Friday, May 25, 2007

Hiya
Well, everyone, I'm going to be really busy over the next few days so I won't be able to get on here at all. I will,however, comment and stuff when I post next time :P Please don't get mad at me! *hides behind a butter shield*

Well, anyway, I went through and made the few corrections to this story from Creative Writing (sorry that you have to put up with it again, Jesse) but it will be at the bottom of this post, so, there you go Yoh ^^ hehehe, I just made a rhyme ^^' I seriously need something to do *sighs*

But first a pic ^^ This would be me if I was ten pounds skinnier lol. Oh well. Some wishes will never come true XD




Okay guys, here it is. Sorry the format's all screwy, but I couldn't figure out how to change it in my post ^_^




Pandora’s Box


Merriam flipped the mysterious artifact slowly from palm to palm, shifting its weight with the tips of her fingers.
Was this really my father’s?
She carefully extended the wallet’s flaps from its body, easing her fingers along its swollen leather surface. Countless years of weathering was caked within each crevice despite a thorough cleaning and a rancid odor revealed the stage of decay it presently occupied.
The young lady scanned an observant eye over the faded documents that protruded from the little worn pockets. Faint words could be seen in the mess of melted paper and an old rusted key was embedded in the rotting material.
His own work, no doubt. Merriam plucked the gem emblazoned metal from its prison and turned it over with quaking fingers. This goes to the old chest, she thought. Why would mother lie?
Aghast at the discovery, Merriam fumbled for the phone that stood in the charger and hovered above the numbers. She had to make a visit.

The road to her mother’s house was paved with gravel and potholes. The old neglected path was rarely traveled by anyone except for the bitter woman that lived at the end and each bumpy mile usually kept visitors at bay.
Merriam sighed. Glancing out the window, endless fields of gleaming corn whooshed past in the noon-time sunlight. Viridian stalks smiled from under their golden crowns, but despite the warm greeting that drifted with the gentle breeze, the approaching house dampened the distance with its emotionless presence.
Within a few minutes, Merriam would confront the woman who raised her, who held a grudge forever for a single man.
Merriam bounced her old jeep from the county road and into the narrow driveway, coming to a complete stop as the disturbed dust once again settled.
Merriam smoothed her white blouse and checked her dark hair in the mirror. She had to look “presentable” for her mother or the fussing would never cease for the old woman’s sense of propriety would no doubt be offended.
Merriam’s throat clenched tight. She had been taught for as long as she dared to remember to be as presentable as possible to attract the right kind of company. “A lady is only as respectable as she appears before others,” Meredith, her mother, had drilled. “Remember it.”
Merriam opened the car door and slammed it shut. Her steps creaked on the mini weathered staircase that led to the porch. After a moment’s hesitation, she rapped on the door and was ushered into the air conditioned foyer.

Merriam waited in apprehension as she watched her mother buzz around the kitchen. Questions battled one another to her parched lips, but she pulled them back with a firm tongue. She had to be careful. One slipped word and the information her mother withheld could lock in suspicion.
“Hey, Mamma,” she called to the busy lady, careful to stifle the quiver in her voice. “I brought the paperwork you requested. Are you sure you want to do this?”
Meredith Carter turned from the sink and lifted her lips into a wrinkled smile. “Why not? I’ve always wanted to live in the city.”
Merriam folded. “Very well. I had hoped you would change your mind though. Daddy loved this place.”
Merriam felt her mother’s anxious gaze.
The old woman placed a pitcher of lemonade on a dainty metal tray and carried it into the living room. She gently set the translucent objects on the coffee table without sloshing a drop.
“Yes, I know,” she replied. Meredith placed two tall glasses side by side and filled one halfway with ice from the small canister.
Merriam took the glass pitcher in hand and poured equal amounts of drink into each cup. She sipped from the homemade sour concoction and ate a sliver of crushed ice, wondering why her mother did not fill her own cup with the frigid condiment, but then again, she never did.
Merriam felt instantly relaxed. For some reason, her mother’s lemonade always soothed her uneasiness. She happily traced the memories from her childhood throughout the room and their individual associations with her beverage.
“How is the investigation going anyway? Has your private detective found anything?
Merriam snapped back to the present and felt a nervous qualm wrench at her stomach. She had almost forgotten the reason why she had come so far into the flat country.
“Well, it’s hard to say.” Merriam said. “I just can’t seem to find him. Wherever he is, he left no trail to follow.”
Merriam took another sip of her drink and searched the room, her eyes cantering across every object until they finally came to rest on a small box that dominated the mantle between two bronze picture frames. There!
Merriam righted herself in the cushioned chair and faced her mother, debating the question that would not quiet its voice on her tongue.
Merriam took a deep breath. “Mamma, why did he leave again?”
Meredith pondered a moment and cast her eyes to the floor in long-felt despair and anger. “He was an abusive man, a tyrant if the phrase fits correctly, and he was forever searching for a dog to lay hands on. He never cared about us and when he found this lady, he jumped on the hormone wagon and was off.”
Merriam contemplated her words and found herself twiddling the zipper on her purse. This didn’t add up to what she one time read and she hadn’t expected it to.
Merriam stood from her seat in agitation, taking firm hold of her handbag’s black leather strap. She stepped lightly over the cream carpet and peered at the photographs that watched silently from their frames on the mantle.
“Mother, you remember in high school when these were taken, and college? I was one of the brightest in my class, always the studious and dedicated student with only a single wonderful parent.”
Merriam paused and glanced behind her shoulder. The sixty-year-old woman smiled and nodded her head in agreement. Facts were facts.
“Well, for a while now, I’ve been wondering about my father and even hired a private investigator to find him…but for some reason, there are no leads to his whereabouts or any information whatsoever other than the fact he just vanished when I was five years old. It’s been twenty-two years since this happened and I have found only tidbits of information. One of the clues is this old thing that was found in your cornfield.”
Merriam took a deep breath and plunged her right hand into her purse, clasping the old withered object that had been nestling snugly between her address book and pen case. She pulled the worn wallet by its damaged cover and tossed it to her mother.
Meredith did not move. She let the wallet hit the floor and stared at it in disbelief as it found a niche in the carpet.
“I don’t think my father left, Mamma, and it is time you told the truth,” Merriam whispered. “He couldn’t be the abusive man that you said he was. I found letters when I was in middle school that he had once written you and he seemed like a man in love with his wife even though he couldn’t be with her.”
Merriam felt drowsy as she released this discovery. This fact had kept her awake a score of nights and fatigue pulsed through her once baffled mind.
Keeping balance by leaning against the mantle, Merriam took the rusty key from her pocket and gently set it in the groove of the old chest. “This key was in it. You once said you dropped it in the creek when I was little and couldn’t find it. That’s not what happened, though, is it, Mother?”
The enlightened daughter took a swift glimpse of her mother that sat still and pale in her chair.
“I don’t think that’s what happened,” Merriam repeated. She twisted the key delicately with index finger and thumb until a click echoed across the room.
Running her fingers across the opening line, she flipped the lid open. Nothing was inside.
“Mother, why would a greedy abusive tyrant leave behind all of his money? Especially when it would be needed for the road?
Merriam saw her mother redden with rage.
“I also found that you have a history of being an inmate. You have a record in the state penitentiary, if I am correct, for theft and assault on one named Charles Carter. My father.”
Meredith slowly regained her composure. Healthy color was floating back to her cheeks but a cold sweat still lined her chin.
“Merriam, I’m sorry, but I had to do this,” she said and a moment later her daughter fainted from the poison that had been planted in the ice.

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