Good Day Friends.
I'm excited to share with you this wonderful short story by author and friend Kathy Finfrock. I hope you enjoy it, I know I did!
Mildred
And Her Balls
Mildred
lived alone most of her life. She didn’t like her neighbors much and they
didn’t care for her. In the early years, the women who lived on her street were
afraid she would steal their husbands. This made Mildred laugh. It was ridiculous. Mildred had no interest in
them. The last thing she wanted was to be under the thumb of a man who she had
to clean up after. She had enough chores without hanging a man around her neck.
As
the years went by, Mildred’s animosity to her neighbors grew. It was
reciprocated by adults and children alike for Mildred had a habit of taking the
neighborhood children’s balls.
She
would say, “If it’s in my yard, it’s my property.” No apology was ever accepted
and no ball ever returned. She had every ball imaginable. Red balls, green
balls, yellow balls, orange balls and blue balls. Not one ball did she return.
Parents
would go to her front door demanding she return the balls. Mildred responded,
“You get off my porch or I’ll call the police and have you arrested for
trespassing.” She added “And you keep your children off my property or I’ll
take YOU to court and sue you for harassment!”
Lydia,
who lived two doors down, attempted to threaten her right back with lawsuits of
her own. Mildred smiled back at her and beckoned her to come closer. She
whispered in her ear. Lydia’s dark tanned skin turned a sickly pale dead fish
white. Mildred smiled and said nothing more. The woman stepped away without a
word and left. She moved within the next few days and never told a soul what it
was that Mildred had whispered to her.
Years
passed on. People came and people went. Children would continue to lose their
balls in Mildred’s yard. They tried hard to be careful, but it was as if the
balls were drawn to her house as a paper clip is drawn to a magnet.
Little
Sammy cried that his hakisak jumped right out of his pocket and leaped into her
hedge while he was walking by. He swore that he was not playing with it at the
time. No one doubted the boy’s claims.
Mildred’s
ball collection grew and grew. One room was filled from floor to the top of the
ceiling. She didn’t dare open the door less they come tumbling out. It never
occurred to her that she should get rid of the balls. The concept ran against
the grain of her soul. She was always first in line to get something free but
she wasn’t one to give anything away for free. She would not donate the balls.
She certainly would not give the balls back to the kids and she would not throw
them away. She had no idea what she would do with them and so the ball
collection continued to grow.
One
day, Mrs. Smith, a person from social services, paid her a visit. Someone had
placed an anonymous complaint. Mildred had been through this before. She wasn’t
concerned. Mildred invited Mrs. Smith in wondering what kind of new free
service she could receive.
Mrs.
Smith attempted to do an inspection. Mrs. Smith noticed that there were balls
in every room. Balls in the corners of chairs, balls on the windowsills. On top
of the bookshelves, on the back of the sink in the bathroom, in the
bathtub. She even found balls in the
freezer. Mrs. Smith opened a hall door a crack. A red ping-pong ball with blue
stripes rolled out of the room and stopped in front of Mrs. Smith’s feet.
Mildred quickly snapped it up and put it in her pocket. “No, no. Do not open
that door.”Mildred said moving as quickly as she could to get in front of Mrs.
Smith closing the door. “This room is used for storage,” Mildred told her.
Although
she was surprised at this, she didn’t think it was cause for alarm. It’s common
for old people to collect odd items. Why she knew of a man who had over 1,000
frog items. They brought him comfort and as he had told her, he just really
liked frogs. Mildred obviously for some reason must like balls or so she
thought.
All
in all, Mrs. Smith felt that the complaint was invalid. There was food in the
fridge and the home, although cluttered with all the balls, was not in squalor.
Mildred did not appear to be a danger to her self or others. Off she went.
One
day Mildred noticed a little girl standing on the sidewalk across the street.
She was a skinny dark haired child, scabs on her knees, hair unbrushed and
generally unkept. The little girl would stare at Mildred’s window for hours at
a time. Sometimes she stood and other times she sat quietly on the curb,
scrawny arms hugging her knees.
Mildred
couldn’t understand how a child could stay for so long in one spot. The child
didn’t play or jump around. She just stared at the windows of Mildred’s house.
Even though Mildred watched her through the lace curtains, she felt the child
was staring directly back at her directly into her soul. Mildred couldn’t
complain or say anything as the child was on the other side of the street.
One
day Mildred couldn’t stand it any longer. She crossed over to the street and
looking down on the little girl asked, “Are you alright? Don’t you have a home
to go to?”
The
little girl looked up at her. “I hear them. They call to me. They want to come
out and play,” she whispered.
“Who
calls to you? What are you talking about?” Mildred asked exasperated.
The
little girl looked across the street and sighed. She leaned back on her elbows.
“The balls. All of those balls. They can’t breathe. They need fresh air and freedom.
They want to play and now they are getting angry.
Mildred’s
lips tightened. Her eyes grew beady. “That’s ridiculous and you need to go home
before something bad happens to you.”
The
little girl replied calmly, “No. You need to go home and free them before
something bad happens to you.”
Mildred
shook with anger but she was more unnerved by the little girls calm stare.
“And
just what is going to happen to me?” she hissed.
“The
balls will let you know.” The little girl stared at the house across the
street.
Mildred
decided this whole thing was ridiculous and stomped back across the street to
her house. She opened the door and stepped in. She promptly lost her footing
and slipped on a ball. She grabbed a chair and kept her self from falling, but
just barely. She picked up the ball. She
looked out the window. The little girl was gone. She put the ball in an empty
bowl on the coffee table. She sighed deeply and sat in her chair. Or more to
the point, she sat on yet another ball. She reached under her large behind
retrieving that ball and placing it in the bowl with the other two. Two? Yes.
There were now three balls in the bowl. Mildred shook her head confused. “I
must be tired. I should lie down for a short nap,” she said to her self.
She
dreamed of bouncing balls.
***
She
woke up to a ball bouncing on her head. She grabbed it and threw it across the
room where it hit the wall and bounced back on her head again. Maybe the little
girl was right. Maybe she should get rid of the balls, but no she couldn’t do
that. She couldn’t admit that maybe she was wrong after all.
The
house was gloomy. Surely that little girl wouldn’t still be outside as it was
cold and rain was pouring. She thought she should call child services. That
child was too young to be sitting on street corners. Her parents obviously were
neglecting her. Thunder rolled across the sky.
Sure
enough, the little girl was standing there under a dirty torn umbrella. Mildred
had to move several balls to get to the phone book. That was it, she was making
the call. She unburied the book, but when she looked up, she saw that the girl
was gone. She set the book back down. Maybe she would call later. Right now she
had a splitting headache. She went to lay down for a while until the pain
passed.
***
She
woke up to a very dark house. Oh my! She had slept the whole day. She could
hear the rain pouring down outside her window. She clicked the lamp beside her
bed but the power was out. She went to her dresser to find a flashlight.
Thump
thump. What was that sound? “Are those kids throwing balls against the house in
the middle of the night in the rain?” she asked. She half-way expected the
balls to answer her. Her skin bristled.
Thump
Thump thump
She
set the balls on the top of the dresser as she fumbled in the drawer. The balls
rolled to the floor thumping as they landed one my one. She could hear them
rolling onto the floor. She found the flashlight. The light flickered on and
off.
Thump
thump. What is that darn noise? Mildred opened her bedroom door and took a
sudden step back. She was shocked at what she saw. She was beyond angry. The
doorway was completely blocked with balls. Somehow those kids had broken into
her house and built a wall of balls. Heads were going to roll now.
Thump
thump.
“You
kids had better get the hell out of my house!” she screamed.
Thump
thump
She
tried to push her way through but the wall did not give. She stepped back. The
wall was moving. It was heaving. Suddenly, for the first time in her life, Mildred was afraid. She was VERY afraid.
There was no sound other than the rain and the steady thump thump. She didn’t
believe it was the kids anymore.
The
wall heaved back and forth and then it burst forth. Balls flew at Mildred
knocking her down to the floor. Golf balls bounced on top of her head. A
basketball smacked her in the center of her face sending her reeling landing
hard on her back choking on blood from her broken nose. She tried to get back
on her feet, but they came in force one after the other never stopping.
Big
balls and little balls rolled over her and on top of her. They covered her
legs, pinning her arms down, the weight of the balls crushed her legs. She
tried to scream but it was futile. There were too many balls. Mildred was
buried under the balls.
A
few days later, the Police came and found Mildred’s body beside her bed.
Neighbors had called because the window in her room had been broken. They
hadn’t seen her for a couple of days. The police officer glanced at the body.
“Looks like a natural death. Probably had a heart attack during the storm.”
His
partner said, “You can’t just make that call. Why would she have broken the
window? It’s obvious that the window has been broken from the inside.”
The
police asked the neighbors if they thought anything was missing.
“It
is odd,” they said. “There doesn’t appear to be a single ball in this house.”
The
End
Kathy has recently released her novel House Of Redemption (It's a perfect book for this time of year --good and scary!) Blurb
Eight
unscrupulous guests arrive at the Blackstone resort unaware this house was
built on the blood of slave labor by the zealous Reverend with the intention of
making sinners repent. It doesn’t take the group long to figure out that they
have been lured to the resort to be punished for crimes that have long gone
unpunished. Tension mounts as, one-by-one, the number of guests are reduced
through the ingenious plotting of the unseen killer. Is it the house’s former
deceased inhabitant or is it one of them?
Available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/House-of-Redemption-ebook/dp/B00E7FVVXO/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1375570438&sr=1-1&keywords=house+of+redemption
