Short Story: 'The Peculiar Disappearance of Mrs Peralta'

by Eva R

Prologue

When working with the residents at Beechwood House, in the mornings I’d lay the table in the dining room and while the residents ate, put up today's schedule and times, before cleaning the first-floor rooms, setting up the game tables, cleaning the second floor rooms and finally I’d spend my 30 minute lunch break drinking Earl Grey tea with Mrs Peralta out in the gardens. I loved to spend my time out there, we would talk about her younger days when she would go surfing into capricious waves that would send her so high she could cavort over whales! Or more mindfulness activities such as birdwatching from the comfort of her old, warm bungalow and hiking through Forestside.

She did not like the other residents and if she could she resided to the wooden bench behind the abelia hedgerow where no one would ever find her. I only ever saw her sneak through there once when I was changing the bedsheets in her room and looked out the open window and saw her slip through a gap in-between the willow-woven fence and hedge. I never told anyone when she went missing, because secretly, I knew she did not want to be there.

Chapter 1 / Mrs Peralta

I sat in my rocking chair by the window, the only piece of “rubbish” the rest of my family let me keep. While I sipped my tea, I watched the outside world pass on without me like a stream flowing around a rock that it could not catch on to, so I sat there watching it elapse on, the cars, the Lycra-clad cyclists, and a young girl on her chestnut horse that would wave to me as she strolled on down the road. It was boring but what could I do? I could only sit there, rocking to and fro with the window open, feeling the gentle, crisp breeze slowly replacing the musty, dense miasma that stagnated in my room. It was not what I would describe as a pleasant view but rather an eyesore that included a dirty carpark followed by a road of poorly laid concrete splattered with potholes and a brick wall separating the big, thick, spikey pines that could not be seen through. The noise was not much better, cars speeding through at 60 in a 40 and the distant sound of trains up the road and a load of drunk men wandering about the littered streets when its only 10 in the morning. Not much when I asked to live out the rest of my life in a quiet countryside village.

That was the only thing I enjoyed, watching out of my window in the morning and watching out of my window in the evening.

As I leave my room in the morning, I could hear the staff turn in the other direction on the creaky floorboards, I shuffled down the corridor, as I entered the dining room, I felt all eyes on me, and with all other seats taken I was left to sit alone on the end. Again. It was like there was a turning point when all adults turned back into teenagers and would purposefully isolate any difference they found, the only exception being they are all 60-above and very irritable.

At lunch I would bring 2 cups of tea into the gardens with this lovely lady that I cannot quite remember the name of, but she always knows what questions to ask to keep the conversation going.

 

Chapter 2 / Mrs Peralta

Laid in bed I think of the good times when my husband and I would go on adventures, not like the staff define adventures (walking around the gardens) but exploring mountains, trekking miles to the nearest civilisation! When I wished it would come true the window blew open and I wished I could be like the birds that sit on my windowsill in the mornings, singing about the freedom you have until all the air left your body and words could no longer describe the happiness, and you would look until all you could see was the horizon, and you just have to embrace the cold night winds or else you would have to land and no longer enjoy the endless expanses of all the beauty the world has to offer.

I sat up in my bed as the wind whistled through the latch of the window, just something about it seemed so welcoming like a breath of fresh air, so enticing, I walked to the edge in my soft, blue nightgown and I peered out of the window as the night drew ever darker, ever closer and the ground slipped away as the words “wow” rippled from my lips, I closed my eyes, I leant even further out of that window, so far I couldn't even feel anything, the carpet, the wall, the window ledge, it was as though I wasn't even reality anymore.

Chapter 3 / Siran

In all my years working at Beechwood it will never be as strange as that morning.

It was at breakfast I first saw it, only one chair left at the very end. We sometimes have people that come down late, but they do not miss the whole of breakfast. In the garden at lunch Amy sat with us rather than being with the lady she always sits with. Then it hit us, we’d lost her, we checked the garden, every room, and then we checked her own. The door was left ajar and inside was different, the bed had been left askew with its contents strewn across the floor leading to the window, with its curtains leaping across the rail and the window, it wasn’t supposed to be open I rushed to it, thinking of the worst.

I looked down.

But there was nothing.

Just concrete.

We searched and searched, for years, but no trace of Mrs Peralta was ever found.

And the birds never returned.