Flash Friday #8 'The photograph'
Original flash fiction: An old photograph prompts memories and long unanswered questions...
Welcome to ‘Flash Friday’ where every week I share some of my original flash fiction.
This week’s story was inspired by the writing prompt: ‘She knelt on the carpet in her new living room, a cardboard box in front of her’.
Photographs are such precious possessions. They show us images of our loved ones long after they have passed away, and enable us to see someone we could never have met due to distance, time, or circumstances. They remain, for the moment at least, one of our best ways to remember someone and to trigger memories, both happy and sad.
I hope you enjoy reading this one…
She knelt on the carpet in her new living room, a small cardboard box in front of her. The box had been with her for decades, kept unopened, its contents too precious to release from its cocoon. But here, now, in her last home, it was time to open it.
Using the edge of a sharp scissor blade, she sliced cleanly through the many-layered brown tape. Over the years additional layers had been applied to hold the ageing box together, and it smelled musty from years of being buried in lofts and storage cupboards. In places the tape binding had gone brittle and peeled away, the remnant of its exposed adhesive now dusty and cloying. It reminded her of an onion with its many layers, even down to its brown and flaking outer surface.
After cutting through the last barrier she sat back and smiled faintly, before leaning forward again eagerly to lift the fragile cover. A blast of a more concentrated mustiness assaulted her nostrils, carrying with it the scent of faded memories and of lost things found. Inside were several items wrapped carefully in crumpled tissue paper, yellowed with age. Carefully, she drew out the largest and most important package.
With trembling hands she slowly peeled back the tissue protection and a black and white photograph revealed itself held in an ornate but tarnished silver frame. A slightly severe yet kindly face stared back at her, posing awkwardly on a high-backed wooden chair and dressed uncomfortably in Sunday best. Her expression was static, but her eyes still seemed alive and alert locked away beneath the glass.
Silently, she traced the features which were a mirror of what her own had been and closing her eyes she took a quiet moment to think of her. The woman who had given her life but whom she had never known. The woman who, when forced to give her up, had left a photograph in her crib. The woman who had, presumably, gone to her grave without ever knowing where her daughter had ended up.
Opening her eyes, she looked hungrily at the image once more. She wondered, not for the first time, whether her mother had later married and perhaps had other children. Children who would be alive now. Children who would be her own half siblings. But if there had been records made at the time, none survived now. She knew. She had checked. For years she had searched and enquired and sought answers until all hope was lost, and the photograph was placed in its box.
Her hands held the frame tightly, and she noticed how old they looked now. Thin and bony fingers. Skin stretched tight across the visible joints and tendons, discoloured by age spots, its texture mottled and fragile like the tissue paper wrapping.
Her knees ached from spending so long on the floor and in the background she could hear the staff of the care home going about their business. Wincing at the crackle in her joints, she got up slowly, using the arm of a chair to steady herself. Moving towards the little table by the window, on which her own daughter had placed a sweet posy of flowers in a little vase, she placed the photograph in clear view.
This was her last home, and her mother would share it with her.
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