Wind Chime

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jones jones
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Joined: Sat Jan 26, 2008 7:30 am

Wind Chime

Post by jones jones »

Alice loved wind chimes. She had them hanging all around the outside her house … some on the veranda … here in Africa they call it a stoep …some in the trees in the yard. There were glass wind chimes and brass wind chimes and ceramic wind chimes and bamboo wind chimes.

Only one wind chime hung inside her house. A special one given to her by her husband David just three weeks before he was murdered. The bastards got their women to make a noise outside in the yard so that he thought one of their maids was being attacked. He went outside and she watched as his head was hacked from his body with a machete. Saw it actually bounce like a football when it hit the lawn.

She just had time to slam and bolt the door before they turned on her. David had long before shown Alice how to load and fire the twelve-gauge pump action shotgun. She fetched it from the bedroom then unbolted and opened the front door. She’d seen grown men freeze just at the sound of a pump action shotgun "tromboning" a new shell into the chamber. It's a sound you will NEVER forget...particularly if it is behind you.

Shick-shick!

“**** you.” she screamed and shot the closest one in the head.

The force of the blast tore away most of his face so that only a bloody skull with bits of tissue and flesh sticking to it remained.

Shick-shick! Another cartridge in the breech …another head exploded. Shick-shick … shick-shick … the sound the shotgun made when it was reloaded was as good as the thrump and the recoil when she pulled the trigger. She killed four that night and would have upped her tally if the ****ers hadn’t run away.

It was a crystal wind chime … a large one and it hung from the passage ceiling … so low that it she had to walk around it every time she went from the lounge to the kitchen. So low that the dogs brushed against it. It made her think of David. Those that hung on the stoep and in the trees were lower than head height as well. She jokingly referred to them as her “musical burglar alarms that worked fine when there was no wind.”

Maverick and Purdy … the Rottweilers she bought after David’s death pricked up their ears whenever they heard the crystal wind chime tinkling

It was one o’clock the next morning when her eyes suddenly snapped open. It was hot and humid in the bedroom … all the windows in the house were closed for security reason so there wasn’t even a hint of the air moving.

It was pitch dark and silent in the room so the sudden tinkling of the crystal wind chime startled her.

“You dogs.” She scolded softly, turning over to face the wall. “Always bumping into David’s wind chime.”

Maverick and Purdy lying cold and dead just outside the open front door couldn’t prick up their ears this time.
"…I hate how I don’t feel real enough unless people are watching." — Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
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