SHORT stories

Amelia

Her fingers traced along the edge of the dresser that was once hers. Its surface is covered in dust that keeps collecting. The wooden bed frame in the center of the room is distorted and broken on the floor where it once stood proudly. Dust also claims it. The mirror she used to gaze upon her beautiful appearance in is cracked and spotted with age.

Everything in this room once belonged to her. She took in every detail. The music box that no longer could play, jewelry that once adorned her neck, the dresser full of feminine clothes, and pictures of Amelia scattered across the floor. Amelia. What they used to call her. She longed to pick up a picture but she couldn't no matter how much she wanted to.

Everything was untouched. No one had been here for years. They had left in a hurry. She could still remember the fear in their eyes. The eyes that once adored and loved her. Love had turned to fear and then to panic. All she wanted was to feel loved again.

Her desire for love had driven them away. She moved through the rest of the house. Fond memories that it once brought turned to painful ones. She now knew that they'd never come back. No one would.

Tomorrow they would tear down the house and everything she had left of them would be gone.

Once the house was gone she'd be doomed to wander, lost and alone. She'd wander until someone noticed her. Until someone cared.

This house was once one of glory, beauty, and love. One act of hate had destroyed it. Tomorrow it would be gone forever because of that one act.

She remembered that beautiful blue eyed boy that approached one day as she sat on the front porch sipping lemonade. She wished now that she had not looked into his eyes. He was captivating, and she fell in love instantly.

He had been so sweet to her. They spent days and days together and it felt like the word was only theirs. Nothing else mattered but them being together.

She moved to the front porch and looked down upon the broken swing they had spent hours on together. That cursed swing. Maybe if she hadn't sat there the day he approached her the house would be safe. She would be safe. She would be loved...and alive.

She recalled the chills that had rippled through her body when the blue eyed boy's eyes had gone cold.

He never loved her. She was only the prey in his series of victims. He killed her when her family was away and buried her in the backyard.

After that moment her consciousness never left. She watched him bury her body, she watched her family grieve, always present and incapable of doing anything. She desperately tried to show them she was there but it only caused fear in them and pain in her. She could feel emotions but couldn't express them.

She was unable to cry, or laugh, or smile. No one could share in her pain. After many attempts of trying to get her family's attention they decided to move out. They couldn't handle the "weird happenings" of the house or the memories inside it, so they left. They left her alone. She had been here ever since. Hundreds of years later she was still here.

No one thought about her anymore. No one prayed for her. All she wanted was one person to remember. One person to pray. Her life was incomplete and never would be until someone did so.

Amelia would be a ghost of the past forever from one act of hate, until it was replaced by an act of love. Just one prayer.