Original fiction - Vanilla Slice Tuesdays
Rating: PG
Genre: light horror
Synopsis: Peter, who is a well-meaning if awkward man who suffers from OCD, buys a vase. This turns out to have been a bad idea.
Notes: This was originally published in Dark Tales more years ago than I care to think! I originally wrote it as part of a writing game at uni. It's a very silly story, but I'm quite fond of it as it's the first thing I ever had acceped :D. I'm posting it here because naboru_narluin prompted me to ;)
*
It was beautiful. The first time he saw it, it brought tears to his eyes.
It was in the Salvation Army charity shop, perched between a badly coloured print of Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed, and a white-painted wooden bathroom cabinet with one door missing. Peter brought out his Tuesday handkerchief and blew his nose as quietly as he could. With itching palms, he picked the object up, tracing the lines of decoration with his fingertips.
His head filled with that heavy feeling he always got at the end of sentimental movies, when the music starts along with the happily-ever-after. He put the object down to reach for his hankie again, but the feeling subsided, and he was left staring at the oddly coloured bottle, hands by his sides.
It shouldn’t have been beautiful; it wasn’t even as if it was exceptionally well crafted. The glass was full of uneven bubbles, and the iridescent patterning was slightly on the skew. He decided it must have been a studio piece, like all that terrible pottery his mum had taken him to see in that museum once. Not a single piece had looked finished to Peter, with their impractical shapes and cracked glazing. But this bottle didn’t look like any of those; it had a strange and captivating allure, and he found that he’d picked it up and was holding it in front of his nose for a better look.
The meagre light from the shop doorway ran like quicksilver along incisions which wound their way from slender neck to bulbous base. He turned it around, inspecting it from all angles, until the little white sticker on the bottom flashed before his eyes and told him it was £3.50. He wondered momentarily whether he could get a discount because it didn’t have a stopper, but the memory of his old mum reared her blue-rinsed head, and he handed over his five pound note, uncomplaining, to the lady behind the counter.
“It’s mine now,” Peter stated. The volunteer gave him a kindly smile and handed him his change.
“Yes, love, it’s yours now.” She patted him on the hand, and he picked up the carrier, the weight of the thing inside pulling strangely on his arm.
Peter didn’t like to break his usual routine, but by the time he'd got to the end of the road the carrier had started to make his arm ache. He thought about paying a visit to Sandra in the bakery, but his shoulder had begun to burn, and so he set off for home instead.
It was smaller, he thought, as he turned it out onto the kitchen table. He brought out his non-food kitchen scissors, and snipped away the tape binding the Sally Army popping plastic. Smaller, yes, it had definitely shrunk. He couldn’t find an adequate explanation for it, so he made himself some tea and sat at the table to think.
His shoulder felt fine now. Why hadn’t he gone to see Sandra? Not that she’d miss him, he thought, but he always went in on a Tuesday. And a Wednesday, and a Thursday, in fact every day except for Sunday and Monday, which were her days off. He always made his visit the last item on his agenda, so that he could savour it on the twenty-six minute walk home. Tuesdays were vanilla slice days, but better than the icing and jam and cream and pastry would be that special smile. And if he was lucky, if the shop wasn’t full, maybe a chat about the weather, or what was on the telly.
Peter felt slightly cheated, but he couldn’t go back out now. The children would be coming home from school, which always unnerved him, and all the vanilla slices would be gone. Besides, Sandra went home at three.
He toyed with the idea, every Tuesday to Saturday, of asking her if she needed someone to walk her there. But he never said anything. There was always someone else in the shop, and turning up as she was heading off just wouldn’t be right.
Smaller, yes, definitely smaller. He picked up the stopper-less bottle and marvelled at the changing colours of the glass. The tiny bubbles appeared to move, squirming around each other in an odd little dance. It fitted snugly now into the palm of his hand. But that wouldn’t do, he might leave it somewhere. He cradled it tenderly as a worse thought came into his head: he might smash it on the kettle when he went to make his 5:30 cup of tea. Or worse, drop it down the lav like his old mum had done once with that mobile phone Uncle Clarence had given her.
He was frantic suddenly, out of his depth with this new addition to his daily routine. In panic, he slipped the miniature glass bottle into his trouser pocket, feeling a cool tingle through the fabric of the glass on his thigh.
Peter’s routine kept him busy, lining up the hours in a regimented fashion, each one with a separate task, just like his old mum had taught him. He began to wear jeans most days, the thick denim an extra protection for the cool, shining object he kept always in his right pocket. It has shrunk to such a size that he could no longer be sure it wouldn’t fall out as he walked, so he kept his hand at his side, dipping in every five minutes or so to check that it was still there. He took it out every evening when he got changed for bed, and placed it on the bedside cabinet while he put his old trousers in the wash and fetched a new pair from the drawer. He kept the night-light on so that he could see it, shining in the gloom. He cried himself to sleep most nights at its grace, and the sinuous twining patterns it cast around the room.
*
“You’re loosing weight,” Sandra commented, showing him all of her front teeth in a blazing white smile. It was three months to the day since he’d found the bottle in the charity shop, and indeed Peter did feel thinner.
He grinned back sheepishly, and ordered a Bakewell tart.
“I don’t know how you do it,” she said, and he felt the warm glow that Sandra’s conversation always brought. “All these cakes every day. You’re not giving them away on the way home are you?” She flashed a wider smile to show him she was joking, and took his correctly counted change. He shook his head and laughed, his hand in his pocket, fingers locked around the chilly glass.
Sandra watched him leave. Her eyes narrowed as she caught a strange rippling in the light over his skin and hair, iridescent almost. She shrugged, and went back to icing buttons onto the gingerbread people. He used to be such a sweet man, she thought, coming in here with his nervous smile and his sensible shoes. She’d taken to setting him aside the best cake each day, loading just that little bit more icing onto a Tuesday slice, or filling Friday’s doughnut to bursting with jam. But in the last few weeks he’d really changed, he hardly spoke, and all the time he’d be fiddling with something in his pocket. And he didn’t just look thinner, but, somehow, less solid. Sandra laughed at herself and slipped the politically correct gingerbread citizens into the window display.
It was three weeks before Sandra realised what was missing from her day. It was Peter; she’d found out his name from his landlady, who came in for macaroons on Thursdays. She’d seen him every day for the first week, and he’d smiled in a slightly sad way as she’d fetched him his cake of choice. Soon he stopped speaking, but that was all right seeing as she knew what he wanted, but for almost a fortnight now the extra special cakes had gone begging at the end of her shift. She reasoned he must have changed his habits, after all it wasn’t the law that he had to visit the bakery every day. Still, though, she felt a bit sad when she realised he hadn’t been in for almost a month, but she kept up the special cakes for the next six weeks, just in case. She began to do the charity shop rounds after work to see if she could find him, but she couldn’t even find anything to buy.
Until she saw the bottle. It was vaselike; fat, bulbous and iridescent. A foot high and at least three around, it wasn’t spectacularly attractive, but it had a certain something that brought tears to Sandra’s eyes.
“Where’d this come from?” she asked the Red Cross Charity Shop volunteer.
“It was in a house clearance,” the girl replied. “Story goes, the owner just vanished one day. Didn’t have any close family so his uncle just gave all his stuff to us. Very generous.”
“Spooky!” Sandra said, wiping the tears from her eyes. She reached out and her fingers brushed the glass. It felt like the crust of icing on top of a vanilla slice. Sandra smiled. “Three pounds fifty then?”
Genre: light horror
Synopsis: Peter, who is a well-meaning if awkward man who suffers from OCD, buys a vase. This turns out to have been a bad idea.
Notes: This was originally published in Dark Tales more years ago than I care to think! I originally wrote it as part of a writing game at uni. It's a very silly story, but I'm quite fond of it as it's the first thing I ever had acceped :D. I'm posting it here because naboru_narluin prompted me to ;)
*
It was beautiful. The first time he saw it, it brought tears to his eyes.
It was in the Salvation Army charity shop, perched between a badly coloured print of Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed, and a white-painted wooden bathroom cabinet with one door missing. Peter brought out his Tuesday handkerchief and blew his nose as quietly as he could. With itching palms, he picked the object up, tracing the lines of decoration with his fingertips.
His head filled with that heavy feeling he always got at the end of sentimental movies, when the music starts along with the happily-ever-after. He put the object down to reach for his hankie again, but the feeling subsided, and he was left staring at the oddly coloured bottle, hands by his sides.
It shouldn’t have been beautiful; it wasn’t even as if it was exceptionally well crafted. The glass was full of uneven bubbles, and the iridescent patterning was slightly on the skew. He decided it must have been a studio piece, like all that terrible pottery his mum had taken him to see in that museum once. Not a single piece had looked finished to Peter, with their impractical shapes and cracked glazing. But this bottle didn’t look like any of those; it had a strange and captivating allure, and he found that he’d picked it up and was holding it in front of his nose for a better look.
The meagre light from the shop doorway ran like quicksilver along incisions which wound their way from slender neck to bulbous base. He turned it around, inspecting it from all angles, until the little white sticker on the bottom flashed before his eyes and told him it was £3.50. He wondered momentarily whether he could get a discount because it didn’t have a stopper, but the memory of his old mum reared her blue-rinsed head, and he handed over his five pound note, uncomplaining, to the lady behind the counter.
“It’s mine now,” Peter stated. The volunteer gave him a kindly smile and handed him his change.
“Yes, love, it’s yours now.” She patted him on the hand, and he picked up the carrier, the weight of the thing inside pulling strangely on his arm.
Peter didn’t like to break his usual routine, but by the time he'd got to the end of the road the carrier had started to make his arm ache. He thought about paying a visit to Sandra in the bakery, but his shoulder had begun to burn, and so he set off for home instead.
It was smaller, he thought, as he turned it out onto the kitchen table. He brought out his non-food kitchen scissors, and snipped away the tape binding the Sally Army popping plastic. Smaller, yes, it had definitely shrunk. He couldn’t find an adequate explanation for it, so he made himself some tea and sat at the table to think.
His shoulder felt fine now. Why hadn’t he gone to see Sandra? Not that she’d miss him, he thought, but he always went in on a Tuesday. And a Wednesday, and a Thursday, in fact every day except for Sunday and Monday, which were her days off. He always made his visit the last item on his agenda, so that he could savour it on the twenty-six minute walk home. Tuesdays were vanilla slice days, but better than the icing and jam and cream and pastry would be that special smile. And if he was lucky, if the shop wasn’t full, maybe a chat about the weather, or what was on the telly.
Peter felt slightly cheated, but he couldn’t go back out now. The children would be coming home from school, which always unnerved him, and all the vanilla slices would be gone. Besides, Sandra went home at three.
He toyed with the idea, every Tuesday to Saturday, of asking her if she needed someone to walk her there. But he never said anything. There was always someone else in the shop, and turning up as she was heading off just wouldn’t be right.
Smaller, yes, definitely smaller. He picked up the stopper-less bottle and marvelled at the changing colours of the glass. The tiny bubbles appeared to move, squirming around each other in an odd little dance. It fitted snugly now into the palm of his hand. But that wouldn’t do, he might leave it somewhere. He cradled it tenderly as a worse thought came into his head: he might smash it on the kettle when he went to make his 5:30 cup of tea. Or worse, drop it down the lav like his old mum had done once with that mobile phone Uncle Clarence had given her.
He was frantic suddenly, out of his depth with this new addition to his daily routine. In panic, he slipped the miniature glass bottle into his trouser pocket, feeling a cool tingle through the fabric of the glass on his thigh.
Peter’s routine kept him busy, lining up the hours in a regimented fashion, each one with a separate task, just like his old mum had taught him. He began to wear jeans most days, the thick denim an extra protection for the cool, shining object he kept always in his right pocket. It has shrunk to such a size that he could no longer be sure it wouldn’t fall out as he walked, so he kept his hand at his side, dipping in every five minutes or so to check that it was still there. He took it out every evening when he got changed for bed, and placed it on the bedside cabinet while he put his old trousers in the wash and fetched a new pair from the drawer. He kept the night-light on so that he could see it, shining in the gloom. He cried himself to sleep most nights at its grace, and the sinuous twining patterns it cast around the room.
*
“You’re loosing weight,” Sandra commented, showing him all of her front teeth in a blazing white smile. It was three months to the day since he’d found the bottle in the charity shop, and indeed Peter did feel thinner.
He grinned back sheepishly, and ordered a Bakewell tart.
“I don’t know how you do it,” she said, and he felt the warm glow that Sandra’s conversation always brought. “All these cakes every day. You’re not giving them away on the way home are you?” She flashed a wider smile to show him she was joking, and took his correctly counted change. He shook his head and laughed, his hand in his pocket, fingers locked around the chilly glass.
Sandra watched him leave. Her eyes narrowed as she caught a strange rippling in the light over his skin and hair, iridescent almost. She shrugged, and went back to icing buttons onto the gingerbread people. He used to be such a sweet man, she thought, coming in here with his nervous smile and his sensible shoes. She’d taken to setting him aside the best cake each day, loading just that little bit more icing onto a Tuesday slice, or filling Friday’s doughnut to bursting with jam. But in the last few weeks he’d really changed, he hardly spoke, and all the time he’d be fiddling with something in his pocket. And he didn’t just look thinner, but, somehow, less solid. Sandra laughed at herself and slipped the politically correct gingerbread citizens into the window display.
It was three weeks before Sandra realised what was missing from her day. It was Peter; she’d found out his name from his landlady, who came in for macaroons on Thursdays. She’d seen him every day for the first week, and he’d smiled in a slightly sad way as she’d fetched him his cake of choice. Soon he stopped speaking, but that was all right seeing as she knew what he wanted, but for almost a fortnight now the extra special cakes had gone begging at the end of her shift. She reasoned he must have changed his habits, after all it wasn’t the law that he had to visit the bakery every day. Still, though, she felt a bit sad when she realised he hadn’t been in for almost a month, but she kept up the special cakes for the next six weeks, just in case. She began to do the charity shop rounds after work to see if she could find him, but she couldn’t even find anything to buy.
Until she saw the bottle. It was vaselike; fat, bulbous and iridescent. A foot high and at least three around, it wasn’t spectacularly attractive, but it had a certain something that brought tears to Sandra’s eyes.
“Where’d this come from?” she asked the Red Cross Charity Shop volunteer.
“It was in a house clearance,” the girl replied. “Story goes, the owner just vanished one day. Didn’t have any close family so his uncle just gave all his stuff to us. Very generous.”
“Spooky!” Sandra said, wiping the tears from her eyes. She reached out and her fingers brushed the glass. It felt like the crust of icing on top of a vanilla slice. Sandra smiled. “Three pounds fifty then?”