socks. They were still slightly damp and just as cold as the floor. Maybe getting out of bed today was a bad idea… Maybe it wasn’t too late to turn back and retreat to the warm, comforting embrace of her blanket. She looked back at it for a moment before deciding she must get to school. Her under garments were no dryer than her socks, but she braved it and kept pushing forward. She held her t-shirt in her hands with outstretched arms; this wasn’t going to be good. Sliding her arms up into the sleeves was the worst part, the fabric slightly fragrant of mildew did not feel good on her skin as it rubbed against it.

it’s just like jumping into the ocean!

Is what she told herself to try and make this unpleasant situation just a little bit better. In a quick as possible motion she put it over her head and pulled it over her body. Small fists clenched and writhed as she tightened every muscle in her little body to hold in a scream that was desperate to find an exit. Deep breaths! Her jeans were last to go on, the thicker denim fabric was extra stiff so they had to be fluffed in the air a few times to soften them. Many people would refer to them as skinny jeans, to Ellie they were just jeans. Long, loosely braided, coffee-colored hair would need to be pulled out from under her shirt. It took a couple of grasps to get it all back out; the tip of which comfortably rested on her waistline as her damp t-shirt clung to her lower back sending shivers up her spine - one final reminder.

Little covered feet shuffled across the room to the mirror on the wall. Ellie leaned in and got real close to it with her face. Wide hazelnut eyes carefully inspected each surface with intense scrutiny as she turned her head from side-to-side to look for any small imperfections that might be made fun of at school. She moved the short roughly cut bangs off of her forehead to check under there too. A little smile lifted her bright cheeks.

looks good!

The room that was hers was fairly small - but still plenty big for her. She didn’t have much in the way of personal possessions that would necessitate the requirement of a larger space. The child sized bed next to the bedside table that never seemed to sit level, an old wood dresser, and a skinny vertical shelf unit took up most of the space around the edges of the room. On the shelves was her little library of books - mostly found from free piles along the neighborhood streets during spring cleaning, as well as a few little knick knacks and old playthings. Any discarded fantasy fiction novel in the free piles was a coveted find for her. High up on the top of the shelf an animal sat perched. The well-worn stuffed toy, a crow, diligently watched over the room with its one remaining plastic eye. They used to go on all sorts of adventures together when she was younger until he got hurt. Now he protects the bedroom from the comfort of the top shelf. Along the wall by her bed, dozens of cut outs taken from old travel magazines and picture books were taped on without much thought about aesthetically-pleasing placement. They predominantly pictured expertly photographed landscapes of far away places, exotic animals, and interesting people. Sometimes she would sit in bed facing the wall imagining what it would be like to stand in those places, see those animals up close, or meet the interesting people who probably had a lot of really interesting stories to tell. The one thing all the pictures had in common was they weren’t things you could find around here.

With her old backpack in hand she made her way into the narrow hallway that connected her room to the kitchen and living room at the front of the house. As she closed her door there was the door in front of her that led to the unfinished basement where the washer and dryer lived together. Sadly, the washer died two months, three days ago. The dryer, heart broken by the loss of its partner and unable to carry on, died nineteen days ago. Ellie was thankful it held on long enough for warmer weather to start coming around. Once in a while her and dad would go down to the local laundromat. She didn’t mind the inconvenience of it because he would allow her to get a treat with the leftover quarters from the vending machines. Plus, it was one of the few activities they shared together, however lately it hasn’t happened much.

Putting the bag down next to the fridge, she opened the freezer door, cold air chilled her damp clothes. Today’s breakfast was to be hash brown patties. She opened the box to grab some… There were only two left… Today’s breakfast was a glass of tap water from her favorite glass - the one with two cows grazing in a green field with a snow capped mountain in the distance. Then another.

Ellie didn’t bother to look in the cabinets for breakfast, she already knew that there was only a small amount of items diverse enough to not go well together. Half a bag of dry pasta, a can of creamed corn, a pack of saltine crackers, and an expired can of sauerkraut were all that remained - orphaned. It’s not that she didn’t like them - well, except for the expired sauerkraut! It was just that they weren’t very good for breakfast food, and she wanted to keep them for possible dinners over the next couple days in case dad didn’t go shopping again.

A quick rinse of her favorite glass and it was put back into the dish rack by the sink. Ellie turned around to look across the open kitchen into the dark living room. Dad was asleep on the couch. Of course he was... She shuffled over from the kitchen to check on him. His clothes stenched of smoke; several small burns left holes in his ratty old t-shirt. He breathed heavily through an open mouth made extra loud by the angle in which his neck was bent on the arm rest. His large hand hung over the edge of the couch towards the coffee table. It was heavily cracked and stained with pitch-black engine grease.

he works so hard, bringing things back to life.

Why couldn’t he bring the washer and dryer back to life too? The fingernails on his index and middle finger were stained a sickly shade of yellow and orange from years of holding a cigarette in between them. If paired together in a sunset or a flower, the two colors would normally look beautiful. But here on his fingers they looked disgusting and cancerous. Even asleep he looked so tired… Ellie observed his face, deep dark pockets hung below his eyes. His thin, dark slicked back hair was showing signs of going gray. A sign of wisdom they say, or perhaps something else.

i better take care of him.

She pulled the old wool blanket that was draped over the back of the couch and gently put it over him so as to not wake him. He had a bedroom to use, upstairs, but he no longer used it. Instead he chose to sleep here every night causing his spine to twist and contort which would inevitably lead to permanent back problems as he continued to get older. She picked up the very full ashtray with one hand and put several of her little fingers into the openings of empty beer cans to carry them to the kitchen. An ashy cloud of cigarette butts fell into the garbage, a small quiet cough. She shook the cans in the sink to get any liquid out then put them into a bag by the counter that she could later turn into pocket change - an allowance of sorts. Another quick trip back to the living room to collect the last few cans she couldn’t carry before. She stopped to look at the dent in the corner of the old coffee table that was built decades before she was born. A painful reminder of the time when she was thirteen and he hit her so hard her chin dented the solid hardwood leaving a permanent dimple-like scar on her chin. When anyone asked her about it she would just say it was from when she fell off her bike. Thankfully nobody ever followed up with more questions about the bike she never had.

maybe it was bright blue like the ocean?

that would’ve been nice.

She remembered there was once a time when he wasn’t like this, at least, she thinks she does. It felt like a past life at this point, like something she may have seen in someone else’s old family photo album. Old blurry photos of smiling faces shot on old film stock that had the same yellow and orange tint as his fingernails. Ellie turned her attention to the glowing television set illuminating the room. A documentary showing secretly recorded footage of poachers cutting the tusks off a live elephant was playing at low volume. The large majestic elephant let out a desperate cry for help with obvious terror in his eyes as he was being cut apart while being held down with chains as several men yelled at it. Her chest tightened - becoming flush. Shoulders tensed, breathing shallowed. Snatching the remote from the table she turned the tv off as fast as possible.

if i was there, i would be able to save them.

i think i could protect them.

i mean, i would try….

She grabbed her bag still leaning on the fridge and quietly made her way to the front porch - not that he would be likely to wake up, but she didn’t want to risk it. A slow twist of the old, loose brass door knob, and an even slower pull of the door. Their house was fairly old compared to some of the others in the neighborhood which meant the door tended to get stuck by the sagging door frame.

come on, please don’t be like this. come… on….

She put what little weight she had into the door and leaned back to release it with a shudder. She had to catch herself before falling over backwards from the sudden release. From the porch it was the same process in reverse. The row of windows on the covered porch shined painfully bright coming from the dark interior of the house. She could tell it was already a beautiful early-May morning. She squinted and put a hand to her face as her eyes struggled to adapt to the intense light of outside, it was enough to cause slight discomfort in her head but was soon ignored. Feeling weightless now she bounced down the wooden stairs to the empty driveway. The blue paint of the house that was peeling off the wooden siding was the same color and texture of a cracked robin’s egg. The years of neglect heavily juxtaposed against some of the nicer houses on the street. It’s a good thing grandma and grandpa hadn’t been back to visit lately; they would not approve of the state of the house. Every other house in this section of Rochester seemed to be identical, but somehow still unique. Street after street of two story homes each with an attic space as well as another level in the basement. Every one clad with either horizontal plastic siding, or old vertical wood shingles painted a shade somewhere between snowy white and muted pastel colors. The houses with color were the wild ones - but not too wild. They all seemed to have a large, well maintained, green lawn and almost non-existent backyard. Those with backyards typically paved over them for extra parking or made a small garden. No house would be caught dead with a front porch not having some sort of covering. And yet, they all seemed to be different from each other; assorted layouts of similar shapes and decorations made them just ever so slightly different from their neighbors - but not too different.

Ellie closed her eyes and looked to the sky, the sun pleasantly warmed her chilled, not quite light, not quite dark, natural skin.

i better get going.

i can’t wait to see naoko - only twenty minutes!

The roads and sidewalks along her walk were old, often cracked, and sometimes patched to squeeze more use out of them before someone had to begrudgingly approve the cost of repaving them. Past the sunflower yellow fire hydrant with the sky blue pole, and around the corner was her favorite tree. It was a pale brown color with white spots; it reminded her of a rare animal amongst the rest of the standard trees on this street.

someone dropped a black jelly bean on the sidewalk…

She would give it some more thought about why and how it ended up there but up ahead coming into sharper view as she approached it, a car was parked on someone’s front lawn for some bizarre reason. Getting closer it became clear why. A brightly colored school of fish drawn by children in chalk filled the driveway.

it’s so beautiful!

Joyed by the sight Ellie skipped as she continued on her journey and suddenly stopped again. There was another black jelly bean. That’s two! The scent of spring flowers filled her nose; small lungs expanded as big as they could go to take it all in. This was truly the best time of the year. After a long cold winter, nature returning in a spectacular display of color and smell always made her happy to be alive. Winters in Rochester are characteristically hard but thankfully the people who lived here understood the struggle. It is not uncommon to see people leaving their homes to help a vehicle stuck in the snow and ice. There was no thanks needed either, it was just what they did.

Sudden panic set in as her heart sped up at a flash of movement that caught the corner of her eye. Ellie froze in terror.

it wouldn’t be, that…

no, it isn’t real, it isn’t.

i can do this.

Working up the courage, she untensed her neck to hesitantly look over her shoulder to face something she hadn’t thought of in a long time. In the dense garden next to her a gray and brown squirrel also stood frozen. It was caught red-pawed stealing a shelled peanut from the large, blue, box-shaped bird feeder on a pole.

oh, it’s just…

A sigh of relief as her body relaxed again. Ellie smiled.

you shouldn’t steal mr. squirrel!

He stared back at her with his beady black eyes, pleading with her.

but i’m so hungry!

…i understand.

Ellie looked around cautiously to see if anyone was spying on them.

if i see the lady who lives here, i’ll tell her it was the bratty kid who lives down the street.

Seemingly relieved by her response, he put the peanut in his mouth and jumped to a nearby tree branch and disappeared in the bright canopy of soft green leaves.

i can’t wait to see naoko. almost there!

…a third black jelly bean?!

School was sort of within sight now; an overgrown bush was creeping over the sidewalk between it and her. While going around it she noticed a black spider with sharp pointy legs resting on top of a leaf. Quickly and instinctively she ran away onto the street then hurried the rest of the way towards the large mahogany-colored mountain to get away as fast as she could in case it decided to chase after her. Other kids were getting out of their parent’s cars in the loading zone at the front of the school. They were embarrassed to the point of wanting to ‘literally’ die for having been forced to quietly say, I love you too as they tracked Ellie coming up behind them. They followed her path with sideways eyes to warn her she’d better not tell anyone about this.

a nice problem to have.

The building’s dark red bricks and sand colored trim was coming into clearer view. Ellie squinted to see if she could see Naoko waiting for her at the entrance but couldn’t see her. Maybe she was already inside.

History class started quicker than usual today. Ellie didn’t get a chance to say good morning to Naoko yet who sat at the front of the class, close to the chalkboard and off to the side. The bell rang loudly, too loudly for Ellie. It pierced her ears and pained her head causing her to wince every time it screamed out. For some reason nobody else ever seemed to notice how loud it was or be bothered by it. Immediately beside her to her right, Ellie’s attention focused on another kid secretly sneaking brightly colored jelly beans out of a plastic bag into his mouth from behind the cover of his desk. He shouldn’t be eating sugar for breakfast, but… at least he was eating breakfast. She brought her attention back to what was more important to her. Naoko’s silky, straight black hair looked extra beautiful today as it draped over the back of her shoulders. It was radiant and sharp as ever, unlike her own slightly rough hair. Naoko’s elegant left hand raised up to expertly brush the hair off her ear. Ellie could clearly see a round ruby red earring shining light back at her. Their teacher turned his back to write something on the chalkboard giving Naoko an opportunity to look back at Ellie. Her perfectly smooth cheeks glowed softly in the morning light coming in through the classroom windows. Bright eyes smiled at her to say hello. A stomach flutter, and a gentle smile back.

she’s so beautiful.

that must be her latest creation!

A choker made of black metal wire woven together tightly wrapped around Naoko’s neck. It was hard to see clearly but it appeared to be almost Celtic in design. Ellie would have to get a better look at it later. The teacher turned back around to face the class and continued to talk about the battle of the Abraham Plains of 1759. Naoko quickly turned back before he could notice her not paying attention; her hair gliding on the air as she