K-OODI Magazine March 2016, Issue 4 | Page 54

SILENT MOMENTS Short story & illustration by Kimmo Matias It wasn't her fault. But as Carla cut three red roses from her well-tended garden and squeezed her fingers around them, her body responded differently. Her smoky grey eyes seemed dazed as she walked toward the house, her ash blonde hair moved slightly in the summer breeze. With each step she squeezed the roses harder, until the thorns pierced the softness of her palm. She didn't react. She just kept on walking, numb, all the while leaving bloody marks on the patio stones leading up to the door. She sensed both pain and pleasure, though at first she hardly registered neither. When she stepped inside the house she suddenly drifted back into herself. And right that instant an intense pain made her reflexes work: she opened her hand quickly and the roses fell to the floor. She looked at her hand and discovered two deep wounds. The large thorns had dug in all the way. She squeezed the skin surrounding the wounds and rinsed her hand under a cold running water until the bleeding started to diminish. After tying a bit of gauze around her hand, she picked the roses from the floor, selected a narrow light green vase and poured water into it. She was on her way to the living room when the phone rang. Carla rushed toward the sound. She grabbed her worn black leather bag from the half-broken chair. Most of the things in her house were broken. Just like her. She felt the insides of the bag. The phone kept ringing and ringing. It seemed that she grabbed every other thing before she finally felt the phone. By the time she answered, she was panting. "Hello?" "Hel-lo?" Then just heavy breathing. It was the same eerie, almost mechanical voice. Not this again. "Stop calling me or I am going to the police!" Carla shouted firmly, agitated. The voice at the other end continued but Carla didn't hear. She had already taken the phone off of her ear. She was having none of it. It had been going on for months. Odd calls at every hour of the day. Sometimes several calls a day. When she got the first one, she tried her best to be polite but she was faced with a wall of silence. She asked who it was. No reply. Just heavy breathing. As the weeks went on she began to lose her patience. Carla threw the phone back into the depths of her bag and sighed. Why do we always rush to answer the phone as if our damned lives depended on it? She returned, grabbed the vase from the kitchen counter and carried it into the living room. As she was trying to figure out where to place it, she got a little bit desperate. All the surfaces were covered with something. She had lived in the same house for many decades and along the way she had picked up more than a few things. Her house resided in Waleford, at the end of the street where her garden met the woods. It was a perfectly nice petite English country house, full of mix-matched furniture, cheap paintings by who knows who, all kinds of decorative porcelain pieces, cushions, handcrafts, the wallpapers had a flower pattern. The dark antique drawers were covered with multitudes of photographs in dusty frames of all sizes and shapes. Flower pots on every corner. Nothing in the room went well together. She had never had an eye for such things, no one had taught her anything about style, or fashion for that matter. Everywhere she looked there was an obvious but endearing war between colors and patterns and styles. It was perfectly fine with her. She was still trying to figure out where to put the flowers, when the flashes from the past came crushing in again. Shouting. Mother's funeral. A ragged little house. Her father in his dirty overalls, smiling and touching her cheek with his rough overworked hands that smell of coal. Explosion. Curtains in flames. Fire, spreading. His father Jacob's voice. Run, run, I'm right behind you! And she ran. Sirens. But he never came out. Carla stared crying and shouting at the uncontrollable flames, She squirmed in the arms of a neighbor who tried to hold her still, until there was nothing but remains of what used to be her home. Daddy!