The Grey Vase On Rockwin Street by Noxaprica at Inkitt

Chapter 1

Bent over on ruined knees, hands clasped in prayer, he begged for a woman who had nearly killed him. In Rockwin Street, inside that enormous old house surrounded by stone pots that Molly said looked like graves, the man was so lost in Mrs. Forswill that, despite the fact that she had just beaten him and almost wounded him with a small sharp knife, he would stay.

To the Mayen neighbors, she was a perfectly respectable woman. Every morning, dressed in her nurse’s uniform, she hurried off to the hospital on Woll Avenue, where she worked. Poor Mr. Plain, meanwhile, remained at home with the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease that had surprised no one.

It was not so obvious to those outside the house, but little Molly and poor Sprintz the cat, often left with an empty food bowl and water that looked more like soup, could already have guessed that something was wrong, if only they had known the reason.

That evening, at 11:00 p.m., Maya Forswill returned home from work already exhausted. Paul Plain was sitting in his armchair with a magazine in his hands, one of those filled with half-dressed models, and he was reading each of their names under his breath.

Consumed by anger, the woman demanded to know where he had found or bought such blasphemy, and the man quickly reassured her.

“I found it under the front door. It must have come with the mail.”

Maya stormed toward the old man, shouting that this time she would truly kill him. It was not jealousy, she cared very little for the poor man and was already having an affair with a surgeon named Jason Wibble. She was simply ashamed that she had married, at only twenty years old, a man so senile and so filthy that he would read such an immoral magazine.

She slapped him at least fifteen times before approaching a small steel knife block. At that moment, Mr. Plain, gathering what little strength still remained in his bones, dropped to his knees and began to pray.

“Please, darling,” he pleaded. “I wasn’t looking at them.”

Maya set the knife down the moment she noticed little Molly watching them.

“I thought you were asleep,” she said. She truly believed the child had been sleeping.

“Fine,” she muttered. “But only this once.”

Maya did not tuck the child in that night. Instead, she lay down in her own bed, staring at the ceiling with her head turned slightly to the left. Paul slept in the living room, on the couch, and Molly had nightmares.

In the shadows cast upon her bedroom wall, she saw a disturbing scene: a woman, a man, and a shredder.

The following morning, she woke up with red eyes and her bedroom window half open. She had been startled awake by a sound resembling a heavy blow against a table.

“Paul! Paul!” she shouted, as if her half-deaf grandfather could hear her from the living room.

“Grandpa, are you okay?” she asked, gripped by a terrible feeling.

When she entered the next room, however, she found him still there, asleep on the couch with one hand resting on his opposite arm.

Maya was in the kitchen, frying eggs on the stove. She did not even turn to look at her granddaughter. She simply stood there, preparing her omelet.

If something serious had happened, she certainly would not have remained there cooking as though nothing were wrong. At least, that was what Molly thought, even if it seemed foolish after what had happened the previous evening.

Molly sat down in an armchair and waited for either Paul to wake up or Maya to speak to her.

“Grandma, why were you so angry at Grandpa last night?” she asked with the pure honesty only a child could possess.

“Your grandfather is a filthy man. A traitor,” Maya replied, displaying the kind of hypocrisy that only she, a woman sleeping with the young Dr. Wibble, could manage.

Molly remained silent. She would never have doubted Paul, with whom she shared a far more stable relationship.

Maya had already burned the magazine in the fireplace, though not before carefully studying the exact page on which her husband had lingered. She was thin, old, and bony; those girls were so tall and beautiful.

Paul finally woke up at around 12:30 p.m. while Molly was coloring a page in her picture book, one of the few gifts she was ever allowed to have.

Maya had gone out to buy groceries, since she did not have to work that day, or at least, that was what she had told the little girl.

Paul was such an easy man to mistreat. There he sat, eating a piece of stale bread while holding a book about the First World War. Molly was not entirely sure how to talk to him, but a child’s curiosity becomes impossible to contain when properly fed. And after what had happened, she had been presented with an entire feast.

“Grandpa, you know you can tell me what you did. I won’t get mad.”

Paul slowly turned toward her, looking confused, as though he struggled, or perhaps refused, to remember.

“Grandpa, really, don’t you remember the knife?” Molly continued without a second thought.

Once again, there was no answer.

Meanwhile, little Sprintz was meowing behind the bathroom door where, probably by accident, he had been locked in. Molly hurried to open it and found him there, completely soaked.

“Did you fall into the toilet?” she asked with a laugh, but the cat was trembling, and that worried her.

She picked Sprintz up and rushed to her grandfather to tell him about the accident. The old man did not seem surprised and said nothing. Instead, he took the cat from her arms and locked him back inside the bathroom.

Only then did he finally speak.

“He’s being punished, Molly. He’s being punished for peeing on your grandmother’s shoes.”

“But it’s not his fault!” she cried. “And can’t you see he’s sick?”

Tears began to run down her face.

“Don’t you worry about it. We’ll deal with that pest of a cat,” he replied, trying to end the conversation.

Meanwhile, Maya was not grocery shopping at all.

She was out in the countryside, sitting inside Wibble’s car. She was smoking while he stood outside having a drink.

“I wish this were my life,” she had been repeating all day.

Jason was an apparently perfect man: young, in his thirties, handsome, and for that reason Maya held on to him tightly. She could not understand what had made him fall in love with her, a worn-out, aging woman, or at least that was how she saw herself, when he could easily have taken a young model to bed, one of those women who posed naked in magazines.

“So? Are you planning to have some fun?” she asked from inside the vehicle.

He turned around and smiled.

“Not yet,” he replied.

When evening came, Maya returned home visibly drunk, but Paul, of course, said nothing.

Molly had spent the entire afternoon sulking, thinking about the cat whom only she seemed to care about.

“Grandma, can we let Sprintz out?” she asked during dinner.

“We’ll let him out tomorrow morning,” Maya replied.

“But he can’t spend the whole night cold and soaking wet!”

“Fine, then spend the night with him and keep him warm.”

Molly sighed.

She cared deeply about sleeping in her own bed, but she already knew she would not sleep a single minute that night. The bathroom tiles were cold, and everything she could lean her back against was cold as well.

She would have to sleep in the bathtub.

So that night she sacrificed her sleep for a cat, and she did.

She did not close her eyes for a single moment, holding Sprintz in her arms as the animal gave off a foul, rotten smell.

Around four in the morning, she noticed him becoming restless, almost as if he were trying to escape from her grasp. By five o’clock, the cat was standing in front of the bathroom door, meowing like mad.

“Sprintz, come here,” she kept calling to him, but he remained there, scratching at the door.

Molly thought it would not really be breaking the rules to let him out for a little while, since it was already morning. Still, knowing how strict Maya could be, she knew she could not get caught.

She gently opened the door, and the cat darted out as though he were fleeing from something inside the bathroom.

Molly stepped out more cautiously. Only a few paces from the door, she heard an unpleasant sound.

A thud, like a hand striking wood, followed by the faint scratching of nails.

But by then the cat was already gone.

“Sprintz, seriously, be quiet,” she whispered.

She walked into the living room, where she had seen him running, then searched through the kitchen, but there was no sign of him.

“Sprintz, seriously, if they catch us, they’ll lock both of us in the bathroom again,” she muttered as she searched everywhere, even beneath the table.

Then she heard a door open.

Instinctively, she hid behind the broom closet nearby.

It was Paul, half dazed, probably awakened by all the scratching at the doors.

He did not appear to be searching for anything, nor did he seem interested in playing hide-and-seek with her.

When Molly realized it was only her grandfather, she relaxed a little, though she remained hidden.

The old man staggered forward, supporting himself with one hand against the wall while his legs seemed to cross over one another.

He picked something up from beneath the armchair and then sat down.

Molly watched him through the keyhole of the closet door. She could not see very clearly, but she was surprised that he had managed to bend down and retrieve what looked like a magazine.

A short while later, someone rang the doorbell.

Paul quickly hid the magazine beneath the armchair once more and opened the front door.

It was Maya.

She had returned from somewhere, but she was not alone.

Beside her stood a very tall man.

Molly had opened the closet door slightly and was struggling to make out what was happening.

“I’m bringing your wife back,” the man said with a chuckle.

Paul opened the door wider.

Maya stepped inside, but not before giving the strange man a kiss on the cheek.

“See you again,” she replied with a smile.

At last the door closed, and Maya, without paying much attention to her surroundings, returned to her bedroom with Paul.

Molly had not known that her grandmother had gone out that night.

More importantly, she had never seen that man before.

He seemed young, certainly younger than Maya, but she had not been able to get a good look at him.

When the bedroom door finally shut, Molly let out a sigh of relief.

She knew she needed to find the cat immediately and return to the bathroom.

She searched everywhere: beneath shelves, beside cabinets, inside several rooms.

She simply could not find him.

That was until she looked behind her grandfather’s armchair.

There, at last, she found Sprintz.

“Little guy, did you fall asleep?” she whispered.

“How did Grandpa not notice you?”

It was a reasonable question, unless the cat had hidden there while she had been searching for him.

“Jeez, Sprintz, you scared me.”

But the cat did not move an inch.

He lay there on his back, his eyes half open.

Molly reached out her hand, and as she picked him up, a red liquid trickled from his mouth.

That can’t be blood, can it? she thought.

It took her several minutes to fully understand that poor Sprintz was dead.

Only then did the little girl scream, waking Maya, Paul, and even the Mayens’ dog next door.

Molly was kneeling on the floor, the cat cradled in her arms, crying and utterly devastated.

What could have happened?

Maya appeared first. She looked irritated, despite the fact that she had barely had time to fall asleep, meaning she had certainly not been jolted awake by Molly’s scream. Paul entered the living room shortly afterward, visibly more concerned.

“Another nightmare?” he asked before he even noticed what was behind the armchair.

Maya stepped closer and immediately saw blood spreading across the floor, though she could not tell where it was coming from.

“Grandma,” Molly said through tears, “Sprintz is… dead.”

She turned to look at her grandmother, expecting to find her upset, perhaps even heartbroken.

Maya did look shocked. Her face twisted with alarm, but almost instantly she turned toward Paul.

“What is this?” she demanded.

Now she sounded angry.

“What is this?”

Her hand moved past Molly, past the cat, and toward the armchair. She bent down and pulled out a magazine.

“You got another one?” she snapped, even more harshly this time.

Paul did not even move closer.

He already knew what she had found.

He stood perfectly still, offering no response, until Maya straightened up, gripping the magazine and preparing to throw it at him.

“But Grandma, Sprintz-“

Maya turned, but she did not even look at Molly.

The moment her eyes met Paul’s, she slapped him across the face.

“Shame on you!” she shouted.

Then she pointed toward the front door.

“And you, take it into the garden and bury it,” she said, this time addressing Molly.

The poor girl remained frozen in place, forced to watch the violent scene unfolding before her. Her grandmother screamed and struck her grandfather again and again.

Yet all of it had become little more than background noise, a shadow moving across a wall.

She was still sitting on the floor with Sprintz in her arms.

After about ten minutes, she finally stood up.

She walked outside and picked up one of the large stone pots that surrounded the villa, the gray, unsettling ones she always called tombs.

She filled it with a little soil and carefully laid the cat inside.

Sprintz had always been small, weighing no more than four or five pounds, with black-and-white fur.

She covered him with more earth, or rather, mud, because that was what it had become after a brief downpour that had happened, by strange coincidence, shortly after Sprintz’s death.

Once the pot was back in its place, Molly knelt before it and began to pray.

Only then did she return inside.

When she came back, Paul was crying behind the bathroom door, locked away once again, while Maya had already returned to bed.

Molly knew she would not be able to sleep.

Not that night.

Perhaps not for many nights afterward.

She decided she would go outside for a little while and then return to her room, pretending that nothing had happened at all.

She grabbed a small umbrella in case the rain returned.

It was dark, so dark that wherever there was no artificial light, she could not even see her own feet.

She cried for about fifteen minutes before the storm blurred the line between the rainwater and her tears.

The pavement flooded quickly, and the wind snapped her umbrella before it could prove truly useful.

And so she remained there: alone, in the darkness, battered by the wind and the downpour.

She was afraid.

She did not know who, or what, might be waiting around the next corner, and every time she turned one and found nothing there, she let out a sigh of relief.

Back at the house, Maya was awake.

She had noticed that the child was missing and had already checked the garden.

She was not worried, exactly, but she knew she would never forgive herself if something happened to the girl. Unlike her husband, whom only the smallest shred of morality prevented her from killing.

While Paul cried in the bathroom, Maya sat leafing through the magazine with a heavy feeling in her chest.

After two hours, and after the magazine had been thrown into the fireplace, she finally began to worry.

Molly still had not come home.

It had been a promise.

She had truly sworn it to her daughter, the girl’s mother.

When Judy died, she had said the words aloud:

“I will become her mother.”

Maya stepped outside carrying an umbrella.

The wind had calmed somewhat, though the rain had not.

She ran along the streets, nearly tripping over the edge of a curb, but she remained alert to every movement around her.

After twenty-five minutes of searching, she found her.

The little girl stood motionless between two houses, hidden in the darkness.