Metaphysical Furniture

  Day 23 – The Collector's Purpose   There comes a point in every investigation when facts stop helping. You know the who, the what, the where, and the when. The only question left is the one people usually avoid asking. Why? The answer to that changes how you feel about the whole case. By Wednesday morning, I knew Walter Ashcroft wasn't trying to destroy Laurel Lane. The harder truth was that he was trying to save it. The only disagreement was from whom. I found Walter repairing an old grave in the old cemetery behind the Methodist church. He used a soft brush and a bucket of water and worked with the kind of quiet concentration usually reserved for restoring paintings. "You maintain these?" I asked him. "They deserve restoration and remembrance." He rinsed the stone. "Moss and time make people forget." The marker belonged to Margaret Ashcroft, 1939–1988. Beloved Wife. Beloved Mother. Gone Too Soon. I stared at that line: Mother. I kne...

  Fireflies & Jewelweed by Susan Eley Chapter 22 – The Long Twilight   Most disasters announce themselves. A tornado has sirens. A flood starts with torrential rain. An earthquake has the decency to shake your coffee before it shakes your house. The Firefly Hours never believed in warnings. They simply became longer. By Tuesday evening, no one in Laurel Lane asked whether the phenomenon was getting worse. The only remaining question was how much worse. When I stepped onto Arthur McCreary's porch, the sun was touching the western horizon. It had been touching the western horizon for almost an hour. Arthur didn't bother looking at his watch anymore. "They've all stopped," he said, nodding toward the kitchen table. Seven clocks. Seven different styles. Every one frozen at 7:48.   "I keep winding the pocket watch." "Any luck with that?” I asked, already knowing the answer. "No." He smiled without humor. "It makes me feel i...

  "Firefly" by Jojo Collins Chapter 21 – The Lost Residents   Every missing person eventually becomes two people. The first is the one everyone searches for. The second is the one everyone slowly invents afterward. The child who would have graduated. The husband who would have retired. The woman who would have become a grandmother. We build imaginary futures because reality refused to provide one. The file gets closed and a person becomes a question. By Monday evening, I had begun to suspect Laurel Lane contained more questions than houses. Night still refused to arrive. The sun remained pinned to the horizon, suspended in an endless twilight that had long since stopped feeling beautiful. No clocks moved. The fireflies still burned without blinking. People spoke more quietly now. As though loud voices might remind reality that something had gone terribly wrong. Walter Ashcroft hadn't left the street in nearly an hour. Arthur paced. Calico filled pages in a noteboo...

  Thumbalina Playing With Fireflies by Priya Rama Chapter 20 – The Fireflies Stop Blinking Time marches on, they say. Maybe it is a flat circle. Maybe it isn’t linear at all. It just moves and shifts as it pleases. But time does move. Morning matters because night eventually leaves. Summer matters because autumn eventually arrives. Children become adults. Songs reach the last note. Conversations find the courage to end while others find the place to begin. Endings are important thought. Without endings nothing ever becomes a memory. By Sunday evening, Laurel Lane had forgotten that. I found Walter Ashcroft already sitting on his porch without his tea or glowing jars. Just an old wooden chair facing the neighborhood. "What are you doing, Walter?” I asked. "Waiting.” "For what?" “Well.” He watched the first fireflies emerge. “Of that I'm no longer certain." That worried me more than if he'd offered an explanation. Arthur arrived a fe...

  Fireflies by Erte Chapter 19 – The Collector I collected baseball cards when I was a kid. Every time I got my allowance for doing my weekly chores, I would rush to the store to buy a pack. When I got them home, I spread them out and studied them they way a scholar might obsess over a recently unearthed manuscript by Shakespeare. Each new set of cards brought the possibility of finding a gem. Those baseball cards are in a box in a storage unit. I kept them because, like all collectors, they connect me to something I love, a passion. That’s how collections work. Each one seems to say: This mattered. Please don't let it disappear. By Sunday afternoon, I had become convinced someone in Laurel Lane understood the Firefly Hours better than the rest of us. Call it hunch. Call it intuition. Call it remembering something Arthur said to me almost in passing. But it gnawed at me the way some lady behind me at the coffee shop that morning was chewing her gum. Loud. Smacking. Annoying. An...