Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24881886-20140501211340

The old crone on a sitting bench.

In the summer, i always used to leave the city for my vacation time. According to my employee contract, i only get 2-week long holidays; this is definetely a good chance to escape from the city. The Canyon Lake, where i rent my condo, all in all seems a good place. There, away from the city, from all the bustle surrounding it, from its frantic pace of life, from sign of civilization, having a gift of placidity, serenity, and absence of my boss, i can finally rest peacefully for some time.

This time i decided to leave immediately after the weekend and not lose a single day. Since i was in a hurry, i made no preliminary preparations this time. Hell, i didn't even my discharged mobile phone with me, i just had no time for it. All i did was pack my clothes, get my money, then leave, and that's it. When i arrived, i finally felt that i'm free now. Just for 2 weeks, yes, but still i was totally free! Oh God, you should visit this place to understand this wonderful experience. Spacious and tide houses with magnificent viewpoint belonging to them. The riverhood, the forest, the wildlife... The place is pretty nice for many kinds of activities you can expect from its guests, be it a romantic getaways, sightseeing, floating down the river, family getaways, and whatever you can think of. Personally, I just use it a good resort place for some lonely retreat because i'm not that kind of an active person.

3 days on the start passed peacefully for me, i was happy by being not troubled by boss' swearing at me, by his calls to my home which always wake me up and demand to get back and perform overtime off-duty work, and by any other shit this moron always finds some way to come up with. Next to me, there was a restricted land section belonging to an old woman. I didn't know anything about here other than her mental illness. She had some kind of mental disorder or something like this, but i never saw her going insane (at least in front of people). She was sitting on a sitting bench right behind frontgates and talking to someone. She was talking very silently and she swallowed words much. I couldn't be able to heard what she had been saying.

The most weird part was her tendency of patting air in a very odd manner as if she had an invisible pet on her knees, probably she was just a bit out of her mind. Maybe she even had a pet at some point, but the thing died so that this tendency of her has become a remnant habit rather than another sign of some mental illness. If you read Bulgakov's 'Master and Margarita', you must remember the trick which made Yeshua know that Pilate had a dog in the past by looking at his pat-like moves during headache. But whatever. She was ill yet she was pretty calm (from what i saw at this moment), and i didn't really feel like interrupting her privacy, trying to talk her about it, or trying to figure it out any other way. It wasn't fear of her weirdness. I just didn't care about it. Besides, why the hell would i even consider wasting my time on some crazy weirdo crone and her subconscious.

One late night, i was just sleeping. It was the 4th day of my vacation. I woke up with a strange feeling. I felt that something woolly lies beneath my hand. Well, being half-asleep, i thought that it's just my cat. Maybe i had forgotten to close a window? I started to pat it with closed eyes. I didn't want to open'em because i was tired. However, a few seconds later i was almost hit by a shocking discovery... i have neither a cat, nor a dog! Maybe it's a neighboor's cat who had got into my mouse after i had forgotten to close a window? I turned my head, opened my eyes, and looked at the window. Is it necessary to mention that it had been shut firmly? Too afraid to turn my eyes onto it, i started to think quickly. 'What the heck should i even do,' i asked myself? My inner voice (you can probably call it 6th feeling or intuition) told me not to look at this cat under any circumstances. I was feeling primordial fear for some reason. I don't know why, but this encounter with this unknown aggressive cat almost made me, a grown-up man, pee my pants. It was something i can discover as anticipation and bad premonition. I don't know how much it had lasted. Probably 2 minutes, probably 20. I was so fucking scared that i lost track of time. At last, i figured out a solution. I was going to quickly pull my hand, grab my blanket, and then try to cover it and hold it chained with my hands while screaming as loud as i can until help arrives.

But as soon as i made a first move, this thing jumped out from my bed and rushed to the bedroom's entrance door. I only managed to notice its unclear silhouette. Something odd, something totally wrong was with cat's moves. No idea what, but something definetely was not right. I jumped up, wore my sneakers and steered towards the door. When i made it into the hall room, there was no one in there. Where the hell did this cat go? I made a quick glimpse into the window. Fuck. So many years passed, but i still make regrets about this decision. I saw HER! This goddamn crone! This witch was outside! Standing behind the window, having her gray hair mad with all this wind outside, and throwing her madness-filled glare at me! Her big black eyes were so frightening! I'm not sure what has caused more fear to me. This cat or her eyes. I never saw her like that these 3 days. I made a giant back leap from the window, and she started to run away back to her land area. I was unable to get back to sleep for hours but i could sleep somehow. Of course i slept badly! This must not come out as big suprise after what i've just experienced!

Next morning, i woke up pretty late. My wristwatch was showing 1:16 PM. Because i didn't bother to bring anything with me (except for clothes and money), the fridge was empty. I went to the shop to buy some bottled water and crossed the fence surrounding this witch's land. She was just sitting there on her bench as usual. Her hair were combed, she was still talknig to her imaginary cat silently, and there was no any sign of yesterday's nightly events whatsoever. I had almost decided that it was just a bad dream last night, but her clear as today's sunny sky words reached my ears after my approach to her.

She told, 'What's wrong with you these days? Always attempting to escape, but why? I didn't play with you enough, and you got bored? Look what you've done! You almost scared this poor guy to death!'

It was the last nerve straw to pull! I didn't even feel fear, it was anger. Nothing more than simple pure anger. This goddamn witch has an invisible cat! A ghost-like cat capable of penetration of solid walls? Oh man! This was so stupid i couldn't even possibly fear it. I barely held myself together and avoided to swear at her right in front of my fellow co-renters. I'm done here! I'm moving out of this place! Fuck money i wasted to rent this place! I'm outta here! I'll never be here anymore! I'll rent another condo somewhere else next year! Good riddance, people! Good riddance, damned witch! Good riddance, you stupid cat! It was nice to meet you all, now fuck off and disturb my once-peaceful life anymore! And so i left the place.

Later, i started to search about this grandma on the Internet. Googling didn't return many results. All i could figure out was an old case which barely made it to newspapers headlines. No one cares about some auntie sent to psychiatric asylum in a hospital ward by court's order in some remote resort place. There were presidential elections underway. Unfortunately, i couldn't read her story; it was removed from news websites for being outdated. All i had was some Google-cached headlines and no text fragments. Fine.

We all like to break promises at some point, don't we? I didn't have much money, this resort place where i was last year was the cheapiest one in terms of price, etc, etc. Needless to say, i returned to the same place again. After meeting locals, i learned that a crone passed out just before my arrival. I should never say this as a devout Catholic, but for some reason i felt great relief even though it's such a sin to feel something positive about other human being's death. But i just could do anything about it, this feeling was beyond my control, so i pushed it out of mind quickly. 10 days passed happily and surprisingly smoothly. I was glad that i have nothing to worry about during my this visit.

On 11th day, i made friends with indigenous guy whose name is Olaf. We had pretty much common in us, kindred spirits as you usually call it. One day later, we were sitting on our chairs in some tavern and enjoying good beer while chatting about different stuff. Our conversation was going nice, and i decided that the dude is OK to share my experience with him. He won't tell me that i need to visit a psychiatrist specialist at least, that's for sure. He didn't believe me of course although, to my amazement, he didn't tell me that i'm crazy. He told me that a lot of kind odd stories surround this crone, and all local people felt the same relief when they knew she died. She had a bad reputation there.

I asked why so. He told me everything. 30 years ago this woman was accused with 1st degree murder. She killed her own husband. She was acquitted of felony, but the judge forced her to a therapy course in a psychiatric hospital. It took her 16 years to supress her animalistic instinct, but she was never really able to cure fully. For 14 years, she was safe and totally fine, excluding this little 'talking-to-her-invisible-cat' behaviour. I asked him about her further about this homicide case. And things started to become painfully clear to me little by little this moment. I remembered exactly what's so weird was in cat's movements. It was running like a normal cat. It was rolling like something round. Like a soccer ball. What it has to do with the murder of her own husband? What's the connection? When i heard about its Modus Operandi, i fell off the chair. I quickly stood up, apologized to the guy, and said that i'd have to leave now because i remembered some unfinished bussiness i had forgot to care about. The dude was surprised but he thankfully didn't start to inquire and just said 'good bye' to me.

I steered towards the house thinking that on my way. I decided to leave this place forever. This time I it will be done for sure. I won't break my promise this time. I will pack my clothes together. Once I'm done with it, I'll head to the airport to leave this place once and for all immediately. Why? Because it wasn't an invisible cat! It wasn't any pet at all. When this crone killed her husband, neighboors called the police. They heard screams from inside her house. When police arrived, she was sitting on her bed. Covered by husband's blood, she kept his head one her knees while simultaneously patting it like a cat and talking to it silently and swallowing words…

So can you suggest any possible improvements of readability of this text, guys? Welcome advices. And as for the possibly bad style, my native language is Russian, I barely use English in daily life, so I probably used at least weird (if not outright incorrect) word constructions in terms of story's grammar here. But I can assure I did my best on trying to minimize it. Punctuation, sentence restructuring, replacement of some words with better-fitting equivalents, correcting tenses used, regrouping paragraphs - would love to point out my mistakes if i made any significant ones. I appreciate your help. 