Day 109: 5 Minute Freewrite: Monday - Prompt: yard sale

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Edward Young was an unhappy man, he and his wife had been married for fifty years and they had raised two spoiled brats together. At first, he had tried to apply discipline and keep the children in line, but Helen was a continual nag and she allowed the children to get away with murder. As a Corporate Lawyer in a prestigious law firm, Ed had made a good living, his wife and kids enjoyed every dollar of it while he worked longer and longer hours at the office just to avoid going home, and no one seemed to mind as long as the money kept rolling in and they had everything they wanted. Those wants had increased in scope as the children got older until going home was the last thing Ed wanted to do, and even after the kids left for college he came in just in time to shower and go to bed.

Every Saturday, as a way to get out of the house, Ed traveled around the area going to yard sales and thrift stores. There was just something about being around everyday people and families that calmed his nerves and made his own life seem more real to him. He rarely bought anything unless he came across some small interesting or unusual object that he could put on display in his office. He was not always working on those late nights, after all, even at a firm as large as his, there was only so much work that needed to be done. It was late at night, after hours, that he searched the Internet, watched the antique roadshow, or read through collectibles books. He had practiced this hobby for so many years now that he could probably pass himself off as an expert at providing estimates on the value of rare items. His Saturday forays were actually more than just looking for trinkets, he had dreamed of one day being the guy who found that piece of lost art or some super rare item that he could display in his office as the ultimate trophy.

This particular Saturday he had made it to three thrift stores and was pulling up to his third and final yard sale for the day, and it was a big one. After parking, he crossed the street and into the yard, there so many open boxes that you could hardly see any grass and it made maneuvering around the other treasure seekers difficult. The boxes close to the street were very old cardboard, yellowed and dusty, he could see that the boxes farther in the back were newer plastic storage bins. There were four young adults working the sale and much of the belongings appeared to have belonged to much older people. So I asked one of the young ladies why they were selling all of this stuff. She explained that her husband's Mother had recently passed away and that his dad had died a couple of years ago, they had been married for fifty-five years and had always been very close. She pointed over to the tables that had been set up using sawhorses and said that everything on the tables and beyond had come out of the house and were all part of her in-law's life together. This stuff she said, indicating the old boxes scattered across the front of the yard, was in a storage building and had apparently been a part of my father-in-law's first marriage. No one in the family had even known that he had been married before, and he must have been very young when it happened. Ed thanked the lady for the information and began looking through the old boxes taking care not to put too much stress on the dried and fragile paper sides. If there was any treasure to be found it would surely come out of these older boxes.

But to Ed's dismay, after going through almost all of the boxes he had only found useless junk, some clippings from newspapers about old murders and some true mystery magazines that had been partially eaten by insects and mice. But walking along the last row before getting to the stuff from the house, Ed saw several items that someone had carelessly dumped out on the ground and gone through. It was there that he found the old, empty, jewelry box. It was exceedingly dirty and looked as though paint or some kind of thick liquid had been spilled on it and smeared around. He could even almost make out a couple of fingerprints that had been preserved in the drying fluid. But as soon as Ed had seen the box he was certain of what it was, he rubbed a small amount of the dried fluid away until he confirmed that beneath it was mother of pearl and bone inlays. He knew then that this box had originally been sold from La Maroquinerie of Paris. He also knew that it had a secret compartment, had anyone checked that he thought? Unlikely, it was so nasty looking that it had hardly been touched by the looks of it. So he took it up to the woman that he had spoken to earlier and asked, how much for the wore out wood box? Five dollars she asked? How about three I offered, and I'll work on it and see if I can get this paint or stain off of it I added. Done said the lady, so I paid for the box and put it in the trunk of my car. It was getting late and I was expected to get up and be nagged all the way to Mass in the morning, and then I had golf at the club in the afternoon while Helen visited the spa. It would be late Monday after the office was empty before I would have a chance to clean the box up and look it over good.

Monday finally came and as the last late working secretary got up and left the office I reached down into my bag and took the box out along with some wood polish and cloth that I had picked up on the way into work. The stain came off very easily which surprised me greatly. It had not been oil based then, it was water soluble and apparently organic in nature. After cleaning the box and admiring the beautiful artwork I looked for the release that would open the secret compartment. I had looked the box up on the Internet and found the value to be four to five hundred dollars, not bad for a three dollar yard sale item. But the website that I found it on only said that there was a compartment, but it did not supply any directions. Finally finding a depression I pressed in and a secret drawer popped open. Inside were several old gold rings, some with diamonds and some gemstones. There were also a couple of necklaces that also looked to be gold. But to my surprise there appeared to be a half-burned cigar wrapped in a badly stained piece of paper, all that I could see of the cigar was a blackened stub sticking out of the end of the rolled up paper.

Carefully unrolling the dried out paper the cigar eventually rolled out on my desk, but surprisingly there was a ring, a wedding ring, slid up on the stubble end. I picked it up for a closer look and the quickly dropped it on my desk. That was no cigar, that was a finger! I noticed that there was writing on the note, so I held it under my desk lamp and read.

This finger and ring belonged to my first wife, she hounded me to go into debt and buy it for her when I was too young and mad with lust to know that I couldn't afford either a wife or a ring. After three months of continual nagging and working two and three jobs to support us, I came home early one day and caught her in bed with the neighbor's husband. Neither of them knew that I was there, but I saw them and I waited. If you are reading this note then I'm probably dead, I would ask the finder to please take this not to a Priest and offer it as my final confession, pick out the item that you like the least to leave in the offering and the rest is yours to keep. I recommend that you not go to the police, if they haven't looked for her or happened on the body by now, I don't think that anyone would be interested in anything but this jewelry. I worked and paid hundreds of dollars for some of these items in order to please her, by the time you find this note they will probably be worth considerably more. I kept the finger as a reminder of the terrible thing that I had done and so that I would always remember to make better decisions in life. I would hate to think what my life would have been like if I hadn't ridden myself of that nagging harlot when I did. Please don't judge me if you have never been in my shoes.*

It was signed Harold T. Grimes

I sat there for a moment and the thought of my own wife and all of the abuse that I had taken came rushing into my mind. I thought of what my life would have been like if I had taken this route instead of wasting all of those miserable years. Then I started laughing, at first it was just a chuckle, and then I couldn't contain it. When I finally got hold of myself I rolled the note back up around the finger as close as I could just the way that I found it. I would drop it into the collections box just like it was, the priest could read the confession, take the ring, and dispose of the finger because I didn't want anything else to do with it. The only bad thing about this great treasure was that I would never be able to tell anyone about it, but that box would remain on display in my office as a reminder to me of one of the greatest treasures ever, a tremendous belly laugh at some unknown woman's expense.

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**Disclaimer: I often use the freewrite prompt to tell a story instead of doing a pure freewrite, so they sometimes take longer than 5 minutes and usually have some editing. But I try to do my story straight through at one sitting without any unnecessary breaks.
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Graphics by: Giphy.com

Old' Steem by the wonderful @snook
Footer by the fabulous: @topkpop
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Prompt : yard sale

Set your timer for 5 minutes.
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Introduction to freewrite

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