The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Gone But Not Forgotten  
by Marge Simon

She’s a big girl now, well past middle age. Her hair has gone white and her joints creak, frown lines trace her sagging face. She forgets if last year’s apple was better

than this year’s, especially when it comes on a tray with little cups of multicolored pills that a man in white delivers to her room.

Still, she remembers her dolls, gifts from father and her brothers from their travels far abroad: Little Hans Brinker with his silver skates, Golden braided Heidi from the Alps and Emmy Lou from England, with eyes as blue as hers, but only for display. But her favorite was the Russianmatryoshka doll that opened up to come apart with children, diminishing in size.

“Someone took them all away!” she cries. The man in the white coat shakes his head. “Selfish old bitch,” he mutters as he leaves, “you set fire to the house while your brothers slept, for your father left you nothing in his will and nothing’s just what you deserve.”

But she isn’t listening. She still has the matryoshka doll, which she’d tucked in her pocket before lighting the gas-soaked living room. Every day, she takes the dolly’s children out and puts them back together. They are the only things in her world that make any sense.

Fiction © Copyright Marge Simon
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com