I stumbled out of bed and swatted the alarm clock off my bureau in a frenzy, cracking the screen against the wall. The red glow of the numbers vanished in an instant, leaving me with absolute darkness hovering over my house. From the window, I saw rows of homes perched along the lower reaches of the town for miles, black and silent.
A pale orb hung low above us, as though the moon had crept a little closer in my sleep.
My cell lay dead on its charger. My alarm clock had used a battery backup.
The alarm had been set for 3 PM.
Pieces of an impossible puzzle began to fit themselves together in my groggy brain. I grabbed my jacket and rushed into the silence of the afternoon night, flitting from door to door with no response. A few hung open, and I ventured inside to find tables set for breakfast and clothing strewn across bedroom floors, as though the town had packed a hasty bag and fled.
Everybody had evacuated, and nobody had thought to tell little old me.
And, as I stood alone in the middle of the empty Main Street, cursing neighbors I couldn't name and pondering my options, it occurred to me at last to wonder why they had vanished. I gazed up at the pale orb hanging in the sky, and I realized it had moved...
And the giant, looming eyeball focused square on me.
Friday, April 21, 2017
Friday, April 7, 2017
[#077] The Bottle and the Glass
I remember the last time I saw my grandmother without red hair.
She was turning 77 and I had driven two hundred miles to see her. It was the least I could do for the woman who'd held my hand at my father's funeral and then fed me for more than half my life. The scent of fresh-baked cookies greeted me in the hall, and the sight of her lying face down on a persian rug greeted me in the den.
Grandma didn't wake for two weeks. I still remember the night my aunt called to tell me Grandma had changed. She never rose from the rocking chair in her bedroom. She never made a sound, except to cry when left alone. She didn't seem to recognize her own name, and...
And Grandma refused to step inside the den.
Twelve years in that house and I'd never really adjusted to the den myself. It lay at the center of the house, beset on every side by another room. The only natural illumination came from a creepy, frosted skylight stretched across the entire ceiling. She would often sit in there for hours drinking wine and reading to herself in a whisper, just loud enough to hear from the hallway between the incessant ticking and tocking of her clock collection. She would sometimes sit up long past my bedtime, and I would venture through the wall of sound the following day to collect the glasses and bottles she forgot.
I returned on Christmas for the gathering.
Her hair had fallen gray and dry, damaged from decades of dye I had never realized she was using. She looked so frail and lifeless without her shiny red crown, a life-sized doll hunched over in my grandmother's chair. This year's family get-together was a big one, as so many distant cousins I had only met through Facebook came to see what became of Grandma. She was the one link to a huge arm of our family descended from her long-passed sister, and I balled my fists as the ingrates polished ham and potatoes off her finest china and chattered about the tragedy of her imminent demise every time my auntie led her from the room.
The guests had gone by ten, leaving Grandma to my aunt and the mess to myself. As I wandered through the house collecting plates and wadded napkins, I paused outside the entrance to the den. Not one person from the party had stepped inside, and indeed many of them had complained about the volume of the clocks even through the closed door.
Why, then, was the door now open?
A glance behind my shoulder saw my grandmother's shadow at the end of the hall. My aunt's voice floated gently through the air besieged by ticking, and I couldn't make out anything but the words "--to bed."
Heavy clouds of snow and winter coated the moon that night. No light poured through the ceiling, and shadows drenched the tiny room. As I squinted, I could just make out the tell-tale shape of a bottle on the end table inside. A glass with a tall stem, her favorite glass, stood next to it, half-full of ruddy liquid.
And just above the top of the chair, turned deliberately away from the door, I caught a glimpse of a wisp of scarlet hair.
I grinned and shut the door. Maybe next time I'll sit with you, I thought.
The bottle and the glass waited for me the next morning.
She was turning 77 and I had driven two hundred miles to see her. It was the least I could do for the woman who'd held my hand at my father's funeral and then fed me for more than half my life. The scent of fresh-baked cookies greeted me in the hall, and the sight of her lying face down on a persian rug greeted me in the den.
Grandma didn't wake for two weeks. I still remember the night my aunt called to tell me Grandma had changed. She never rose from the rocking chair in her bedroom. She never made a sound, except to cry when left alone. She didn't seem to recognize her own name, and...
And Grandma refused to step inside the den.
Twelve years in that house and I'd never really adjusted to the den myself. It lay at the center of the house, beset on every side by another room. The only natural illumination came from a creepy, frosted skylight stretched across the entire ceiling. She would often sit in there for hours drinking wine and reading to herself in a whisper, just loud enough to hear from the hallway between the incessant ticking and tocking of her clock collection. She would sometimes sit up long past my bedtime, and I would venture through the wall of sound the following day to collect the glasses and bottles she forgot.
I returned on Christmas for the gathering.
Her hair had fallen gray and dry, damaged from decades of dye I had never realized she was using. She looked so frail and lifeless without her shiny red crown, a life-sized doll hunched over in my grandmother's chair. This year's family get-together was a big one, as so many distant cousins I had only met through Facebook came to see what became of Grandma. She was the one link to a huge arm of our family descended from her long-passed sister, and I balled my fists as the ingrates polished ham and potatoes off her finest china and chattered about the tragedy of her imminent demise every time my auntie led her from the room.
The guests had gone by ten, leaving Grandma to my aunt and the mess to myself. As I wandered through the house collecting plates and wadded napkins, I paused outside the entrance to the den. Not one person from the party had stepped inside, and indeed many of them had complained about the volume of the clocks even through the closed door.
Why, then, was the door now open?
A glance behind my shoulder saw my grandmother's shadow at the end of the hall. My aunt's voice floated gently through the air besieged by ticking, and I couldn't make out anything but the words "--to bed."
Heavy clouds of snow and winter coated the moon that night. No light poured through the ceiling, and shadows drenched the tiny room. As I squinted, I could just make out the tell-tale shape of a bottle on the end table inside. A glass with a tall stem, her favorite glass, stood next to it, half-full of ruddy liquid.
And just above the top of the chair, turned deliberately away from the door, I caught a glimpse of a wisp of scarlet hair.
I grinned and shut the door. Maybe next time I'll sit with you, I thought.
The bottle and the glass waited for me the next morning.
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