Turn Around

An odd and unexpected event occurs at a small store run by an older woman and her niece.

A single dark cloud moved across the clear blue sky and covered the building below in complete shadow. The building, as it happened, was a buy-and-sell establishment called Turn Around, run by one widow, Mrs. Fran Robertson.

This old lady, for old lady she was, had just bent over to pick up some discarded papers and trash that customers had thought nice enough to hide beneath a display, when the room darkened considerably. Being an avid weather watcher, Mrs. Robertson knew the forecast called for naught but clear skies all week and so with a frown, habitually seen on her face when things don’t go as planned, she waddled to the nearest window and scowled up at the single dark cloud. It didn’t seem to be moving anywhere but hung above her shop as if just to spite her and the laws of physics.

With a humpf, the old lady turned from the window and proceeded to turn on the lights in every room, something she is not accustomed to do at noon, and found her sullen store-mate curled up in a chair in the used book section. Mrs. Robertson flipped on the light with a click and stood waiting until the girl acknowledged her presence. The young lady, and I use that word loosely, was the old lady’s niece, Matilda, who, in her quest for adolescent independence and being subjected to a good number of horror films, forewent that name written on her birth certificate and started being referred to as Raven. But as she soon found out while working for her aunt, the name Raven wasn’t used in front of potential customers, or neighbors, or friends, or the mailman, or really anybody else.

When Raven insisted on ignoring her aunt as she glowered from the doorframe, Mrs. Robertson cleared her throat and waltzed into the room, covering ground magnificently for a woman reaching seventy.

“Yeah?” said the girl without raising her thickly lined eyes. She was reading a book on the Manson family, perhaps to infuriate her aunt, which it did when she saw it.

“Matilda Anne!” she exclaimed, grabbing the book out of her hands. “What are you doing reading that smut?! What if a customer saw you?”

Mrs. Robertson was in the habit of asking rhetorical questions when angry, but as Raven had developed the quality to engender frustration in those around her, she answered such questions readily. 

“You sell the book, why can’t I read merchandise? I’m just trying to educate myself by reading non-fiction.” She added the last with a smirk and stood up from the chair covered in layers of sheets and Afghans, probably to hide the fact that the back and cushions were frayed and the thing itself reeked of smoke. But Raven loved to use it; it reminded her of her uncle. The chair innately withheld the essence of the late Mr. Rick Robertson, which was the exact reason why Mrs. Robertson despised the thing but refused to sell it out of his undying memory. And so it remained in the corner of the shop, a tempestuous tribute.

The girl gathered herself up and smoothed out the crinkled lining of her short black dress while her aunt searched for a place to hide the demonic book. For in the mind of some, it is better to hide the dark truth of history than to display it for all to know, Mrs. Robertson was one such person. Eventually she stuffed it behind a row of cookbooks near the top shelf, sure that nobody would find it there.

The old lady continued on her rounds of turning on lights after giving Raven a glare that she understood to be of irritation but could have been construed towards impatience or frustration. Raven shook it off and returned to her dark view of the world which incidentally brought her to the window to stare, as her aunt did, at the unmoving cloud lingering above the shop, blocking out the sun. The girl brushed a strand of jet black hair from her kohl lined eyes and wondered whether or not she had ever seen a cloud hover.

From the outside of the building one may see that in the long row of shops pressed against each other like the pages of a book, only Turn Around was being denied the sun’s midsummer rays. It was indeed curious to walk along the sidewalk from the florist next door and being beaten by the furious noonday sunlight and in the next step be plunged into near darkness, the cloud was that thick and opaque.

Mrs. Robertson had completed her rounds and returned to her post at the shabby counter in the front room when the entrance bell dinged. The old lady, always delighted when customers walked through her doors, grinned amiably as a young couple sauntered inside. The boy, who looked to be in his early twenties, was less excited to be there than his companion, a young miss still bubbling through her teen years on a high of expensive clothing, cheap perfume, and cheaper hairspray. She was rather pretty underneath the makeup and false eyelashes, but too skinny, so thought the illustrious shopkeeper, who remembered better days when girls valued curves instead of bones.

“Hell-o,” she greeted just as Raven rounded the corner and deposited herself in a rolling office chair behind the counter. “Welcome to Turn Around, let me know if I can help you find anything particular.”

“Okay, thanks,” the young female customer returned generically and pulled on her companion’s hand which had been laced through hers upon entrance.

The boy followed, as Mrs. Robertson thought he was trained to do, but not before throwing a prolonged look over at Raven’s short hemline and not before his girlfriend noticed him looking. Acting nonchalant, perhaps as he’s done several times before, he picked up pace and focused his attention on some nonsensical merchandise in the next room. The girl stayed in the doorway and looked from Mrs. Robertson, who had plastered on a business grin and pretended not to have seen anything; to Raven, who ignored the angry glare; to her boyfriend’s back as he roamed the next room.

Mrs. Robertson could tell the girl was miffed, considerably so according to her heightened red coloring and shallow breathing, but couldn’t exactly understand why one look should make her so angry. Low self-esteem and one too many glances, she supposed.

 The girlfriend decided after several moments that she couldn’t yell at Raven for receiving a leering look, though like as she might, set her jaw and glared one last time before catching up with her beau.

Mrs. Robertson blew out a breath, released herself from the faux grin, and shook her head. “Matilda, why do you have to wear clothes like that?” she asked in a whisper over her shoulder. “It angers the girlfriends.”

Raven smirked and shrugged a shoulder. “I like watching their faces turn all red and ugly.”

“Honestly, dear,” she said with a sigh, “it isn’t decent.”

Raven sat up in the chair with a start as the yelling began in the next room.

“Jacob, look at me!” the girlfriend yelled, undeterred at being in a public business or having strangers in the next room.

Jacob’s voice was much more discreet and the two ladies in the front room struggled to hear his side of the argument. Both moved to the connecting wall and pressed their ears against the peeling wallpaper.

“Jacob!” the girlfriend screamed again and Mrs. Robertson who hasn’t been accustomed to screaming since her husband died jumped at its shrillness. Mr. Robertson had had many lovely qualities but much to Mrs. Robertson’s chagrin, the drink made him boisterous.

“You won’t look at me but you can look at her?” Raven snorted.

“I wasn’t looking at her, babe.”

“Don’t call me babe, I saw you staring at her legs, the old lady saw you, and the w***e saw you!”

Raven issued a short ‘hey’ and her aunt shifted uncomfortably, inwardly debating on going in and defending her niece’s honor. Curiosity won out, for now, and she stayed where she was. If there had been any other customers Mrs. Robertson would have been sure to escort the feuding couple out of doors, but as it was, business was slow and entertainment at a minimum.

“Hey, keep it down,” Jacob insisted, worried about his propriety and clearly being embarrassed by his girlfriend’s jealousy.

The couple walked, from what they could hear in the front room, to the edge of the stairway leading to the basement where troves of ancient technologies were sold, Atari, Nintendo, and Sega cartridges lined the concrete walls bathed in green fluorescent light.

“I’ve seen you looking at w****s before, Jacob, don’t think I haven’t. I see a lot of things and I’m sick of it!” Her voice wavered on the edge of madness and one could practically see the red-hot death rays issuing from her eyes. 

“You’re seeing things that aren’t there,” he said slowly and the ladies in the other room drew in a breath as his girlfriend hissed. Word to the wise: don’t ever tell an angry woman she is imagining things.

“Excuse me?” she said quieter. “Don’t you ever call me crazy.”

The floorboards creaked as Jacob backed up towards the stairs. Mrs. Robertson could imagine him holding up his hands in placation and wishing he was anywhere else. She wasn’t far off.

“I �" I can’t do this anymore…” Jacob said in defeat.

“What?!”

“I can’t handle your issues anymore, this is it. I’m done.”

“No!” she yelled back as her voice trembled with the inevitable tears. “I can’t live without you!”

The lights flickered, dimmed, and sputtered all four occupants of the shop into complete darkness. Then came a deafening crash and the tumbling thud of a body falling down stairs.

Mrs. Robertson sprung from her crouch near the doorframe where she had been listening and grappled along the wall for the light switch and wiggled it wildly, unsuccessfully. Her heart beat wildly against her ribcage, as if it were a bird trying to escape capture.

“Matilda, hand me the flashlight under the counter. Matilda?” when she didn’t answer the old woman made her own way and reached the light, flipped it on and saw Raven standing just feet from where she stood. Mrs. Robertson jumped and put a hand to her chest.

Once again the lights flickered and turned back on and the two women rushed to the next room just as the scorned lover uttered an ear shattering scream. Raven and Mrs. Robertson reached the girl as she crumpled to the floor in devastating sobs and looked down the stairs to the unmoving heap that was once Jacob, his legs pointing the wrong way and blood slowly pouring from a wound on the back of his head.

“Oh dear lord!” Mrs. Robertson breathed, her heart threatening to fail. “Raven, call an ambulance.” The old lady moved gingerly down the stairs, avoiding the blood stains and touched the skin on Jacob’s wrist, feeling no movement. The wound on his skull was jagged, bits of bone visible beneath the dark hair matted with slowly congealing blood.

“It’s on its way,” Raven said, appearing at the top of the stairs. Mrs. Robertson put a shaking hand to her mouth and made her way back up, trying hard to think of anything but liability claims.

The girl lay still on the floor, her eyes never leaving the mess lying in the basement, and sobbed muttering, “can’t live without him,” over and over again.

The ambulance arrived a few minutes later and taking one look at the wound on his head, summoned the police who were there in a few minutes more. Still the girl sat muttering as Mrs. Robertson and Raven relayed what they had witnessed, the argument and the crash.

The police decided after the two testimonies not to trouble them further and escorted the young woman out of the store in handcuffs just behind the paramedics who were doing the same to a covered body.

Mrs. Robertson and her niece stood on the stoop watching the police and the paramedics loading their cargo. The girl sitting in the back of the squad car looked to the old lady, her eyes ringed in streaming mascara, and mouthed something in muted frustration.

Mrs. Robertson looked over at Raven and asked where she had been when the lights went out.

“Next to you Aunt Fran,” she said and returned inside.

The squad car siren stammered into life and pulled away from the curb just behind the ambulance, leaving the street untarnished save a few inquisitive bystanders.  

The old lady took a deep breath and looked up to see the dark cloud dislodging itself from the position just above her shop as it began moving onwards through an otherwise cloudless sky. With a heavier heart than when she awoke, Mrs. Fran Robertson turned and walked back inside the store, thinking of cleaning up blood and forgetting the scandal that had tainted her shop.

Raven was sitting behind the counter, her legs curled beneath her, reading the Manson book her aunt had hidden with a small complacent smile upon her face.

Author's Note

I encourage feedback, so please tell me what you think.

Reviews

[Joyrider]

Very well written Marrissa. Enjoyed it throughout.
Expecting more similar works from you