Hi guys, I wrote this short story a little while ago, and figured this would be a great platform to hear what you guys think! Its called "His Jawless Smile" enjoy!
A once complacent woman sits motionless by the phone,
rigorously rehearsing the chastising, and
scolding she’ll unleash on her tardy son. She silently
seethes, spiting out the words in her head
“You’ve left me worried” or “Not a single call,” to end
dramatically with the pounding down of the
phone, which parallels the pounding of her heart as she waits.
Negative thoughts seem to immobilize her further. She’s
alone. Left. Worrying. She reflects on
how their irrational love hate relationship has fuelled her
reactions. The scheduled phone calls seize
to continue, and as days turn to weeks she regrets the
previous calls, the nagging, the
bickering, for they are now nothing but seemingly distant words
and inerasable memories.
In her eyes this was all her fault, if only her earlier
complaints of his unemployment stayed a hushed
whisper in her head. She reminisces. Her biggest pet hate,
now a very much welcomed sight to see,
she yearns to walk into the lounge and find his body
sprawled lazily across the family furniture.
Unfortunately life is no fairytale and like the hollow
promise of regular phone calls, her wish is left
unanswered.
Years pass, but still, she waits.
Memorials are made as his whereabouts remain unknown, a
makeshift funeral of his favourite
belongings are tossed in his bodiless coffin and buried deep
underfoot. Perhaps somewhere his
body lay underfoot, who knows, who knew, and who will ever
find out.
The now tearless woman goes about her day, forcing a smile
at those who spare a second glance,
and the phone, a once regularly used utensil lay lifelessly
in its holder. A ring of an unusual kind
echoes down the hall. In a droid like motion she gets up and
answers the door.
Two oversized men greet her cradling a very familiar
materialistic, yet somewhat withered
possession she vividly recognises as an item she’d laundered
time and time before. She gasps for
breath. Could these average Joe’s be the light at the end of
her tunnel? The suppliers of all her
unanswered questions? What did they know? And why did it
take so long to find out? She
lashes out at the men, bloated with rage, profoundly pounding
on one of the men’s chests like a
snare drum. Her outburst only justified by the lack of
emotions this now jaded women seems to
possess. She’d stopped living a long time ago, in her eyes
her existence is only warranted by the
hopeful recovery of her son. On countless occasions she’d
sit and anticipate her reaction to
the words she could only wish to exit from either of the
men’s mouths. At last they come.
“We’ve found your son”. These words, four little, single
syllable words, she’d been waiting to hear
for years, now expressed in the most unwanting of
circumstances. With the realisation that this
conversation is real and not another faucet of her
tormenting dreams, she welcomes the men in
baring her once ever so common, welting eyes.
For the first time in a long while the silence is welcomed
too, the soundless room says so much,
gives so much comfort and answers all her questions. But
this silence is to be one of only
temporary comfort as the men have a job to do.
They explain to her in detail the findings of her son, just
a disfigured face, a limbless skull lay
dormant under the shade of a beautiful pear tree off the
shores of a now prevalent tourist
destination. He had stood on a land mine patrolling the
beach back in the summer of 45’ but with an
accidental misspelling of his name on the duty card, his
whereabouts and missing went unreported.
The response is minimal. Satisfaction of his final
whereabouts gives her relief but the end of a
dream, the perhaps reuniting of her lost, but very alive
son, seizes to continue. Her attention is
drawn to the belongings in one of the men’s hand. “This was
the only intact personal possession of
your son’s, found buried at the scene,” one of the men
uncomfortably noted. “Ironic huh? How a
delicate handkerchief can be the only thing to withstand
such a heavy blow,” she mutters in an
unenthusiastic tone. She is handed the bundled up
handkerchief and realising it has an inner
content, unravels it.
“They were what identified your son, ma’am”, the teeth that once
sat snug in his head and reflected
his every emotion, pile up ever so loosely in the crevice of her
hands. All she can do is cradle
them, they look so strange, alone, utterly
jawless in a constant smile, not in the least
like his. The
men came and went leaving the lone
woman to grieve. She sit’s for a while but her eyes remain dry
and after pointlessly preparing
herself for another sleepless night, she snaps.
Her waiting, fizzling to tragedy, her patience, everything
but the key to her happiness. How can
people suggest that patience is the key to happiness? She’s
wasted so much time waiting, watching
her life pass her by. She’s now just an old woman, a
completely ordinary, uninspiring woman. So
many dreams and aspirations unachieved by the passing up of
opportunities as she’d wait. She peers
up at the clock, the time once again has nothing but slipped
by, it’s midnight. In an explosion of her
bottled up emotions now engorging her more than ever before,
she grabs the cluster of teeth, his
utterly jawless smile and hurls them out the kitchen door.
Where would they land? It didn’t matter.
The broken woman collapses wirily on the kitchen floor, falling
aimlessly into that stupid sleep,
knowing him dead at least, soul rested and finally home, back by
her hand.
