Heirloom
By Leo Boss
I broke the vase the other week.
Mother must have given it to me, what, five or six years ago? For a birthday. Or maybe it was Christmas. Some sort of celebration, but it really doesn’t matter.
I remember there was a little green bow tied neatly around the neck, clashing horribly with the vase’s muddy orange. Mother smiled coldly, as always, and gave the regular speech—happy holidays (or happy birthday, or congratulations on your engagement, we’re oh so proud of you even though you really could have done better)—and then began to talk about the vase.
She’d always said it was a tradition of her family to explain the meaning behind the gift when giving it. Normally I rolled my eyes and pretended to pay attention while she talked about its origins, or connections to the family, or whatever other deep and definitely meaningful thing that had to be said, but to this day I can recall her exact words about the vase, short as they were.
“May it bless you.”
No history lesson, no symbolic reasoning behind it. Just “may it bless you.”
I probably should have been more careful with it. I half believe that she gave it to me in the hopes that I would smash it as soon as I got home.
I’m still not sure why I didn’t, because even Melody was ready to sell it at a yard sale. “Really?” she asked when I put it on the mantle. “Your mom won’t even notice. She gives you some dumb guilt-trip gift every chance she can, and you always throw it out.”
“Mother will know,” I said. I wasn’t sure she would, but her words still rang in my head. “Maybe it’s… a sort of blessing.”
Melody snorted but didn’t argue over it anymore.
I’ve been trying for days to get the bits of vase out of the carpet, to no avail. I’ve tried vacuuming, scrubbing it, everything I can think of. But it looks like this corner is permanently speckled with the gritty stuff. Melody didn’t ask about it, so it’s probably not obvious to anyone but me.
For some reason, though, I still can’t get it off my mind. I even dream of my white rug being splashed with thick, dirty orange paint.
I guess, in ways, it could have been seen as a blessing. The years with that vase were some of the best years of my life. Melody and I finally got married, and even though Mother didn’t come to the wedding, she sent a card with a vague congratulations message on it. Less than a year later, I finally got a halfway decent desk job, we had our own house (actually ours, we bought it, if you can believe it), and Melody’s novel finally got accepted by a publisher. The day she got the news, we held each other and screamed for what felt like hours, thrilled at the chance we’d been given.
Life just kept going up. We were both so happy. And the vase, that garish good-luck charm, sat forgotten on the mantle.
Maybe I shouldn’t have thrown the shards away. Maybe the luck would have been kept if they stayed on the mantle. Maybe my blessings would have stayed.
I should be clear, I didn’t mean to break it. I hated her, but I wasn’t so petty as to hope that her soul would leave me in peace if it were gone.
It was actually the day of her funeral that it happened. Apparently, Mother’s one strict guideline for after her death was that I could not, under any circumstances, be allowed at the funeral. Percy and Jackie were there and even offered to take me to the wake, bending the rules to the point of breaking, like we’d done when we were little. I thanked them but stayed home. If she didn’t want me there, I wouldn’t go. I’m not sure I would have gone even if she’d required me to. Maybe this was a way for Mother to have that last shred of control, even in death.
I just wanted to hold it. I wanted to grieve, to cry, to hold something because even though I’d hated her, I missed her. And she would never give me an ugly gift like this again.
It fell so slowly. I’d meant to just grab the vase gently, but the polished exterior slipped through my fingers as I fumbled to keep hold of it. But it still fell, down, down, down for what seemed like forever until there was a small muffled crunch at my feet.
My first thought was a relief, which I immediately chided myself for. This was all I had left of my mother, and I was happy to see the ugly thing out of my house? What kind of a daughter was I? But I still felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. She was gone. I didn’t have to hear her disapproval, feel her mocking glances, or worry about when she would next call to try and convince me to give up and marry some nice boy who made a fortune off of some useless gadget or another.
I picked up the shards, swept what I could out of the rug, and threw it into the trash can. Melody came home later that night and gave me a hug, asked me how I was feeling. I told her about the vase and she pursed her lips for a moment before she told me how sorry she was that I felt so awful.
The orange splotches on the carpet in my dreams look more like dark red, now. I keep scrubbing.
Melody broke her arm this week. She said she slipped in the tub, but the doctors gave me nervously looks every time she insisted it was her own fault. I wasn’t home when it happened, but I wasn’t quite sure I believed her either. There weren’t any other fractures—it was a clean break—but greenish-orange splotches covered her right arm, stopping cleanly at the shoulder. They were almost comically bright, but the doctors assured me that it was regular bruising. They set the arm in a cast and released her, but pulled me aside afterward to make sure I’d keep an eye on her.
I tried. I really did. She insisted she was fine, and I could tell she hated the hovering, but I tried.
She didn’t come to bed last night. I was almost too exhausted to notice, but early in the morning when I felt for her, I grasped at empty sheets. I sat up, still a little drowsy.
“Melody?”
There was no response, so I called louder. “Melody? Hon, are you there?”
Still nothing. I didn’t really want to get up, but I worried she might have hurt herself again. I finally fumbled for my glasses on the side table and felt my way to the door, walking out through the hallway and into the living room.
She stood there, by the mantle. Right on the spot on the carpet that I’d been scrubbing at for weeks. I reached towards her, not sure what to say, but she turned around before I could open my mouth.
The dim light from the hallway illuminated her face just enough for me to see the swirling orange pattern covering it. Her eyes were sunken, with vivid green veins branching across them. Each breath she took seemed labored and shallow.
“Melody-” I started, but cut off when she smiled at me. Her teeth were sharp and jagged.
“You should have listened to her,” she said, and the words fell from her mouth like sheets of glass onto the floor. “Maybe everything would have been okay.”
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
“I suppose it’s all over now. It’s not really your fault, you know. But it’s happening anyway, and you were the start of it.” She stepped closer to me, her teeth inches from my face. “Let my memory be…" she chuckled before continuing. "Let my memory be a blessing for you.”
With that, she brushed past me, towards the door, but in a moment of clarity I grabbed for her wrist. Not like this. She was still here, still alive, still with me.
The moment my fingers grazed her skin, everything exploded into ceramic shards, cutting my skin and covering the carpet.
I woke up this morning in my bed. Melody was gone, with no sign of where she might have gone. All of her things are where she left them, no suitcases missing or clothes gone from the drawers, and the rug is as spotless as it was before Mother’s funeral.
My face is still cut. That’s the only thing that I can hold onto from that night, the only thing that keeps me from dismissing it as a dream.
I sleep well now. No more nightmares of broken vases, no more worrying about the state of my rug.
It’s a blessing almost worth the emptiness next to me every time I roll out of bed.
Winner of the Highpoint Scary Short Story Contest, Halloween 2022!
Dusty Ghosts
By Sam Geiger
It’s one of those days when the dust swirling in a small suburban home reflects the sunlight shining through a living room window. What was once invisible is now plain to see, dancing on the air like dandelion seeds in the breeze.
Abigail Wilson sleeps stretched out on the couch, even so her little feet barely hang over the edge of one cushion. She yawns wide exposing the gaps where her front teeth should be, and her eyelashes flutter open. The light from the window dances over her cheeks, and the warmth makes her smile, dimples and all. She swings her legs down from the couch, and runs to the window. Her eyes barely see over the sill, and yet she happily watches the summer breeze tickle the trees and shake the flowers. She runs back to the couch and throws herself onto it. She lands with a smile, cross legged.
Back at the window, the dust swirls in the light. It reminds her of the waves she plays in when she goes to the Cape. She sits and watches the dust for a very long time. It is quite entrancing, hypnotizing almost. She sees shapes, and names them like clouds. A horse gallops across the window sill but before it can get to the other end it is swallowed by a giant hand, which in turn disappears into a ballerina, twirling upside down. Abigail giggles at the images she sees, it is fun to imagine things that aren’t real.
She sees a face in the dust and smiles, it looks just like her mother. She waves at the figure, and to her delight it waves back. It continues to wave as it gets closer to Abigail and sits at the edge of the coach. Abigail reaches out to touch it, but as soon as her fingers brush the particles at the edge, the figure disappears. Abigail is all alone once again.
She runs back to the window sill, grasping at the dust, shaking it up. The vision of her mother taunts her in memory. No matter how much she flails, she cannot get the vision back. She collapses on the floor in a heap of tiny arms and legs, heavy tears welling up in her eyes like a pot about to boil.
She feels a hand on her shoulder, just a light touch, but definitely there. However, when she looks up to where the body connected to the hand should be, there is nothing there. The pot reaches its boiling points, and her tears spill over her eyelids and burn like hot water on her cheeks.
The telephone rings and she rushes to the kitchen. Her father has always told her never answer the phone when no one is home, but she knows that she should answer this. She picks it up.
“Hello.” She gasps into the phone.
“Hi, is Mr. Wilson there.” Mr. Wilson was not there and Abigail knew.
“He’s busy at the moment, can I take a message?” Her father had taught her exactly what to say, to never reveal that you are alone in your home.
“Um…sure. He may want to hear this in person but I guess why not. There’s been an accident and Mrs. Wilson is in a fatal condition. We don’t know how long she’ll make it.”
The phone falls from Abigail's hand and hits the ground with a loud crack. She runs back to the living room, and falls onto the floor sobbing. She cries until she can not make another noise and can not squeeze another drop from her eyes. When she looks up, the dust is gone. Her mother’s ghost has said goodbye.
Runner-up in the Highpoint Scary Short Story Contest, Halloween 2022!