Originally published by Drunken Pen Writing on March 7th, 2020.
Amongst the heaps of refuse and the acrid stench of despair, a lone figure hid in the shadows, curled up between two crooked dumpsters. Beyond the odor and the muck and the biting cold, the dumpsters provided a minor reprieve from the bone-stinging wind. But that’s all they provided.
Grace often wondered why fate had played such a cruel joke on her life; how hiding out in dark alleys and under noisy bridges had become normal. It wasn’t always like this. She used to be somebody—had a warm home and a loving husband. Her two daughters made her macaroni cards every mother’s day and they relished the nights she read them bedtime stories. This was Grace’s old normal. A life she was so accustomed to that she had taken it for granted.
Until it was all snatched away.
Gerald, her husband of eight years, went out one snowy December evening—at Grace’s request—to buy the girls one more Christmas gift. It was a gift she had forgotten to buy and insisted the girls needed. Some unimportant hunk of plastic they would play with for a few days and then discard in the toy chest, never to be played with again.
Gerald never returned home.
That was three years ago. Since then, her old life had fallen apart. Now, her days consisted of begging strangers for change so she could spend the nights keeping warm with bottles of bottom-shelf vodka. Regrettably, on this cold night, she was sans vodka.
“Please. It’s just one more thing. It’ll only take ten minutes.”
Grace’s mutterings were nearly inaudible. The white plumes of breath rising above the shadows were the only real signs that she was speaking out loud.
“I’d go but I have to keep an eye on the lasagna. Unless you want to cook dinner for once?”
The only answer she received was from a cold snap of wind pushing its way through a crack behind the dumpsters. Numb, she buried her face into her folded arms. This did little to keep the cold at bay.
“Why can’t you ever do anything without complaining? It’s not like I ask you to do much around here. The least you can do is buy a damn Christmas toy for your children.”
Her cold lips struggled to move, allowing only the faintest of whispers to escape. Still, she didn’t budge from her position behind the dumpsters. No matter how cold, no matter the damage it might cause her frail body, she felt deep down that this was her punishment for sending Gerald out that night.
The wind swirled in a new direction and the updraft flipped one of the dumpster lids open, then slammed it back down with a deafening smack. While the noise startled Grace, it wasn’t the sound of the dumpster lid she was envisioning. To her, it was the sound of her husband slamming the door behind him as he left their home in anger. Only, this time Grace wasn’t annoyed by the sound. Instead, it felt as if an iron ball had dropped in her stomach.
“Where’s daddy going?”
“He had to go to the store real quick. Don’t worry, he’ll be right back, honey.”
The memory—that particular scene—played over and over in Grace’s head throughout the night. An endless loop of her lying to her youngest daughter. “Don’t worry, he’ll be right back.” The words stung her heart with burning venom.
The pain never subsided. Not even when the world grew dark and a permeating warmth hugged her motionless body.
The wind slowed its assault while a sparkle of tiny diamonds flittered through the air. Slow and steady, snow began to pile upon Grace’s prone figure. Only the soft crackle of ice forming on her hair made any noise.
The city was as still as her heart.
Caleb James K. 