Purgatory (standard:Flash, 748 words)
Author: Gavin J. Carr	Added: May 08 2006	Views/Reads: 3418/2	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
One man's search for a way out of purgatory.

I was in purgatory. 

Ornaments, holiday souvenirs, books with torn jackets, mismatched sets
of china – all of it resting on pasting tables, their rickety legs 
thin, like a newborn foals'. 

I wasn't sure what I was doing here, amongst the dust and the smell of
mould. I had meant to go for a walk, a breath of air and a break from 
the cloying stench of a marriage that was turning bad. Somehow I found 
myself inside a charity shop instead. This purgatory. 

I picked up a hair brush and turned it around in my hands. It was oval,
with a silver-plated handle inlayed with mother of pearl. There was a 
design on the back that reminded me of care homes – pink cabbage roses, 
the kind you saw on antique upholstery. There was a weight that you 
seldom feel any more. A sense of solidity and permanence. Of something 
that had taken time and care to make. It was beautiful and yet at the 
same time ugly, almost grotesque. 

As I looked closely I saw that it was cracked. There were several pieces
of inlay missing leaving rusty holes in the handle. There were fine 
white hairs stuck in the bristles. They were the kind that could only 
have come from an old woman's head, someone's long dead grandmother or 
mother, aunt or elder sister. 

Suddenly the atmosphere seemed oppressive. Outside it was a summer's
day, the cars on the street speeding by, the noise of their engines 
punctuated by the occasional blast of music. A grey miasma of exhaust 
fumes hung in the warm still air as birds chattered on the branches of 
bushes, looking for trash and discarded slices of pizza. It was hardly 
a rustic scene, but it was alive. The world outside was a living, 
breathing entity, moving toward whatever the future held. Inside the 
shop was different. Everything was out of time. From the smallest set 
of teaspoons to the monstrous cupboard in the corner; the world had 
moved on and left these things behind. 

I knew just how it had happened. My mother had died three months ago and
I had cleared out her flat. The place was small and she had never been 
a hoarder, but still I was overwhelmed by what she had accumulated, the 
detritus of her life that, stripped of the veneer of sentimentality, 
could only be described as junk. The leaking fountain pen my father had 
given her as a gift; a cheap figurine of a ballerina bought during a 
family holiday; a collection of thimbles she'd had as a child – all of 
it useless and yet tinged with that melancholy magic that made it 
strangely indispensable. To throw it out would be a betrayal; to have 
it in your home a painful reminder. 

What people do in these situations is the equivalent of leaving the baby
on the convent steps. Lacking the fortitude to be honest, to say ‘I 
don't want this', they give it to the charity shop instead. They tell 
themselves that ‘it's going to a better home', and ‘one man's junk is 
another man's treasure', but the reality is here, now, inside this shop 
with its peeling wallpaper and water spotted ceiling. This purgatory. 

The terrible thing about purgatory is that it's in the grey area, I
thought. It is a hiatus, neither life nor death. In a way I suppose I 
too was in the grey area, in purgatory. After my mother died I grew 
distant. My marriage suffered. The world continued to move around me, 
to live around me, but I was in hiatus. It was as though I were frozen 
in ice or trapped in amber. I could see what was going on around me, 
hear my wife's words of comfort and concern, but I had ceased to be 
part of it. I was as trapped as any one of the items in this shop. 

I went to the checkout, to the woman who looked as dusty as the shop
itself. It was a good brush, she said. They didn't make ‘em like that 
no more and it would last me a life time. It cost a pound. 

Outside the hairs in the bristles seemed to glow with an inner-vitality,
a light of their own. 

At the bottom of the street there is a bin. I'll drop it in and continue
on my way. The world has moved on and I'll set myself free. 

Free from this purgatory. 

The End. 


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