The Blue Vase, Ending.

See part I here and part II here.

III. It is quite late at night. I am sitting in my old rocking chair, rocking back and forth. The boys have been sleeping upstairs for hours.

Why didn´t I lock up the attic before I agreed to have little John Christopher and his friend here for a full week? Boys are so nosy. Of course they are. Did they believe my story? I think they did. But what if they tell their mothers when they go back home? My dear Lydia would love putting me away in a home if she ever …

I certainly loved my Billy, and I was the proudest girl in the world when all my friends saw me sending him off to France in his magnificent uniform.

But then he came back. I had joined that wonderful love cult in the meantime. What was it we called it? Oh yes, The Middle of Nowhere. Those dear young people showed me what true, cosmic love was. Marriage wasn´t the thing, really, so they worked so hard on me to make me break up with Billy. So when he came back, quite disillusioned and in that creased old uniform … I am not at all sure I would have known him from Adam if I had met him in the street.

And then he broke my precious vase. I still think he must have been drunk that night. I saw the jagged edges dripping with his blood and it struck me immediately this must be a sign. It was my duty to get rid of .. ehm, to rid him of his earthly cocoon. I was just about to crack the vase down over his skull, but just in time I saw how much better the poker would be.

I was so eager to prove to the leaders of the cult how loyally I had parted with my worldly obligations, so keen that I brought his severed hand along with me to our next Conglomeration in The Middle of Nowhere. It nearly broke my heart when I saw that they disapproved of my sacrifice. And then they excluded me from their warm, loving community!

But that nasty fluid in the vase? What on earth can that be? I am sure I can´t remember. Should I try to taste ….