1.
A
stolen ring, fear of spiders, and a sinister stranger.
Anna fingered the finger where her
mother’s ring used to sit. It had been a beautiful ring. Gold with a black
stone surrounded by white stones. Before it had been stolen, it had been her
mother’s engagement ring. Although her mother had never been married it was
still something which had adorned her mother’s hand since before Anna had been
born.
Upon moving halfway round the world
to Melbourne, Australia, her mother had given the ring to her as a token to
remind her of home. Her mother would laugh at her for the loss of the ring,
tell her she should be more careful with her belongings perhaps, and not to
trust the “friend” who had taken it.
There was no sentimental value to the
ring. An old suitor of her mothers who had proposed and after a few months
engaged had been hit in the face with the damn thing. Then her mother had
remember that she had bought it with her own money and promptly demanded it
back.
Still, the guilt of losing something
which was not her own nagged at her and would continue to do so until she
confessed the story to her mother.
This new country was a scary place to
be without her mother. It had always been the two of them and adjusting was
hard. Not that she was alone. She did have cousins who lived nearby, but she
barely knew any of them. Her only contact with them before moving here was
through an old senile member of the family who was always telling of them but
she hadn’t actually spoken to any of them.
The climate alone was vastly
different to home. At home it was warm for only a few days in summer and
nowhere near the temperature here. She had needed to replace most of her
wardrobe within the first few days of arriving.
The neighbour across the street
hadn’t minded that. He would stare whenever she left the house and had asked
her out numerous times. She wouldn’t have minded if it was for the pig-headed,
grossly sexist comments he would make.
He was amused whenever she opened the
mailbox at the end of the drive and scream as a mammoth spider lurking at the
other end would come scuttling out. She wasn’t afraid of spiders. She wasn’t.
But these things were not like the spiders at home. No, these were double the
size and hairy. And when they came crawling out of her mail box she wasn’t
expecting them. Of course that would make her scream.
What made it worse was that he would
just stand behind her laughing. Trying to hide it of course, so instead it
would come out as a snort. Possibly one of the most unattractive noises imaginable. It was just a shame that his looks weren't as unattractive as the rest of him.
