#FSS

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.

 

33 Messages

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Inspired by Fandango’s Story Starter#118– When she looked at her cellphone, she was shocked to see she had 33 voicemail messages

Photographer Unknown

Carline Broom was all alone in her dark  Mother’s living room watching the rain beat against the side window when she heard her phone go off.

It was on the flower table near the front door  buzzing like an angry bee and she had left it on vibrate so it was dancing too. It didn’t ring though. She had turned the ringer off because she had driven over here and everyone knows you shouldn’t use your phone when driving.

She didn’t feel like answering it right now anyway.  The rain had gone from a mist to a down pour and the streets were filling up with water. At this exact moment in time all Carline wanted to do was watch the rain come down and she wanted to watch the sky fill up relentlessly with dark black clouds.

She wondered if there would be thunder and lightning too.

Her phone sat there behind her, quiet as a mouse and just as she was about to give it faint praise for remaining still  it started to  buzz and danced again.

Carline drifted over to the table and looked down on her phone- she had 33 messages- more then half of them had come in this morning.

” Well.” Carline said to her phone. ” Well. ‘

” Where is that thing? ” she heard her Mom say,  from the kitchen. ” Whose damn

phone is that? ”

Carline told her Mom, ” it’s mine. ”

Fiona  brushed by Carline to the flower table, she picked up Carline’s phone and then she dropped it- the phone missed the table and hit the floor and Carline guessed the screen was probably cracked now.

Her Mom walked to the window where Carline was watching the storm rage and Fiona said to her own reflection, ” I’m sorry you aren’t here to see this storm Carline, you’d have loved it. ”

Carline turned and looked at her Mother, then she turned back to the window and watched the rainfall.

”  There are  33 messages on your phone Carline- I’m sorry you won’t be here to pick them up.  The jackass that hit you  when he answered his phone, I’ll bet he’s picking up his messages today. I’ll bet he’s surfing the net and playing wordle too. Bastard. May he rot in Hell. ”

Her phone buzzed from the floor.

Carline did wonder who would be calling her, and where they were calling her from and she hoped they weren’t driving through this storm wondering  why she wasn’t answering her phone.

Photographer Unknown

 

 

The Bridge

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For Fandango’s Story Starter #117-

This week’s Story Starter teaser is: I had just finished putting the last of my books in the trunk when…

Winter Night. Figure on the Bridge
Ladislav Mednyánszky1888

I had just finished putting the last of my books in the trunk when… I remembered that one last thing that I  could not, that I refused to leave  my Grandfather’s house without.

It was my little treausre.

We had found my  little treasure five, maybe it was a half dozen years ago when we were taking our walk  to the snowy bridge in the woods behind his house. It was purely by chance that we found this little reminder of my lost childhood and I was thrilled  to have found it.

It has been our custom,  to take our walk  to  the bridge just before I leave  for my parent’s house for Christmas. I thought it was silly to visit them now and for Christmas in addition to that when it had been ages since we had really been a family.

I belonged here now and they had no one but to blame but themselves for this.

I left my room and my packing and went down the stairs to my Grandfather’s study.

I knocked on his study door and waited for him to ask me in. He was getting along in years and he didn’t like to be surprised or startled. Even by me.

” I’m looking for my treasure. I want to take it with me. Is it in here?”

My Grandfather was sitting at his desk with a glass of brandy by his hand. ” No. No. It’s probably outside. Just at the foot of the path near the bridge.  Why don’t you leave it here? Leave it where it is. This time. ” he said.

” I don’t want to leave without it. I want to take it with me. I want them to see it. ”

” Of course you do. ” he sighed. ” Of course you do. ”

I went out to the foot of the path and there under a tree was my treasure- a smooth white bone no bigger then the palm of my hand, pitted with age and warm, despite the cold air around it to the the touch.

I lifted it up and took it back to the house and as I passed the my Grandfather’s study I  called to him. ” I found it. ” I said stubbornly.

My Grandfather looked up at me.

”  I want them to see it.” I said firmly.

My Grandfather nodded into the darkness behind me and said, ” Of course you do. ”

I went back up to my room and finished packing and then I got myself ready to  cross the bridge in the woods behind my Grandfather’s house  so that I can haunt my Parents,  like I do every Christmas.