Prompt Lost – Who knows what it could have been about.
Grandma Hands Off Her Elven Powers…?
“There is no chaos within the orderly mind.”
Maria looked like a small child beneath the comforters. I had to retrieve the third heavy blanket from the small closet beneath the stairs where it lay folded into a small dusty square, forgotten. Draped over my mother’s emaciated form the blanket revealed itself to be a meticulously sewn quilt. A hundred or more squares of material, each bearing a delicate illustration, connected into one perfect whole.
I sat beside my mother in the dim light cast by a single small bedside lamp. “Grandma made this,” I said, remembering.
Maria was drifting, in and out of the present, touching her toe to the crystal lake of the past. The medication they had her on was taking it’s toll.
“I did not ask for this,” she said, and I thought she was talking about the quilt, “it was given to me.”
“You said you were cold Mom,” I reminded her, “are you still cold?”
She opened her eyes and looked into mine. “Yes,” she said, and she was back there with me, Maria, my mother. Not the addled stranger who mumbled cryptically these last few days, but the protective, self-assured woman who once talked down a gun toting would be robber with a gentle smile and a touch on the shoulder.
I was glad to see her again. Every time she disappeared I was growing more and more certain she would never return.
“Hey mom,” I said, with a smile, “there you are.”
She smiled weakly back at me, her thin pointed ears white from lack of blood flow, the same failing heart that made it impossible for her to keep warm. He high, defined cheekbones almost protruded from behind the smooth skin of her ancient cheeks. I have had no idea how little she weighed, and I didn’t want to know. I’m certain the number would make me cry.
Maria blinked slowly and seemed to mentally situate herself in reality. “Laura,” she said, giving me an affectionate look, “Are you alright?”
Of course she’d ask me, as she lay in her death bed, whether I’m alright. And of course, I wasn’t. “I’m OK Mom. How about you? How’s the pain?”
Her mouth opened and closed very slowly, just a few millimeters, but it took several seconds. “Oh,” she said with an extended, weak sigh, “not bad I guess.”
“Good,” I said, picking up the small water glass beside the bed, “have a sip?”
She nodded ever so slightly and I brought the cup up to her lips and tipped toward her as carefully as if it were filled with nitro-glycerin, as if a single misstep would make the whole house explode. She drank a thimble’s worth, if she drank anything at all and blinked to let me know she was done.
As I put the cup back down on the nightstand she began, “your grandmother says hello.”
I paused, hand still on the cup on the nightstand. I’d heard that people often find spirituality near the end, but I did not expect it of my mother. “Oh, well, hello grandma,” I said, trying not to make too light of it, “when did you see her?”
My mother made a small coughing noise and it took me a moment to realize she was laughing, such as she was able. “Every single day,” she said, “for the last forty three years.”
This struck me as a particularly unique flight to the metaphysical and I momentarily chalked it up to my mother’s general loss of salience. However, the doctor said it was best to just go along with these sorts of mental dalliances with the unreal, lest I accidentally cause her undue distress.
“I see,” I replied in my most upbeat voice, “that must have been nice.”
My mother took a deep breath, “sometimes – when it wasn’t difficult.” Her looked across the room and raised an eyebrow. “Open the bottom drawer, please, and take out the box there.”
A scavenger hunt designed by a dying woman. How exciting. Not particularly eager I got up and searched the drawer, not even expecting to find anything other then towels, but there, beneath the folded bed sheets, was a box. I took it in two hands – it was fairly heavy – and brought it back to my mother’s bedside.
“Open it,” she said.
I peered at her tiny face for a moment, uncertain what to make of this strange turn of events. But I obliged her and lifted the carboard lid. Inside was a gleaming silver metal urn. I took the urn out and on a brass panel is read, Marsha Hobble, 1896-1986.
“Grandma’s urn?” I had never seen the artifact, I did not even know she had been cremated. My grandmother was an unknown to me, a strange, eccentric woman based on my mother’s cryptic stories.
MY mother fixed a serious stare upon me. When she spoke, her voice bore an uncharacteristic seriousness. “Open it,” she commanded.
I wanted to argue, but I didn’t. Instead, I took the metal lid in my right hand, the base in my left, and I twisted until the lid popped off. Then I looked inside and up at my mother.
“Nothing,” I said, “it’s empty.”
My mother nodded solemnly, “yes.”
I paused, waiting for her to say more, “OK, I’ll bite, why?”
With a sad smile, my mother sighed once again. Each word she spoke was difficult. “Because, she never died.”
I blinked. “OK,” I said, more than a little frustrated by the whole strange delusion. I begin screwing the lid back on. “You should get some rest mom.”
From under the covers, with a strength I thought was impossible at that point, my mother’s hand shot up and latched onto my wrist. The speed and power of her grip frightened me, and I tried to extricate myself from it. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not break out of the vice of her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I should have told you.” Her voice was stronger as well, more alive than it had been for months, “prepared you.”
Anxious, my hand beginning to pound from the constrained blood flow, I asked, “for what?”
My mother’s eye’s began to glow a vibrant green, “for this, my dear.”
The green light grew in power and began to emanate not only from her eyes, but from her mouth, her nose and ears. Then it began blinking through the small pores of her skin, until Maria was more light than person. All that energy coalesced toward her tightly gripped hand, which started to burn intensely against my skin. At first it was a slight heat, but soon it became searing, scalding plasma. I started to scream in pain, trying to pull my hand free, even as the form that was my mother began to disintegrate into nothing, until at last the hand itself disappeared, the sheets and blankets went flat, and all that remained of the entire event was a slight residual green glow on my wrist.
I stood up quickly, overwhelmed by a strange sensation of invasion. A voice spoke to me from someplace I did not understand, energetic, alive, healthy and terribly familiar.
“Well, thank goodness that’s done. I’m sorry if it hurt.”
I stood up swiftly and looked around the empty room, at the empty bed, “Mom?!” I said outloud, certain I was losing my mind.
“No, honey,” another voice chimed in, this one clearly Maria’s, “that’s was your grandmother.”
I ran to the mirror, trying to catch a glimpse of myself, to square myself back firmly in reality. What I saw there made me scream.
Gone were my soft cheeks and small ears, and in their place were the features of my mother, the features of my grandmother in the pictures I’d seen, the features of my great grandmother in the single deteriorated silver print my mother kept framed over the fireplace.
I looked like all of them, high cheekbones, pointy ears – the elven traits that ran in my family, but inexplicably skipped only me. Or so I had thought.
“Mom, What the hell is going on?!”
“I’m sorry sweetheart,” my mother said from wherever it was she resided inside my head, “but I’m afraid I have a lot to explain.”
I’m not sure if she started explaining then or not. The blood rushed from my astonished head and I passed out onto the bed.
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