Ink [A Collection of Short Stories]

Lost and Found

Dedicated to haleykins, for being an amazing cousin to me for all these years. Though we aren't blood related, we might as well be :D

I wrote this one at ten at night.... not a good idea to write a ghost story so late haha....

NOT EDITED

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~ Lost and Found ~

She was a frail old woman, that Berta Mianna Vloss. Though, that being her real name, she had always preferred Bee, and never had taken a liking to her last name. Despite taking a permanent sitting upon her records and birth certificate, Bee would shoo away any mention of her given name, and always insist on her name being Bee Mianna. She claimed it had a ‘ring that was much more merciful to the ears’.

Bee was a much exaggerated woman, shall we say. She always made such an unnecessary fuss over the simplest of things. Say, the angle the lace cloth was draped peculiarly upon her worn coffee table, or the tilt of her small glass bird that sat just so on her fireplace mantle. She would always acknowledge the smallest of celebrations with an unbeatable gusto, and her roast turkey that she so happily served on Christmas Eve night was the most felicitousin town. So only one could wonder what her reaction was to her husband’s death.

His name was Thomas Vloss, a kind man with a large heart. He was very generous and never judged others for their wealth, rank, or appearance. Thomas, or Tom as he preferred, always kept his wife in check, and calmed her in troubling situations; most of which were financial. There was no denying his death was a strange one. Tom had left the house to purchase a loaf of bread from the market at Bee’s instruction, but he never came back. Bee called upon police to investigate, and they discovered his body on the side of the road.

He showed no signs of being murdered, and one would think he died of a stroke, heart attack, or something else along those lines. But after further inspection doctors came to the conclusion that it was none of these that had caused his passing. Nor had it been any overdose of a drug, mind you. It had almost seemed as if he had just decided to curl up and fall asleep, but to never wake. And it surely seemed this way, because the most haunting thing about his death was that his body temperature was completely normal. It stayed at a constant ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit all throughout the time professionals were inspecting his body. He hadn’t fallen into a coma, for he had no heartbeat, and doctors used special equipment to check for brain activity, but came up empty.

Thomas Vloss was officially dead.

Nobody knew what had ever become of Bee, however. As soon as Tom’s funeral had ended, she locked herself away inside her house and not a soul could beckon her to come out. Bee would hardly ever eat, and when she did manage to force a morsel down her throat, it would never taste. She became distant and would lose herself in a completely still state; oblivious to what was occurring around her, but never actually having a clear thought anymore. Most days, she wouldn’t find herself being able to even get out of bed for a glass of water; finding no purpose to do so. She completely forgot the importance of food and for days on end would forget to eat.

She was alive, yes, but only physically. Mentally, however, she had died when she got the call that police had found Thomas’ lifeless form that night. Majority would say that this emotionless way of life – this simple existence – was worse than death itself. She would simply be, not live. Her life revolved mostly on the effort of actually getting out of bed and remembering to drink a glass of water a day.

One night, Bee received a phone call at an ungodly hour. She, of course, did not find the incentive to get up, so she stayed laying in bed; listening for whoever was calling her to leave a message on the answering machine. There was none. She waited for a few seconds for the person on the other line to say something, but in the end she heard the click of them hanging up.