Writings

Author Shelley Dayton

Mystery. Adventure. Monkeys.

Writings

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Cranky Bones
A short story published in thirds.
By Shelley Dayton

For his birthday, Dale’s mother gave him an urn.

It was the yellow color of processed cheese, with an orange stripe around the middle and a screw-top lid.

The urn did not surprise Gail. Her mother-in-law, Yvonne, recently celebrated her seventy-second birthday and threatened to drop dead frequently.

She whipped out this threat at various occasions: when her meatloaf went unappreciated; when Dale’s brother couldn’t take her to bingo night at the grocery store; when Dale’s sister wanted to go to Hawaii for Easter; and lastly, when she saw Gail’s new haircut.

“There’s one thing I don’t get,” Gail whispered to Dale. Yvonne had shuffled away from the dinner table to restock the empty meatloaf plate.

“Mmm?” he asked, working through his fourth helping with gusto. His hair was a shaggy, blonde mop and his fraying tie kept dragging through his mashed potatoes.

“Why is it so small? You could barely fit two cups in it.”

He nodded sagely and scooped some Jell-O mold. “It’s ‘cause she’s going to live with all three of us,” he waved his fork to explain, “in three different urns.”

Ah.

She encouraged him to have an extra beer, and promptly shoved the urn deep in a closet the second they got home.

A week later, she was forced to dig it out again after Yvonne made good on her threat. It was news to Gail that a person could choke on sardines. Through the whole service, she wondered if Yvonne was looking down on her hair with disgust.

Or, more likely, looking up at her. She thought of her six-year-old, worn black shoes.

It didn’t matter. Because wherever she was, Yvonne wasn’t content to stay there.

The haunting commenced while Gail lugged a basketful of laundry from the dark garage, the Man Zone, where Dale could make a mess and she pretended not to notice. He kept to this arrangement after Gail took the hunting rifle he left in the guest bathroom and returned it to his garage…clean, oiled, and painted a lovely shade of cotton candy pink.

Today, as she stepped over a pile of boots crusted with mud, and felt a sudden chill that seemed to make her entire skin shrink down into her bones. She barely had time to suck in a breath, when a wispy white figure bloomed in front of her.

A scream tore out of her throat. For a second. Then she cocked her head.

She saw Yvonne’s right arm, thick from her youth as a pig farmer. She saw Yvonne’s left leg, covered to the calf in a floral dress. And she saw Yvonne’s face. The hair was shoulder-length and done in loopy, white curls. The lips were pinched and puckered. The eyes were mean, mean, mean.

“Where’s the rest of you?” Gail heard herself ask. Right in the middle of Yvonne was an ancient and inoperable television set Dale refused to throw out. Then the shoe dropped, and she felt her eyebrows raise even further.

It was a third of Yvonne.

Chill wrapped around her arms like a noose. With one sudden shove, Yvonne knocked the basket out of Gail’s arms.

Put me back together! her voice shredded through Gail’s brain.

Gail took one, two ragged breaths. And ran as fast as she could out the back door.

That night, Dale clutched the urn to his chest. His eyes popped open and his mouth sagged. “No, of course we are not getting rid of Mahmay! Look, I know you hated her, but the woman is dead! And I’m not just going to…to throw her in some lake! Or off some mountain!”

Gail fought the urge to throw her scalding decaf coffee at his face. What sort of grown man calls his mother Mahmay, she cursed in her head, clenching her fingers around the cup’s handle. She glanced at her daughter Riley, who was reading a book under the table while she picked at her peas. Her blonde ponytail, which curled into a spiral from constant twirling, rested beside her cheek.

With a clank, Dale put the hideous urn back on the fireplace. “And she’s not haunting you! Mahmay wouldn’t even swat a mosquito! You need to get some rest or something!”

She forced herself to release her mug. If only for her daughter’s sake.

The next day, Gail spooned lemon juice into a bowl of wet ingredients, which she then mixed with the dry ingredients to make lemon muffins. She spooned it into pink and yellow cupcake liners when…

You’ll kill him!

Gail leapt upright, pumped her arms upward, and threw muffin batter over her shoulder and onto the floor with a splat sound.

That withered face materialized over the black oven. The arm was crooked, apparently resting on an invisible hip.

Don’t you know he’s got acid reflux? And you’re serving him lemon muffins? He’ll get stomach cancer! You know he can’t resist those things! He eats the whole batch every time!

“He’s not going to get cancer!” Gail shrieked, stunned, then proud of herself for not running.

You’ll kill him, came the quieter reply.

This became routine. With each meal prepared, and each snack, came an otherworldly nag. Too much acid, not enough whole wheat flour, too much butter, those pork chops are tougher than car tires. Yvonne griped for years that people would kill her, now she griped that Gail would kill her precious son with her cooking.

But never in front of anyone else.

Gail called her brother- and sister-in-law.

Jim and his wife Tina responded: “No, she’s not haunting us, is something wrong with you, and did you hit menopause or something?”

And: “No, we can’t give you her ashes. They’ve been thrown to the wild winds on a beautiful mountaintop as the sun gently set on the Pacific Ocean.”

Sister-in-law Edie had a different take.

“I flushed ‘em. Now she knows what it’s like to be treated like sh…”

Putting down the phone, Gail reflected that she had always liked Edie.

*

PART TWO:

Apparently, Mahmay…Yvonne had been listening.

The next afternoon, Gail checked on a tray of chicken bones in the oven.

They were a deep brown and would make excellent soup. She glanced at the clock, and saw she had two minutes before the bones would be done, and she’d have to whip them out to cool, then hop in the car to pick up Riley from school.

She cinched and tied the garbage bag under the sink, heaved it out of the bin, and hurried out the back door to the big cans.

She reached out to open the door again and heard a slow, quiet clicking noise. Through the glass, she saw Yvonne’s white face. Yvonne winked.

Cursing, Gail yanked at the handle.

Locked.

She stood for a moment and let the enormity of her situation rush through her.

Those bones were done. The oven was on. Would the bones catch fire? All of her neighbors were gone to work, so none of them could call the fire department for her. The nearest store was two miles away. And her keys were, of course, in the house.

She ran to the back garage door, and felt a rush of happiness when it opened easily. She drew a deep breath and tiptoed around Dale’s piles of shoes, newspapers, rusted tools, and baseball cards.

She figured it took all of Yvonne’s energy to lock the kitchen door, so she might not be able to lock this one. And she might not hear.

She gently clasped the tarnished, round knob. She started to turn it, carefully, slowly…
CLICK.

A windy snicker came through the door as the deadbolt slid shut.

Gail pounded the door and screamed.

Then the charred smell coming through the door told her the bones were burning.

She could break the glass in the kitchen door. But the glass was so high above the latch, she probably wouldn’t be able to reach the lock, even if she didn’t cut a major artery in the process.

This one was solid. It had a doggie door, left over from the previous homeowners, but that had been screwed shut from the inside the morning Gail had awakened to find a skunk sitting on her counter, calmly eating her sourdough bread.

A smell drifted over to her, and this time, it was smoke.

Adrenaline zapped her heart into high gear. She felt sweat break out on her neck as she scanned the garage for something, anything useful.

A pair of bolt cutters. Too light. Garden hoes, shovels…maybe…. The drawers full of smaller tools wouldn’t be any good. She couldn’t imagine how to get a saw through the wood at this angle.

Then she saw the old, dusty, neglected thing in the corner with the splintering, wooden handle. Just the thing.

She hefted the six pound sledgehammer over her shoulder. Feeling frightened but also liberated at the prospect of destroying her own property, she lifted it, lifted it above her head, and WHAM!

The jolt traveled up her shoulder and rattled her neck. A small, square indentation marked the wood now. She hefted it again, and…WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!

On the last strike the sledgehammer cracked through the wood. It was several more blows to make a hole wide enough.

When she wiggled through the door, scratching her skin bloody on the jagged edges, she saw a thick fog of smoke filling her ceiling. Not caring where Yvonne was, she scrambled to grab a kitchen towel and jerked the oven open.

Foul, choking smoke poured over her in a hot blast. She grabbed her black and ruined baking sheet, covered with black and ruined bones, and tossed it in the sink. She turned the oven off and ran to open all the windows.

“You are done, you hag!” Yvonne roared as she ran to the mantel and grabbed the urn.

You can’t do that. If you leave a single crumb of ashes, I’ll still be right here. Get the rest of me!

“Yvonne, the rest of you is gone!” Gail shrieked. “Dumped and flushed! This,” she shook the thing, “is all that’s left of you!”

There was a shocked intake of breath.

“And I’m going to do just what your precious Edie did. I’m going to flush you! And that’s only because I don’t have a hole leading straight to hell in my backyard!” Gail turned and marched to the hallway.

Something caught her eye.

She turned to find Dale in the open front doorway. His mouth worked in a little “O” shape. He stared at her, his face a picture of hurt, worry, and confusion. His eyes rolled to the ceiling and kitchen, taking in the smoke. He set his lips together.

Dale walked over to her, and firmly took the urn from her hands. Then he grasped her arm and walked her to the bedroom.

“Lie down. Now. I’ll get Riley. And I’ll pick up something for dinner.”

The door shut. Gail heard him speaking quietly. She thought he was talking to himself until she heard him say, “So sorry, Mahmay.”

She went into the bathroom and slammed the door with all of her strength. The crash of a decorative plate breaking on the hardwood floor exhilarated her, but only for the moment.

She showered herself clean.

The hot water rolled the smoke and sweat off of her. She dressed in sweats, crawled under the covers, and turned on the little television.

It had been a year since she had time like this…with nothing to do, nobody to work for. Nestled in the clean, blue sheets, she began to doubt herself.

She worked hard to provide a good home for her family, when she wasn’t working at the school to save money for Riley’s college fund. Like Dale, her stomach often burned with acid. Maybe it was time for a break. Time to spend some money on a spa treatment, or a vacation just for her.

She fell asleep to a rerun of Frasier.

*

A knock came at the door, and Riley poked her head in. Her pretty brown eyes were pinched in concern.

“Mom? You okay? I brought you a barbecue sandwich. Your favorite kind, with lots of pickles.”

“Sure, baby, come in. Sit with me a second.”

Riley toed open the door with the oversized, chunky boots the kids her age wore. She stared at the floor so she wouldn’t trip while carrying a huge sandwich and mammoth dill pickle.

At that moment, Yvonne returned. And when she did, she made a serious mistake. A whopper, a dealbreaker.

*