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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Horror
- Subject: Horror / Scary
- Published: 05/30/2019
MEDALLION
By Tammy Ruggles
It was daytime when four high school friends--Ram, Lotus, Aaron, and Rosa--entered a pawn shop, Ram carrying his electric guitar.
“Man,” Aaron said to Ram, “you would do anything for some weed.”
“I’ll get it back.”
Lotus slid her hand into Ram’s back pocket. “I thought that was your favorite guitar.”
He kissed her. “You’re my favorite guitar, Lotus Flower.”
Ram and Lotus headed for the pawn broker standing behind the counter while Aaron and
Rosa’s eyes browsed the contents of the glass cases: Knives, jewelry, mp3 players, CD’s, video games, coins, and stamps.
When Ram placed his guitar on the glass counter in front of pawn broker, the broker examined it.
“I don’t really need it, kid. I’ll give you fifty.”
“It’s worth more. Seventy-five.”
Lotus looked down through the glass counter at a tarnished medallion with intricate engravings on it. It was attached to a chain that was just as tarnished.
“Oh, Ram,” she said without taking her eyes from it. “I want this.”
Ram looked at it, then said to the man with barely a beat, “Sixty plus the necklace.”
“Medallion,” the man said lifting it from the case and draping it seductively over his hand for Lotus to see. “Quaint little thing. It plays music but there’s no place to open it.”
“Plays music?” Ram asked as he leaned his face toward it for a closer look.
“When it takes a notion.”
Lotus looked at the man. “Where did it come from?”
“No idea. Came in with a bunch of junk last week. Little bit of jewelry polish, look good as new.”
Aaron and Rosa joined Ram and Lotus. Aaron had a CD and Rosa had a belt buckle.
Aaron reached for his wallet. “We’ll take these. I’ll get yours, Rosa.”
“Sweet.”
Ram gave the pawnbroker a fifty and a ten, then slipped the medallion over Lotus’ head and
kissed her.
“Hot,” he smiled at her.
The four friends walked out of the pawn shop and continued down the street.
Rosa looked at Ram. “The party at your house, or Aaron’s?”
Ram nudged Aaron with an elbow. “Can we use your basement, dude? My parents postponed their cruise ‘cause Mom’s gotta show a cool house to a rich dude.”
“No worries,” Aaron replied. “Mom’s got a date tonight.”
“Who is he?” Lotus asked.
Aaron offered a private smile. “She.”
“Dude,” Ram said, “your mom’s lez?”
“Bi,” he grinned. “Doubles her chances for dates on Saturday night.”
“I would die if my mom was with another woman. Gag. I can’t imagine.”
Aaron shrugged. “‘cause you’re not bi.”
“Is that why your dad left?” Ram asked.
“SHE’S the one that left.” He touched Lotus’ medallion. “Man, that is cool. What is that scroll stuff on it?”
“Beats me. Looks like some kind of foreign script.”
“We could take it to the librarian,” Rosa suggested. “She speaks about five different languages and is reading all those books.”
“Cool,” Lotus smiled.
The four walked on down the street, chatting and holding hands.
::::::::::::::::
The party was in Aaron’s basement later that night, about fifteen high school students in all, including the four friends Ram, Lotus, Aaron and Rosa.
Swatches of colors from clothes and objects basked in the glow of a black light owned by Aaron’s mother as the kids talked, danced, or made out. The TV was on, and so was an old 8-track tape player.
Someone played some bongos. Someone poured drinks while another passed them out to partiers.
It was a freestyle party. Everyone did what they wanted.
Ram and Lotus played with an Ouija board at a coffee table, fingers poised on the edge of
the planchette.
Lotus wore her medallion. Having been polished, it gleamed as if a living organism in the black light.
They gave each other a long look across the board.
“You look different tonight,” he said. “Happy.”
The planchette slid from beneath their fingers and moved to the edge of the board, where it dropped off.
“What the hell?” he asked as he put the planchette back on the board. “Let’s finish this.”
They re-positioned their fingers, and it slid again.
Lotus’s smile faded as she jumped to her feet and stomped off.
“Stop doing that!”
Ram got up and followed her, laughing. “What? It wasn’t me.”
She spun around.
“Not funny, Ram. That means death. And my mom’s only been gone six months.”
Ram took her arms and pulled her to his chest. “I didn’t make it move,” he said stroking her hair and kissing the top of her head. “Must’ve been vibrations from the music. It’s okay. Let’s go to the back room. There’s a couch.”
Ram and Lotus headed for a back room holding hands, passing by Aaron and Rosa, who were getting into it pretty heavily on the couch.
“We could join them,” Aaron suggested. “Make it an orgy.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?”
“Experimental. Take after my mom.”
Aaron and Rosa kissed deeply, his hand sliding behind her back and down to her rear.
Her hand went inside his jeans.
The dancers danced on.
:::::::::::
After the party, Aaron and Rosa stood on Aaron’s patio and watched their friends as they got into their cars to leave the party. Horns honked and kids waved out car windows, music blaring.
Rosa tried to shush them with a loud whisper.
“Sshh! You’ll wake the neighbors!”
A neighbor’s porch light came on across the street. Aaron and Rosa hurried back inside, giggling, until last car pulled away from the curb.
:::::::::
A few minutes later they were in the basement discarding the party debris--a darker, quieter place now that the black light was unplugged and the music was off. Only a nightlight shaped like a seashell lit the area.
Aaron and Rosa settled onto the couch together, sleepy.
“Night,” Aaron murmured tiredly.
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
They unwound in the stillness, the only sound their breathing; nodding off wearing small smiles of contentment.
Then, a bang, from the back room; jolting them awake. Aaron jumped to his feet, grabbing a baseball bat in the corner.
“What the--”
The door to the back room opened and Ram stumbled out.
“Aaron, she--I can’t wake her up. I think she’s dead.”
Rosa sat up. “Who?”
“Lotus?” Aaron asked.
Ram nodded. “I don’t know if she took something. Too much. She was depressed about her mom. I don’t know.”
Rosa and Aaron rushed to the back room, Ram following.
The room was lit with candles. Lotus lay on a waterbed, lifeless but peaceful-looking.
Aaron went toward the water bed, whispering.
“Oh my God. What happened to her?”
Aaron leaned his head down to her chest to listen for a heartbeat, but instead of that, heard the music in the medallion softly playing.
Ram said, “I told you I don’t know. We fell asleep. I woke up, tried to get her awake. Nothing.”
“We have to call the police,” Rosa said.
Ram fell to his knees at the waterbed and clasped Lotus’ hand to his cheek, crying.
“I’m sorry, Lotus. I should have woken up. I should have noticed. I should have listened to you.”
Rosa squeezed Ram’s shoulder, tearful. “Not your fault, Ram.”
Aaron took his cell phone from his pocket and pressed 911. “This will kill her dad. First his wife, now his daughter.”
::::::::::::::::
There was a bountiful array of flowers at her funeral, as often is at the passing of the young. Almost too many flowers. An outcry of objection. A beautiful outrage.
Lotus lay in the casket, as beautiful and peaceful as she had lain in the waterbed.
Ram sat in the front row of the funeral home at the viewing service, Aaron seated on his right, Rosa on his left.
An old woman behind him, as weathered as an old apple, spoke to her lady friend sitting beside her. “Heart attack. Could be drugs.”
Lotus’ father, looking haggard and red-eyed, approached Ram and opened his hand to reveal the medallion.
“Here. I think she’d want you to have this.”
Ram took it and put it on, then gripped the man’s hand.
::::::::
Two hours later, Lotus’ family, friends, and classmates walked to their cars to leave the service, accompanied by sobs muffled into handkerchiefs, and the clicking of heels on the asphalt parking lot.
Ram walked toward his car without a word to anyone, Aaron and Rosa giving him concerned looks.
Rosa squeezed Aaron’s hand. “Should we follow him?”
Aaron put an arm around her. “He needs time alone, Rosa.”
Ram got into his car and left the funeral home, driving down the street with angry tears in his eyes, gripping the steering wheel hard.
Through gritted teeth he asked, “Why? Why’d it have to happen to her?”
There was no one in the car to answer him, of course.
He kept driving, past shops, parking lots, restaurants, parks. Familiar places he and Lotus visited and spent time in. So much time together. Time that was enjoyed, wasted for fun, making memories.
He was about to turn the radio on when music came from the medallion.
Ram touched it fondly as it hung against his chest, caressing. Then he lifted it and kissed it, pressing it against cheek and closing his eyes, as if he could feel her in the ornate disc.
She had loved it. He would keep it forever. Keep her close forever, a treasure locked inside his heart.
Ram’s car approached an intersection.
The medallion pulsed warm in his hand.
“I love you, Lotus.”
A semi pulled out in front of him and his world faded to black.
::::::
The intersection was now the scene of an accident. A police car. Ambulance. Fire truck. Bystanders.
Aaron and Rosa stood on the sidewalk holding each other. The cops wouldn’t let them get any closer.
“Some things you can’t unsee,” one of them said as he walked back to the twisted metal of the collision.
Rosa hid her face in Aaron’s chest while paramedics, firefighters, and police used the jaws of life to pry off the top of Ram’s car.
Rosa sniffed against Aaron’s chest. “Do you think he meant to do it, Aaron?”
Aaron hid things well, but he couldn’t hide his pale face and glazed eyes. “I don’t think so. That’s not him.”
::::::::::::::
Aaron and Rosa stayed at the scene all day and into the evening, long after the emergency vehicles and bystanders had gone home.
The couple sat on the curb against a light post, deflated and numb as traffic drove by. The intersection now looked normal again, as if a young life had never been lost there.
Aaron turned and looked at her. “Come on, babe. We need to go home.”
“I can’t. I feel like I’m leaving them behind.”
“You aren’t. They aren’t here anymore.”
Aaron helped Rosa to her feet and they were starting toward Aaron’s car when something shimmering caught the corner of his eye. He looked into the street and saw the medallion.
“Oh wow. Stay here.”
She obeyed, watching curiously as Aaron waited for traffic to slow. When it was safe, he trotted out into the street and retrieved the medallion.
She put her hand over her mouth.
“Oh, Aaron.”
He slipped it around her neck, and as they walked to the car, the soft music of the medallion started to play.
::::::::::::::
The next morning at the pawn shop, the pawnbroker sat behind the counter, sipping coffee and munching a bacon and egg on bun while reading a newspaper with the headline: “Another Family Mourns”.
The door slammed open, and Aaron staggered in, disheveled, hair mussed, eyes red and dark-circled.
He was trembling.
He carried the medallion up to the counter, holding it as far away from his body as possible.
Beautiful music came from the necklace.
“What the hell is this?”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“My girlfriend drowned in her own pool last night after I left her house. She was wearing this necklace, and now she‘s dead. Ram wore this necklace, and he’s dead. Lotus wore this necklace, and she’s dead. What is this? Where did it come from? How does it kill?”
“I don’t know anything about--”
The pawnbroker’s coffee cup began to tremble in his hand, then his entire body began to
shake. Blood trickled from his nose, ears, mouth.
Aaron took a step back, threw the medallion on the floor, and ran, pulling out his cell phone to call 911.
:::::::::::::::
Parked a few cars down from the pawn shop, Aaron sat and watched as two paramedics rolled the sheet-covered pawnbroker from the store on a gurney, lifted him into the back of the ambulance, and drove away, no lights or siren.
When he could no longer see the back of the vehicle, Aaron started his car and pulled away from the curb.
He drove past the funeral home, craning his neck to look at it as he passed by.
He drove past the cemetery, his eyes on it too.
As if to distract himself from his own thoughts, he reached for the knob on the radio and pressed it, then started a giddy laugh.
Into the rearview mirror he said, “Hey, 911, yeah. Could you send somebody to that pawn shop to pick up that funky medallion and get rid of it? I’d do it myself, but I just lost my best friends, and I kind of like it here among the living, so, yeah. I’m not touching it again, and I advise against anyone wearing it. You can pick it up, but you can’t wear it.” After a nervous laugh, he deepened his voice to answer himself with, “Right, kid. I’ll get right on that.”
Aaron ran a hand through his hair and kept driving.
::::::::::::::
A week later.
Aaron climbed onto his front porch, retrieved the newspaper and some other pieces of mail from the mailbox, and went inside.
“Mom? You got a recipe magazine.”
He put the mail on the coffee table next to his mother’s laptop.
The house was quiet, except for the soft medallion music coming from the kitchen.
The mail fluttered to the floor.
“Mom?”
He crossed the living room. Slow at first, then quick, until he was at the kitchen door pushing it open.
His mother’s girlfriend was slipping the medallion over his mother’s neck.
“The pawnshop’s widow had a clearance sale, Aaron,” his mother smiled. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Aaron lunged toward her to grab the medallion.
The End
Medallion(Tammy Ruggles)
MEDALLION
By Tammy Ruggles
It was daytime when four high school friends--Ram, Lotus, Aaron, and Rosa--entered a pawn shop, Ram carrying his electric guitar.
“Man,” Aaron said to Ram, “you would do anything for some weed.”
“I’ll get it back.”
Lotus slid her hand into Ram’s back pocket. “I thought that was your favorite guitar.”
He kissed her. “You’re my favorite guitar, Lotus Flower.”
Ram and Lotus headed for the pawn broker standing behind the counter while Aaron and
Rosa’s eyes browsed the contents of the glass cases: Knives, jewelry, mp3 players, CD’s, video games, coins, and stamps.
When Ram placed his guitar on the glass counter in front of pawn broker, the broker examined it.
“I don’t really need it, kid. I’ll give you fifty.”
“It’s worth more. Seventy-five.”
Lotus looked down through the glass counter at a tarnished medallion with intricate engravings on it. It was attached to a chain that was just as tarnished.
“Oh, Ram,” she said without taking her eyes from it. “I want this.”
Ram looked at it, then said to the man with barely a beat, “Sixty plus the necklace.”
“Medallion,” the man said lifting it from the case and draping it seductively over his hand for Lotus to see. “Quaint little thing. It plays music but there’s no place to open it.”
“Plays music?” Ram asked as he leaned his face toward it for a closer look.
“When it takes a notion.”
Lotus looked at the man. “Where did it come from?”
“No idea. Came in with a bunch of junk last week. Little bit of jewelry polish, look good as new.”
Aaron and Rosa joined Ram and Lotus. Aaron had a CD and Rosa had a belt buckle.
Aaron reached for his wallet. “We’ll take these. I’ll get yours, Rosa.”
“Sweet.”
Ram gave the pawnbroker a fifty and a ten, then slipped the medallion over Lotus’ head and
kissed her.
“Hot,” he smiled at her.
The four friends walked out of the pawn shop and continued down the street.
Rosa looked at Ram. “The party at your house, or Aaron’s?”
Ram nudged Aaron with an elbow. “Can we use your basement, dude? My parents postponed their cruise ‘cause Mom’s gotta show a cool house to a rich dude.”
“No worries,” Aaron replied. “Mom’s got a date tonight.”
“Who is he?” Lotus asked.
Aaron offered a private smile. “She.”
“Dude,” Ram said, “your mom’s lez?”
“Bi,” he grinned. “Doubles her chances for dates on Saturday night.”
“I would die if my mom was with another woman. Gag. I can’t imagine.”
Aaron shrugged. “‘cause you’re not bi.”
“Is that why your dad left?” Ram asked.
“SHE’S the one that left.” He touched Lotus’ medallion. “Man, that is cool. What is that scroll stuff on it?”
“Beats me. Looks like some kind of foreign script.”
“We could take it to the librarian,” Rosa suggested. “She speaks about five different languages and is reading all those books.”
“Cool,” Lotus smiled.
The four walked on down the street, chatting and holding hands.
::::::::::::::::
The party was in Aaron’s basement later that night, about fifteen high school students in all, including the four friends Ram, Lotus, Aaron and Rosa.
Swatches of colors from clothes and objects basked in the glow of a black light owned by Aaron’s mother as the kids talked, danced, or made out. The TV was on, and so was an old 8-track tape player.
Someone played some bongos. Someone poured drinks while another passed them out to partiers.
It was a freestyle party. Everyone did what they wanted.
Ram and Lotus played with an Ouija board at a coffee table, fingers poised on the edge of
the planchette.
Lotus wore her medallion. Having been polished, it gleamed as if a living organism in the black light.
They gave each other a long look across the board.
“You look different tonight,” he said. “Happy.”
The planchette slid from beneath their fingers and moved to the edge of the board, where it dropped off.
“What the hell?” he asked as he put the planchette back on the board. “Let’s finish this.”
They re-positioned their fingers, and it slid again.
Lotus’s smile faded as she jumped to her feet and stomped off.
“Stop doing that!”
Ram got up and followed her, laughing. “What? It wasn’t me.”
She spun around.
“Not funny, Ram. That means death. And my mom’s only been gone six months.”
Ram took her arms and pulled her to his chest. “I didn’t make it move,” he said stroking her hair and kissing the top of her head. “Must’ve been vibrations from the music. It’s okay. Let’s go to the back room. There’s a couch.”
Ram and Lotus headed for a back room holding hands, passing by Aaron and Rosa, who were getting into it pretty heavily on the couch.
“We could join them,” Aaron suggested. “Make it an orgy.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?”
“Experimental. Take after my mom.”
Aaron and Rosa kissed deeply, his hand sliding behind her back and down to her rear.
Her hand went inside his jeans.
The dancers danced on.
:::::::::::
After the party, Aaron and Rosa stood on Aaron’s patio and watched their friends as they got into their cars to leave the party. Horns honked and kids waved out car windows, music blaring.
Rosa tried to shush them with a loud whisper.
“Sshh! You’ll wake the neighbors!”
A neighbor’s porch light came on across the street. Aaron and Rosa hurried back inside, giggling, until last car pulled away from the curb.
:::::::::
A few minutes later they were in the basement discarding the party debris--a darker, quieter place now that the black light was unplugged and the music was off. Only a nightlight shaped like a seashell lit the area.
Aaron and Rosa settled onto the couch together, sleepy.
“Night,” Aaron murmured tiredly.
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
They unwound in the stillness, the only sound their breathing; nodding off wearing small smiles of contentment.
Then, a bang, from the back room; jolting them awake. Aaron jumped to his feet, grabbing a baseball bat in the corner.
“What the--”
The door to the back room opened and Ram stumbled out.
“Aaron, she--I can’t wake her up. I think she’s dead.”
Rosa sat up. “Who?”
“Lotus?” Aaron asked.
Ram nodded. “I don’t know if she took something. Too much. She was depressed about her mom. I don’t know.”
Rosa and Aaron rushed to the back room, Ram following.
The room was lit with candles. Lotus lay on a waterbed, lifeless but peaceful-looking.
Aaron went toward the water bed, whispering.
“Oh my God. What happened to her?”
Aaron leaned his head down to her chest to listen for a heartbeat, but instead of that, heard the music in the medallion softly playing.
Ram said, “I told you I don’t know. We fell asleep. I woke up, tried to get her awake. Nothing.”
“We have to call the police,” Rosa said.
Ram fell to his knees at the waterbed and clasped Lotus’ hand to his cheek, crying.
“I’m sorry, Lotus. I should have woken up. I should have noticed. I should have listened to you.”
Rosa squeezed Ram’s shoulder, tearful. “Not your fault, Ram.”
Aaron took his cell phone from his pocket and pressed 911. “This will kill her dad. First his wife, now his daughter.”
::::::::::::::::
There was a bountiful array of flowers at her funeral, as often is at the passing of the young. Almost too many flowers. An outcry of objection. A beautiful outrage.
Lotus lay in the casket, as beautiful and peaceful as she had lain in the waterbed.
Ram sat in the front row of the funeral home at the viewing service, Aaron seated on his right, Rosa on his left.
An old woman behind him, as weathered as an old apple, spoke to her lady friend sitting beside her. “Heart attack. Could be drugs.”
Lotus’ father, looking haggard and red-eyed, approached Ram and opened his hand to reveal the medallion.
“Here. I think she’d want you to have this.”
Ram took it and put it on, then gripped the man’s hand.
::::::::
Two hours later, Lotus’ family, friends, and classmates walked to their cars to leave the service, accompanied by sobs muffled into handkerchiefs, and the clicking of heels on the asphalt parking lot.
Ram walked toward his car without a word to anyone, Aaron and Rosa giving him concerned looks.
Rosa squeezed Aaron’s hand. “Should we follow him?”
Aaron put an arm around her. “He needs time alone, Rosa.”
Ram got into his car and left the funeral home, driving down the street with angry tears in his eyes, gripping the steering wheel hard.
Through gritted teeth he asked, “Why? Why’d it have to happen to her?”
There was no one in the car to answer him, of course.
He kept driving, past shops, parking lots, restaurants, parks. Familiar places he and Lotus visited and spent time in. So much time together. Time that was enjoyed, wasted for fun, making memories.
He was about to turn the radio on when music came from the medallion.
Ram touched it fondly as it hung against his chest, caressing. Then he lifted it and kissed it, pressing it against cheek and closing his eyes, as if he could feel her in the ornate disc.
She had loved it. He would keep it forever. Keep her close forever, a treasure locked inside his heart.
Ram’s car approached an intersection.
The medallion pulsed warm in his hand.
“I love you, Lotus.”
A semi pulled out in front of him and his world faded to black.
::::::
The intersection was now the scene of an accident. A police car. Ambulance. Fire truck. Bystanders.
Aaron and Rosa stood on the sidewalk holding each other. The cops wouldn’t let them get any closer.
“Some things you can’t unsee,” one of them said as he walked back to the twisted metal of the collision.
Rosa hid her face in Aaron’s chest while paramedics, firefighters, and police used the jaws of life to pry off the top of Ram’s car.
Rosa sniffed against Aaron’s chest. “Do you think he meant to do it, Aaron?”
Aaron hid things well, but he couldn’t hide his pale face and glazed eyes. “I don’t think so. That’s not him.”
::::::::::::::
Aaron and Rosa stayed at the scene all day and into the evening, long after the emergency vehicles and bystanders had gone home.
The couple sat on the curb against a light post, deflated and numb as traffic drove by. The intersection now looked normal again, as if a young life had never been lost there.
Aaron turned and looked at her. “Come on, babe. We need to go home.”
“I can’t. I feel like I’m leaving them behind.”
“You aren’t. They aren’t here anymore.”
Aaron helped Rosa to her feet and they were starting toward Aaron’s car when something shimmering caught the corner of his eye. He looked into the street and saw the medallion.
“Oh wow. Stay here.”
She obeyed, watching curiously as Aaron waited for traffic to slow. When it was safe, he trotted out into the street and retrieved the medallion.
She put her hand over her mouth.
“Oh, Aaron.”
He slipped it around her neck, and as they walked to the car, the soft music of the medallion started to play.
::::::::::::::
The next morning at the pawn shop, the pawnbroker sat behind the counter, sipping coffee and munching a bacon and egg on bun while reading a newspaper with the headline: “Another Family Mourns”.
The door slammed open, and Aaron staggered in, disheveled, hair mussed, eyes red and dark-circled.
He was trembling.
He carried the medallion up to the counter, holding it as far away from his body as possible.
Beautiful music came from the necklace.
“What the hell is this?”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“My girlfriend drowned in her own pool last night after I left her house. She was wearing this necklace, and now she‘s dead. Ram wore this necklace, and he’s dead. Lotus wore this necklace, and she’s dead. What is this? Where did it come from? How does it kill?”
“I don’t know anything about--”
The pawnbroker’s coffee cup began to tremble in his hand, then his entire body began to
shake. Blood trickled from his nose, ears, mouth.
Aaron took a step back, threw the medallion on the floor, and ran, pulling out his cell phone to call 911.
:::::::::::::::
Parked a few cars down from the pawn shop, Aaron sat and watched as two paramedics rolled the sheet-covered pawnbroker from the store on a gurney, lifted him into the back of the ambulance, and drove away, no lights or siren.
When he could no longer see the back of the vehicle, Aaron started his car and pulled away from the curb.
He drove past the funeral home, craning his neck to look at it as he passed by.
He drove past the cemetery, his eyes on it too.
As if to distract himself from his own thoughts, he reached for the knob on the radio and pressed it, then started a giddy laugh.
Into the rearview mirror he said, “Hey, 911, yeah. Could you send somebody to that pawn shop to pick up that funky medallion and get rid of it? I’d do it myself, but I just lost my best friends, and I kind of like it here among the living, so, yeah. I’m not touching it again, and I advise against anyone wearing it. You can pick it up, but you can’t wear it.” After a nervous laugh, he deepened his voice to answer himself with, “Right, kid. I’ll get right on that.”
Aaron ran a hand through his hair and kept driving.
::::::::::::::
A week later.
Aaron climbed onto his front porch, retrieved the newspaper and some other pieces of mail from the mailbox, and went inside.
“Mom? You got a recipe magazine.”
He put the mail on the coffee table next to his mother’s laptop.
The house was quiet, except for the soft medallion music coming from the kitchen.
The mail fluttered to the floor.
“Mom?”
He crossed the living room. Slow at first, then quick, until he was at the kitchen door pushing it open.
His mother’s girlfriend was slipping the medallion over his mother’s neck.
“The pawnshop’s widow had a clearance sale, Aaron,” his mother smiled. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Aaron lunged toward her to grab the medallion.
The End
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