Tag: family

Incommon Haunts: Last Stop

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Janine closed her leather jacket, trying to get herself just a little warmer. Late October wasn’t the coldest by any means, but it was a bit windy. She kept walking towards the old platform, holding a large bouquet of white lilies held together with a rubber band and wrapped in a Kroger shopping bag. She stopped for a second and looked at the Kroger bag she was carrying them in, tilted her head, and furrowed her brow. “Is this good enough? Fuck. It’s fine, no time anyway.” She stopped talking to the flowers, removed them from the bag and threw the bag in a trash can just before the stairs up the platform. 

Janine walked along the stone platform, listening to her own footsteps echo between the old train station and the apartment complex across the street. In the middle of the platform was an iron bench, recently renovated back to its original design from over 100 years ago. Janine was a sucker for art nouveau, but she could still appreciate its more art deco stylings, with its bold sharp shapes and sleek symmetry. 

She sat down on the bench and brought up one arm to rest against the back. Her flowers sat next to her. Turning towards the sign hanging just a few feet above and to the right of her, she confirmed that this was the right stop. The clock on the wall confirmed that it was the right time too. She was a few minutes early, but honestly, she was always early for these kinds of things.

Turning back forward, she jumped a little as she noticed that an older woman was sitting next to her now. The woman was wearing an old-fashioned bonnet with lace and a floor length dress. It reminded Janine of the Mennonites that would come into town to sell bread, and presumably other things. She only ever bought the bread and the pretzels.

Janine started to tap her foot and check her watch, occasionally turning towards the other woman who was sitting stone still. Janine would open her mouth, and then stop herself before looking back at her watch.  

The old woman finally seemed to shake awake and move a little. She blinked, once, twice, three times, and then yawned. She stretched and bumped into Janine. “Oh! Sorry dear, didn’t see you there.” She took a long look at Janine, starting at her eyes, following her nose, down to her mouth, then chin. “Have we met?”

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Paint

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I have a few paintings in my living room. Each one was painted by my mother. She never went to school for art or ever made a dent in the art community, but she made a dent in me. She loved to paint figures in a variety of poses, attempting to express her mood through the figure. If she was anxious, the figure would pick at its skin. If she was joyous, the figure would dance. It was simple, yet beautiful.

She would taste the paints before using them. It didn’t matter if they were acrylic or watercolors or oil, she would touch the pad of her finger to the paint and then against her tongue. She said this would help her determine the mood of the paint. “You don’t want angry paint in a painting about sorrow,” she would say. I felt like she was doing this to tease me but she would even do this when she thought I wasn’t looking. She had to taste it each time in case the paint changed its mood, buried in her cluttered art box.

After working, after cooking dinner, after everything she did for us, all of her spare energy went toward painting. Despite that, she would just start another canvas when she was finished, if she even finished a painting. Never framed them, never hung them up.

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Incommon Haunts: Finished Business

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Emma sat on the edge of her mother’s old double bed. She only came in here to dust the furniture and vacuum the floors even though no one had lived there for a few months. And also for the visits.

She ran through the events of the last few days, making sure the omens were the same and that she was sitting in the right place. There was yesterday when the raven flew into the house. Emma tried to chase it out but it just kept landing on the picture of her mother sitting above the fireplace. Then this morning, without warning, she thought she smelt the same scent as the white lilies she placed on her mother’s grave at her funeral. 

And finally, just a few minutes ago, there were those two identical twins in the second story hallway beckoning her to her mother’s room. Emma shooed them out and sent them back to the house next door and was determined to have a talk with their parents, but right now, she needed to wait for her mother.

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Dragonfly: Static

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Jenny flipped the switch to start the rotation of her dragonfly’s habitat module. The spinning allowed the structure to simulate light gravity, which, even if it was nothing compared to Earth’s, was much better than nothing. She removed her hair tie, let her hair fall to her shoulders, skipped over to the fabricator and popped out a warm meal. 

“Too tired to cook today. I’m sure you understand, Fab Fab.” She patted the fabricator right above a crudely drawn face she made on the front, above the screen. The machine did not respond.

Jenny glided across the habitat and sat herself into her chair, ready to set up a call with Sammi, her sister, still back in the states. “Did that girl change her lock yet or not?” Jenny said to herself while popping a bit of the breading into her mouth. 

After pressing the call button, Jenny sat back and waited, expecting the call to take a minute before being accepted. Instead, the call was immediately accepted, shocking Jenny forward and forcing her to drop her meaty pastry.

“Shit! Hold on a second, let me get my food.” Jenny got off her chair and crawled under her desk, quickly finding the pastry before crawling back to her chair. “Stay there, I’m almost back.”

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Duplicitous

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I think it’s important that you hear this from my perspective. It… it might not make sense and I don’t completely understand what happened either. I just don’t know what she would say about this, and that terrifies me.

Earlier today, I returned home from a business trip. There…there was a conference out in Chicago, and with the snow, I just couldn’t get out of the city. So I was a day late. She knew that could happen. She had to have seen the weather reports, right? She was always the kind of person to fret over these kinds of things so I can’t imagine she didn’t spend most of yesterday checking the weather every hour.

I tried to call. I really did. I called home and no one answered. It didn’t even ring. I thought I had the wrong number. So I called again. I think I called about 10 times, but nothing changed.

When I got back home, I was worried, really worried. So I ran inside. I banged the door into the wall, I think. There was a dent in the wall where the handle would have been. I didn’t think I opened it that hard, but there was the dent, like on the wall. This startled her, I thought at least. She turned around speechless and just stared at me. She was wearing a light blue dress that went down to her knees, and over that a white apron. 

I said, “Oh thank god! I tried to reach you!” 

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Dragonfly: Relay

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Edwin set the applicator back onto the magnetic strip on his belt, causing a satisfying ring in his suit. The reaction of the hull patch was still working, but he knew it should be fine from here. Soon this part of the relay will be fine to work in again without protective gear, and every little bit of room was a luxury.

He pushed away from the relay and slowly floated backwards. He floated loosely, freely, and took in the sight of the whole structure. The whole thing reminded him of a dragonfly, with solar arrays for wings, and the tail itself as the actual relay. If he needed to move the thing, the wings could open up wider into solar sails, but its orbit had been stable as long as he worked there. At this point in his orbit, the relay was angled just right to catch the light of the nearby star, the body glittering as the wings absorbed the light in full, highlighting the veins of circuitry that ran through them.

The tether caught tight, reminding Edwin to come back in. He gripped his belt and the tether started to drag him back towards the airlock. Slowly but surely moving towards the entrance of the dragonfly, he took a deep breath and smiled. A good day’s work was rough on the body, and sometimes the mind, but at the end of it he felt satisfied. Tired, but satisfied. A healthy exhaustion. Although, to be fair, he couldn’t always tell what counted as a day anymore. 

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Mother May I

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Molly entered the kitchen to see Michael already awake and cooking breakfast. “You’re late! Mother will be home soon.” He paused and changed his tone to something more pleading. “Please help.”

“I was still asleep.”

“I would love to sleep in too!” said Michael, losing the softer tone he had before. 

Molly’s eyes flickered to the patches on his skin and quickly walked into the room to help him. “What do you need from me?”

“Could you see if the milk is still good?”

Molly ran to the fridge and opened it. The hinges groaned open and a sweet smell filled the room. “I hate this thing.”

“She tried her best, now hurry up and help.” Michael continued to chop up a carrot, shaking the entire time.

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Hoof Prints

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On the drive to my new home, I realized that somewhere along the way I lost a button. It wasn’t a jacket button. I would have noticed that earlier, when the wind was stronger and we were packing the boxes into the car. No, it was a button that I found out in the woods one day. It was small, wooden, and had several nicks in it. I sewed the button into the shoulder of my jacket once I found it. My mom always says I’m a bit of a goblin, always picking up and collecting everything I can find.

“Honey, are you okay back there? You’ve gotten a little quiet.” My mom didn’t know about this button specifically, but she quickly realized I was upset by something.

“I’m okay, just thinking about things.”

“You missing the old place already?”

“Sort of, but I’ll be okay. I swear.” I answered her as honestly as I knew how to. I didn’t know how to explain to her about how it all was connected together.

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