Assigned Prompts
Genre: Ghost Story | Action: Buying a cookbook | Word: Angle
Limitations: 24 hours and 250 words
Selected from 1,000 submissions to advance to the Final Round.
© 2021, Matthew L. Jones
Since moving into their new home, his wife had begun obsessively collecting jars. There were maybe a hundred now. Each meticulously cleaned. Dried. Labels removed.
“I tried throwing them out. I just…can’t.”
“Let me.” He said, reaching for the cupboard.
“NO!” she flared, grabbing and wrenching his wrist at a hard angle. Her strength and the sudden appearance of gravel in her voice surprised him.
“Dear god.” Her countenance softened as she let go. “I’m so sorry.”
The next day he found himself at an unremarkable yard sale next door—moth-ball clothing, mismatched Tupperware, milky crystal, dusty vases—when an old cookbook caught his eye.
“Home Preserving and Pickling. Maybe this’ll give her some ideas for those goddamn jars!” He muttered as he paid the old man in the lawn chair.
“What about jars?” the old man perked.
“Oh. Nothing, really.” As he explained his wife’s newfound compulsion, the old man’s face slackened.
“A lady lived in your house years ago. Started collecting jars, just like your wife. They say it drove her mad. Ended up killing herself and her husband. Chopped him up and stuffed all his bits and pieces into those jars.”
Surely he was just trying to rattle the neighborhood “new guy.” None of that could be true.
When he returned home he found his wife in the kitchen. She’d just finished cleaning out a very large jar. Large enough for a human head, perhaps?
“Darling, you’re home!” she said with a too-wide grin.
Her voice seemed different, and he realized she’d never really called him “darling” before…
Matt Jones | Writer 
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