GUARDIAN TALES...WEBMASTERS TALES

WEBMASTERS TALES

Guardian (Part VII - Punishment)

Not long after the incidents in part 6, Sis and I began planning to move out of the house. We began looking for other places to live, gave notice to the landlord, and with CC's help started packing things up. I felt mostly relief to be leaving; the nearly constant undercurrent of fear I carried was wearing on me, and I just didn't want to live there any longer.

The Guardian was aware of our plans, it seemed - and was apparently NOT happy that Sis was leaving. While CC and I shared similar negative reactions to the Guardian's presence, (as explained in Part II) Sis had been, in the beginning, more accepting than we were. This acceptance cost her when she began preparing to leave.

She suffered a minor car accident, where she wasn't injured, but her car was damaged. The next day she borrowed CC's car to run some errands, and had a second accident, this time within sight of the house. Again, it wasn't serious, but it shook her up badly.   CC and I were upset also; two accidents in two days were obviously unusual.

It was time to pay the rent again, and Sis had the money in her wallet. I always found Sis to be careful with her wallet; keeping it in her purse unless she was using it. It was large, not easy to misplace. Sis had come home with a couple of friends and had placed her purse on the dinette table, with the wallet inside. (The other people with her were not near enough to the table to reach it.) Sis set her purse on the table, looked away for an instant to say something to one of the other people there, and looked back at her purse to find the wallet gone...I don't remember her ever finding it, and believe she never saw it again...she was distraught, and our stress level raised because we were now forced to step up our packing. Neither one of us could afford to gather up the rent money a second time...

It was agreed that I would take CC's furniture to my new apartment, as I didn't yet have any of my own, and CC didn't need it where she lived. This included the bed and the cabinet that had the handcuffs in it. (Handcuff info in Part V) No one, including myself, had touched them since I had placed them back in the cabinet with the bracelets locked together (there was no key) When we took the mattresses off the bed frame, the handcuffs were found attached to the side of the metal frame. Or rather, HALF of them. ONE bracelet was attached; the other was missing, along with half the chain. The chain had not been cut, it had been PULLED until it BROKE apart. None of us were strong enough to do this. We never found the other half, nor figured out what had happened to the cuffs...

We began to clean up the garage, where garbage had been stored between trips to the dump, and where firewood was kept. There was also several sheets of plywood there, bought shortly before I had moved in, originally intended to build a playhouse for the girls, but never used. The plywood was only a few months old, and still looked new. It had been stored out of the weather in the garage, and was stacked on the floor.

I went over to the plywood and, bending down reached out with my gloved hand to grasp the top board; it crumbled to dust in my fingers. Startled, I stood up and stared at it, unable to believe what I was seeing. The plywood looked perfectly normal...except there was a piece missing out of the top board, where my fingers had caused it to disintegrate...I didn't touch it again, and believe it was left behind...

-Webmaster.

End Part VII

Part I    Part II    Part III    Part IV    Part V    Part VI   Part VII

Part VIII   Epilogue