(I decided to challenge myself to write a 50 word story today. I think it turned out okay. :))

The earrings fit perfectly in my hand, I dropped them up into my sleeve as I left the store.

They fell out at home. My mother, angry, knowing my allowance didn’t stretch that far.

The earrings fit perfectly in my outstretched hand as I, mortified, returned them to the jeweler.

“Don’t run up the stairs or you’re going to trip.”

Gemma’s parents had all kinds of warnings for her, no matter where she was in the house. That was their version of good parenting – being human caution signs at every point of possible peril. As much as they tried though, they failed to protect her from the real dangers in their house. In fact, her parents couldn’t see those dangers at all.
Gemma did. She saw the man who lived by their front steps, the side of his head dented from some kind of accident. She could see the dog that slept in front of the fireplace and barked whenever she came near. And, worst of all, she could see the little girl who lived under the stairs.

The girl had long stringy black hair that hung down her back in knots and clumps, the kind of hair Gemma’s grandmother would have described as ‘looking like nobody owns you.’ Her white dress was splattered with rusty brown spots, the colour familiar to Gemma even though she wasn’t sure why. And her long fingers reached for Gemma’s feet whenever she was coming up the stairs from the basement.

There was no risk on the way down, everyone knew that. On the way up though? You had to run so the girl didn’t reach between the steps and grab an ankle so she could pull you down with her. So Gemma ran up the stairs every time.

When Grandma was alive, she could see them, too. She was the own who had explained that Gemma needed to avoid the ghosts who seemed to be about her age. Those were the most dangerous because if they caught her, they could force her spirit out of her own body and take it over. That’s why Gemma was especially careful of the girl under the stairs, she knew the risks of inattention.

Her parents though, they only saw the dangers of rushing up the stairs, of tripping, of hitting her head. They weren’t aware of the dangers of moving too slowly. And, that Monday, her mother was only trying to be a good example when she walked up the stairs ahead of Gemma, moving as slowly as she could.

When she talked about the accident later, Gemma’s mother was astounded that her daughter hadn’t been more badly hurt.

“Even though we were going slowly, she somehow got her foot caught in the space under the riser.” She would explain. “She slid right up to her knees, feet hanging down under the stairs. It was a wonder she didn’t go right in underneath.”

Her friends would shake their heads at this, at Gemma’s sheer good luck. “She’s been right strange since it happened, you’d hardly recognize her. It’s some hard to get her to go downstairs at all, and she rushes right back up like she’s on fire. I think she’s afraid it’s going to happen again.”

They would all cluck about that for a while before going back to their tea and biscuits. Children didn’t make any sense in the best of times. When they were frightened, they were worse.

Under the stairs, Gemma spent most of her time crying. Crying and waiting for the girl to walk slowly enough for Gemma to reach up through the stairs to grab an ankle and reclaim her body.

The ceiling fan had a pleasant sort of vibrating noise if she really, really tuned into it. Most of the time, she just flicked it on and went off to sleep so she didn’t immerse herself in the noise. It was good though, a kind of a buzz that echoed in her mind and made her feel sort of calm and easy. Watching the fan was good too. You’d think it would make her dizzy to watch it but it didn’t really work that way, it just kind of mezmerized her until she let everything else slide right out of her brain. She wasn’t worried about getting her painting done on time, she wasn’t concerned about her mother visiting later this week, she was just all about that fan.

She had always been like this when she was stressed. She would work herself up into some sort of frenzy, be on the edge of some sort of breakdown and just when things were most painful, when her breath was jutting out of her in shards, she would suddenly focus on one small thing and the stress would just melt away. Today it was the fan, but at other times it had been a bird building a nest in the tree outside her childhood room, the front-end loader at a construction site, the water over a pile of rocks in the river at the park. She still had a scar on the back of her thigh from where she had gotten so close to the rocks, listening to the splashing, watching the light tumble, that she had tumbled over backward and landed hard on more rocks behind her.

It would be easier if she could just paint, she knew that. She had the canvas ready, she had the paint prepared, but she couldn’t bring herself to lift the brush. Those first strokes were the beginning of failure and she couldn’t bear to see another painting fall so far short of what she could see in her mind’s eye.

It was ridiculous. She knew that. There was never any way to get her vision directly out in the world, she had to keep trying so she could get closer and closer. They had told her that in art school. Her therapist had echoed it, and her mother tried to coax her through the process every time she saw her. They never talked about the pain of it though, that’s why she didn’t quite believe what they said about how to get past it. They spoke as though it were easy to fail, easy to paint her heart over and over, forgiving herself for not matching her own visions. It hurt more each time. It wasn’t getting easier to fail, it was getting harder to start.

She let the buzz of the fan ease her into a daydream where she worked in an office and she had a straightforward list of things to get done today and her vision could easily match her reality. She would fail at that too, though, because she was not designed for lists and realities, she was made of ideas and colours. So she drifted into another daydream- one with birds’ nests and trickling water.

When she woke, she pulled herself off the bed and right into her studio. As always, the only thing worse than the pain of failing with her art was the pain of not creating it at all.

(Today’s prompt from Story A Day was to write in the second person. Let’s see how that goes.)

You look down at him, kneeling in front of you, ring held aloft and you struggle to remember how you got here.

He is earnestly waiting for his answer, the whole restaurant is watching you, and you feel that familiar heat crawling up your neck. How can one person get things wrong so very many times?

You know it’s not your fault, you can’t do what you haven’t learned, but why does your inability to read other people always have to end in such public disasters?

You don’t want to hurt Ronald, of course, but you definitely don’t want to marry him. You don’t even want to pretend you are going to marry him.

This is your worst nightmare coming true, you feel like you have shown up without your skin, exposed and raw and meaty. Why didn’t you notice that he seemed to be needing you more and more? Why didn’t you hear his talk about the future? You can’t remember hearing anything of the sort, of course, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. Subtlety isn’t your strong point and sometimes you miss even the most obvious things. You don’t beat yourself up about it anymore but you haven’t found a solution either.

How are you going to get Ronald up off the floor without making a scene? Is there any way to do it? Can you save face, his face, at all?

One part of your brain starts forming an elaborate escape plan involving climbing up through the ceiling tiles and changing your identity and all manner of ridiculousness but another part wants to shoot straight.

Without even consciously choosing to speak, you hear yourself saying ‘Ronald, you know I don’t like spectacle. Please get up off the floor so we can leave.‘

His face crumbles like it was a first draft, a paper ball of dismay, and you feel a twinge of guilt. Not enough to make you change your mind but enough to make you wish, again, that you knew how to handle these things better.

You look at him and look around at the other diners, all of whom are intently studying their meals, and you realize that you don’t want to make better with Ronald, you just want to get out of there. Maybe you didn’t see the clues leading you both here but he’s the one that chose to make the grand gesture, to make it public. He’s the one who didn’t read YOU well enough to know what you would want. He just assumed that you would go along with whatever he wanted.

Now the heat crawling up your neck is fueled by anger. How dare he treat you like this? You open your mouth to start shouting but you shut it again quickly. You don’t need to take this any further, you simply turn and walk toward the door.

You can hear him calling out to you from behind but you square your shoulders and head out into the rain, alone. Your head feels clear and your body feels light, the rain doesn’t bother you in the least.