Collection

A contemporary fiction short story by R.E. Holding - FREE SHORT STORY

Based on my previous poll, I was surprised that a number of you wanted to get notified any time I posted! There were also some votes for just short stories, so to respect those folks, I’m just going to notify you all when there is a new short story. I’ll ask again in the future, so that may change.

For the story, if you know me, you’ll recognize some personal things in this one! :)

Warning: There may be a few triggers - this story is a little sad.

Collection

The old Grandfather clock ticked out of sync. Its gears were crusted and suffused by an abundance of funk in the air. I learned to appreciate the awkward knocking. In the silence, it comforted me.

Moving around had become difficult. My hip creaked and groaned in the socket, occasionally popping into place when I dared stand and stretch. It was a heavy reminder of my former years as a competitive athlete. I loved the long jump and the any-meter dash, as long it didn't involve endurance. I excelled in short bursts, not in distant stretches.

I attributed that to my weak lungs.

Now, I languished on a couch broken by time and relegated to the two streaming services I used as entertainment. I didn't always watch television, knowing full well that it was akin to brain rot and opened the mind to otherworldly vices.

Without it, however, I sat in silence, listening to the decrepit Grandfather clock clicking and barely ticking away like my crippled hip.

Visitors used to come by. I cherished their visits, but they became fewer and fewer as I continued to collect their gifts in piles and wads. Some called me a bit of a freak, but I didn’t let that bother me.

Life was too short to worry.

Slumped on my couch, I picked up a purple ball of wrapping plastic from the side table that once housed the most delicious chocolate chip and peanut butter swirl ice cream sandwich from the parlor down the road. It was an old mom-and-pop place that refused to die when the pandemic hit. Impressed with its perseverance, I traced the little logo of a simple line drawing depicting a chubby boy with his fists on his young and functioning hips, a grin plastered on his face, and smiling at the sun.

The wrapper was a reminder of human resilience in rocky times, as well as the old friend who gifted it to me. I couldn't possibly throw out such a treasure, given to me on a particularly warm day by Jillian, my favorite former coworker at the medical device manufacturing company. She could not visit anymore.

If she couldn't, or wouldn't, at least I had her memento when I saw her last, two years prior.

I put the crumpled wrapper in a frosted plastic Tupperware container, long stained with the orange grease of spaghetti sauce. I wouldn't dare pitch it, as it was the final container to house leftovers from the last home-cooked meal I was able to make in the kitchen and a reminder of healthier times.

The kitchen was my pride and joy years ago. With shimmering quartz countertops and slick wooden floors with a long dining table fit for ten, I used to host many gatherings—old friends, new friends, and even strangers who would become friends. 

The spaghetti-tinged plastic was a token of those times.

It was shortly after my hip degeneration diagnosis that I met Charlotte’s friend Andrew. I was single and searching, and he was charming and handsome—an absolute delight to converse with. Andrew was gay and uninterested but a joy nonetheless. I stowed him away in my memory along with my collection of other friends, imprinting the sauce-stricken Tupperware with his constant compliments of my cooking that night seventeen years ago.

Taking long walks through memories was nice, but I thought now was a good time actually to stand up and move around.

With the hip issue, it was even more challenging to rise from the couch’s deep indentation created by constant sitting. It hugged my legs like a stubborn child begging for attention or a wicked habit coaxing me not to let it go. Like the ice cream parlor, I was still resilient, rocking back and forth to gain momentum and leverage to rise.

And rise, I did.

My goal was at least to reach the bathroom by the end of my journey. The trick was getting my foot in a good position to scoot forward. It was necessary to turn this way and that around the stacks of classic newspapers and magazines collected from the past thirty years. I loved to pick through the piles and find articles from special days I experienced in life.

There was no room for that today; only a stroll around the small house and a stretch to move the blood was all I wanted.

I weaved around my childhood rocking chair and my parents’ old broken table mother wanted to throw out. I stole it from her before she could destroy it because the deep scratches on the surface came from my young nieces and nephews as they grew.

My youngest nephew turned thirty yesterday. I held on to an old faded yellow soccer jersey he grew out of as a reminder that he once told me he’d take care of me when I got too old.

He also stopped visiting.

I hadn’t seen my sister in about four years, but I heard she was doing well. I kept all the VHS tapes we recorded ourselves on when we were children. They piled in the corner, yellow aging labels peeled and torn at the edges with my father’s blocky handwriting printed on each one, bleached by time. I used to write stories, and we would act them out on camera.

Though we didn’t always get along, the times we did were precious and few.

The tapes’ plastic casings showed evidence of little teeth imprints, most likely from a creature in search of food. I found a nest once, made from the scattered and fluffed remains of my stuffed teddy, Bear-Bear. Whatever had come and gone created a home in his belly—a crater deep enough to nearly sever his legs from the torso. I left Bear-Bear on the floor, covered in little black droppings and dried sticky urine.

Grandma gave him to me when I was born. Now I gave him to the rats.

I didn’t mean to, but it was hard to care for my collection properly. Before mother passed, she warned me about my collections. She didn’t really understand… no one would truly understand.

It was my collection that tethered me to the earth. It held me close to those who affected me in life and filled my head with warm memories of times past. Nostalgia, for her sake, even though she was gone, she lived on in my house.

I cataloged pieces of her within my rooms.

The towering pile of cloth squares meant to craft an intricate quilt… the carton of spools to go with them… all parts of a whole, dedicated to her.

My father, who passed before her, left behind empty bottles of Jack Daniels cocktails and Hard Mike’s lemonades. These treasured trinkets lined the baseboards, savored from the ages when we would sail the Missouri rivers in our flimsy aluminum canoes.

While not the original artifacts, their worn labels, and out-of-production flavors triggered thoughts of a life with Dad still in it.

An old friend once teased me for saving a paper coaster each time we visited the dive bar down the road from university. I was glad I did because each one was flecked with a frozen moment. A white square coaster with only the bar’s logo had drops of virgin mudslide splattered and stained into the paper fibers. It was a month before I turned the appropriate age for alcohol, yet my friend was hairy enough to pass for legal. We laughed about the injustice of it all, and the laughter left its chocolate spray on the coaster.

My coasters sat in the corner with Bear-Bear, decorated with newer brown flecks and yellow-orange stains.

As my brain flipped through its internal photo album, I realized I had walked beyond the goal of reaching the bathroom to the door leading down into the basement. It had been quite some time since I ventured down there… perhaps three months or more.

The stairs were getting sketchy, and I needed more room for my collections, so the worn carpet snaked a path down the center, wide enough for one foot at a time. The last time my nephew visited, he was able to fix the stripped screws at the top of the handrail, but they started wearing a hole in the drywall again.

I remembered the stacks of board games and yearbooks stashed in the depths. Gripped with a sudden desire to read through all the messages my high school friends wrote in them, I figured there wasn’t anything else going on that particular day, so why not?

I wrapped tentative fingers around the rail, watching bits of wall dust snow down onto my collection of knock-off perfumes. Their sleek magnetic closures rusted over and sealed their fragrant payloads inside. I loved the bottles in their uniform cylindrical shapes, all from the same company suggested to me by my closest friend, Abby.

They’re cheaper than the original!

Her words echoed in my head, and I couldn’t help but crack a smile at my frugal friend’s enthusiasm.

The perfumes found their home on the stairwell when Abby succumbed to pancreatic cancer. The caps rusting over was a terrible thing to discover that day.

I could no longer take in the aroma of her ghost.

One foot planted in front of the other over the stair’s wormy path. My hip protested, but I pressed on, sliding my fist over the rickety banister.

Three… Four… Five…

Then I saw it. My box of yearbooks sat right at the bottom of the stairs, where my nephew pushed them. If I could just… take… a few more…

The banister snapped free from the wall.

I wasn’t prepared for it to swipe me to the left, still grasping the untreated wooden surface. My shoulder hit the opposite wall as splinters dug into my palm. Pain rocketed through my arm as my failing hip buckled and forced me down the stairs.

The stripped screw clattered down the steps, landing just beyond my head onto the concrete below. I was sure something in my body was broken. All I could do was tilt my head back and stare at the shadows, turned upside-down and creeping toward me.

My hand burned from the splinters, surely working their infection through my flesh. But I couldn’t move. I reached behind my head, pawing at the top book inside the box of yearbooks at the bottom of the stairs.

Lifting it from the box into view, it was the one from my Junior year. That year was nothing but drama for me, but I knew the messages from my old friends would keep me company while I lay broken on the steps. I flipped to my picture. I had long hair and used to wear makeup, but I styled myself in the grungy flannel of the 90s. I never understood why so many boys had a crush on me then. Looking at my picture now, it was clear.

Call me sometime! Love, Chris.

I never called Chris.

Keep your big ole’ giant titties. -Travis

I did, Travis, I did.

Chemistry was so boring, right? I’m glad you were there with me. -Nicole

I was glad you were there, too. Where were you now?

I was about to read a long passage from Kevin when something slipped at the top of the stairs. My bottles of perfume slid down the steps, bouncing off the wall and random stacks of papers. One bounced off my stomach and launched into the basement, shattering the glass and releasing its aroma.

Then another… and another.

Abby’s fragrances mingled together in an amalgam of flowers, vanilla, and musk. If I were to imagine the scent of her specter, the one surrounding me at that moment was perfect. At least I had someone in this mess. Someone was there with me still, as everyone else had abandoned me.

I collected them all.

The perfumes were the beginning of an avalanche of memories. A stack of books, a box of appliances, a tower of ice cream tubs—they tumbled and rolled, covering me in a blanket of crusted wrappers, empty containers, disintegrating books, and heavy defunct machinery. In a final effort to rid themselves of me once and for all, it collapsed over my head. 

The Grandfather clock ticked and buzzed in mechanical fits, echoing in the silence upstairs. It wouldn't be long before the furry denizens hiding in my walls would find me--a giant source of food.

This was the sign I needed. It was the sign that my collection was complete. I ran out of space.

And now… I was running out of time.

END

---

Fancy a unique T-shirt, quirky socks, or a swirly clock? Visit my Red Bubble Shop.

I was never into poetry, but I might start. Buy Me a Coffee and see what I do with it.

Get my books: METAXYSM | HILLBILLY VAMP | REAPER’S GAMBLE

---