#sshortstories

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a ghost

Grace was stoic that evening, just as she had been every evening every day that December. Nothing moved her. Not even the breath of winter that chilled and shook the frosting daffodils. Not even the cockroaches that scurried ‘bout her floor, in search of scraps. She meandered throughout her house that night. She was always careful to be silent, as if making any sort of movement or sound might disturb the great hullabaloo of cascading dust and fidgeting mites. Her house was a tomb: the epitaph written upon the empty bottles of wine, the stale odor of cigarettes, and the general disarray of household. The dilapidated half-house inhaled and exhaled mighty bouts of air into its hollowed hallways on especially windy nights, but it never breathed. The house kept up its machinery. Every night at eight, the critters would pop out of their hiding places to go from one corner to the next. Every night a quarter past ten the floorboards would begin to creak. At around 2 the sounds would cease for but an hour, the witching hour, and then resume. Grace took shallow breaths and only shifted positions once or twice to forgo interrupting everything. I am still. I am still. I nothing but a flower waiting for water. Waiting for a sip of dew to stop me from withering away. A lick to pull me from this drought. Just a touch. A glance. Grace was stoic that evening, just as she had been every evening every day that December when he left her twenty years ago. And she would remain that way every evening every day twenty years more, until he came home.

-S

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Short Story Part 2

Three weeks had passed before the bereaved eruptions ceased. A service was held in her name in a park off the local highway, and the hush of Pacifican life resumed. I too went back, to my original work. I arose early on weekdays to commute to my corporate job in the nearby city and returned in time to prepare dinner for myself at home, shower, read a novel, and sleep by nine. Mrs. Abernathy and her nephew had all become a blip in my life, yet still, it troubled me. Often times I spent nights befuddled. The day he discovered her body he was bewildered, in some sort of stupor, begging to use my cell phone because he’d left his own at home. Hesitantly I agreed and, in the hallway, listened as he called relatives to harken the bad news. It was not at all strange, in fact, it was an ordinary tragedy. Yet the incident remained in my memory every time I gazed out my bedroom window to look at Mrs. Abernathy’s cottage. The flowers were now beginning to wilt.

Weekend mornings I had committed to attending church, and when one morning I pulled up into my driveway I noticed a peculiarity. Jackson’s truck was parked sideways in the former Mrs. Abernathy’s driveway, crushing several browning daffodils under its tire. Slowly I exited my own car and began my journey up the hill. Her door was pushed open, and although I began to feel the sticky sensation of perspiration on my palms, curiosity beckoned me forward.

“Jackson?” I called. I passed through the threshold. Somewhere in a back room I heard rustling. I had never seen the inners of Mrs. Abernathy house before, but now marveled at its spaciousness. Someone had begun to pack away the ornate china and glass displayed in the room but stopped presently-- knocking and throwing the decadent pieces to the floor in what looked like a tantrum. Half bodies of glass horses and russian packing dolls lay destroyed at my feet. Still I continued. I tiptoed through the shards that littered the floor struggling to see what lay in the darkened hallway.

“Jackson” I croaked. I heard a moan from the room nearest to me. I pushed the door open and apathetically stared at the man before me. There Jackson was, the inebriate, bottle in hand and balled up into the fetal position.

“She’s dead” he mumbled as I pulled his arm over my shoulder and hoisted him up. I almost keeled over gagging. He reeked of vomit and body odor, the pungent odor of alcohol incapacitating me the most.

“She took me in after my parents died” he confessed, “she was my mom”. I blushed in embarrassment over his inappropriate laments. I considered laying him back down to the floor, but generosity persuaded me to assuage him.

“I’m sure she loved you”. He threw his head about, streaks of hot tears lining his face.

“That’s why she couldn’t have died.” I wondered if I should continue to listen to his ravings.

“They said she died of a heart attack, but she had been taking her pills. I know. I came to pack her things today and look what I found” he shoved 2 capsules into my face “look what I found!” I pulled back and examined the things. All I saw was two white oval pills engraved with the letters ‘CV’.  

“I dont--”

“That’s not the correct prescription” he sloppily slurred.

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Short Story Part 1

The death of Mrs. Abernathy came in swells to the sleepy town of Pacifica and hovered over its inhabitants like the impenetrable fog that blanketed the town before daybreak. The town mourned profusely, loudly even; the Tribune paid written homage to her excellence, her dedication to the wayward children at the local community center. News stations lamented the town's great loss. Townspeople would converse over a cup of tea, shaken with sorrow. Relatives would stumble out of bars, half-drunk in a maddened stupor. The frenzy would begin haphazardly, and fizzle out just as quickly. I myself was confounded as to why her death caused such an uproar. She was a quiet, revered old woman, whom for many years I'd mistaken as a hermit (it seems she ventured outside to help the children at the community center). Her house was just up the hill from my own, austere, quaint-- the kind that does not call attention to itself-- complete with an assortment of flora variegated not only in color, but nationality. Occasionally, her nephew trecked up that hill to assist with maintenance work, but for the most part visitors were seldom. She was brittle with thinning hair, incapable of walking so far 300 meters and so news of her death came at no surprise. It was one morning, as I rose to pull a tee over my head  did I notice through the window of my bedroom Mrs. Abernethy's nephew Jackson running down her hill, skin white and face twisted. Concerned, I left the confines of my home and greeted him. He quaked nervously and wiped water from his cheeks (whether tear or sweat I never found out). He slurred his words and looked about fearfully as if he'd just witnessed a murder. Only much later did I come to learn he'd stumbled across the crime scene.

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From what I can recall (1)

The first few memories I have of my dad are the absence of him. Him missing from every coddle in my mother’s exhausted thinning arms, half drunken toddler steps, and outings to the neighborhood park where my sisters and I gallivanted in freshly mown grass. To this day my mother insists that he was there: to wrap me in his arms, to document my penguin walk races, and hold my hand at the park. She insists that bad memories paint over good ones like correction tape, and that he was gentle, loving father to me then. She never excludes that word though, “then”.

- S.N.C

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When you grow old...

Forty, fifty, sixty, years from now, when your youth has abandoned you, left you with brittle bones, sagged skin, and a wavering bass voice, you will be settled in your leather recliner, monitoring the little feet that run about. And you will produce bellowing laughs, empathizing with their rambunctiousness, recalling fond memories from four decades prior. And you will call them over, the two ceasing their play fight, to begin your story.  Your grandchildren will gather about you, hands grasping at your rotund stomach, belly gorged on merriment, fattened with too many Thanksgiving dinners where your daughter insisted you eat more and the limitations of your aging body. Still-- they will cherish the crinkle in your eye that your wife so long despised in her own reflection, they will admire the cumulated years you’ve stolen, and they will listen intently. Listen to your memories, condensed into few words about the summer you fell in love, the time you naughtily played Chinese firedrill (your daughter shaking her head, don’t give them any ideas), the English teacher whose intelligence intimidated you, but whose personality invited you with warmth. They will listen to your adversities, your demons, the instance in which you ran out into the street, painted with emotions and screamed out at the sky. And they will hear about your friends, your dear chosen brothers and sisters whose laughter, shoulder, words, and mere presence brought comfort to you. And once you are finished, you will insist that while nostalgia is a burden, it is also a happy gift, and they too must enjoy life to its fullest extent but also remember it. But your grandchildren, disinterested and drowsy by the fourth hour will dismiss this notion, unable to understand. Your daughter will then, with the help of her husband, whisk the children off to bed, stroking away tendrils of hair, and kissing their rosy cheeks. And you will sigh, they mustn't forget their youth. And your wife will then make her way over to you, wrap her frail arms about you, kissing your cheek tenderly, I haven’t forgotten ours.

--S