sjsprWriting

“Careful with it. It’s fragile,” she said to him.

They had recently found a simple, glass vase in one of their old boxes up in the attic.

“Do you remember who gave this to us?” he asked, inspecting the opaque crystal of that once forgotten vase.

“We bought it when we went to Paris.”

“Paris! Right.” He smiled.

“Go put it somewhere. I’ll finish up around here.”

“Okay.”

He went down to their room, wondering where he could possibly put it. He decided it was best not to put it there, but elsewhere. So, he went around the house until stepping into his study. Placing the vase on his desk, he felt he had chosen correctly.

“Where’d you put it?” she asked during suppertime.

“My study.”

“Why not our bedroom?”

“I don’t know. I guess I wanted it all to myself.”

She laughed lightly. “Just be careful with it, okay?”

“Okay.”

Every night, when he’d go write or read, he’d stare at the vase, wondering how long he could hold it without breaking it. And, thus, every night, he’d hold the vase for an hour. Something about its fragility enticed him.

With each passing day, the need to go hold the vase only intensified. She took notice of his sudden obsession, and began to worry.

“You spend hours in your study,” she said weakly as she waited in the bed for him.

“I’ve been busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Why does it matter?”

“It’s unusual.”

Infuriated, he left her in the room to return to his study. She coughed and wheezed, but he could not hear her for he could only ever focus on the vase. He hadn’t noticed that the vase was beginning to crack.

His covetousness had blinded him.

Every night, when he’d leave her, she’d whither and feel herself shattering. An unwelcomed illness had begun to manifest itself in her soul. Her veins throbbed, swirling around her pallid skin.

“Please, be gentle. It’ll break,” she constantly warned him.

“It’s mine. I will hold it for as long as I want.”

Her coughing worsened. His longing grew.

It grew and grew and grew so much that, one night, he grasped the vase as tightly as his greedy, sweaty palm ever could, and broke the weakening glass. In a frenzy, he paced around his study.

“What have I done? What have I done?” he repeated. He rushed over to his bedroom to tell her of what had happened and to ask for her forgiveness.

He walked over to her side of the bed, and stood paralyzed. Her eyes were wide open, and a thick stream of blood rolled out of her mouth. The veins in her body outlined the cracks of broken shards.

He fell to his knees and stared, aghast, at his most prized possession.

“Broken,” he whispered. “I’ve broken you.”