The Grill

“Honey, look what I found in our backyard!” My husband’s carrying voice reached my ears like a whisper as I sat on our bed painting my toenails.

            “Just a minute dear!” Arching my toes toward the ceiling and walking on the balls my feet, I limped down the steps grabbing the guardrail as if life itself rested upon it.  I looked out the window to my smiling husband, pointing to a grill. Not just any grill, but the grill that had been stolen from our yard just a week before.  It seemed completely intact, and as I forgot about my painted toenails and ran outside to it, I verified its safety and wholeness.

            “It’s as if it never left!” I exclaimed, inspecting inside and outside of the grill, and then grasping his strong hand in mine with excitement.  He smiled down at me.

            “That’s not all.” He gave me an opened envelope addressed to “the owners of this grill.” I eyed it curiously, then pulled out the contents.  It was a letter reading:

“Dear owners of this grill,

“We apologize immensely for the brief disappearance of your property.

Our son and some of his friends were having a scavenger hunt, and apparently a grill was on his list.  We know this doesn’t excuse stealing, but it seems the grill is in perfect working order and nothing was broken. Also, as a token of apology, we’ve enclosed two tickets to a play at the local theater. Thank you for your understanding, and we assure you that nothing of this sort will occur again.”

            I looked inside the envelope once again and pulled out what I had missed before. Two tickets to a local showing of “Les Mis.” I didn’t know the theater, but the address was printed on the tickets, making it easy for me to mapquest and find the destination.

            “It’d be nice to go, I mean, as long as you’re not busy.” I hinted to my husband, who nodded with hesitation, then said “Yeah, that sounds good.”

            The play was in exactly a month. Hours, days, and weeks stretched before me like an unbearable marathon.  I endured however, with the glimpse of sophisticated art at the end of my tunnel, the play my diamond-studded glimmer in a life-bucket of dirt.  I craved the theater as a child craves candy, for in my dreary, dull life of inconspicuous suburbia the theater, despite the small size of this theater, was a solace of glamour and superiority, an amusement much more gratifying then the usual block party or bonfire.  I picked out my outfit a week before the event, making subtle alterations to planned accessories each night thereafter.  My husband, on the other hand, seemed a bit less thrilled, and as the night came closer I put together his outfit as well, creating a favorable ensemble of a black dress shirt, black slacks, and my favorite tie.

            When the night arrived I showered then dressed slowly. Looking for any stains or wrinkles on my flawless silver dress, I inspected the outfit in my full length mirror, then added my nicest, antique jewelry, which acted as accents to my already stunning attire. We left the house a quarter after six, and as we drove I felt like a twelve-year-old girl on her way to her first Justin Bieber concert. The drive seemed like hours, it was around forty minutes away, and when we arrived, I first thought we were at the wrong spot.

            “What is this?” I pointed at the empty warehouse in front of us, its inside bare and its door adorned with a “Closed” sign. “Check the tickets again for the address.” I commanded my husband.

            He looked at them quickly and dictated, “22 Hemlock Street.” And with a feeling of dread and disappointment in my stomach I saw the address of the warehouse. 22 Hemlock. I felt as if I wanted to cry, but I held myself together as we circled the street, searching for the nonexistent theater. 

            “Dear, its not here,” my husband was a master at stating the obvious, “Do you wanna just go out to dinner?”

            “Let’s just go home.” I muttered as I picked up and opened my pocket mirror.  My mascara had streaked under my eyes due to a nervous habit of eye rubbing.  I looked like Frankenstein’s bride. “I’m tired anyway.”

            “Okay.” He turned his car around and we began our traffic-packed ride back home. Our forty-minute drive to “the play” turned into a two-hour crawl back to our house, two hours of complete silence.  I tried to erase the disappointment of the non-existent play, still pondering why our tickets were flawed and why our play was absent.  However, it was not during the two hours that I found the answer to my questions, yet it was when we arrived home and my husband opened the front door.

            “Holy Crap.” I stared; all I could do was stare.  In front of me was nothing, and that was the phenomenal issue.  Where our antique bench used to sit sat nothing and where our couch once was remained only beige carpet with the shadow of its past covering.  All of our furniture was gone, and as I ran with desperation around the house, I saw that was not all that was stolen. Where our clothing once hung was now empty hangers, my jewelry boxes were completely empty, (I now thank God that I had worn my most expensive, antique jewelry to the “theater”) and even our mattress, comforter, and sheets were completely gone. 

            In both tears and hysterics, I sprinted down the steps, down the porch, and across the lawn where my husband now stood. I stopped beside him and saw that lawn chairs and the beach umbrella of our backyard past were now missing. Everything was missing, or so I thought.  As I inspected my yard further I noticed, in its usual spot, completely intact and unscathed stood our grill.

           

 

Reviews

[Tea And A Cheshire Smil..]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and I simply loved the twist at the end ^^ However, I must make the same criticism here as I have done on many other pieces of work lately: please, please, PLEASE proof read your work! There were quite a few consistant spelling mistakes and one or two grammar mistakes as well! They really took away from the quality of your piece which is such a shame considering what a brilliant idea you had.
Over all, a brilliant piece of writing, but please remember to paste it into Word or check through it in some way!

[Rain]

ahahaha
a nice read! very creative!
i agree, nice twist, it was a surprising one!