STORY STARTER
A character has inherited a treasured possession from a close loved one.
Create a story around them trying to keep it safe, even if it's not an item they particularly like.
A Bit Of A Ghostly Tale.
The so-called treasured heirloom came to him not as a blessing, but more of a smelly, mouldering albatross, festering and rotting on a chain round his neck. It was a ghastly, grotesque porcelain doll.
A relic of madness, an heirloom of horror bequeathed by a dear departed auntie, a woman, who's entire reason for living had been to make him miserable and a person he had loathed since he was old enough to know the meaning of the word.
The doll was a monstrous abomination, its painted face contorted in a wicked grin that sliced through his soul like a serrated knife through flesh and a face that was sagging in on itself, as if melted by acid. Its eyes, two soulless black pits, followed him wherever he went, a malignant spectre lurking like an unpaid tax bill at the year’s end.
His so-called loved one, in her twisted sense of humour or, perhaps, malevolence, had bequeathed him this nightmarish effigy. She knew of his deep-seated aversion to it, the damn thing had blighted his childhood, always there, in the sitting room, like an arse covered in warts. Now, from beyond the grave, she tormented him still, the shrivelled old witch.
He couldn't destroy it. Every time he tried, it somehow survived the burnings, smashings, drownings, crushings, as if mocking his feeble attempts to rid himself of its sinister presence. He considered new ways to dispose of it but somehow he knew that each time he thought it was gone it managed to reappear on his doorstep, its diabolical grin intact, leering at him like some drunken murderer's apprentice.
His nights became a torment. Sleep eluded him more and more as imagined the doll's cackling laughter echoing in the darkness. The toy was actually silent of course, when he paid attention there was no sound. But still, in his imagination the sniggering, tinny sound of laughter was all too real and he could feel the crepitus sound of it moving in the icy dark waiting for its chance to crawl over him. The doll’s, or perhaps his aunt’s evil intentions to him always evident, always menacing, always there. He thought of it always, its presence seeping, like penetrating oil, into his very being.
Desperation drove him to the brink. He consulted a wide range of nut jobs, pseudoscience loons ranging from seers to priests to new-age alternative quacks, cranks and charlatans, seeking an end to his cursed inheritance. All a futile waste of effort. The doll remained. Always present.
One moonless night, driven to madness, he took the abomination to the desolate woods. He dug a shallow grave, dropped the monstrosity into it, and buried it under the weight of dirt and disgust. He stamped on the grave, pissed on it, cursed it, drove over it and poured petrol on it and set it ablaze. He swore never to return, to let nature reclaim the cursed, awful thing. Recycle that, he thought, as he jumped, mud spattered back in his car and drove slowly home.
But when he got home it was there, in the kitchen, by the bread bin. It's beady eyes on him. An eternal reminder of the dear departed, dreadful aunt. He knew she was rotting in hell, but worse, he knew that when his turn finally came to join her, the doll would go with him. Forever.