the rest of "Mother": a short story -- Unicorn Short Story Forum

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Date Posted: 23:37:48 10/01/03 Wed
Author: Ashley Owen Smith
Author Host/IP: cdm-66-233-64-203.bnvl.cox-internet.com / 66.233.64.203
Subject: the rest of "Mother": a short story

*****

The fact that she might suddenly smell smoke had quickly become Myrtle Kleinschmidt�s greatest fear; even taking the place of spiders and high places.
She had been sitting on her barstool numbly, absolutely terrified that Mr. Pendleton would light one of those matches and they�d go up in flames.
And when the smoke billowed slowly, silently under the kitchen door, Myrtle�s heart seemed to freeze in her chest.
Fire! Fire! her mind screamed. But her feet wouldn�t move. They felt as if they were in a bucket of hardened cement.
She stared at the gray smoke, smelled it.
It�ll be my doom, she thought calmly. My doom.
The paralysis broke and she could move.
She jumped down off the barstool, ran for the door.
She slid in a puddle of consomme that she�d been meaning to wipe up. She fell to the ground with what seemed to be slow motion, like in one of those action movies her Gil had loved so much. Her right leg bent at an impossible angle, and she heard the bone snap.
Will I die now? she asked some internal part of her.
Yes, it answered promptly.
Like hell I will. It ain�t over �til the fat lady sings, and I haven�t sung a note, she replied.
The smoke was very thick above her now, and she was glad that she was on the ground so long as she had to be here.
She raised her head to assess her predicament.
She had been sitting on the barstool, the backdoor behind her. She had jumped off it and ran for door, had slipped between the stove and the central island. This is where she�d fallen.
Myrtle rolled over to her considerable stomach, and crawled on her elbows towards the stove. She grasped the first thing her fingers touched: the oven door�s handle. Not knowing this, she beared her weight�all one hundred and forty-five pounds of it�on the handle, began to pull herself up.
The oven�s door snapped open, broke off the oven itself, and delivered Myrtle to the floor. She let out an ooof sound and tasted blood on her lips where the impact with the floor had split it.
�Ooooh,� she said, her voice wavering with pain.
She breathed deeply for a few moments, and then tried getting to her knees. She made it to her knees, but the pain, firing up from the point where her leg bone had cracked, slammed her back down to the ground. She caught herself on her hands wincing as her palm was pricked by a piece of the shattered glass from the oven door�s front.
�Dammit!� she said vehemently.
She crawled on her elbows closer to the central island, this time only putting her weight on her left knee, holding desperately onto the edge of the island. Her left hand was slick with blood, but she managed. She stood up shakily, only standing on her left foot. The smoke immediately began making her eyes water, making her nose and throat close up in protest. She hobbled precariously to the door. She opened it and nearly fell down the three brick steps that led down from the threshold. She hopped down these with the utmost care, made it halfway around the house before having to stop and take a breather.
At last, making it to the front of the house, she was fearful afresh. She had nothing to hold onto to help her keep her balance. Pushing herself off from the wall, she hopped quickly, momentum carrying her too fast. She fell onto the thick, lush grass of the front yard, a grunt forced from her mouth.
Myrtle turned her head so that her cheek rested on the cool, dewy grass, breathing deeply, sweat beading on her forehead and upper lip.
I�ll just stay here for awhile, she thought dreamily. I�ll just rest here.
And she passed out.

*****

�Ma�am...Ma�am?�
Myrtle heard the voice, soothing and soft. It made her want to wake up, but she had a stronger desire to stay here in here darkness for a few minutes more.
But the voice was insistent. �Ma�am? We need to see if there�s anything wrong with you.�
Myrtle came awake slowly, and the pain of her injured leg brought her back fully and she gasped . The person belonging to the voice put two strong, capable hands beneath her armpits and helped her up. Her good leg felt like it was full of pins and needles, the knee joint felt as though it was made of jelly and it threatened to buckle.
When the knee bent involuntarily, she swayed forward and down, the capable hands caught her, and the voice said, �Whoa,� and chuckled.
The nice paramedic gently and slowly led her to the back of the ambulance where she sat. The paramedic put a blue blanket around her shoulders shawllike, and placed a cup of hot coffee in her hands, wrapping her fingers around it.
Myrtle looked up at the house, and a mournful sound escaped from her throat. The house was a smoldering, smoking heap of blackened wood and waste. It had always been so beautiful, like something straight out of Gone With the Wind.
She drew warmth from the Styrofoam cup, sipped the strong black coffee from it. She looked around her, assessing her surroundings.
Several firemen, in their dirty yellow dusters and red hats, were milling about purposefully, along with several uniformed policemen and -women and medical personnel.
Her eyes soon returned to the destruction of Mr. Pendleton�s house and she sighed.
A man who was standing in the ruins of the house looked up and shouted at a short, burly man who resembled a bulldog. �We got another body! From what I can tell it looks like a man. Bu God only knows: his face is melted.�
Myrtle could feel her gorge rise, but she swallowed convulsively several times, and the nausea was tamped down.
A female paramedic walked over to her, raised Myrtle�s skirt, rolled her support stocking down, and begin wrapping an Ace bandage around her calf and ankle.
�This won�t help very much, but it�ll have to do until we can get to the hospital,� she said, smiled at Myrtle and patted the older woman�s knee.
Myrtle sat in the back of the ambulance for an hour, and by then most of the hubbub had died down. The paramedics were readying her to take her to the hospital to have a cast put on her leg after the male paramedic had diagnosed the leg as broken.
No shit, Sherlock, she�d thought, dredging up the quaint saying from memory after hearing her grandson use it.
When the paramedics hopped up into the back of the ambulance with the nostalgic agility of the young, movement near the house caught Myrtle�s eye. It couldn�t have been a policeman or fireman because they�d left several minutes ago. The only people who were still there were the paramedics and a few diehard reporters.
Could it have been a reporter, then? she asked herself silently.
She didn�t think so. And as she looked, a figure walked out of the rubble of the burnt house.
Myrtle gasped, watching, as if in a hypnotic trance, the figure floating�floating??�across the front lawn, disappearing into a copse of trees on the right side of the house.
I�ve seen her somewhere before, she thought wondrously. Where was it? Who is she?
She searched her memory. Hadn�t she seen a picture of her somewhere in Mr. Pendleton�s house? One the mantle? In his study? In his painting studio?
In a trunk! her mind screamed suddenly. She�d seen a picture of this lady in a trunk in the attic during spring cleaning. She�d taken it out of the frame, curious to know who it was. She�d read the back of the picture, depicting a pretty, if sever-looking, woman, face devoid of makeup, with a natural and creamy-looking in the black and white color of he photo.
Those eyes, she remembered herself thinking. This woman was so beautiful. But her eyes are so hard, so cold, like chips of glacier of ice. She remembered she�d shuddered involuntarily, feeling her spine grow cold and gooseflesh form on her arms and back.
She�d removed the back of the old-fashioned picture frame (Haven�t seen one of these since I was a young girl, she�d thought), slipped the picture free from the frame, and stared at the back of the picture, nonplused.
It�d read

Ursula Merriweather�Pendleton
January 29, 1938
In Paris, France

in small, messy handwriting. Myrtle had quickly replaced the picture in the frame and slid the frame�s back cover into its slot.
Why would Mr. Pendleton have a picture of his mother in the attic and not have one in any of the rooms in this enormous house? she�d wondered. God knew she�d adored her dearly departed mother; had pictures of her everywhere. But she decided that Mr. Pendleton�s refusal to keep a picture of his mother around was not her business. And�d never thought about it again.
Until now.
Was that his mother? she asked silently. She felt like fainting, returning to the blackness she�d succumbed to while lying on the grass.
But she�d dead. Dead.
Ghosts? Ghosts?
�Not under God�s blazing sun,� she murmured out loud.
�What was that, ma�am?� one of the paramedics�the female�asked.
�Oh, what? Oh. Nothing. Nothing,� Myrtle answered, distracted.
A ghost of Mr. Pendleton�s mother? she asked herself.
Don�t be ridiculous.
But...had that been who he was talking to? The ghost of his mother?
She found this very frightening. Very, very terrifying, indeed.
She shivered, feeling nausea roiling in her stomach.
Mr. Pendleton�s mother? Her ghost?
Oh, dear God.

THE END

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Replies:

Re: the rest of "Mother": a short story -- Raphaela, 07:06:20 11/01/03 Sat