His Breath Lingers Still

His Breath Lingers Still

The gold piece sat atop an elderly, abandoned box in the upstairs closet. Eloise knew she mustn’t touch, but her spruce-toned eyes spread wide in wonder and awe of the beautiful metal. She stretched her young, fragile body, the tips of her fingers barely brushing the trim of the piece high on a shelf. She knew Papa would have a fit to see her in his bedroom and even more so reaching for something she should not even lay eyes on, but he and Momma left over an hour ago, and the lonesome feeling and curiosity nagged at her from the inside.

Eloise pulled out the lightest box she could find amongst the many piled away in the dimly-lit closet and stepped upon it. Now at arm’s length, she grasped the chain that no longer held a priceless shine connected to the main piece, and delicately wrapped it around her short, slender fingers.

Ever so carefully, the young girl went down from standing on the box and knelt on the floor to more closely inspect the elegant object.

She’s only heard of the stories about where this had been. Surely the smell of gunpowder would no longer linger, for those years were long ago. She leaned in closer and thought to herself if the taste of her grandfather’s blood could bite her tongue, but she remembered it had long since been washed. She brought it closer to her head and listened for the remnants of his heartbeat, but heard nothing because his life was concluded for quite some time now. No longer did each hand move with the passing of seconds, minutes, and hours. How many years ago it stopped, she didn’t know, but she dreamt of the glistening gold as he took it from his pocket and the soft tick-tock one could hear if all else was silenced to a whisper.

Papa never had the piece out of the closet except for the time his father had passed and it was time to store it away for good. Papa was bitter. When Grandpa died, Papa seemed more resentful than he was mournful, but it was the first time Eloise saw tears in his eyes. Grandpa was not a good person, but he served his country well in a war that destroyed the vestiges of a great man. He carried the piece with him into that war, and afterward, it served only as a reminder of the gray-coated sky and every lethal, silver bullet aimed for his head. He went mad.

Eloise had once heard Papa say you could see the gates of Hell in his father’s eyes. Every swig of a bottle and every drunken swing of a fist taught her father that a man--no matter how many good deeds he pays--could still bear the mind and body of a devil. Papa told Eloise that he grew up without a father of his own, but he didn’t care because the man was no man at all.

The girl couldn’t feel one way or another. Before he died, she hardly knew her grandfather. She only saw the anger in her own father’s burnt umber eyes when Grandpa was mentioned, and the quivering of his lips as the words “hush up” spewed from them. Papa was a frightening man, and holding the piece brought her one step closer to the man whom she feared.

Her fingers twiddled with the meager dial jutting out the top and twisted it, sending the hands in a craze on the face of the piece. She stared at the aged artistry and ran the pad of her thumb over the swirling designs engraved into the bezel. She sighed, wishing something such as this could be called her own, but knew she did not deserve anything of such allure.

Within those few moments, Eloise’s mother and father had returned home, and the click of the front door and the tapping of their footsteps couldn’t be heard inside the bedroom closet. She sat on the floor oblivious to the trouble she’d soon be in.

“Eloise,” a harsh whisper pierced the silence from above.

She drew her hands between her legs, the piece clutched into her fist. “Hi Papa,” she murmured without looking up.

Papa streamed past Eloise, circling around her, turning on his heels, back and forth, back and forth. His nostrils flared, but he wouldn’t look at her--like he always did. His hands grabbed and raked through his peppered hair and he torturously grazed his face like it was an unbearable sight. “Why are you in here?” he asked.

Eloise said nothing. She shrunk farther back into the corner, tempted to cover her head in anticipation. Tears collected in her eyes and her body shook in terror. She momentarily forgot she even had the piece in her hands.

This angered her father more. Within a second’s worth of time, he reached down, and tore her hands away from her lap, leaving scarlet marks along her arm and ripped the piece from her grasp. “Do you know what this did to me?” he spat, waving the piece in front of her face. “Do you know what he did to me?”

Eloise shielded her face so she wouldn’t have to see the pungent hatred rising from him and the spittle flying from his lips. He towered over her, an infernal beast looming over his prey, a condescendent dictator standing above his victim, a menacing man not rightly named a father for his daughter. “I’m sorry,” she managed between choked breaths. She then tried to crawl away, her knees and elbows shaking in haste and guilt, but Papa took her by the arm with one hand and jaw in the other, the piece still entwined through his knuckles. The cool metal scraped her cheeks, and he held her tighter. The dial at the end pressed too harshly into her temple and she whimpered in pain, but he didn’t notice. She bit her bottom lip, drawing blood, and her heart struck her chest with a such force she could faint. Finally, he looked straight into her eyes and spoke with a slow, rough-edged voice--his breath hot and stale against her nose.

“Do not touch what isn’t yours, Eloise.”

And with that, he tossed her out like a regret to be forgotten, and he shut himself inside the closet like a monster caged by his own demons.