Esther

When she was dull, dull and tired of watching TV or any number of mundane tasks, she would go out to the garage to investigate. The garage sat where great poplars once stood, casting their wintery skeleton-shadows upon the snow. The nobility was gone, replaced by the laughter of teenagers playing pool and cheating the pinball Gods.

Esther had filled the garage with coin operated games and a pool table. Maybe she did it because she needed the money, or maybe she wanted to attract the children—but whatever her reasons were, she did attract the children, all of them. This brought about a kind of paranoia in Esther. She would pace the floors inside her modest yellow house, glancing out the windows to the garage. She would become angry and exclaim “they better not be getting into anything out there!” These thoughts would consume her, and send her out to the garage, over and over throughout the day. Until one January day, her worst fears were realized.

Esther went out to open the garage door at 7AM only to find the door wide open. She walked inside. Something about the crisp winter air erased any idea that something was wrong. At first she thought she must have forgotten to lock up last night, but she did. She locked both of the padlocks and now she could see them in pieces scattered across the floor inside. Ester stood in the garage, looking at the broken lock on the pool table. It was a violation! Wasn’t she the one who put wood in the stove? Wasn’t she the one who made the change for the table to begin with? She stood there in her yellow housecoat and red slippers, with the keys to the table in one hand, and an empty purse in the other. A long moment passed before she noticed the wood axe was chipped. “I know what to do with you,” she murmured. “The next kid to walk through that door is going to get it!”

For the next 30 minutes she shuffled her feet around the garage. She wondered if she should really kill the next child who came in, or if she should raise the prices and make everyone repay the loss of her $10. The cool air chipped away at her anger little by little, until at last she lit the little stove to warm the garage for the children who would certainly be arriving soon. She took the axe and turned to follow her footprints in the snow back to the yellow house.

The chill had taken its toll. She was as old as any of the poplars, and better known. Her age and the emotional drain of the morning had taxed her severely. The stoic face of the businesswoman had slid into a defeated sadness, like a wax face melting. Her steps were shorter going back, and her feet barely lifted from the ground. She did not notice that the birds didn’t stir as she passed them on her way back to the house. She looked like an old tree walking.

Once inside, Esther leaned on the chest freezer, resting. While she stood there, her strength slowly returned until at last she felt strong enough to move again. She placed her frail hands on the chest freezer and pushed the top open. Snow-like frost fell into tiny white piles and a cool fog flowed out like little clouds thinning quickly. Esther looked at her husband’s corpse inside the freezer and said, “Can you believe they would do that to me?” – she put the ax inside the freezer and closed the door.