The message

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This week I'm returning to (Fiction)Friday. I will keep the prompt to myself so as not to spoil my story!

He awoke with a start. Through the gap in the curtains he saw sunlight. He realised he was in bed alone, he was confused. Where was Jane? He’d overslept. That was it. But why hadn’t she woken him? And it was Saturday, she always stayed in bed a little longer at the weekend.

He sat on the edge of the bed trying to get his mind around what was going on. Images began to fill his head. Things he'd done, things he'd said. During the past few weeks he'd ignored Jane's pleas. He closed his eyes and saw her anguished face, tears running down her cheeks. He heard her voice warning him that unless he changed, she would leave. He'd not taken her seriously. Jane would never leave me he thought.

The bedside clock said eleven fifty nine. Eleven fifty nine pm. PM? But it was daylight. It must have stopped last night.

The telephone rang downstairs. He rushed out of the room and stumbled as he ran down stairs two steps at a time. He grabbed the phone and steadied himself against a doorframe.

‘Is that John Thompson?’ asked a man’s voice at the other end of the line.

‘Erm, er...’. What was happening, for a second or so he’d forgotten his own name. ‘Yes, er yes. Who’s this?’

‘It’s Sergeant Foster... Bridgenorth police? We have something of yours here at the station’

‘My wife, you have Jane, my wife!’ he yelled. Even as he said it he knew he sounded stupid.

‘Mr Thompson, are you alright?’

‘Alright? Am I alright? Yes,yes, of course. I’m sorry Sergeant. What exactly do you have of mine?’

‘Your mobile telephone sir. It was handed in this morning. If you remember, you reported it lost a month or so ago. We just need you to call in and collect it’.

He went back upstairs and pulled a few clothes on. After another quick look around for his watch, he wandered outside and jumped into his car.

Everything around him seemed to be moving in slow motion. The cars in front of him were crawling. He pressed his horn. He pressed it again. The traffic continued at a snail’s pace. One by one they turned off. At last, he thought. He pressed his foot to the floor and began to hurtle forward.

Suddenly a woman wandered out in front of him. He slammed his hand on the horn and stood on the brakes. His car screeched to a halt, but the woman continued to meander across the road without even acknowledging him. He sat for a moment with his head in his hands, and then slowly started off again.

His eye was caught by a young lady wandering along the pavement. It looked like Jane. It was Jane. He slowed the car, wound down his window and called to her. ‘Jane’. She carried on walking looking down at her feet. She hadn’t heard him. ‘Jane’ he shouted, but she turned down an alley and disappeared from sight. What on earth was happening?

He climbed the steps to the police station. It was strangely empty inside. He pressed the bell on the desk but no one appeared. Pressed it again. Nothing stirred. He decided to leave but then he heard a voice behind him.

‘John Thompson I assume. Come for your phone?’

‘Erm, yes. I am... I mean I have’ John stammered.

‘We had to look at your messages when we were trying to ascertain that the phone was yours. It was after all, thirty days ago that you lost it. One message concerned us Mr Thompson. It was sent to you on the night you reported it missing’

Foster slid the phone across the desk. John felt dizzy, hot, cold, all at once. He flipped the phone open and turned it on. The screen told him he had one message. His fingers suddenly felt like jelly as he struggled to press the key.

It was from a number he didn’t recognise. It read ‘You have thirty days left to live. Use them wisely'.

The collection

I wrote this piece for Sunday Scribblings 'Pilgrimage' and Fiction Friday 'Collection'
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May I read it to you? If so, click on arrow
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“Have you seen my scarf darling, the blue one?”called Jonathon as he searched under the coats and jackets that hung by the door.

Julia sighed, and with a half smile said “You’d lose your head if it wasn’t screwed on!”

Just lately one thing after another had vanished. Nothing of particular importance. A pen, only a cheap one, but one he liked to use. He’d also mislaid a photograph of himself receiving an award at his firm’s dinner, and another of him reclining on a sun bed. And what happened to last year’s diary? He needed to look up a detail about a meeting, but it was nowhere to be seen.

“Good morning Julia”. Cheryl, their home help breezed into the kitchen with her usual cheery smile.”Jonathan left for work already? I’ll start my cleaning with his study today” she said as she tied the strings on her apron.

Cheryl was a stickler for tidiness. Trouble was she was so tidy that Jonathan often couldn’t lay his hands on things which he had known the exact position of before Cheryl sorted them out.

“I found these in the rubbish bin” she said. Julia looked into the plastic bag and saw a pile of old greetings cards, from birthdays and Christmases past.

“Mind if I take them” she said. “I can put them to good use”

Julia saw no reason why she shouldn’t. Jonathan was a bit of a hoarder, so she was delighted to see the back of them.

One afternoon just as Cheryl was about to leave, Julia asked if her if she would like to take a bag of Jonathans old clothes with her – they were almost new but not often worn. Maybe she could sell them at the church jumble sale. She took them willingly.

*

Cheryl liked to be alone in Jonathon’s study. Behind the closed door she could go through his things and imagine what it must be like for Julia, having him all to herself.

What made her do it, she didn’t really know, but one day she picked up the picture of Julia which sat on the desk and unscrewed the back of the photo frame. It was as if she knew what she would find inside. And there under Julia’s portrait was a faded picture of a young girl with the fairest hair and the palest blue eyes. And by her side a youthful Jonathan, his arm draped over her shoulder.

She took the photo over to the mirror and held it alongside her face. Her smile melted away.
Time had not been kind to her. She took off her spectacles and stared into the glass. Gone the smooth skin and alabaster complexion. Her furrowed brow and tired eyes were a testament to twenty years of sadness and longing. That cropped back hair never really suited her, but it was necessary.

Nothing remained of the girl she was except for her pale blue eyes.

*

It was a cold cruel winter’s day. Cheryl telephoned to say she was unwell and asked if Jonathon could call around that evening with a coat she had left behind the previous day.

She got from her wardrobe the dress she had worn the night Jonathan had walked away from her. It was faded, and no longer fitted properly. She sat in front of the mirror and tried to recreate the face she saw in that picture from all those years ago. Then she slipped on a wig of the fairest hair, and tears rolled down her cheeks.

Leaving the door ajar, she retired to a candlelit room at the back of the house and waited for Jonathon to arrive.

When he did so, she called for him to come on in. He followed her voice and walked slowly towards her.

What he saw took his breath away. In the flickering light of a score of candles he found himself surrounded by his own possessions, old photos, keepsakes and dozens of things he thought he’d mislaid. And there in the corner she sat on a chair, grotesque, absurd.

He froze, unable to think, let alone speak.

She stood and slowly walked across the room, to where he stood, motionless, and wrapped a blue scarf around his neck. She twisted it tighter and tighter until he was no longer able to breathe.

She left the room and turned the key in the lock. Her collection was complete.

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