Good riddance

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are:

home ~ grey ~ good ~ bath ~ necklace

They were submitted by: https://www.bakinginatornado.com

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It's a good home, Kris said as she looked around in the grey light of coming day. She touched the necklace her mom had given her as a housewarming present. She could still hear her mom's voice full of love and joy when she put it on, "i know you have all the vintage kitchen stuff you could ever need, so i wanted to get something to celebrate you and the life you'll build here instead."

She was good with words and gifts.

The necklace was vintage too. And her birthstone, a sapphire.

Kris took another look around, another stroll. There was the sink where her dog Molly had her first bath. The living room where she and Dan put up their first Christmas tree together...but there were the marks from their last fight too. His blood stained the carpet where he smashed a beer bottle to threaten her with and burn marks from his cigarette butts. There were still marks on the floor from where he smashed her sewing machine but even that couldn't stop her learning to sew and now here she was with her own clothing line. Hers. Without him.

The entire house was full of ghosts. Ghosts of pain, of joy, of lost innocence. She had loved this house so much and the loss of that love haunted her as much as the memories.

She touched the necklace again and stared out the sliding glass doors. To help up the value of the home, she'd decided to put an inground pool in the backyard. Really it was less about value than it was about attracting interest. This wasnt exactly a popular neighborhood now that most of the street was either rundown or Airbnb rentals.

Well. That wasn't exactly the truth either, but it was a great story. No one would look for Dan under that pool not when everyone thought he'd run off more than a year ago while she kept him in a freezer in a storage locker downtown while the police looked around a little. He'd always threatened to leave her hanging. Anyone who'd spent any time around him had heard it so it wasn't exactly a hard sell. She was sure everyone the cops interviewed had said he was a bully and a brute and worth about as much as a pile of dog shit. Everyone knew about his many many many infidelities over the years, and she'd been smart enough to get copies of texts and messages between him and the latest. It definitely gave the story some believable support.

She'd been sure to throw out all the antifreeze containers in the garage and tidy the place up after the job was done, and honestly it wasn't so hard to play the sad wife left alone by an abusive, cheating prick. Her anger was real. Her sadness over the loss of the best years of her life was real. She very much had been beaten down and worn out and disgusted with herself.

But the pride she felt for standing up for herself put a spark in her belly, a warmth that smouldered every day she woke up free. And now here she was, doing things she dreamt about while wincing from her cut lip and bruised ribs.

The pool company was coming to finish up their work today and the final piece would be in place and after that she was going to see about getting another sapphire added to the necklace. She had a second chance to build her life and had every intention on taking it.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:



Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/