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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Mystery
- Subject: Horror / Scary
- Published: 10/29/2011
BLAME THE WIND CHIMES
Born 1952, F, from Penrose, Colorado, United StatesBLAME THE WIND CHIMES
I blame the wind chimes. The first day my mother put them up on the porch, my cat went missing. We looked everywhere for that damn cat. Under the house, in the garage, the attic, the neighbor’s yard because we knew the Harrington’s despised cats. Mom even posted pictures of Toby, our Orange Tabby, on telephone polls around the neighborhood, and on the bulletin board at the local Meat Market. But no one remembered seeing Toby.
“Don’t worry honey,” mom brushed my yellow bangs from swollen eyes. “We’ll get a new Toby.”
That only made me cry that much harder. “But it won’t be the same Toby,” I spilled between racking sobs, “ did Toby go to Cat Heaven, mommy?”
“Yes, darling Abby, our little Toby went with the Angels,” mom promised.
That was the first time I heard the damn wind chimes. At my request, mom had pulled them down shortly after Toby went to Cat Heaven, or where ever cats go when they disappear. I was four then. The following year, when I turned five, mom put up another set of wind chimes. Guess she didn’t learn from the first time.
Her boyfriend was over helping her put them up. In-between decorating and cooking, they were both drinking pretty heavily and I just seemed to be in the way. I should mention here that my mother had me when she was very young, seventeen. My father never wanted to marry her and pleaded with her to have an abortion. She wouldn’t hear of it, she told me. Thank goodness, because had she listened, I wouldn’t be telling my story.
My mother never held anything back from me. She told me that sadly, she and my real father never saw each other again and he never asked about the daughter he never knew. My mother Lila went out of town far away to conceive me. She returned to her hometown where she grew up near her own family to raise me so I would have grandparents. I never knew my real father, and now she dated off and on. Strange men in my living room was a common occurrence. I didn’t know half their names and I didn’t try to learn any of them, because by the time I did, they would have been replaced anyway with someone new.
Our front door was a revolving door for a while until Silas Carter entered the picture. Now at twenty-two, my mother thought it was time to get serious with someone again. Silas was a year older, twenty-three, and irresponsible. I think he ran an Auto Parts Store. I would hear him talk to my mother about it, but it made little sense, and I didn’t care anyway because I didn’t like him. Something about Silas I didn’t trust. I don’t know if it was his long black hair and shifty grey eyes that pierced me and made me tremble in my bare feet, or the fact that he always acted like “I was taking his girlfriend away.” After all, she was my mother and I needed attention because I was still a child. I don’t think he understood that.
So there the wind chimes were, going up in the same spot. I shook my head, knowing something bad was going to happen. This time I didn’t have another cat to lose. Perhaps it was going to be one of my dolls.
“Aren’t they pretty, Abby?” my mother asked.
“No, no, they’re not,” I cried, “something bad is gonna happen. Just wait and see.” And I burst into tears.
Mom came towards me but Silas stopped her. “Now you grow up,” he hissed at me. “Your mother wanted these up and you just accept it right now.” He belched. I looked away. My mother tried to come towards me to comfort me. He held his hand out like a bar where she couldn’t cross over. “Don’t Lila,” he warned her, “if you go to her, you will spoil the little brat and she will think from now on, all she has to do is (belch) cry to get her way.”
He looked at my mother then and his eyes must have been some awful powerful. They told her, don’t you dare move. She listened, but winced in my direction after he applied painful pressure to her wrist. I backed off and looked up at him, submissively, with fear lodged in my throat. He had a knack for silencing things.
“Thatsa girl,“ he cooed, “why don’t you be a good girl and go play with your toys? If you do that, I’ll let you have some ice cream later, how’s that?”
But I wasn’t easily persuaded by food and I knew we didn’t have ice cream in the freezer and he wasn’t about to go get it. As long as there was a six pack of beer in the fridge, everything would be okay. He’d make a store run, for sure, if the beer got too low, but to make sure there was ice cream in the freezer, no, that wasn’t Silas. And he wouldn’t let my mother go out of his sight to the store, either, so, there wasn’t a chance of getting it that way, either. I would just have to give up on the ice cream, that wasn’t going to happen.
I went into the living room to turn on cartoons. But even with the sound turned up pretty loud, the commotion in the kitchen was beginning to concern me. It was getting really loud in there. I guess my mother was making a scene because she didn’t like the way Silas was treating me. Their voices were getting louder and louder until it became a screaming match. I heard dishes crash to the floor. I heard garbled words here and there like “you can’t talk to her like that” and “I just did, bitch, whatcha gonna do ‘bout it, cry like her?” Back and forth the banter went. My mother began to weep and yell at him to get out, get out. That’s when I heard the sound I hear on Westerns: a bang.
When I ran to the kitchen, my mother was on the floor lying in a pool of blood. That’s what I remember the most, blood, so much blood, everywhere, up and down the walls. Across the toaster, and the counter. Her face was gone, or what my young eyes could comprehend in a state of shock, and there was teeth across the linoleum tile. Silas stood there for a moment with a 45 Caliber Pistol dangling from his hand, don’t ask me where it came from. I think my mother kept one in a kitchen drawer for safety purposes in case a robber tried to break into the house. It didn’t save her this time. It was the reason she was there on the floor, lifeless.
For a moment, as our eyes locked, I felt the vileness that coursed through this man’s black veins and it made me shudder for all my youth was worth. I felt so numb, and alone, and frightened, and yet Silas was smiling through his sick hatred and insanity at me, like I was nothing more than a figurine that couldn’t feel. But I felt everything, my entire world crashing around me, with the haunting sound of wind chimes singing on the porch in the background, and Silas’ laughter ripping through my tender ears.
And then, without another sound, he ran out the back door, leaving me standing there with my dead mother. I don’t know why he let me live. Perhaps he thought no one would believe the testimony of a five year old child. I don’t know what his reasoning was. Maybe he came to his senses and realized what he had done, and didn’t want to go down for two murders in case he got caught. But that’s okay, because he did enough damage. If only he had known he killed a part of me anyway, and killed the only thing in life I loved, or that loved me back. I vowed, standing there, at the age of five, to find him again someday, and this time, he could tell me all he wanted to be quiet. But I wasn’t going to listen. My day would come to have a knack for silencing things.
~ ~
It was a warm day in sunny Aspen, Colorado. I moved there after I turned nineteen, and now at the age of twenty-one, I was running my own book store on the main drag called “The Grotto.” I served specialty coffees and muffins too, so, it was sort of like a quaint little coffee shop/bookstore with a rock stone fire place in the middle, and comfortable couches scattered about. It was real cozy and a hot spot on Friday nights when I would have local musical talent sing to us with acoustic guitars.
I had done well for myself. Was a published Poet and spoke at colleges and universities and did Poetry readings in the park. I had made a name for myself and was known as the Local Author in the area and even had my own table always reserved at the Gold Rush Bar and Grill. Everyone treated me like a real celebrity. My talents paid for a nice log home overlooking the ski area with my animals. I was content and kept in contact with my grandparents that raised me back in Arizona.
I was closing up early because business was slow and I thought it would be a nice day for a trail ride in the mountains with a friend. When I was putting the sign in the window, Sorry, We’re Closed, a man knocked incessantly on the glass, shrugging his shoulders, mouthing “please, I won’t be long.” Well, what’s one more sale, I thought. I unlocked the latch and let the man in.
“I’ll be quick,” he promised. He was tall, his face shadowed behind a cap. Why he was wearing a cap in the summer, was none of my business, but I thought it odd, nonetheless.
“That’s okay, sir, take your time,” I said. “I have some coffee left if you’d like that.”
He was looking up and down the isles, taking a book down, putting it back, moving along, taking another off the shelf, putting it back.
“Are you looking for something in particular?” I asked him as I poured the still-hot Hazelnut coffee in a styro-foam cup. Without asking, I just went ahead and fixed it with regular cream and sugar.
He walked over to the counter. I handed him the coffee.
“I’ll come back later when I have the time,” he said, taking the coffee. He took a big gulp. “Wow, really sweet.”
“Oh, is it too much sugar?” I apologized. “I could start over . . .”
“No, no, it’s okay, I’ll just deal with a sugar rush for a while.”
We both laughed. It is then he took off his cap. He was still laughing long after I stopped. Where I had seen that long black hair before, only now the sideburns sported a tint of silver. He actually looked very distinguished. Especially the gray eyes. The shifty ones.
“Name is Silas,” he said, still chuckling between gulps of sweet coffee. “Silas Carter. Just passing through on my way to California. I know it’s a little side trek. But I always wanted to see Aspen. I’ll have to come back during ski season.”
I turned cold as ice. I’m sure the blood was drained from my face, but he didn’t seem to notice the drastic change in color. I don’t think he recognized me, yet. My brain was doing some calculations: that would make him right about thirty-nine. Yeah, he was twenty-three at the time, and I was five. My how time flies when you’re having fun when you should have been in prison for First Degree Murder.
I let him talk for a few more minutes. He told me he was staying in a hotel down the street but had to leave no later than tomorrow afternoon. Would I mind showing him around in the morning, he asked. I agreed to meet in front of my store at 8:00 am sharp. We would have coffee and I would give him a tour of Aspen sites. I promised to give him the tour of his life, the kind off limits to other tourists. He laughed again and left. I bolted the door shut behind me. I watched him walk down the street. That night, my nightmares ended, I don’t know why.
~ ~
At 8:00 am the next morning, I rounded the corner to find Silas Carter already standing in front of The Grotto waiting for me. When he saw me, he broke out in a wide smile. My face remained frozen and non-committal. I asked him if he wanted any coffee and he said we’ll just grab some on the way, no sense in opening the shop or customers might think I’m open, and he really wanted that private tour.
So we grabbed a coffee at Starbuck’s and jumped in my Jeep. I drove to a spot about ten miles outside of town, showing him things along the way, old mines and forts, the ski resort off in the distance, but closed for the summer months. He seemed to enjoy this, as I spoke softly of the things we passed, like, over there was once an historical site; he just loved it and was impressed with my knowledge of the area.
We finally reached the area I wanted to show him. It was called Cougar’s Canyon, and there was a Condo sitting up high on a bluff overlooking a canyon area that dropped off about 1700 feet. No one was around, as this was closed off and used mainly to house tourists during busy ski season, and because the area was so remote, no one lived there permanently. Only a few locals had keys to some of the rooms, like the Mayor and some of the Real Estate Agents. But since I was treated like a celebrity, I had the keys to the Condo all year-round, even during off-season. I had only been there once or twice but really had no reason to ever go there. My own log home had million dollar views sitting on its own bluff overlooking various mountain ranges and the ski resort, so, the Condo was redundant for me to even consider an overnight stay or weekend retreat.
Silas was also impressed that I had keys to the place. We went to a room that was on the sixth floor and the view from the two-story great room was absolutely breathtaking of the canyon and the distant mountains. It looked like Heaven. He stood there for five minutes and couldn’t pull his eyes away. Finally, he looked at me.
“I really appreciate this,” he said. “When I come back, perhaps this winter, maybe we could meet again. And, if you had the time, you could teach me how to ski. I always wanted to learn to do that.”
I didn’t answer him. I was thinking more like, how could he go about his life and not have a guilty conscience about what he had done sixteen years ago? So while he’s living, traveling around the globe, my mother is laying decomposed in the ground somewhere back in Arizona. It didn’t seem right.
He turned back to look at the view. “Can we walk out on the balcony?” he asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Hope you’re not scared of height,” I laughed.
We walked out and I noticed some wind chimes hanging. A cool breeze from the high elevation got them dancing. We had to talk louder over the music in the wind.
It was then he took a hard look at me, and put his palm beneath his chin, shaking his head. “Something about you I can’t quite put my finger on,” he mused.
“What could that be?” I asked.
“I don’t know. How could you be familiar?” He asked. “I’ve never been to Colorado before. I couldn’t have met you, but something about you . . .”
“I’m a transplant,” I told him. “I’m not originally from here.”
“Oh, no kidding,” Silas remarked, looking at me harder. “Where are you from?”
He sat on the balcony, precariously on the ledge. I almost said something to him, like, you’re too close to the edge, you’re making me nervous, can you move where you will be safe. But the words wouldn’t come.
And I looked back at him, real hard. And I saw my mother weeping in his eyes. I saw a frightened little girl staring off into space, feeling her world crumble to pieces. The heat in my veins was on fire. My heart was thumping out of my chest.
“Arizona,” I spit out, “I’m from Arizona.” I let it sink in. He began with a nervous twitch. I kept on. “Remember Lila?”
It was his turn for blood to drain from his face. That’s what I remember, the wide eyes, his mouth open, afraid to say a word. His words suspended in his throat, unable to mutter anything other than a painful swallow.
“That’s right, I’m Lila’s daughter,” I growled, and with that, it didn’t take much, my fingers nudged him just enough, and he went catapulting over the balcony into the vast, deep canyon abyss below, where it would take days for his body to ever be discovered. And even if they did find it, what of him would be left to recognize? Authorities would assume it was only the tragedy of a hiker, alone in this remote mountain range. They would mumble amongst each other that he should have known better. That’s the reason this area was called Cougar Canyon. Wild cats (Cougars, Pumas, Panthers) were known to run rampant in this area. They were on the Preservation List and it was against the law to shoot one, for the area they roamed was a government protected reservation. They would feed well tonight, leaving merely left over bones for buzzards to pick at.
For a split second I saw the look in his eyes that was my reward, the shock, the horror, when you know you’re going to die a horrible death. In his eyes, too, I saw my mother’s smile, and I saw a five year old, who finally stopped listening.
On my way out, I pulled the wind chimes down and threw them off the balcony into the canyon behind him. I heard them for at least the first 500 feet down. Then nothing.
I turned my back, locked the place up and left, not proud of the fact that I too learned the knack for silencing things.
BLAME THE WIND CHIMES(Susan Joyner-Stumpf)
BLAME THE WIND CHIMES
I blame the wind chimes. The first day my mother put them up on the porch, my cat went missing. We looked everywhere for that damn cat. Under the house, in the garage, the attic, the neighbor’s yard because we knew the Harrington’s despised cats. Mom even posted pictures of Toby, our Orange Tabby, on telephone polls around the neighborhood, and on the bulletin board at the local Meat Market. But no one remembered seeing Toby.
“Don’t worry honey,” mom brushed my yellow bangs from swollen eyes. “We’ll get a new Toby.”
That only made me cry that much harder. “But it won’t be the same Toby,” I spilled between racking sobs, “ did Toby go to Cat Heaven, mommy?”
“Yes, darling Abby, our little Toby went with the Angels,” mom promised.
That was the first time I heard the damn wind chimes. At my request, mom had pulled them down shortly after Toby went to Cat Heaven, or where ever cats go when they disappear. I was four then. The following year, when I turned five, mom put up another set of wind chimes. Guess she didn’t learn from the first time.
Her boyfriend was over helping her put them up. In-between decorating and cooking, they were both drinking pretty heavily and I just seemed to be in the way. I should mention here that my mother had me when she was very young, seventeen. My father never wanted to marry her and pleaded with her to have an abortion. She wouldn’t hear of it, she told me. Thank goodness, because had she listened, I wouldn’t be telling my story.
My mother never held anything back from me. She told me that sadly, she and my real father never saw each other again and he never asked about the daughter he never knew. My mother Lila went out of town far away to conceive me. She returned to her hometown where she grew up near her own family to raise me so I would have grandparents. I never knew my real father, and now she dated off and on. Strange men in my living room was a common occurrence. I didn’t know half their names and I didn’t try to learn any of them, because by the time I did, they would have been replaced anyway with someone new.
Our front door was a revolving door for a while until Silas Carter entered the picture. Now at twenty-two, my mother thought it was time to get serious with someone again. Silas was a year older, twenty-three, and irresponsible. I think he ran an Auto Parts Store. I would hear him talk to my mother about it, but it made little sense, and I didn’t care anyway because I didn’t like him. Something about Silas I didn’t trust. I don’t know if it was his long black hair and shifty grey eyes that pierced me and made me tremble in my bare feet, or the fact that he always acted like “I was taking his girlfriend away.” After all, she was my mother and I needed attention because I was still a child. I don’t think he understood that.
So there the wind chimes were, going up in the same spot. I shook my head, knowing something bad was going to happen. This time I didn’t have another cat to lose. Perhaps it was going to be one of my dolls.
“Aren’t they pretty, Abby?” my mother asked.
“No, no, they’re not,” I cried, “something bad is gonna happen. Just wait and see.” And I burst into tears.
Mom came towards me but Silas stopped her. “Now you grow up,” he hissed at me. “Your mother wanted these up and you just accept it right now.” He belched. I looked away. My mother tried to come towards me to comfort me. He held his hand out like a bar where she couldn’t cross over. “Don’t Lila,” he warned her, “if you go to her, you will spoil the little brat and she will think from now on, all she has to do is (belch) cry to get her way.”
He looked at my mother then and his eyes must have been some awful powerful. They told her, don’t you dare move. She listened, but winced in my direction after he applied painful pressure to her wrist. I backed off and looked up at him, submissively, with fear lodged in my throat. He had a knack for silencing things.
“Thatsa girl,“ he cooed, “why don’t you be a good girl and go play with your toys? If you do that, I’ll let you have some ice cream later, how’s that?”
But I wasn’t easily persuaded by food and I knew we didn’t have ice cream in the freezer and he wasn’t about to go get it. As long as there was a six pack of beer in the fridge, everything would be okay. He’d make a store run, for sure, if the beer got too low, but to make sure there was ice cream in the freezer, no, that wasn’t Silas. And he wouldn’t let my mother go out of his sight to the store, either, so, there wasn’t a chance of getting it that way, either. I would just have to give up on the ice cream, that wasn’t going to happen.
I went into the living room to turn on cartoons. But even with the sound turned up pretty loud, the commotion in the kitchen was beginning to concern me. It was getting really loud in there. I guess my mother was making a scene because she didn’t like the way Silas was treating me. Their voices were getting louder and louder until it became a screaming match. I heard dishes crash to the floor. I heard garbled words here and there like “you can’t talk to her like that” and “I just did, bitch, whatcha gonna do ‘bout it, cry like her?” Back and forth the banter went. My mother began to weep and yell at him to get out, get out. That’s when I heard the sound I hear on Westerns: a bang.
When I ran to the kitchen, my mother was on the floor lying in a pool of blood. That’s what I remember the most, blood, so much blood, everywhere, up and down the walls. Across the toaster, and the counter. Her face was gone, or what my young eyes could comprehend in a state of shock, and there was teeth across the linoleum tile. Silas stood there for a moment with a 45 Caliber Pistol dangling from his hand, don’t ask me where it came from. I think my mother kept one in a kitchen drawer for safety purposes in case a robber tried to break into the house. It didn’t save her this time. It was the reason she was there on the floor, lifeless.
For a moment, as our eyes locked, I felt the vileness that coursed through this man’s black veins and it made me shudder for all my youth was worth. I felt so numb, and alone, and frightened, and yet Silas was smiling through his sick hatred and insanity at me, like I was nothing more than a figurine that couldn’t feel. But I felt everything, my entire world crashing around me, with the haunting sound of wind chimes singing on the porch in the background, and Silas’ laughter ripping through my tender ears.
And then, without another sound, he ran out the back door, leaving me standing there with my dead mother. I don’t know why he let me live. Perhaps he thought no one would believe the testimony of a five year old child. I don’t know what his reasoning was. Maybe he came to his senses and realized what he had done, and didn’t want to go down for two murders in case he got caught. But that’s okay, because he did enough damage. If only he had known he killed a part of me anyway, and killed the only thing in life I loved, or that loved me back. I vowed, standing there, at the age of five, to find him again someday, and this time, he could tell me all he wanted to be quiet. But I wasn’t going to listen. My day would come to have a knack for silencing things.
~ ~
It was a warm day in sunny Aspen, Colorado. I moved there after I turned nineteen, and now at the age of twenty-one, I was running my own book store on the main drag called “The Grotto.” I served specialty coffees and muffins too, so, it was sort of like a quaint little coffee shop/bookstore with a rock stone fire place in the middle, and comfortable couches scattered about. It was real cozy and a hot spot on Friday nights when I would have local musical talent sing to us with acoustic guitars.
I had done well for myself. Was a published Poet and spoke at colleges and universities and did Poetry readings in the park. I had made a name for myself and was known as the Local Author in the area and even had my own table always reserved at the Gold Rush Bar and Grill. Everyone treated me like a real celebrity. My talents paid for a nice log home overlooking the ski area with my animals. I was content and kept in contact with my grandparents that raised me back in Arizona.
I was closing up early because business was slow and I thought it would be a nice day for a trail ride in the mountains with a friend. When I was putting the sign in the window, Sorry, We’re Closed, a man knocked incessantly on the glass, shrugging his shoulders, mouthing “please, I won’t be long.” Well, what’s one more sale, I thought. I unlocked the latch and let the man in.
“I’ll be quick,” he promised. He was tall, his face shadowed behind a cap. Why he was wearing a cap in the summer, was none of my business, but I thought it odd, nonetheless.
“That’s okay, sir, take your time,” I said. “I have some coffee left if you’d like that.”
He was looking up and down the isles, taking a book down, putting it back, moving along, taking another off the shelf, putting it back.
“Are you looking for something in particular?” I asked him as I poured the still-hot Hazelnut coffee in a styro-foam cup. Without asking, I just went ahead and fixed it with regular cream and sugar.
He walked over to the counter. I handed him the coffee.
“I’ll come back later when I have the time,” he said, taking the coffee. He took a big gulp. “Wow, really sweet.”
“Oh, is it too much sugar?” I apologized. “I could start over . . .”
“No, no, it’s okay, I’ll just deal with a sugar rush for a while.”
We both laughed. It is then he took off his cap. He was still laughing long after I stopped. Where I had seen that long black hair before, only now the sideburns sported a tint of silver. He actually looked very distinguished. Especially the gray eyes. The shifty ones.
“Name is Silas,” he said, still chuckling between gulps of sweet coffee. “Silas Carter. Just passing through on my way to California. I know it’s a little side trek. But I always wanted to see Aspen. I’ll have to come back during ski season.”
I turned cold as ice. I’m sure the blood was drained from my face, but he didn’t seem to notice the drastic change in color. I don’t think he recognized me, yet. My brain was doing some calculations: that would make him right about thirty-nine. Yeah, he was twenty-three at the time, and I was five. My how time flies when you’re having fun when you should have been in prison for First Degree Murder.
I let him talk for a few more minutes. He told me he was staying in a hotel down the street but had to leave no later than tomorrow afternoon. Would I mind showing him around in the morning, he asked. I agreed to meet in front of my store at 8:00 am sharp. We would have coffee and I would give him a tour of Aspen sites. I promised to give him the tour of his life, the kind off limits to other tourists. He laughed again and left. I bolted the door shut behind me. I watched him walk down the street. That night, my nightmares ended, I don’t know why.
~ ~
At 8:00 am the next morning, I rounded the corner to find Silas Carter already standing in front of The Grotto waiting for me. When he saw me, he broke out in a wide smile. My face remained frozen and non-committal. I asked him if he wanted any coffee and he said we’ll just grab some on the way, no sense in opening the shop or customers might think I’m open, and he really wanted that private tour.
So we grabbed a coffee at Starbuck’s and jumped in my Jeep. I drove to a spot about ten miles outside of town, showing him things along the way, old mines and forts, the ski resort off in the distance, but closed for the summer months. He seemed to enjoy this, as I spoke softly of the things we passed, like, over there was once an historical site; he just loved it and was impressed with my knowledge of the area.
We finally reached the area I wanted to show him. It was called Cougar’s Canyon, and there was a Condo sitting up high on a bluff overlooking a canyon area that dropped off about 1700 feet. No one was around, as this was closed off and used mainly to house tourists during busy ski season, and because the area was so remote, no one lived there permanently. Only a few locals had keys to some of the rooms, like the Mayor and some of the Real Estate Agents. But since I was treated like a celebrity, I had the keys to the Condo all year-round, even during off-season. I had only been there once or twice but really had no reason to ever go there. My own log home had million dollar views sitting on its own bluff overlooking various mountain ranges and the ski resort, so, the Condo was redundant for me to even consider an overnight stay or weekend retreat.
Silas was also impressed that I had keys to the place. We went to a room that was on the sixth floor and the view from the two-story great room was absolutely breathtaking of the canyon and the distant mountains. It looked like Heaven. He stood there for five minutes and couldn’t pull his eyes away. Finally, he looked at me.
“I really appreciate this,” he said. “When I come back, perhaps this winter, maybe we could meet again. And, if you had the time, you could teach me how to ski. I always wanted to learn to do that.”
I didn’t answer him. I was thinking more like, how could he go about his life and not have a guilty conscience about what he had done sixteen years ago? So while he’s living, traveling around the globe, my mother is laying decomposed in the ground somewhere back in Arizona. It didn’t seem right.
He turned back to look at the view. “Can we walk out on the balcony?” he asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Hope you’re not scared of height,” I laughed.
We walked out and I noticed some wind chimes hanging. A cool breeze from the high elevation got them dancing. We had to talk louder over the music in the wind.
It was then he took a hard look at me, and put his palm beneath his chin, shaking his head. “Something about you I can’t quite put my finger on,” he mused.
“What could that be?” I asked.
“I don’t know. How could you be familiar?” He asked. “I’ve never been to Colorado before. I couldn’t have met you, but something about you . . .”
“I’m a transplant,” I told him. “I’m not originally from here.”
“Oh, no kidding,” Silas remarked, looking at me harder. “Where are you from?”
He sat on the balcony, precariously on the ledge. I almost said something to him, like, you’re too close to the edge, you’re making me nervous, can you move where you will be safe. But the words wouldn’t come.
And I looked back at him, real hard. And I saw my mother weeping in his eyes. I saw a frightened little girl staring off into space, feeling her world crumble to pieces. The heat in my veins was on fire. My heart was thumping out of my chest.
“Arizona,” I spit out, “I’m from Arizona.” I let it sink in. He began with a nervous twitch. I kept on. “Remember Lila?”
It was his turn for blood to drain from his face. That’s what I remember, the wide eyes, his mouth open, afraid to say a word. His words suspended in his throat, unable to mutter anything other than a painful swallow.
“That’s right, I’m Lila’s daughter,” I growled, and with that, it didn’t take much, my fingers nudged him just enough, and he went catapulting over the balcony into the vast, deep canyon abyss below, where it would take days for his body to ever be discovered. And even if they did find it, what of him would be left to recognize? Authorities would assume it was only the tragedy of a hiker, alone in this remote mountain range. They would mumble amongst each other that he should have known better. That’s the reason this area was called Cougar Canyon. Wild cats (Cougars, Pumas, Panthers) were known to run rampant in this area. They were on the Preservation List and it was against the law to shoot one, for the area they roamed was a government protected reservation. They would feed well tonight, leaving merely left over bones for buzzards to pick at.
For a split second I saw the look in his eyes that was my reward, the shock, the horror, when you know you’re going to die a horrible death. In his eyes, too, I saw my mother’s smile, and I saw a five year old, who finally stopped listening.
On my way out, I pulled the wind chimes down and threw them off the balcony into the canyon behind him. I heard them for at least the first 500 feet down. Then nothing.
I turned my back, locked the place up and left, not proud of the fact that I too learned the knack for silencing things.
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JD
11/08/2018There is something really satisfying about a revenge story, and this is one of the best I've ever read. I almost feel guilty for considering it to be one of my favorite stories on Storystar, but it is. Outstanding tale of turning tables. Thanks so much for all of the great short stories you've shared on Storystar, Susan! : )
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