Saturday, January 12, 2013

Day 12 of the 250 Word Prompt

"A teenage girl's dead grandmother starts appearing in her dreams and revealing family secrets."

“Good night, Mom,” Sheila called from the top of the stairs.

“Are you going to bed already?  It is not even 10:00.”  Her mother, Stella, came to the bottom landing and looked up at Sheila, worry etched across her face.  “Are you sick?”

“No,” Sheila answered, keeping her voice even, attempting to assuage her mother’s concern.  “It was just a really busy day at school, and I want to get a good night’s sleep.”

For the past three nights, Sheila’s grandmother, whom she recognized from the framed black and white picture in the family room, entered her dreams, and talked to Sheila about the family history she had never been told.  Vera had passed away when Sheila was just a baby, and Stella rarely spoke of the woman.

But Vera had a lot to say.  Bobby, Stella’s baby brother, had died suddenly in his sleep one night at two years-old.  It had never been explained with any specificity as to exactly what had caused his death, and the coroner finally listed it as “crib death.”  Grandma Vera never accepted that version.  She always wondered why the brown-haired, brown eyed daughter had slipped out of Bobby’s room just minutes before Vera had found the blue-faced, un-breathing boy.  

According to Vera, Sheila’s mother never cried over her little brother’s death.  In fact, Stella had acted like the memorial gathering at the house after the funeral was a party, and had flitted around ensuring everyone was “enjoying themselves.”  Most wrote it off as the misunderstandings of a young girl, but Vera was never able to reconcile the brooding little girl from prior to her brother’s death, and the happy, flamboyant child that existed after Bobby’s passing.   

4 comments:

  1. Creepy! With the makings of something very good!

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  2. Neat. From the first paragraph, I thought, "Woa- there's a book there."

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  3. Thanks Lori & Niki...needs work, but I think it could go somewhere!

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  4. I think this is a good plot, but it didn't hook me in as much as your other prompts did. I think if it started with the dream, then with Sheila waking up from it, would entice me more into it. I really like the plot line, though. I would just try a different hook. It seems a little...rushed, maybe?

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