The Plot Calls #9 : "Soiled Memories"

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and/or Ai-assisted-content-generation. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Evelyn Bainbridge had once been radiant. She loved and was loved like a beautiful perfume—subtle, pervasive, and never overstated. For decades, she had hosted luncheons with her beloved other half and late husband, Gerald. Everyone felt welcomed in their warm, delicate presence. There comfortable home carried the gentle soothing scent of jasmine tea, soft laughter, and warmth. People adored her. People loved Gerald. They were members of the community who were an example of true love, even two their children whose healthy relationships were reflections of the wonder people Evelyn and Gerald were: patient, honest, authentic, present, and compassionate.

But that was decades ago.

Now, Evelyn was alone.

Her children, busy yet happy, called less. They loved their mother, but their father died a long time ago. They had happy families and healthy children to raise. Seeing their mother living in the past was leaving daytime television looping on repeat. Evelyn's friends stopped visiting years ago. The daily retelling of how Gerald had proposed beside the fountain at Saint Allegra’s never got old, but Evelyn's grip on the past did. No one asked about her garden anymore, afraid that it open them to a sad and pitiful, wine-scented exhale followed by, "Gerald loved laying in the hammock with his pipe while I pruned the flowers." It wasn't that no one cared she kept the drapes closed— they simply got tired of sitting in her dark home as she repeated, “They have to be closed—to preserve Gerald's memory." Evelyn's broken heart broke everyone else's.

In truth, she missed her best friend and couldn't imagine making another. So she kept a makeup mirror by Gerald’s urn and angled it just-so. Enough to powder her face without ever looking at her loneliness. If she couldn't see her face in the present, she could always look at the past—the past where Gerald stood beside her. It had been since she’d done anything new.

The world moved on. Her children moved. Gerald passed on. Her home did not. Evelyn did not.

One night, after forgetting whether she’d eaten dinner, she wandered into the master bedroom. It still smelled faintly of Gerald's cologne. She hadn’t sprayed it in years, but the drawn drapes kept the air stagnant. Her grief long since replaced by self-soothing repetition. She didn't need therapy. She didn't need to learn anything new. She didn't need to be present for her grandchildren. "When your husband dies, you'll know how I feel," she'd repeat to her daughter. "Why couldn't it be you?" she'd still tell her son. The pillow on Gerald's side was dented—and when it wasn't, she pressed it down. Every evening, Evelyn stared at Gerald's photo. She smiled and sat—visualizing the past. She didn't care about bringing him back anymore. What mattered was the familiarity of her visceral, depressing routine. She could dress in black and be drunk before noon every day.

As she sat in the dark, thinking about the past she didn't care to let go of, she noticed something.

A shimmer. A pulse. At the floorboard’s edge on Gerald’s side of the bed: a small patch of dark soil. Nestled in the center, like a ghost flower extending from a grave, was a porcelain hand.

It reached upward—still, pale, and expectant. A voice she couldn't hear whispered something she felt. Hunger.

Evelyn didn’t scream. She didn’t gasp. Something in her knew what to do. She removed her wedding ring—her most treasured possession—and placed it within the beautiful, delicate porcelain hand.

The hand sunk into the soil like it was retreating into a window—a portal to somewhere else. A portal somewhere beyond and below. In that moment, Evelyn knew she had a pact with something—something that existed beyond time.

She curled to sleep beside the plot.

“Good morning, Evie,” Gerald called out the next morning.

She awoke, smiling. No one was there. But the bed was warm. Her angled mirror gleamed as if someone had polished it. A cup of tea steamed gently on the nightstand.

She wept. Not in fear. In relief. Gerald didn't return. He didn't need to. She just didn't need to change. She didn't need to accept he was gone.

Days passed. Weeks blurred. Evelyn completely stopped going outside. She drank herself to sleep and awoke to Gerald's voice and a warm cup of tea. The mornings Gerald didn't speak, when there was no tea, and his side of the best was cold and dent-free, Evelyn placed something into the porcelain palm. Then, she lived in a never-ending loop of cherished moments: The first time they danced. The night he called her beautiful under a dying marquee. The way he said, “You’re my whole world.” His cologne.

Each memory replaying without effort. She could sit and stare at the wall, yet only see the fun she once had.

Whenever the present threatened to intrude—a phone call from her son, a knock at the door, a tooth that ached—Evelyn returned to the plot. She whispered, "Another offering for The One Beneath, please eat," as she placed anything she could find into the porcelain hand—an old earring, a photograph, a strand of hair. It always accepted. The hand never moved, it simply closed and sank.

Over time, her memories dulled. Her voice grew faint. Her skin paled. She stopped answering the phone. She forgot she had children. She forgot Gerald had died—they were together, in their best moments, all the time. She forgot to eat. She forgot to bathe. She forgot what she was forgetting. Evelyn lived in where she chose to remember. Eventually, her memories were her dancing with a faceless man in a room with no corners. Her mind had become a graveyard—the faces she remembered were ones she never saw in places that shouldn't exist.

"It's so lovely here, Gerald, isn't it?" Evelyn would repeat to the darkness. Gerald, now just a name in her mind, was always nearby. Holding her hand—if she fed the soil.

Then one morning, there was a knock at the door. Her daughter and son entered, hesitant. The air was neither cold nor hot. The floorboards didn't creak. The door-hinges didn't squeak. The home they remembered was stuck outside of time. Neither frozen nor preserved. Soundless. Idle. The siblings walked up the stairs. The lights didn't turn on. A faint purple glow radiated from below Evelyn's door. Her daughter started prayed. Her son inhaled. The opened the door to their parent's bedroom. Evelyn was sitting on the other side of the bed—Gerald's side—muttering to the glowing floor.

“Mom?” her daughter whispered, holding her tears. She looked at her brother. "M-Mom—are you okay?" her son stuttered.

Evelyn didn’t turn. Her head was bald. Her eyes unfocused. She wore a black robe she didn’t own.

“I found him again,” Evelyn whispered to the glow her children didn't want to see. "Who?" her daughter asked. “I never had to say goodbye,” Evelyn responded. "To who, Mom?" her son asked.

Evelyn stood. She was wearing black robes and looked like a sick, pale man. "The One Below," Evelyn said, never turning to face her children—gazing into the glow. As if by instinct, her children backed away and bolted out of their childhood home. They called emergency services.

They waited outside when the officer arrived. He entered the eerie home and walked upstairs. It was silent. An unholy violet glowed from a room at the end of the hall. The officer froze. "Ma'am?" he asked, calling out. There was no response.

He walked closer to the glowing room. A tall pale man in a dark robe kneeled over the source of the wicked glow. The room was empty—no bed, no urn, no mirror. Only an idle figure gazing into something ominous and wicked. Neither waiting nor expecting. Idle.

"A plot of soil?" the officer asked, horrified. He raised his radio.

Then, the Idle Man turned slowly. The officer couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't blink.

The Idle Man looked at him. The Idle Man's face was blank.—eyes, unreadable.

Then, without warning, both the Idle Man and the soil twisted—not down, not up, neither left nor right—sideways. They turned in an unnatural direction that had no name and vanished. The officer shrieked, but it felt as though there were no corners for his fear to echo.

In the silence, the terrified officer heard a single, emotionless whisper:

“I found relief. I fed the One Beneath. The Plot Thickens.”

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