Leslie Tills

September 9, 2013 by ladyharvey 27 Comments

Leslie was tilling her garden and heard a thunk.  She had hit a rectangle of rotting wood.   Pulling it up she gasped at a gas mask staring back at her.  Grabbing her trowel she started to unearth the mask.  Slowly the top half of a skeleton unveiled.

The bones gleamed white.   The top half wore: a red bowler hat with remaining brown curls of hair, a gray suit jacket with a red silk pocket handkerchief, a yellow and white shirt in small plaid, a black tie, and jet cuff links.  The skeleton was eccentric, well-mannered and familiar to her.

She sat back on her heels.  It occurred to her that his outfit was not in time with the gas mask.   It was as if he had been plucked out of time, bleached shiny, starched, gas mask stuck on his face, and plopped in her garden.  Who he was and why her garden specifically she wondered.

She continued until she had uncovered all of him.  He had no shoes.  Leslie thought it was bad taste to bury him with no shoes.   She didn’t understand how he was supposed to walk to the pearly gates without hurting his soles.  In that situation she would appear in front of St. Peter flustered.   Not a good start to being dead.

While mulling over the shoes she riffled through his pockets.   There was a yellow plastic comb, a ten dollar note, a map of the London underground, a small box of moldy raisins, a brown porcelain hare, a leather wallet, and a note.  The note read in cursive: “bubble bath not the lavender kind she hates the lavender kind or is it that she hates the rose kind?”

Leslie felt lavender the better bubble bath choice.  She opened his wallet.  There was a selection of credit cards, a gym membership, his driver’s license, and his business card.  She took the business card and read:

 

“Gregory H. Gray

Polymath
Nice to Meet You Leslie
Call me maybe? ”

I wrote this piece for Trifecta: Week Ninety-Four Challenge:  Check it out here: http://www.trifectawritingchallenge.com/