I've Come for My Girl and Two Other Dark Tales by Marlene Pardo Pellicer

Author:Marlene Pardo Pellicer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: paranormal, supernatural, weird fiction, ghost fiction

Under the Shade of the Avocado Trees

The Miami skyline interrupted swollen clouds that lolled overhead. A sluggish, humid breeze rattled the fronds of palm trees nearby.

My birthday was also a death-day. Bitter memories and the vines of emotions entwined within them, punish you for ignoring them until the moment of their anniversary. I received my twenty lashes and asked for more.

The multi-storied building where I spent my day discharged me into the fifth and uppermost floor of the parking garage. My heels tapping on the concrete sounded lonely and garish. It was then that I stopped observing myself. I know that sounds odd, but during the day I felt detached, going through the motions, smiling when someone wished me a happy birthday, and dodging ways to make small talk. I acted surprised when they called me to the conference room and my coworkers surrounded a cake with lighted candles. Where I longed to be was buried deep in my blankets at home, waiting for a new day.

I slid behind the wheel, brooded and sighed. Memories held at bay flooded the moment like a mudslide, and a yawning sensation of vertigo sucked me back to my life one year before.

My family gathered in a somber group; some of them wept in muted tones. With hesitating steps I walked down a hospital corridor leading to my grandmother’s room. A coincidence scheduled her double-knee surgery on my birthday, but everyone forgot that significance when the doctor told us there was a complication and that she would not survive the night.

I approached her bedside, the unmistakable disinfectant odor of the dimly lit hospital room imprinting itself into my olfactory memory. Machinery chimed in different tones next to her. She could not speak, but recognition glinted in her eyes when I bent over her. We both knew it was a farewell.

Slumped in my car, I wondered how to lessen the homesickness that engulfed me. The saffron brilliance of a spot of sunlight quivering on the hood of my car mesmerized me. The next thing I knew, my car flowed into the traffic drifting like the ebb and flow of the sea, and it pushed me into the city where my family moved in many years before. It was a small southern town where retirees from the North came to escape the ice and snow; its only claim to fame was the Hialeah Race Track. Built in 1925, Seabiscuit, Citation and Seattle Slew galloped around the track pinned at its center by a pond where pink flamingoes preened themselves, ignoring the crowds that gathered during the winter months to cheer on the thoroughbred race horses.

On the main street I recognized buildings now disguised in other incarnations. The art déco entrance of the corner Five & Dime Shop lay imprisoned behind a neon sign for Frankie’s Pizza. The Dairy Queen with its striped awning and walk-up window where we would line up for a soft-swirl cone lay under the asphalt for a supermarket parking lot.

Fat raindrops kissed the windshield as I turned into the street where I once lived.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.