#FSS

Bailey’s Eyes

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Inspired by Fandango’s Story Starter #264

They had been together for twenty-five years when…Fletcher Ware who was eating lunch with his friends at work in the staff break room with Gary and Amy and Ed when realized that he didn’t know what color his wife’s eyes were.

Without having to check for confirmation,  Fletcher knew that Amy from accounting had blue eyes, that Gary from IT had brown eyes and that Ed Farmer had a glass eye that almost matched his green eye perfectly but not quite.

That aside, Fletcher was a little horrified when he thought and thought about it and he could not remember what color Bailey’s eyes were. A husband should know what color his wife of twenty five  years had.

A cold bead of sweat ran down the side of his face.

He remembered to swallow his noodles and he remembered to smile at the joke Gary had just finished telling, but at that exact moment, Fletcher was in a panic.

Fletcher made himself calm down. Was it dementia? Alzheimer’s?  Was he having a stroke?

What color were Bailey’s eyes!

Okay. Amy and Ed were flirting and Gary was talking about his kid’s soccer game. Fletcher reached over to his phone and casually flipped through the screens until he came to his photo album.

He looked over at the next table and there was Tracy from sales talking to Marie from the warehouse.

He tried to slow his breathing.

He found the pictures he and Bailey took at the fairgrounds last weekend. In one  she was biting into a caramel apple and the man next to her was biting on the other side of the apple- he pulled his phone over and held it up.

Who in the Hell was that guy?

Fletcher  hit the flip icon on his camera and a face filled the screen.

He just didn’t know whose face it was filling up the screen but Fletcher wondered if that guy knew what color Bailey’s eyes were.

 

 

John Doe AKA William R. McDowall

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They say everyone who looks into their family history will find a secret sooner or later.

What I found wasn’t a secret, it was just a story that wasn’t told in it’s entirety.

My Great Great Grandfather, William Robert McDowall  drowned in 1925.

How he ended up in the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, Canada remained a mystery, so it was never determined if his death was accidental or if he was the victim of foul play.

He was identified by his Father and Son in Law and if the circumstances of his death weren’t bleak enough, my Great Great Grandfather was  in Ottawa for his Mother’s funeral.

My Great Great Grandfather’s death and the story about his tragic death wasn’t a family secret at all.

I knew before I saw it confirmed in the news paper story that I found  that he had been in the water for a few days. Robert was listed as a a John Doe until some papers were found in his pocket that id’ him. It was  my Great, Great, Great Grandfather who  went into the mortuary and looked down into the face of his son’s corpse and confirmed that was his son because in those days they didn’t have a room for the deceased and another room for the family and a camera or a window to separate you from them.

He looked pretty bad, I heard.

The only detail, and I guess it’s a small one is this- my family who were pretty superb story tellers never really got around to explaining why Robert was alone for the funeral and why they didn’t think foul play was involved.

Those details never made their way into a single story and I will always wonder why.

 

 

Memories

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Inspired by Fandangos Story Starter Prompt #169

My mother has a set of photo albums that she keeps in the bottom drawer of her dresser.

The albums are bound with cord, and the pictures aren’t held into place by sheets of plastic. They’re held in place by crisp little paper corners that have turned yellow with age. “Memories ” are stamped in cursive on the cover of each album.

Each album is filled with pictures of my Mom smiling, she is sitting next to Christmas trees and at picnics, she is sitting on a blanket and making faces into the camera.

I don’t know who any of the other people are in those pictures. They smiled more than anyone I knew or saw in our home.

Once, my Mom caught me about to take one of her photo albums out of the drawer. I was sitting cross-legged in front of her dresser, and when I looked up at her, she was scowling. Her face was red. There was no trace of the smiling lady from those albums on her face.

She reached into the drawer and pulled out an album. She pressed the album to her chest and told me to never ever touch her ‘memories’ again.

She told me to go away.

It’s not as if there weren’t pictures of me next to Christmas trees or in Halloween costumes or at picnics. But those pictures were in a drawer in the writing desk in the hallway.

Some were in albums that had sunsets or flowers on the covers. Most of the pictures inside of those albums were starting to turn yellow.

Some of the pictures were fading. I don’t think it mattered to her.

My Dad used to open that drawer.

Sometimes, he put pictures inside of the albums and sometimes he just dropped pictures into the drawer.

” Don’t you want my memories, Dad? ” I would ask him sometimes.

He never answered me. He just looked right through me,
as if I were a ghost.

The Chocolate Shoppe

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For Fandango’s Story Starter #152

Photo A.M. Moscoso Rogers’ Chocolates Victoria BC 2017

Anna always hated chocolate, so she was surprised and a little confused to find herself standing outside of the quaint chocolate shop on the outskirts of town  just after sunset.

It was cold that night and it was going to snow. She could feel it in her bones. She could smell it.

She put her hand to the back of her neck, she licked her lips. She reached for the door and before she could pull it open she stepped back.

” What are you doing? ” she scolded herself. ” You hate chocolate. You don’t like the smell or the way it coats  your teeth. You despise the way you are forced- forced to run your tongue around your mouth and are made taste it yet again in order to get rid of it. Step away from the door. Turn around and leave! You hate chocolate!”

Anna turned away from the door. She took one step. Then she took another. She was walking now, not slinking, not running, but taking confident brisk steps away from the Chocolate shop.

Then she stopped in front of the window.

The Chocolate shop was decorated for Christmas.

There was a toy  train in the window, there were nutcrackers and angels holding candles from the tops of the shelves to the corner of the store,  and there were lines of people- tired distracted people waiting patiently for their turn at the cash registers at the counters for their free samples.

Anna stopped at the window. She pushed her face against the glass.

Her mouth was watering.

She hated chocolate- she hated chocolate with a passion.

The door swung open and shoppers with bags and boxes of chocolate stopped out of the store and some went inside

Anna closed her eyes and she allowed the smells from the shop to flood her senses.

Anna, as I have said hates chocolate.

Her tongue darted out of her mouth and she licked the cold window and then she closed her eyes and she opened them and she told herself how much she hated chocolate- she needed to leave right now

her eyes followed one shopper and then another and another-

but she was hungry.

God. She was so hungry.