This is a series of stories I started called Shush Be Death. This is the first in the series, they are all short stories. I actually feel quite dark and morbid for the part about this dreams in this. I'm currently working on two but until then...
Illumination Of A Rocking Chair
The mere thought of coming back to my grandmother’s house sent chills down my spine, and now I was to live in it. Stepping out of my car I headed straight for the attic. I wanted to know if it was still there. What? You may ask; the rocking chair.
My eyes swept over her pale body, air seemed to slip slowly like a balloon with a blocked end. She’d told me she wanted to die this way, sitting in her rocking chair, where apparently so many good things had happened to her. “Anna…” Her cold raspy voice called out, years of yelling stage directions and smoking, had not been kind of her voice. I knew her lung was missing; I was at the hospital the day they took it out.
My dreams had since been haunted with, cold, gloomy hospital rooms, operation tables, dimly lit lights, that cast a faint glow on nurses and doctors that appeared to be something out of a horror film. Their voices sounded like mere creaks and groans, their faces covered in scars and burns, some were missing an arm, one man in a wheel chair. Each dream something else was removed from my self, a toe…a lung…both legs…both arms…kidneys…bladder…soon the only thing left was my heart. But last night they took that too, and as I lay there staring up at the ceiling, I caught a glimpse of my refection. One that didn’t belong to me at all but that of my grandmother the woman who sat in front of me at that very moment.
I didn’t want to go to grandma, after all between her and I was the dark, creepy attic. Mother kept telling me I had nothing to be afraid of, and after all I was ten and ten-year-olds weren’t afraid of the dark. I swept in my breath, Nothing can hurt me…nothing can hurt me. My mind chanted as if those simple words would keep me safe. Trying not the think about the many shadows and the abundance of old dummies my grandfather had collected I ran across to my grandmothers side.
She smiled down at me, I half expected dust to her face or her jaws to squeak in protest to the movement, like an old rusted hinge on a door. I watched as ever so slowly words formed and spilled from her mouth.
“Anna…Anna my dear have I ever told you why this rocking chair had been a good thing in my life?” She asked her smile remaining as if I was the most beautiful things she’d seen in a long time. I shook my head vigorously some many times I had pleaded my mother to tell me what was so special about the chair, since all grand mother would say was,
“Special stories like that are better left for a special day” But mother would just put and hand on my shoulder and say,
“News is often told when people are sitting.” I’d never understood what she’d meant, what did news have to do with the old rocking chair in grandma’s attic?
“Well it’s time I told you.” She said as she smoothed out her dress in a dainty manner, and gathered her thoughts. “I was sitting in this very chair when your grandfather purposed to me, and it was in this chair that the doctor told me I was pregnant with twins, or mother and uncle of course, it was from this chair that I watched your uncle leave to go off to war, and where I watched him return,” Her old, shaking hand reached forward and stoked my long brown hair, “and most recently, it was in this chair that I held you, when you were a baby for the very first time.” She turned her gaze from me, to look at the many trees that could be seen from the large, round window that the chair sat in front of.
“Anna, will you get my knitting please dear?” I was already up and running for the door happy for a few moments of escape from the attic. I nimbly rushed to the basket that sat at the bottom of the almost vertical stairs that led to the attic. Once my hand grabbed the weaved handle of the basket, I began my rather slow ascension back to the attic. I reopened the door, the cold draft of air that always seemed to surround the attic engulfed me, and slowly I walked forward to grandma’s side. My mouth opened to tell her I was back but I soon let it fall closed. Her eyes were glazed over and the hand that had been tightly gripping her shawl moments ago had fallen to her side. I hadn’t even noticed the basket had slipped from my hand until I heard the wood cracking snap of the handle braking.
I burst through the attic door and tore through the mounds of junk and there illuminated in the moon light was grandma’s rocking chair.
