Morning all. I hope you are doing fabulously well on this Tuesday morning. I had a strange dream about giant snails evacuating from the sea and up the coast line. People were amazed and lined up to watch until they realized the slow moving wave of snails was fleeing something. Then there was panic. No clue what they were escaping though. Still, I will think about it. But now, on with the day. Or at least the writing prompt. Timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go.
I like the set up. It lets you know something is wrong and by her reaction she knows something hs been wrong for a while, so things are at a tipping point. It’s going to be fun to play with I think. Although I would want to go and do something that is a little different than expected with it.
Tuesday, October 27th: This means everything.
‘This means everything,’ she could remember saying that. She could remember it after he commented on what an ugly vase it was. She explained that it was the only thing she had left of her family. That everything else was destroyed in the fire. It didn’t matter if it was an ugly vase. She could remember her family laughing about the ugly vase and how it came into their house. It had good memories and laughter attached to it.
She remembered the conversation. She remembered it several times, mostly because Alex commented so often about the vase’s ugliness. It wasn’t the beginning of the sort of amused comments the family had, but a sneering insult however. She offered to move it into her home office and for a while that worked. He could ignore the vase if he didn’t see it every day. Then somehow it stuck in the back of his mind.
There was ugliness in the house. Ugliness somewhere he could sense and not like.
The comments returned.
She left it on the bookcase in her office but moved it out of the direct line of sight from the door. Alex had no cause to come into her office and no way to see it with just a casual glance. It was far back on the shelf, away from the edge and unless you were sitting at the desk, you simply couldn’t see it.
For a long time that sufficed. There were no comments about the vase and she was relieved.
Today, the vase was on the floor, broken.
‘No not just broken,’ she thought bending over them. It was smashed and then ground to powder as though someone stepped on it, repeatedly. She saw the black marks that Alex’s shoes tended to leave on the floor downstairs on some of the larger pieces.
There wasn’t enough solid left to attempt reassembly. She took a few or the larger pieces and set them to the side. She swept up the rest of the remains and threw them way. Carefully she walked the shards to the bedroom and slipped them into her jewelry box before returning to the office.
There was no way for the vase to have slipped on its own and no way for it to be seen from anywhere but at the desk.
‘Which means Alex was at my desk.’
She felt a mixed wave of anger and sadness as she moved to her desk. She sat down and looked around. She saw nothing out of place except the missing vase. She looked in each of her desk drawers. Everything looked shifted about somewhat. She knew others would think it messy but she was habitual. She knew she could reach into the drawer and grab the item she needed without looking. Always putting it back in the same place.
Everything was moved about now. A true jumble.
‘Searching,’ she thought. For what she didn’t know, but the drawer was searched. There was nothing that he might need that she kept there. A note pan and jar of pens sat on the desk if he needed to jot something down. Any other item he might need quickly would be in the junk drawer in the kitchen.
She looked at her laptop and placed a hand on it to open. The laptop was still warm. Alex left only a few minutes ago. She saw him leave as she turned the corner. She sighed and stood, taking her lap top with her. She had a friend who knew more about computers than most IT folks ever learned. She decided asking him to give it a once over might not be a bad idea.
‘It might let me know what Alex was looking for.’
The Drive to Ben’s place wasn’t long. She called him on the way and he told her he would be happy to take a look. As she drove, she couldn’t get the image of the crushed vase out of her mind.
