Grief

 Flash Fiction by B.C. MacManamon

It had come on her all of a sudden. She lived with it as a dull ache anyway, a background sensation that she almost forgot, but then it would return in a spike.

She had been rooting through the cupboards for a bottle of ink that had gone missing. She seemed to be getting more and more absent minded. Her clutching hand grabbed something and pulled it out.

It was a jar of peppermints. Something of Maurice’s. In happier times, he would lean back in his easy chair, reading and rolling one around in his mouth. Sometimes he would raise his eyes to tell her about something amusing from the book, and smile at her over his half-moon glasses.

She took the jar back into the study. It was more or less as he had left it but for the chest of his clothes she had moved in. She could not bear to part with them but could no more bear to have them in the bedroom, where she would see them every day.

She sank down onto the rug and cried herself to sleep.

When she awoke, she was in darkness. She did not know what had awoken her until the noise began again. Echoing off the cobbled streets, there was a wailing. It was at once a high and a low sound, like one voice that became many and then one again.

It was an inhuman sound, a warning, but it held no fear for her. Her already exhausted chest broke out into fresh sobs. The banshee had returned.

Death had come to claim another person from the village.

Death had come for someone else, and the disappointment was more than she could bear.