REFLECTIONS

REFLECTIONS
A mysterious salesman proves that all that glitters is not gold, and not all the world can be viewed through rose-colored glass.


Mason Beaulieu had whiled away most of his morning over a pot of strong black coffee and the Stewart County Gazette. He grimaced at the sound of furniture scraping across wood floor, as his wife, Dorothy, rearranged the living room for the fifth time since they’d purchased the gracious two-story house in Florence, Georgia, a month ago. He turned his gaze back to page seven, as Dorothy carried on a steady stream of conversation, half to herself, half to him. After twenty years in a small bungalow in Atlanta, they finally owned the house of their dreams. Buried deep in the Georgia countryside, it was a diamond in the rough.

Both were feeling a touch of spring fever this fine Saturday morning, though Dorothy’s, it seemed, came with a lot more energy. She pushed and pulled tables and chairs into imaginative floor patterns, and while he dawdled over his coffee, she resisted the urge to scold. Finally, sensing the heat, he pushed himself from the kitchen table, slipped through the archway into the living room, and stepping around his grunting, perspiring wife, slid the couch into position, before a large bay window that looked out over what might once have been a sizable formal rose garden.

Squinting into the morning light, his eyes traced a border of stones lining what looked more like an oversized rat’s nest. Tangled brush covered what remained of the roses, as they fought to hold their ground against the weedy onslaught. Dorothy’s green thumb would soon bring it back from neglect, “if she could only leave the furniture in one place long enough to get to it!” he chuckled to himself, returning to hoist up a large, baroque mirror, which she secured to the dining room wall.

“Let’s go for a drive!” he suggested suddenly, snatching away her hammer. “See what lies beyond our castle walls! We’ll give the truck its first road-test!” He’d recently traded his Saturn for a sensible pick-up truck; now, they were officially "country folk."

Half an hour later, the truck turned onto a bumpy gravel road, and accelerated headlong into the scent of wild grass mingled with road dust. Adjusting the radio, “Keep on Chooglin’” pumped through the open window into the fresh spring air.

They were about an hour out, when the truck began to buck slightly. Mason tapped the gas pedal, reading the gauge at half full. Immediately the car returned to normal, and he relaxed into the seat again. Minutes later, the car lurched suddenly, then stopped dead in the road. Dorothy turned to him with a stricken look. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “We’ve got plenty of gas.” They both jumped from the car and he hoisted the hood.

Staring into the engine compartment, Dorothy pictured her cell phone sitting on the bedside table, mentally cursing Mason, who refused to carry one. To their relief, almost directly behind them, they spotted a ramshackle house almost buried beneath a tangle of climbing rose bushes. On the porch, a vintage array of items caught their eyes. Heaps of metal and piles of wood were scattered about.

Out front, a faded sign read:

Wind Rose Country Relics

Please Walk Right In!

Mason pushed open the wooden gate and strode up the path with Dorothy right behind. As he reached for the doorknob, a wild gust of wind blew the front door open with a bang. Inside, a middle-aged woman behind a counter looked up abruptly.

“Goodness! You sure startled me!”

“Sorry,” stammered Dorothy, startled herself. “The wind . . . ”

“Yes, the wind…” the woman answered almost absently. “It does blow things around. Can you help me? Uh, I mean, can I help you?” She smiled slightly, embarrassed.

“We . . . our . . . car broke down . . .we need . . . phone . . .Auto Club . . ." They were tripping over each other’s words, both speaking at once, feeling oddly airy.

“Oh dear,” the woman worried, "we’re quite a ways from that kind of help . . . what’s wrong with your car?”

“Don’t know,” Mason blinked, as a breeze flicked a tuft of hair smack into his eye.

“Well, maybe my husband can take a look at it for you, why don’t you look around while I go out back and get him. He’s out fixin’ the windmill.” She turned and disappeared. Out the window they could hear her voice on the wind, “LEEEEE-ROY! LEEEE-ROY! COME HERE, I NEEED YOU FOR A SPELL!”

The couple gazed around at crowded shelves, display cases and beautiful antique furniture. “This stuff is gorgeous!” Dorothy gushed, turning over a tag. “And CHEAP! This is a real goldmine! You’d never find these prices in the city!”

Mason was finding nuggets of his own. He wandered outside to a pile of wood he thought would make beautiful kitchen cabinets. As he bent over to take a closer look, Leroy rounded the corner.

“Howdy!” he said.

“Howdy!” Mason answered.

“Hear you’ve got some car trouble.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what happened. It just stopped.” Mason offered, “I don’t know much about cars…”

“Mind if I take a look?” asked Leroy.

“No, no… not at all. I’d be grateful!” Mason added.

“You like wood?” Leroy asked, eyeing Mason’s interest in the pile.

“I do, in fact. I’ve always been kind of drawn to it. Like the feel. Especially the older stuff. Don’t see much like this these days, all that pressboard and phony veneer.”

“Know what ya mean. That’s the real deal,” said Leroy, as they headed towards the car.

Another blast of wind nudged the two of them jarringly forward.

“Windy here,” said Mason.

“Yeah,” answered Leroy.

Moments later, after a quick turn of a wrench, he motioned Mason to try the ignition. The engine hummed solidly.

“Loose battery cable. Maybe some dirt in the gas line,” Leroy said as he closed the hood. “Should be OK now.”

They returned to the house to find the women chatting away while dusting off portions of a beautiful old crystal chandelier.

“Look what I just bought!” exclaimed Dorothy. “Won’t this be lovely over the dining room table? It’s missing two prisms, but I think I can find replacements.”

“Hard to tell in that condition,” Mason answered with a laugh. “Ready to get going?”

“Hey, what about that wood you were looking at? Make you a good deal,” Leroy prompted . . . “Got lotsa' bargains around here!" He pulled a rumpled business card out of his pocket and handed it to Mason. It read:

.........Not much of a salesman, but I make some good deals.

...........................~Leroy & Gretta Lerouch

“No thanks! I can appreciate it, but I’m not that handy! We’ll just take the chandelier, and thanks a lot for your help with the truck!”

Home again, Dorothy hopped out and ran for the house with her treasure, anxious to clean up the old chandelier and fasten it in place before the sun set. As she carefully lifted out the wrapped pieces, a handful of rose petals tumbled out of the box, and drifted to the floor. Intent, she didn’t really notice.

That night, over a candlelight dinner, they couldn’t help but admire the dramatic fixture. Light from the candles, flickering across crystal droplets, shone dazzlingly in the ornate mirror on the dining room wall. Occasionally, one or the other would reach up to paw gently at the dangling prisms, causing shimmering lights to dance merrily around the room.

“It almost looks like there are tiny little faces deep inside these prisms!” Dorothy remarked, holding one up to her eye. Glassy tinkling filled the air. Behind her, a swirling puzzle of light seemed to form a vague ever-moving outline of the man and woman reflected in the mirror.

So entranced were they, that for a while, they failed to notice the rustling in the treetops, or the leaves blowing past the big glass window, as wind velocity increased outside. It wasn’t until the thorny tendril of a wind-whipped bush scratched against the windowpane, that they came out of their spell.

“I like the scent of those candles,” Mason remarked, casting a wary eye toward the whistling darkness outside. “Smells like roses.”

“They aren’t scented,” Dorothy said in a distracted tone, following his gaze out into the night. “I didn’t think the rose bushes outside were tall enough to reach that window . . . one must have blown loose from the weeds . . . ” her voice trailed off, as did the wind.

“Well, the wind’s over almost as soon as it’s begun.” Mason jumped up. “Let’s get to bed before it comes back up and we find ourselves without power! I didn’t realize the weather changed so abruptly in this neck of the woods. We’re pretty close to Tornado Alley, though not technically in it,” he added.

As they left the table, Mason’s left shoe picked up a small pink rose petal and deposited it half-way up the stairs.

Early the next morning, Mason opened the back door to survey wind damage from the previous night. Everything seemed to be in order. As he returned to the house, he noticed the roses at the bay window seemed taller, but he wasn’t really sure. He walked into the house, and noticed the bottle of homemade plant food on the kitchen counter. He smiled understandingly. He wondered when she had started feeding the roses. That was some super stuff Dorothy whipped up!

They couldn’t resist another candlelight dinner. Tonight, the spectacular display on the walls reflected endlessly into the mirrors’ depths, turning the room into an optical fairyland. At last, ready to retire, Mason reached out to switch off the dining room light. As he did so, a shadow flickered through the bottom row of crystal prisms, and washed across the mirror. Dorothy caught it in the corner of her eye, then quickly dismissed it.

Padding up the stairs to their bedroom, a pink rose petal hitched a ride on her slipper, to the top of the stairs.

Shortly after midnight, Mason and Dorothy sat bolt upright in bed, jarred from their sleep by the loud tinkling of glass violently hitting glass.

“Did you leave a window open downstairs?” Mason shouted over the din.

“I don’t think so,” Dorothy shivered.

Downstairs, the sound of wind and clashing crystal made the hairs on the back of Mason’s neck stand up like a field of icy needles. Rushing to find the tell-tale window, expecting to find their chandelier in splinters, he stopped cold at the doorway to the dining room. The chandelier hung motionless, not a ripple nor flicker of light. Silent.

“That was not a dream," he told himself, as he checked the window fasteners upstairs and down. Starting back up the stairs, he puzzled over the nightmare they had evidently shared. “Isn’t there a term for two people having the same dream?” He couldn’t remember.

Climbing back up, a rose petal caught the cuff of his pajamas and rode the soft fabric into the bedroom where it fluttered into the bed as he crawled in beside Dorothy who had fallen back asleep.

The following day, Mason mused, trying to recall the specifics of a lost dream. Checking the stone wall at the north end of the property, something twinkled near his foot. He bent down to look. Using a stick, he levered up a small glass prism out of the dirt. Two feet further on, he pried up one more. Slipping them both into his pocket, he headed for his back door.

About fifty feet from the house, he noticed the rose bushes nearly covering the bay window. “She’s overfeeding them!” He said to himself and made a mental note to mention it. Once inside, he dropped two prisms on the bedside table, and promptly forgot them.

During dinner, the wind began to build once more, but by now, the two were getting used to these gusty episodes that occurred around the same time every night, so, engaged in conversation, they ignored the sounds, mesmerized, as the chandelier sent ripples of light twirling out the windows as if entreating the dark to come hither. As dry leaves skittered a frantic tarantella across the roof of the house, the couple laughed, and emptied a second bottle of Cabernet beneath the glittering crystals. In the mirror, a reflection of a man and a woman grew slightly bolder.

Outside, thorny tendrils stretched and clawed up the sides of the stucco walls almost to the roof.

Giggling, the couple flicked off the lights, stumbled up the stairs and tumbled into bed, their intoxication lulling them into a deep slumber. Outside, the night began to wail, trees bent, branches cracked and took flight, shadows crossed the face of the moon and wild animals hunkered down. Inside, Mason snored, as his wife, wrapped snugly in his arms, worked her toes into a small pile of rose petals, both blissfully unaware of the forces headed their way.

Mason woke up violently as Dorothy was wrenched from his arms. In the blackness, feeling her way across the bedroom floor, he heard her mutter, “What the hell . . . ?” She felt sticky liquid drip from a long scratch, already forming a welt across her cheek.

“Dorothy!" he shouted against the wailing wind. He looked blindly about, seeing nothing.

Then the world began to thrum, a deep moan, like the sound of a million broken hearts gushed through the room like blood, building in intensity, gripping them both in a fear so intense they each had a sudden and separate desire to die, in the face of it.

Flailing in the darkness, they fought the urge to give in, as two slender lights began to glow. Scrambling toward them, they each snatched a crystal prism off the bedside table. At the foot of the bed, a column of rose petals fluttered from under the blankets, rising high into the air joining with the specters near the ceiling, and as the massive tornado hit, the room was drenched in a dusky pink light that shot out the windows like a beacon into the terrible night. A sweet bouquet of flowers filled the air.

When the darkness lifted, devastation was everywhere. Rounding a bend in the road, weary rescuers stopped in awe, staring ahead at a two-story house smothered in enormous climbing rose bushes, thick tendrils ten inches in diameter, thorns like spikes dug into walls, reached up and over the roof, effectively tethering the house to the ground.

Wielding axes, the men hacked their way to the door.

Inside, Mason and Dorothy faced each other, unhurt, across the dining room table. In the mirror above them, the clear image of Leroy and Gretta Larouch, smiled down at them from beneath the mirrored surface.

The two previously missing prisms hung primly in place.

On the table between them lay a business card that read:

.........Not much of a salesman, but I make some good deals.

-© by taree Belardes 3/14/2008
NYCMIDNIGHT 2008 SHORT STORY CHALLENGE
Final Round Submission
Competition guidlines:
Write a 2500 word or less short story within a 24 hr. deadline
Must fall within the asigned genre: (Ghost Story)
Must include the asigned subject: (a salesman or saleswoman)
At midnight contestants are emailed their subject and genre, and the race is on!
*This story has not been edited from the original submission written in 24 hrs..